Measuring the ROI of marketing activities has never been easy. And it isn’t getting easier as the buying journey gets more complicated, and more fragmented, split across multiple devices.
People leave behind a rich trail of demographic and behavioral information in their digital wake. The problem is that most of that data is anonymized, flooding in from a huge range of sources with different identifiers.
A single customer could watch an ad on YouTube, research product information, read reviews and make the final purchase on four different devices, each with its own anonymous browser or device ID.
Reconciling these apparently disconnected behaviors into a cogent series of actions is going to be essential to every marketer. And people-based measurement is the best way to do it.
In many ways, it’s like the holy grail for many marketers, and for good reason.
People-based measurement
People-based measurement is about using de-duplicated, person-level data – rather than digital identifiers like browser IDs – to tie marketing activity back to sales.
That’s a big deal.
For one, it delivers a true omnichannel view of your customers’ experience. So instead of looking at a series of anonymous digital IDs from disparate sources, you can see how a single customer went from one channel to the next to the next (and know it was really them).
As a consequence, you can use it to see how a customer goes from being exposed to various touchpoints to actually buying stuff.
Done right, it makes it possible to track how every cent of marketing spend contributes to sales. (Holy grail, right?)
Getting to people-based measurement
People-based marketing requires a holistic, omnichannel understanding of individual customer experiences. It’s why people-based measurement is so important.
And if that sounds like a lot of dots to connect, that’s because it is.
This type of measurement is a massive change to the way you collect and process data,
so it’s important to make sure you don’t rush in without a plan.
It’s worth making this shift, but how you get there will play a huge part in determining how successful you’ll be with it.
That’s why it’s important to start building up a gradual understanding of your own customers and channels, aiming higher with more sophisticated measurement techniques once you’ve had some success.
The many paths to people-based measurement
There’s no one correct path to achieve this measurement. It’s a long journey that requires commitment to (and investment in) a new way of working. But the rewards are worth it.
With it, marketers are already learning new things about where their customers buy and how their channels work. More importantly, they’re learning new things about the omnichannel customer journey that no other approach to measurement can give them.
Read our guide, The Journey To People-Based Measurement, to get the lowdown on how it works, how marketers are using it, and how to integrate it intelligently, deliberately, and effectively.