MarketingDojo #61: 💃 Dancing On The Big Screen.🍜
2 Ways to measure incremental campaign performance, the state of marketing in 2024, dancing cup noodles and more.
Hello,
Welcome to the 61st issue of The Marketing Dojo!
I plan to disappear for the next quarter. The Marketing Dojo will still be in your inbox every Wednesday, but for much else, my responses will lean heavily towards 'no,' but why?
I'm diving deep into a writing course I've longed to explore, dedicating the time and focus it deserves.
Curious about the course? Stay tuned for details in the P.S. section.
Here's what we will cover in this week's edition:
📏 Measuring incrementality
🤳 LinkTok is here?!!??
💸 Meta faces a $7Bn lawsuit
🍜 Creative excellence: Dancing ramen captivates Times Square
And lots more.
Not a subscriber yet? Join the Marketing Dojo family. Every Wednesday, I distil the essence of marketing news into bite-sized, digestible content for your inbox.
Thank you for being here. Let's delve in!
The “Why” and “The How To” Measure Incrementality.
Incrementality is a lesser-known cousin of attribution.
Attribution means identifying which channels led a customer to buy your product or service. Was it an ad they saw on TV, a Google search result that popped up for a specific keyword, or was it a combination of both?
Measuring a channel's success based just on attribution is dangerous for marketers.
I shared this example in Marketing Dojo #38. Imagine you own a pizza shop and decide to boost sales with a fantastic buy-one-get-one-free offer.
If you distribute the brochures for the campaign right outside your pizza parlour, the attribution numbers will be through the roof. You will witness a fairly high usage of the offer. So, was the campaign a success?
Probably not. Most people who took advantage of your offer were headed to your pizza store anyway. The customers were ready to buy the pizza at its full price. The 50% discount largely eroded your margins. The low incrementality of the campaign did more harm than good for your business.
Relying only on attribution for channel success can lead to short-sighted and risky marketing decisions. Channels like Google-branded search or sponsored product ads on retail platforms often show low incrementality.
Attribution's appeal stems from its measurability through digital tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Business Manager. These platforms quickly credit sales to their advertising, prompting a critical question:
Would these sales have occurred without the ad spend?
The answer to this helps you determine incrementally.
How to measure incrementality
Two prominent methods can help one measure incrementality:
Conversion lift: Divide the target audience into test and control groups. Serve the ad to the test group but not to the control group. The difference in sales between the test and control groups indicates incrementally.
M&C Saatchi Performance. 2. Geo lift: Another approach for testing incrementality would be to target audiences in a region with your marketing campaign and compare them with another area with no ads for the same period.
Why Measure Incrementality:
Incrementality can change your media choices. For example, for a mythical campaign, you
Split the audience into two groups of 100 to form a test and control group
Served the ad 3-5 times to the test group
The cost of targeting the customers in the test group is USD 800
Without incrementality
If 10 members from the test group buy your product for USD 100 each.
The return on investment would look like =(Sales - Cost of advertising)/cost of advertising
=(1000-800)/800
= 25%
With incrementality
3 Members from the control group ended up purchasing the product at USD 100.
The incremental return on investment
= (Sales in the test group- sales in the control group)- cost of advertising)/cost of advertising
=(1000-300)-800)/800 =-100/800
= -12.5%
The channel needs to generate more incremental sales to justify the cost of a marketing campaign. Other offers, platforms, etc., could help develop a better real return on investment.
As digital platforms phase out cookies, traditional cross-platform attribution models will falter. A robust measurement strategy should integrate Attribution, Incrementality, and Media Mix Modeling, ensuring a holistic view of marketing effectiveness and optimizing media investment decisions.
Meme-Time: Oh, what fun it is to be a marketer in 2024!
Search, social media, and email are three main sources of leads, and 2024 has been a disruptive year for all three.
Search: Large Language Model-driven search results aim for zero-click searches, where answers are displayed directly on Google's homepage. Initial tests indicate a potential reduction in organic traffic by 18% to 64% for selected websites. It's early days for SGE, but organic traffic is definitely under threat.
Email: For those wielding email lists exceeding 5,000 subscribers, heed the new bulk-sending regulations from Google and Yahoo. A spam report rate of three per thousand can relegate your emails to eternal spam folder exile. Email marketing got a bit more complicated.
Social: The US Senate resurrected talks around the TikTok ban. Will they, won't they? The suspense is anxiety-inducing.
