Alex Steer

350 words | ~2 min

This post is a shameless plug for this book, the catchily-named Multichannel Marketing Ecosystems, which may not make the New Year bestseller list, but which does contain a chapter by me and Chris Perry (CEO of Fabric).

Despite sounding a bit science-fiction-y, the book is a collection of essays by people working on the problems associated with trying to plan and execute marketing campaigns that exist in lots of different channels, to varying degrees of breadth and depth, and whose audiences may encounter them in whole, or in part, and in any order.

Our chapter - the alliteratively-titled 'Making money with metrics that matter' - argues that multi-channel marketing requires an approach to metrics which goes beyond simple conversion funnel logic and that brings channel-level analytics more thoroughly into the domain of marketing strategy. A marketing strategy should be clear on the role of each channel, and attach meaningful metrics and goals to each channel (not just a 'bottom line' of brand equity or sales metrics), that do not depend on a channel being encountered at a particular point on a journey. This understanding should be shared by all those accountable for the strategy and not merely by analysts, and information about channel performance should be used to optimise and where necessary re-organise the channel mix. This idea - know what you're trying to do, where, why, whether it's working, and when it's not, why it's not - isn't rocket science but requires a serious and shared commitment to measurable standards of effectiveness from everyone in the marketing mix. That's more challenging, and more rare, than most of us like to admit. For agency types, for example, it means choosing the metrics by which your work will be judged in advance - not waiting to see which ones look best in the wash-up.

The book is edited by Markus Ståhlberg and Ville Maila, and is published by Kogan Page.