Measuring Brand-Building Efforts

Viewpoint by Tülin Erdem, Academic Partner

Today’s marketing environment presents more challenges — and offers more opportunities — than ever before.

The challenges include meeting rising demands for accountability, and developing and implementing complex and creative marketing strategies and programs. Among them: Choosing among increasingly fragmented traditional media and a host of new and emerging media. With so many choices, it is vital to design and evaluate marketing strategies based on sound analysis rather than intuition alone. Challenges, indeed. But opportunities, as well.

Fortunately, there are two pieces of good news. First, there is an unprecedented availability of data, including ratings, click tracking, and consumer surveys. That said, these data risk simply being a pile of numbers if they are not properly analyzed using rigorous techniques.

The second piece of good news is that a host of tools is available for analyzing the effectiveness of different components of marketing strategy. Not only do they better guide evaluations of how different marketing programs complement each other, but they also better measure the incremental effectiveness of these programs, including, for example, adding a new medium to a marketing portfolio.

With the increased focus on measurable marketing, it’s important to keep in mind that:

The analysis is only as good as the data. It is vital to have a well-reasoned strategy for collecting the data to avoid noise and bias.
Any model is an abstraction of reality. However, models need to be subjected to reality checks.
It is important to evaluate incremental effectiveness. This includes, for example, an assessment of whether different media are substitutes or complements.

Applying these techniques can be difficult, requiring the processing of very large data sets using complex statistical models. Now more than ever, it is essential that your team grasps both the workings of these new analytical techniques and the market environment in which they’re being applied. Prophet brings a deep understanding of measurable marketing – both its underlying issues and solutions to achieving it. We stand ready to guide your team on its path.