Marketing Optimization

Hello everyone! Welcome back to another edition in our series as we explore marketing and everything that has to offer. Today we're going to be talking about marketing optimization specifically how Inbound Marketing is often overlooked and how it shouldn't be when we're looking at ROI on our marketing efforts.

So first off what is marketing optimization right what are we talking about here today well market optimization is traditionally comp traditional outbound marketing efforts looking at that understanding how we can maximize our ROI that's traditionally how it was done that's how Nielsen's done it for decades with their media mix modeling telling clients hey you need to spend more here you need to spend less here but as we as we the internet age has come upon us as we social media platforms we've had all these different channels and inbound marketing has become such an important aspect of every company across every single industry it's something that is often overlooked and the reason behind that is it's hard to put a true cost factor to it when we're talking about traditional outbound marketing or traditional media there's a spend that's always tied to it right I mean how much are you spending for example if you look here on google right you can see your spend your total profit and you can see what what your ROI is leveraging log data tracking those various paths the consumer.

So that's why for me the optimization is really simple and it's hard because we're talking about inbound marketing they're usually the spend associated with that is much more traditional and when I say that we're talking FTEs so it's traditional it's labor costs but it's untraditional in the in essence that it is traditionally isn't captured within these marketing optimization tasks because again you're just talking about FTEs you're talking about people that you pay for your inbound marketing efforts to generate content that is rich and it's engageable so ultimately it can help those customers along that path and that journey to an acquisition but it's extremely important especially now as that talent is really something that's becoming high valued it's something that you're talking about individuals that are making over hundreds of thousands of dollars a year so we need to understand that cost and that ROI when we're talking when we're to making our marketing strategies we need to know hey if we added two more full-time employees and that cost us from a layer perspective say 400k because you have to factor in health insurance all of that stuff onboarding or we spent 400 thousand dollars more on search what is going to help us generate more ROI those are factors that companies have to start thinking about.

So again I know we have just touched on this already but just for those who aren't aware the difference between inbound and outbound outbound those traditional spend channels think about the commercials you see at the super bowl see think about the ads you hear on the radio think about even those at if anyone even reads the newspapers these days think about the the coupons and the stuff that are attacked in there where inbound is again that data rich those those engaging things that people are re seeking that information and they're being drawn to your company drawn to your offerings so important to join us those things and again outbound there's usually it's very easy there's usually a spend that's associated with all of those efforts there's pro from a tracking perspective extremely easy inbound you have to extrapolate a little bit more you have to understand from how much time is being spent derive it from full-time employee cost etc so why is this so important.

Well a little bit about marketing optimization this is what CMOs across the across the world across the country leverage to make their marketing plans right now it's the fourth quarter everybody is putting setting up their budgets for next year they're putting against their strategy and their plans and marketing a huge cost center they have to understand how they want to spend it now they're going to have a yearly plan but again we all know marketing it changes week to week month to month but they need to be forward looking right they need to be forward looking be able to forecast understand hey I need to do x, y, and z so that I can bring more people in that online to offline integration and when we say that is think of traditional marketing and outbound advertising well that might be what gets people interested but how are they then engaging with your inbound marketing efforts
that rich content on your website what are you attributing value to that part of the process within that customer journey and ultimately what we're trying to do here is have accurate ROI and understand the marginal impact of each of each marketing a collateral engagement that a customer has on the path whether it be inbound or outbound and again we're incorporating that consumer behavior so leveraging that log data right that is very hot button topic in today's world with everything that's going with GDP car and CCPR but understanding you hey what material are people gravitating to you maybe you're out by marketing got them here.

But what inbound marketing or what other aspects are actually are concealing the deal right what what's putting us over the top and that's important to understand and you need to again attribute the appropriate amount of reward to that process rewards that aspect in the process so just moving forward we kind of touched on this what the power of that marketing optimization is again improve that customer reach experience there's a lot of modeling and ai predicting that we can get into that we can leverage once we have that data and understand the appropriate operation and mitigate those market spending risks which is ultimately what we're trying to do here is understand hey we want to maximize our dollar and sometimes that doesn't mean hey google ramp it up sometimes it means hey I need to invest in my inbound marketing team I need to bring on some talent that is going to drive more people organically to our website because that's where we're seeing best success and then obviously quantifying those returns and maximizing ROI as we talked about but again what does this ultimately conclude with and as we see here you see your traditional customer journey that awareness the consideration purchase service loyalty something that as marketers we all know about but the importance is understanding as we go along this path this winding curve you can see social media radio tv word of mouth online display search websites email social media etc websites right important social media etc. experience what things from an inbound aspect is influencing this process and again it's often overlooked often.

We're just looking at the traditional outbound those easily quantify costs so that we can associate ROI with and frankly a lot of agencies and marketers in google analytics they want to say hey these are high impacts fans they want to say hey you're getting all of this value by using using paying for our services but you don't think google wants you to spend some more money with them of course they do so i'm sure there's some self-interest in there I mean you can't be blindly accepting it but that being said it's extremely powerful but it's also understand from an inbound aspect what what are we doing what are we able to organically create and then that inbound marketing as well also helps with outbound because what happens when those people get your websites start searching around getting different material right I mean you can get someone to the door but ultimately what's going to get you over the hump and it's kind of it's a salesperson before a salesperson right if you have the right inbound marketing and you have the right reach you you typically have sold someone before they've even walked in the door whereas outbound there's much more of a usually it's a longer sales site we have to get through so the one thing I really want to emphasize in this conversation today is that when you're looking in your marketing observation it's Q4 looking towards next year just make sure you do not overlook inbound marketing understand its importance make sure that you're properly attributing ROI to that process to that do that to that process to that i'm sorry tongues got my thing running over time here but it's properly attributing it to the process that's occurring within your consumer journey so I mean if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me love to hear from you guys and ultimately get out there and get after.

Okay, have a wonderful day!