Power Digital Marketing’s Post

Giving CFOs More Power in the Marketing Ecosystem: Strategies and Insights for all of us lads. What's up guys? Let’s talk about CFOs taking charge in marketing. Can they really turn marketing into a data-driven powerhouse? Spoiler: Yes, they can. Let’s dive in so don't throw your hate on me! The Advertising Ecosystem: Then vs. Now Gone are the Mad Men days. Today, it’s all about data. But the digital ad landscape? Murkier than the Mariana Trench. Stat: Only 25 cents of every dollar spent on digital ads results in a real human seeing an ad. The rest? Lost in inefficiencies. The Role of CFOs in Marketing CFOs are cost-tracing experts as we know. Advertising? Often a blind spot. Considering US advertisers will spend close to $500 billion on marketing in 2021, CFOs just can’t ignore this. Global Digital Ad Spending (2020): $125 billion, growing at 4.2% annually. Why CFOs Need to Step In: 1. Fragmented Marketplace: Marketing dollars are scattered across multiple agencies and platforms. 2. Murky Digital Spending: Programmatic media involves real-time auctions, creating a complex supply chain with significant leakage. CFOs can fix this! Let me break down the Supply Chain Costs: Agency Fee: 7% Demand Side Platform Fee: 8% Demand Side Technology Fee: 10% Unattributable: 15% Supply Side Platform Fee: 8% Supply Side Technology Fee: 1% Publisher Revenue: 51% Business Strategies to Learn From 1. Rigorous Financial Oversight: CFOs should scrutinize marketing spends. Key Questions: How much of our budget is wasted on non-human views? What are the fees in the digital supply chain? Which partners provide poor value? 2. Collaboration and Education: CFOs must understand marketing complexities. Actions: Read Adweek and Ad Age, attend ANA Media Conference, take marketing courses. 3. Setting New Reporting Standards: CFOs can ensure transparency and optimize budgets by setting new standards and holding teams accountable. My Predictions for the Investment Industry 1. Increased Financial Scrutiny: CFOs will play a larger role in marketing spend analysis. 2. Rise of Data-Driven Decisions: Marketing will rely more on financial insights. 3. Enhanced Transparency: Demand for transparency in digital ad spending will lead to better tools. Final Thought: Combining CFOs’ analytical rigor with marketers’ creativity can transform ad spending. Let’s empower CFOs to ask tough questions and make investments into marketing work smarter.

A great point of view by Dale W. Harrison regarding multi-touch attribution. It’s really how you look at it. The challenge our industry has is that many marketers view attribution as direct and/or linear. This unfortunately, often gives credit to the last touch which can undervalue passive media channels or small publishers. It’s important to look at how each channel and each ad partner contributes to leading up to an outcome and understand the many factors that don’t get accounted for. IMO, sometimes you have instinct and human insights needs to be part of the decisioning process.

Today I’m going to p*ss off some performance marketing agency. Performance marketing gurus of LinkedIn, let's talk transparency ! We see it all the time: screenshots of skyrocketing sales, happy clients, and self-proclaimed "performance marketing wizards." But here's the question no one seems to be asking: At what cost? Is that 200% sales increase fueled by cutthroat discounts that erode your brand value? Are you burning through ad spend like gasoline, leaving your long-term marketing strategy in ashes? Here's the uncomfortable truth: Chasing short-term performance can be a dangerous game. Unsustainable Margins: Slashing prices to drive sales is a race to the bottom. You might win a few battles, but you'll lose the war on profitability. Brand Dilution: Desperate discounts scream "cheap" and damage your brand perception. Customers may jump ship for the next "hot deal." Blind Attribution: Performance marketing loves its metrics, but did that sale come from your ad, a customer already considering you, or a lucky tweet? So, what's the alternative? Let's talk about building a sustainable marketing strategy. It requires: Understanding Customer Lifetime Value: True success goes beyond one-off sales. Focus on fostering loyalty and repeat business. Building Brand Equity: Solid branding attracts customers willing to pay a premium. Create a story and value proposition they believe in. Multi-Channel Marketing: Don't put all your eggs in the performance marketing basket. Explore organic reach, content marketing, and building genuine relationships. Are performance marketing tactics still valuable? Absolutely! But they're just one piece of the puzzle. Don't be fooled by cherry-picked data. Look beyond the flashy sales figures and ask the tough questions about long-term brand health and profitability. Let's spark a conversation! What are your thoughts on the hidden costs of performance marketing? Have you seen any cautionary tales? #MarketingTransparency #PerformanceMarketing #BrandBuilding

