Blurred Lines: How to sharpen your focus on your cross channel strategy – Part 3

In my previous posts (part 1 and part 2) in this series, I’ve looked at best practices for marketers to take advantage of the blurring of lines across channels and devices. Here are a few final thoughts on the topic that should help position you for long-term success.

Capture Your Audience Through Key Data Signals

Data is the key to helping you create a consistent and flawless customer journey. Despite there being an abundance of it, many marketers find it difficult to action.

One way to leverage data is to engage customers with ads based on search intent. This can be done through automatically creating ads in Facebook and Facebook’s Audience Network (a way for advertisers to extend their campaigns beyond Facebook into other mobile apps), based on the intent consumers demonstrate through their search engine activity.

In addition to Facebook this search intent data can also now be leveraged across mobile and desktop display. This type of targeting has helped boost ROI for many leading brands by re-engaging customers based on their interests and also increased customer acquisition by using the expressed search intent to find similar ‘lookalike’ customers.

Make Attribution Actionable

The age of the customer demands that marketers understand consumer interactions across channels. Attribution plays a big role here – if done accurately it can help inform you of the true customer journey to help determine how important each channel was in the purchase decision.

This data can help you value conversions, determine the most influential paths, and forecast future scenarios. Ultimately, it can help you make the tough decisions about where to increase spend and which cuts will fund that increase.
Actioning these insights in real time as opposed to after the fact is the most effective way to manage attribution.

When it comes to pursuing and implementing attribution, the majority of marketers still fall short, according to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Skai, Cross-Channel Attribution Must Convert Insight Into Action. Marketers still embrace elementary approaches to measurement with only one in nine marketers using advanced attribution methods. In fact, among those using attribution, 23% still use single-click method.

Watch our recent webinar with guest Tina Moffett of Forrester for a deep dive session highlighting findings from the recent Forrester study on cross-channel attribution to help you understand the opportunities to drive improved performance through data-driven optimisation and the impact of predictive forecasting on today’s marketing programs.

With the data and technology innovations available to the modern marketer, it’s becoming more of a reality to create truly holistic digital program that provides a seamlessly integration across channels and screens. At the end of the day, your consumers do not draw hard lines against the ways they interact with your brand, and neither should you.