How to create a marketing measurement plan built for the future

Karen Stocks: How can marketers think about building a solid measurement plan to stay ready for what's next?

Hey there. I'm Karen Stocks, managing director of global measurement solutions at Google. Businesses need a plan built for the future to drive performance amid economic uncertainty and changes to privacy regulations. A solid measurement foundation will be the key to identify and measure what's working and deliver real value to your business. So let's talk through strategies to set you up for measurement success.

Keep growing your first-party data. By now, marketers know that first-party data is no longer a tip to marketing success, it's table stakes. That's why it's important to constantly check if your first-party data strategy is adequately addressing all touchpoints of the customer journey. One touchpoint that's becoming more important is apps. Apps allow you to build meaningful relationships with shoppers, which can drive better results for your business.

In fact, 87% of retailers say their app users are more loyal and have a higher lifetime value than nonusers. So marketers should consider tools that can help grow their app's user base and try new measurement solutions to get the most out of their data.

Upgrade your analytics technology to the latest version. Admittedly, this tip is an obvious one, but the digital transformation has rapidly change how we approach our jobs.

That means it's imperative that you upgrade your analytics technology for these three reasons: one, to adapt to these ongoing changes; two, to help you collect real time data; and three, to predict future purchasing behavior. If you delay, you risk leaving essential insights in the dark.

Let me talk you through a good example. When McDonald's Hong Kong pivoted to the latest machine learning technology in order to reach people most likely to purchase, they were able to increase in-app orders by 550%, while reducing cost per acquisition by 63% in just two months. Impressive, right?

Enrich data with your business values. Google advertisers see an average 14% increase in conversion values when they optimize for value rather than just cost. By expressing the value of conversions as they relate to your business, automated tools can help enrich your insights and optimize your marketing strategy for what matters, like revenue, profit, lifetime value, and more.

If you aren’t able to provide the business value of the conversion, there are tools like conversion value rules that allow you to adjust the conversion value to things like geographic location, device, or audience.

Enhance your measurement with offline insights. A strong measurement infrastructure supports both your offline and online marketing efforts. So for example, let's say your business is collecting leads online, but the sales are happening offline.

In this case, you should import the offline sales into your advertising tools so they can help optimize your bidding. You can use tools like enhanced conversions to import offline conversions and help improve your online conversion measurement in a privacy-safe way.

Protect privacy while driving performance. Respecting users’ privacy preferences doesn't mean you have to sacrifice conversion data. Leverage tools that empower people to choose how their data is used on your site.

And if you're concerned about measurement gaps due to limited data, you can lean on modeling techniques to fill in those gaps. Your marketing measurement plan needs to be built with data from new privacy, safe technology to better unlock growth opportunities for your business.

So to quickly recap, here's what marketers can think about to create a measurement plan built for the future.

Keep growing your first-party data. Upgrade your analytics technology to the latest version. Enrich data with business values. Enhance your measurement with offline insights. And protect privacy while driving performance.

There's no question that tomorrow's successful marketers will build on a measurement foundation based on first-party data and a strong tagging strategy. I hope these tips help you to prepare your business for the challenges and the opportunities ahead.

Check out the description below for tools you can use for your measurement plan. That's it for this episode, and thank you for joining. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel so you can catch the latest insights. See you.