💰Budgeting season is starting! 5 tips for marketers and media agencies 1. Use incrementality-corrected ROI/ROAS in media comparison By now, most people are aware that using ad platform attribution or last-click attribution directly in budget optimization can be dangerous. For example, last-click attribution is known to overestimate ROAS of branded search and underestimate ROAS of social, potentially leading you to cut social investment that were effective in reality. It is important to use ROI/ROAS metrics that take into account true incrementality of specific media channel. 2. Understand level of saturation, before increasing investments High ROI does not always mean that increasing spend in the channel is a good idea. For example, it could be that your branded search has high ROI but is close to saturation already, whereas PMAX has a slightly lower ROI but has lots of room for scaling. It is critical to understand the level of saturation for each media channel by looking at marginal ROI and response charts. 3. Ensure sufficiency of budget for reaching next year's sales target Don't create a budget that is doomed to underdeliver. This can happen especially with eComs & DTC brands, who have ambitious growth targets, but their planning process is strongly anchored to last year's budget. Use a planning tool that gives you a forecast of total sales based on your media budget. 4. Pace budget appropriately throughout the year Budget-pacing is often an undervalued lever in budget optimization. As an example, you should not overinvest during weeks when demand is naturally low. Use a planning tool takes into account seasonality and other dynamics that are specific to your business. 5. Build realistic budget scenarios for the CFO discussion When discussing with finance, each scenario should have - Media allocation by channel - Pacing throughout the year - Expected total sales with media-driven sales split out You could use these scenarios as a starting point: - Reference #1: How much sales can you reach with the same budget and mix you had this year? - Reference #2: How much sales can you reach with same budget but with optimized mix and budget pacing? - Sales target optimization: How much budget is needed to reach next year's sales target at different levels of risk (small mix changes, large mix changes..) - Overdeliver sales plan: How much budget is needed to overdeliver sales targets by X%?

❌ No More Wasted Ad Spend! Transform Your Returns with Smart Performance Marketing! 🚀 Have you ever felt like you're throwing money at ads without seeing the results you want? I've been there too. But let me share a story of how we turned things around and achieved remarkable success. Recently, we managed a performance marketing campaign for a client in the home essentials niche, and the outcomes were astounding: 💰 Spend: $30,119 📈 Revenue: $100,942 📊 ROAS: 3.3 So, what was the secret sauce? Here’s Our Winning Formula: 1️⃣ Simple Account Structure – We streamlined everything for maximum efficiency. 2️⃣ Manual Bidding – By taking control of our bidding strategy, we outperformed our competitors. 3️⃣ Scaling with CBO Campaigns – This allowed us to maximize our budget and achieve exponential growth. The Mistakes We Learned From: Before we got it right, we made our fair share of mistakes. We've seen many businesses spend thousands of dollars on ads without generating meaningful results. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid: *Overcomplicating Ad Accounts *Automated Bidding Without Strategy *Not Scaling Effectively ✨ Let's make your next campaign a success story #PerformanceMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #MarketingSuccess #D2C

Sharing this great article on our Marketing Mixed Model (MMM) solution for digital performance optimization at Exactius! Our team has worked hard to develop this product to equip marketers with data-driven tools to answer the age-old question: "Where should I invest my next dollar?". MMMs are advanced statistical models that provide a holistic attribution model for digital and offline performance. Some areas of focus include: 1. Assess Marginal CPA Across Channels 2. Monitor Saturation Points 3. Consider Incremental Value with MMM CPA Our MMM playbook focuses on optimizing complex media mix budget allocations through MMM budget recommendations, A/B testing, and blended impact evaluation. By working with campaign managers, we leverage the MMM dashboard to diversify their media mix and drive higher spend efficiency. https://lnkd.in/gXKNsuaD

