Navigating measurement, reporting, and ROI in a cookieless world
It’s one thing to have your ads strategy nailed and firing - but another to know how you’re measuring it and reporting on the ROI. There’s plenty of changes coming to this arena (including a cookieless world) - here’s what you need to consider to be set for success.
Redefining how you measure success
In 2024, the landscape of B2B digital marketing measurement and reporting continues to evolve, making the concept of success increasingly subjective. For B2B marketers looking to navigate this changing terrain, it's crucial to redefine what success means for their organisations. This means going beyond traditional metrics to consider the broader impact of marketing efforts across all channels, including overall business growth and customer sentiment.
In an era of subjective success, understanding and leveraging your CRM platform as the source of truth is more important than ever. Unlike relying solely on ad platforms, which often provide fragmented or siloed data, a well-integrated CRM system offers a holistic view of customer interactions and campaign effectiveness. This comprehensive perspective enables marketers to make informed decisions, align strategies with business objectives, and demonstrate the true value of their marketing initiatives.
Cookieless measurement & targeting
The cookie jar is almost empty - and 2024 is the year where your hand goes in and nothing comes out. As marketers face a constant barrage of questions surrounding marketing ROI, every dollar has to have a measurable impact, especially in a recessionary environment.
Gartner predicts that 60% of CMOs plan to cut marketing analytics teams - citing ‘failed promised improvements.’
2/3rds of marketers agree that they don’t have the right type of solutions to support cross channel decision making.
GA typically only tracks a single device journey which represents around 20% of your buyer journeys. You need to make sure your analytics solution, whatever that may be, is able to track and report as much of the customer journey as possible, from the top to the bottom of the funnel.
Research by Marketing Week found that buyers use an average of 6 touch-points on the buying journey. Moreover a lot of these platforms want you to spend more and have “ad-bias” giving credit where possible for every conversion, even if it wasn’t the final or most influential touchpoint.
We are moving to a world without third party cookies. Why does this matter you ask? Think about the amount of users who use Google Chrome, for example. Removing cookies, removes the ability to personalise and retarget.
Hot tips
Make the most of your first party data and stay up to date with the various platforms proposed solutions. We’ve been here before - think of it as a challenge and rise to the occasion. The cream will rise to the top.
If you haven’t been collecting zero party data now is most definitely time to start. Coined by Forrester in 2018, zero party data is a subcategory of first party data and is the information like communication preferences or birthdays a user willingly shares.
You should be relying more on your first party data which is easy to collect and consensual. You can learn what interests users the most on on your site by pages they visit and products/services they buy.
Contextual advertising will see a resurgence where ads are placed based on content of the site or page being viewed rather than the user's past behaviour.
You should still be able to retarget on the various marketing platforms themselves, e.g. if someone likes your post they can be retargeted. Conversions however will likely become a predicated AI figure (if it isn’t already…)
New technologies will come to the fore using predictive and AI based analytics - almost like a big fancy decision tree if you will.
Engaging content and a superior user experience on your own platforms will be crucial in attracting and retaining users.