Blog

Big reasons why big data can vastly improve marketing efforts

August 12, 2016 by Susan Lietz — SVP, MarComm, Tapad

We all know the big, failed product launches, especially those from companies known for marketing greatness like New Coke, the Arch Deluxe and Orbitz soda. And, of course, there’s lots of analysis out there about why they crashed and burned, but I believe every executive in charge of those campaigns would have benefited from one simple thing: more accurate real-time data. 

There will always be marketers who choose to go with their gut instinct over evidence. But, given the tremendous number of insights we are now able to glean from the whole wide world of devices, there will be fewer and fewer of those who opt for that. 

We can now see the crucial link between digital marketing and brick-and-mortar transactions. Today’s technology can accurately determine when an ad shown on a smartphone, for instance, actually leads someone to a retailer for such a purchase. That's a real game-changer when you consider that 90 percent of transactions still occur in the traditional retail setting. 

Add that to the fact that companies can now also integrate privacy-safe point-of-sales data from credit card partners, and it is now possible to learn which specific products were purchased. In essence, it is increasingly difficult to argue with the data in this new, far more revealing world.

The Real-Time, Cross-Device Difference

Restaurants have always been able to connect advertising campaigns with sales, however indirectly. By the crudest measure, an executive could look at how much they spent on advertising and how much of a sales boost was experienced during that time in order to compute a back-of-the-envelope ROI figure. 

However, that method required weeks, if not months of additional work to make a final determination about whether a new product was hitting its mark. But now, there are new forms of measurement available.  

This year, for instance, smartphone penetration is approximately 77 percent, according to comScore. When you consider we now also can pinpoint both when a consumer witnesses an ad (through cross-device targeting), as well as when they (and their smartphones) enter a fast food outlet, it's clear that data now allows us to very accurately connect the dots between our marketing investments and point of sale. 

Additionally, since all this data comes in real-time, marketers can now experiment with ad sequencing on different devices by using this type of cross-device targeting to prompt customers into in-store visits.

What This Means for Fast-Feeders

The food service industry is a dynamic one, where marketers constantly jostle to take advantage of changes in consumer tastes. To stay on top, chains must constantly experiment. 

Although many do just that, larger-sized chains often find it difficult to stay agile as a product becomes a runaway hit or flop. With accurate real-time data, executives gain the same type of visibility their franchisees have on the front lines. 

At the same time, cross-device pairing can offer much more detailed data concerning who is actually seeing advertising, as opposed to the information that gross rating points can provide. This kind of pairing helps executives see which audience segments are being most affected by marketing efforts. The results can often be surprising.

For example, in the early days of the internet, marketers were somewhat stunned to see that hearing aid ads were getting some real traction with young women. That's when they also realized this younger audience was often leading family efforts to purchase hearing aids for older loved ones. Data made that game-changing revelation possible. 

So the bottom line on this for restaurants is that this kind of data capture and analysis is essential for executives who want to definitively know which ads are most effective at accomplishing their sales goals. Perhaps equally important is the fact that this kind of data can quickly expose the marketing flops that you can rapidly abandon, in order to invest your time and money into something better.