Re-Thinking Customer Acquisition Focusing On Less Measurable Bets

    Customer Acquisition,

    Marketers are now using use attribution reports to assess trends and predict the relative impact of strategies, but it is risky to draw significant conclusions from absolute numbers.

    After acquiring any client or closing a deal, marketers should step back and ponder on the factors that resulted in the closure. It is necessary to understand which marketing tactic or gimmick is creating the maximum connect,  identifying if it is email marketing, trade fair, digital marketing, or some seminar. Marketers should take care not to fall prey to the typical human behavior of filing a thought away and never revisiting it until the topic is highlighted again.

    Marketers contact a prospect and usher them through each stage of the funnel, nurturing at every turn until they become a customer. The real game starts when they analyze what converted them – which marketing tactic can “attribute” to the sale, and go on to invest more in what’s working. The rise of data-driven marketing has made attribute marketing tactics for sales, very popular. However, this does not account for what can’t be measured, so the resources should be invested smartly across multiple tactics. Marketers often double down on one section of their marketing strategy. They forget that converting a prospect at the user conference disregards the long email campaign that first caught the attention. As per a report, 56% of marketers confirm the importance of attribution with another 33% deny of its criticality.

    Today, prospects cannot be simply and accurately credited with one touchpoint for triggering a complex buying decision. Marketers need to come up with internal formulas for multi-touch attribution to push customers to purchase. These formulas tend to illustrate what marketers give priority to, rather than what’s genuinely influencing customers.

    The attribution process is not that easy; for instance, comparing the win rate of deals that include a single type of touch versus another, is reasonable.  However, to identify one specific touch-type that will drive a certain amount of pipeline solely on its own, is a complex assumption. Few channels may experience less conversion simply because there are more competitors on that platform from the particular industry. Alternatively, the problem could be with the execution rather than the channel itself. An attribution report can’t confirm why a tactic is underperforming, and that is where marketers’ experience and knowledge come into play. Marketers must be able to analyze and to optimize their efforts, place multiple bets on different channels, to be clear on what cannot be relied on for long-term dividends.

    This might even mean firms may need to move some resources from digital programs and place them to work on human-based evangelism. Firms should consider launching a global event series, live events, internal marketing programs, and creating dedicated customer workshops aimed at vital strategic accounts. These campaigns need marketing technologies to back them, to be able to reach the target audience. Even if these bets are challenging to manage, marketers should place trust in them and correctly choose the marketing technology that could simplify the process.

    It’s not that attribution doesn’t add value. However, data can only measure the quantity. However,   qualitative marketing and the value of creating real connection are more important than an open or click-thru rate. To be successful, firms need to adopt a stable mix of personalized marketing touch and martech tools.

    So when looking for a magical recipe or algorithm to measure their marketing efforts, marketers need to remember that the only formula for good marketing is that there is no specific success formula.