The cherry on top is the gradual phase-out of cookies, poised to complicate cross-platform campaign measurement significantly.
Today's meme is dedicated to the travails of marketing teams just trying to get the job done.
If LinkedIn and TikTok had a child….
Can LinkedIn become the TikTok for B2B? We are all about to find out.
LinkedIn is experimenting with short-form videos on its platform. The format will be similar to videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels & YouTube shorts, except in-theme with the platform they will focus on professional development.
The B2B marketer in me is excited. B2B marketing has yet to embrace short-form content wholeheartedly. LinkedIn's new offering might open up new ways to connect with customers.
The race is on, and speed matters. Early birds in the short-form video space on LinkedIn could capture unusually high engagement levels, a common trait for new content types.
However, LinkedIn has tried and failed to copy Instagram Stories. The excitement for professional stories simply evaporated.
This time, LinkedIn might have the edge due to two significant advantages:
LinkedIn is less chaotic than X/Twitter, and its more business-oriented approach than TikTok positions it uniquely.
The strategic timing aligns with the evolving workforce demographics. By 2025, Gen Z will constitute 30% of the workforce, a generation well-versed in short-form video consumption. This shift could make LinkedIn's new video feature a critical tool for engaging with the upcoming wave of professionals.
LinkedIn's experimentation with gaming was a big blah for me (why would I want to play games on a professional network). Unlike gaming, short-form content aligns well with LinkedIn's core of professional networking and knowledge sharing, potentially turning it into a game-changer for the platform.
Creative Excellence: A dancing cup noodle captivates Times Square.
A 3D Cup noodle person is dancing on one of the most expensive billboards. Wait, what?!!??
Nissin's latest outdoor ad, splashed across one of the priciest, high-traffic billboards, is nothing short of creative brilliance.
With its daily foot traffic reaching 460,000 and yielding nearly 1.5 million impressions, Times Square is a battleground of sleek, contemporary advertisements.
Instead of getting lost in the sea of sameness, Nissin has broken the mould with its 3D dancing Cup Noodle character, infusing a touch of whimsy and nostalgia that stands out in the urban clutter.
Billboards are a glance medium. Nissin's singular focus on just one message: "Cup noodles are now microwaveable" is essential. This clarity ensures that even the most fleeting glance can capture the message, creating a lasting impression among the bustling crowds of Times Square.
When platforms mark their own homework: The Meta lawsuit
What would you do if you could grade your own examination paper?
If the idea of you authoring your report card seems absurd, consider that most digital channels, such as Meta, Google, Amazon, and others, do this regularly.
Advertisers launched a $7 billion lawsuit against Meta, accusing it of exaggerating ad viewership figures by 400% and causing them to overpay for ad spaces. The contention lies with Meta's Potential Reach metric, which allegedly counts all accounts, including possible bots and duplicates, inflating the ad reach and costs. While Meta refutes these allegations, the legal battle, initiated in 2018, is on the brink of trial or settlement.
This issue underscores a broader problem of opacity within 'walled garden' platforms like Meta and Google, where advertisers, spending vast sums, rely heavily on the platforms' self-reported performance metrics. This scenario is akin to students grading their own exams, presenting an inherent conflict of interest.
Court cases like these will ultimately drive these platforms towards greater transparency and potentially pave the way for independent third-party data verification to ensure fairness and accuracy in advertising metrics.
Short Stuff:
TikTok launched a $2.1Mn advertising campaign to fight a potential ban in the US. (TV’s nemesis spends on TV ads for its survival).
Amazon will publish its ads library in the EU. (One more resource for competitive research).
Instagram improved its Hastag-based search experience. (Social search is getting easier).
That’s a wrap on this week. Thank you for your time and attention. If you liked this week’s newsletter or found something interesting, please give me a like ❤️ or drop a comment🗨️. Your support helps drive the newsletter's discoverability.
Once again, thank you for your time. See you in your inbox next Wednesday.
Regards,
Garima Mamgain
P.S: For a long time, I have been a big fan of Internet writer David Perell. I have always wanted to enrol in his cohort-based writing course, "Write of Passage," yet the stars never quite aligned—until now.
During a routine scroll on X, I stumbled upon a chance to apply for a grant to attend the course. While I didn't secure full funding, the scholarship I received was the final nudge I needed to enrol in David's celebrated program.
For the upcoming six weeks, I'm committing an extra 8-9 hours weekly to hone my writing prowess and craft pieces I can be proud of. I am looking forward to the Write of Passage. Send some good vibes my way!