Marketing is one of the areas most affected by the evolution of communications and the emergence of new technologies. Nowadays, the need to apply an analytical logic to Marketing and communication is essential, either because there are more and more companies actively working to stand out by increasing their communication volume, or because the contact points between brands and clients have increased exponentially.
However, one of the greatest difficulties of marketeers is still proving the returns from Marketing actions. This makes the process of Marketing Mix definition and alignment of internal stakeholders complex.
The arrival of digital Marketing brought the promise of performance Marketing, which would allow brands an obstinate focus on results and an improvement of the mediation chapter, solving a big part of the challenge. Yet, the problems were quickly displayed: digital fraud, click farms, brand safety, and a cocktail of plights which made alarms ring.
Over time solutions for these problems have emerged, but the biggest of all challenges remains. It is very hard to measure the true reach and performance of campaigns, since a lot of the businesses are still hybrid. They are born in the online channel but leading to a business in a physical store and, in that context, it is difficult to “trace” the client.
In the coming years, the barrier between the physical and the digital will quickly fade and that may be great news for performance Marketing. With the emergence of IoT, the rise of digital purchase services and of e-payment services, tracing the user and truly measure the performance of Marketing actions will be made possible. It will undoubtedly be a great opportunity for promotional channels on which there are still some reservations, such as influencers, or new forms of promotion like voice search engines - Amazon Alexa or Google Home.
For example, it will be interesting to see, in the near future, a micro influencer promoting a specific movie, and having the ability to understand that one of his followers watched the trailer of that movie right after its promotion and ended up purchasing a ticket for that same movie in a cinema app.
For all these reasons, performance marketing evolution should transform the way companies advertise/sell products, as well as the way they measure the success of their marketing campaigns. It should also reduce arbitrage opportunities and strengthen the return of Marketing actions.
The future of performance Marketing is just around the corner and will increase greatly as the barriers between digital and the brick and mortar are broken down. The value for brands is clear. It will allow them to devise strategies with a proven ROI and pay for results, which is the promise they have always dreamed about.
The (almost) Real Adventures of a Fraud Management Department: Get the comic here