Not focusing on or being accountable to Marketing ROI is the #1 reason why I would fire a CMO. Because when your ROI is 2x (super low performing), you spend $10MM on Marketing & SDRs and get $20MM in pipeline. And when your ROI is 10x (high performing), you spend the same $10MM on Marketing & SDRs and get $100MM in pipeline. This difference fundamentally solves the growth challenges for a mature company. It fixes pipeline coverage, sales quota attainment, growth rate, unit economics - Everything that matters. But lots of CMOs don’t track it and sadly don’t care about it. This is why lots of CEOs, CFOs, CROs, and PE Investors everywhere are increasingly questioning and underwhelmed by the performance of the Marketing department. And here are the excuses you hear from CMOs that miss pipeline targets and get poor ROI from their Marketing budget: “Marketing takes time”  “We need to measure the time lag”  “We’re doing it for brand”  “Check the multi-touch attribution report for how everything is working" “Our Marketing investments won’t pay off until next year and 2026” Wrong. A CMO must be able to implement strategic changes to investment allocation, core KPIs, cross-functional processes, and Marketing strategy to grow pipeline, improve unit economics, and make an impact on short-term business metrics. And Marketing investments MUST deliver appropriate ROI in period (TTM). It’s the CMO’s responsibility to deploy the investments appropriately to balance the short-term and long-term return. #finance #gtm #gotomarket #marketing #b2b p.s. Lots of CMOs will say they don’t care about ROI. They deploy a $30MM/year budget, get an awful return on the investments, miss their pipeline and revenue targets by a mile. And then after a terrible 2024 performance, they plan on doing same things with the same budget for 2025 (insanity). Any CMO that says they don’t care about ROI should not be a C-Level executive. Because the “C” in CMO means you are a BUSINESS LEADER first and the way you deliver business results is through the strategic execution of Marketing. And FWIW….. Growth = Investment x ROI ;) So you have two options: 1. Keep increasing the budget with terrible unit economics until the model breaks and your company is worth less than the amount of money you’ve raised.  2. Keep the budget the same (or lower) and improve the blended ROI of all of the investments. It's not complicated. Being more *efficient* in your go-to-market doesn’t mean you grow slower. It’s actually the opposite.

Reposting Chris Walker's latest comments on marketing ROI and CMO accountability because there is an interesting conversation to be had re: "Exactly how data-driven can any CMO expect to be?" A few months back, Massimo Giunco (former brand director at Nike) lampooned the company for destroying over $25b in market cap and claimed that one reason for the collapse was that: "Nike will change its marketing model, centralizing it and making it data-driven and digitally led."* I'm losing an incredible amount of nuance, but at least part of the issue stemmed from Nike's insistence on optimizing for channels with easily measurable and attributable ROI, thereby sacrificing the brand and product leadership on which they had built their business. This case study seems to directly counter what Chris argues for in his post. There are two competing narratives here: - CMOs should be directly accountable for ROI, and we can confidently measure that ROI in a time-efficient manner - Consumers (read: the world) are too messy and unpredictable to expect full ROI, so we should expect some leeway and creative flexibility. So is one narrative right or wrong? Is it both, but we need to figure out the right distribution between attributable vs. non-attributable marketing activities? Is this a B2C vs B2B thing? Does it vary by industry? Interested in my networks' thoughts. ------------------- Some relevant reading: ▶ https://lnkd.in/dg38642P ▶ https://lnkd.in/dtmS_MeR

#CMO's are often the first people facing pressure to cut spend in a challenging economy. #Marketers need to be able to trim budgets in a way that doesn’t thin out the #brand. Keep #marketing funnels healthy by focusing on low-cost tactics, emphasizing the correct #metrics, and aligning with #CFO's.

The growth and appeal of performance marketing lies in its ability to quantify the effectiveness of various advertising strategies and channels. This approach provides clear insights into ROI and helps advertisers optimize their campaigns based on performance data. It integrates seamlessly with digital marketing tools and platforms, increasing its effectiveness and contribution to business growth. #iworkforComcast #PerformanceMarketing #DigitalMarketing #BusinessGrowth https://lnkd.in/g_5qGyw2