When B2C companies launch offline marketing campaigns, they tend to do so with brand loyalty and awareness and customer retention in mind, according to a study from PlaceIQ [download page] conducted by 451 Research. However, offline marketing campaign KPIs are evolving to use more online success factors, per the report, while online marketing campaigns are adopting more offline KPIs.
The survey was fielded among 200 multi-channel marketers operating in North America across automotive, consumer goods, restaurant, retail and travel businesses.
Primary Offline Campaign Goals
When running an offline campaign (such as TV or out-of-home), respondents whose primary sales channel is online said that online customer engagement was their top goal. By contrast, those whose primary sales channel is offline noted that brand loyalty and awareness was their top objective.
In the aggregate, brand loyalty and awareness (55%) and customer retention (52%) were the top-2 goals of offline marketing campaigns, while online and offline sales (each at 31%) were the least common goals. Recent research likewise indicates that few advertisers use sales and ROI metrics when measuring TV campaigns.
Online and Offline Metrics Converge
Although offline campaigns have traditionally been viewed in terms of branding and awareness, they’re beginning to be more closely aligned with digital success metrics, per the report.
Indeed, when asked how the goals of their offline campaigns have evolved over the past 2 years, two of the top 3 responses concerned online KPIs:
- Increasingly driving online engagement such as website and app visitation (47%); and
- Driving online sales (37%).
By contrast, when respondents were asked how their online campaign goals have changed over the past 2 years, traditionally offline metrics and results dominated:
- Driving brand loyalty and awareness (68%); and
- Driving offline engagement (65%).
It makes sense, then, that the most important data sources for measurement processes marketers are consumer location data to measure lift of store visitation and consumer purchase data to measure in-store sales lift.
Currently, there are numerous challenges in linking online marketing with offline engagement, though. These range from a lack of collaboration across teams to issues with unified processes, limited budgets, and limited technology expertise.
Integrated Marketing Hits Some Roadblocks
While these results presage increasing adoption of integrated marketing, one-third of respondents continue to lack a formal integrated marketing approach, and another 31% are still working towards a more integrated approach.
The biggest impediment to implementing integrated marketing campaigns is a limited ability to measure the success of campaigns across digital and physical channels, per the report.
Beyond measurement issues, marketers are also facing limited budgets for data, tools, systems and people, as well as lack of shared performance goals across teams and limited access to IT teams.
Measurement issues are likely to take precedence in the near future, though: roughly 6 in 10 respondents said that they have a “very urgent” need to improve measurement. And their main reason for improving measurement capabilities? A mandate from a superior…
The full study is available for download here.
