Putting Live into Marketing ROI

ZENITHOPTIMEDIA    REBRANDING   MEDIA BUYING

As I am sure you know, Asia Pacific leads the world in digital and mobile connectivity. We have over 1 billion internet users and this will only rise with the continuous growth in mobile internet and the rapid take up of social media. On this basis, Asia should also be at the forefront of new approaches to communication strategies.

But whilst consumers are living this massive digital transformation, marketing carries on with many traditional practices, effectively rendering significant parts of communication budgets unproductive in the digital world. A new approach is needed to communications to effectively engage with customers.

There are three fundamental changes affecting today's marketing world:

1. Availability of instant and rich data

2. Shifting balance between paid, owned and earned contact points

3. Increasing socialization of consumers' buying behavior

With these changes come new opportunities with potential to grow marketing ROI depending on how you approach them. Below are three key observations.

1. Marketing decisions based on "old" data can reduce quarter of the marketing efficiencies: Today consumers reframe their opinions and motivations on a daily basis; leaving significant part of marketing decisions based on outdated research and data less relevant by the time it goes live. We reduced a client's cost per acquisition by 27% based on real-time measurement insight that only 15% of their keywords were delivering 65% of the total volume for the brand. (Source; Benchtools - Performics proprietary bid management system).

2. Decreasing influence of paid contacts compared to owned and earned media: This doesn't mean that paid media will be replaced by owned and earned media, but it does raise the strategic question of what is the right mix between these elements and how can they be integrated? Our Touchpoints database tells us that consumers increasingly depend on earned and owned contacts when engaging with brands, with earned media on average valued at over 30% more than paid media. Such information from Touchpoints - world's largest database on Paid, Owned and Earned contacts, provides us a precise way of balancing client's investments across three categories, thus providing plans with highest efficacy.

3. A Facebook brand page does not equal social strategy: Social, the key driver of digital has been endorsed by many marketers as seen in countless Facebook brand pages. But ZenithOptimedia's SocialTools reveals that less than 1% of the fans who sign up to a brand page communicate with it on a regular basis. A social strategy needs to be based on something more than a one hit and an initial "like", it needs to provide a compelling reason for fans to engage with brand on a regular basis.

Our analysis shows huge disparity in consumer's social engagement with different product categories - "media and entertainment" brand pages have more than 10 times the active fans compared to beauty and personal care. This deeper understanding of social metrics is the only route to a truly social strategy.

We believe that "Live ROI", grounded in real time measurement, is the key driver of marketing success in today's digital world. At ZenithOptimedia we are committed to helping our clients navigate this fast changing consumer and media space with a comprehensive system of proprietary methods and "apps". This means our people can make actionable recommendations which we believe ensures a distinctive competitive advantage for our clients and their brands in today's marketplace.

by Philip Talbot , regional chief executive officer at ZenithOptimedia Asia Pacific.