by: Christopher N. Roberts, COO, CloudControlMedia, LLC
Does it seem like your digital marketing agency is hiding your data from you? They may not be doing it intentionally, but if they can’t connect an action and spend to a down-funnel result, you’re not getting the results you deserve. You’re not getting down CRM (sales) funnel data associated with your channels, campaigns, and sources.
The Importance of Down Funnel Attribution
Marketing attribution allows you to accurately assign credit to a single marketing effort to measure the results it produces.
For example, if you purchase advertising on Facebook, you should be able to see how many of your prospects clicked on an ad and were interested enough to request more information. In the best scenario, you could even assign a dollar value based on the cost of your good or service to determine actual return on investment. With proper attribution and analysis, your agency should be able to pinpoint success and spend strategically so every dollar counts.
One of the most common complaints we hear from clients who switch agencies and come to work with CloudControlMedia is that they couldn’t connect their marketing investment to actual contracts, enrollments, loans, and the like. In other words, their front end spend is not tied to down funnel sales. Sure, they saw more website traffic. There were more inquiries—maybe even more sales starts. But there was no final follow-through. No new sales, contracts, enrollments. The sales numbers didn’t change significantly, and digital and offline marketing dollars were being wasted.
Does This Sound Like You?
Your marketing dollars are spread across platforms and your agency refers to brand lift and increased inquiries, but when you ask for specifics, it’s nothing but crickets.
You see reports and data that indicate a reasonable cost-per-inquiry, but those inquiries aren’t converting, or you don’t know what is working and what isn’t, and much of the information doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you. The good news is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that your marketing efforts aren’t yielding any results. But the bad news is that if you don’t know what’s working and what’s not, you won’t be able to make sound financial decisions or plan your marketing budget.
Maybe your current agency doesn’t know how to tie front end (Google, Facebook, 3rd party affiliate, organic, etc.) inquiries and spend to down funnel performance. Maybe they don’t have a system or method to make heads or tails of the data. Or maybe the data would show poor sales results from their efforts and mean a trimmed media budget. They definitely don’t want that!
So, either your agency knows what platforms are performing well and where you’re seeing the best bang for the buck and is just not sharing the info. Or much worse (and quite likely), they really don’t know enough about efforts, results, and attribution to definitively say what’s working and what’s not.
CCM and our software, the CloudControlMedia Platform (CCMP) approach your spend like we’d manage a financial portfolio. We choose individual investments based on what is working, what’s trending, and ultimately, what will yield highest sales for you.
Of note, buying media tends to be the easier part of the equation. Getting to an effective cost-per-inquiry or increasing volume willy-nilly isn’t rocket science. However, combining front end pacing and early performance coupled with managing and calibrating media spend to CRM down-funnel data in real time takes years of know-how and robust technology. CCM invested millions of dollars, enlisted the brainpower of dozens of skilled engineers, and took several years to perfect CCMP. We utilize this technology and methodology for all of our clients.
Want to learn more? Check out the CCMP demo video.