Blog  Perspectives  

Mind the Gap Between Marketing Planning and Action

by Amobee, September 27, 2016

When my wife and I decided to renovate the master bathroom in our home, we hired a local, highly recommended architect to create a blueprint of our vision. At one point, I noticed a draft plan didn’t accurately depict one section of a wall. The architect explained that it wasn’t necessary to revise the plan since that area wouldn’t be touched by the renovation.

Our builder felt differently. When I explained that the architect said the section isn’t anywhere near the action, he sighed. Then he explained a chain reaction of seemingly minor details that started at the misdrawn section and ended on the other side of the room. The result: A door that wouldn’t be able to close properly.

The builder explained: “Architects are idealists because theoretically, anything they draw can be built. Builders need to be practical, because we have to deliver the client’s actual vision on the client’s actual budget.”

Our choice was simple: significantly expand our budget to build exactly what the blueprint depicted or modify the plan to accommodate reality.

Not having a money tree, we modified the plan.

The Gap Between Architecting and Building

From years of experience, our builder knew to look for gaps between the proposed and the actual. When it came time for construction, he knew it was important that our expectations exactly matched what was achievable within the budget.

In advertising technology, some companies claim that a singular focus on data management is more beneficial to marketers than a platform that integrates data management with campaign activation. Their end product is a customized audience segment, a cluster of potentially alike users, which can be syndicated to take-action email, media, or content systems. These segments are important elements of campaigns, to be sure, but they are an intermediate step en route to the on-the-ground events that produce a brand impression, prospecting lead, or sale.

That gap between planning and action can make your marketing miss the mark. The world our customers live in is constantly changing — device, location, weather are some examples. Real-time platforms like Turn’s sense these changes in milliseconds, and dynamically adjust the way they interact with consumers based on what’s happening right now. They eliminate the gap between proposal and reality, making your marketing continuously achieve your goals, even as your consumers evolve.

Here’s an example: An auto client’s data architect sold them a plan to reach a segment of approximately one million potential new car buyers. Our buying platform, which measures conditions in real time, found that over 60℅ either had already bought a car, dropped out of the market, or cleared their browser preferences. Why the discrepancy? Architects only measure once, before committing blueprint to paper. Builders measure in real-time, before every cut.

The Turn platform can serve as both architect and builder to provide marketers with the ultimate accountability. Tens of thousands of times over, we’ve developed the audience blueprint and delivered the campaign results. The data and expertise we gain from delivering on marketer goals gives us an advantage in designing blueprints that don’t need to be modified when construction begins. Inherently, there’s an added measure of accountability for our system to deliver exactly what it promised.

Three Important Questions

Every marketer needs both architects and builders. Having the right mix of trusted partners in this best-of-breed world requires both vision and implementation experts advising your team.

But it’s important that marketers minimize risks associated with the lack of accountability that can occur when linking together multiple marketing technology systems and to confirm that the recommendations they get from partners really are actionable. Here are three questions to help start these conversations:

  1. What is your absolute end goal, and is this vendor responsible for delivering that or do they provide an intermediate step?

  2. Is their proposal based on real-world data? How often do they take measurements to verify that data?

  3. Do you have an actionable plan for resolving disconnects, should they arise, between what is proposed and what can actually be delivered?

Marketers must regularly challenge each vendor on proposal details to make sure they can truly deliver as promised and aren’t just talking a good game. Technology companies, including the one I lead marketing for, tend to present ideal states – you want proof the vendor knows how to deliver results in the real world. Similarly, don’t let them offer solutions that they have no capability to fulfill.

In other words, to paraphrase one of my favorite Super Bowl commercials of all time, make sure your tech partners can truly deliver results, not just propose intermediate steps.  

 

About Amobee

Founded in 2005, Amobee is an advertising platform that understands how people consume content. Our goal is to optimize outcomes for advertisers and media companies, while providing a better consumer experience. Through our platform, we help customers further their audience development, optimize their cross channel performance across all TV, connected TV, and digital media, and drive new customer growth through detailed analytics and reporting. Amobee is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tremor International, a collection of brands built to unite creativity, data and technology across the open internet.

If you’re curious to learn more, watch the on-demand demo or take a deep dive into our Research & Insights section where you can find recent webinars on-demand, media plan insights & activation templates, and more data-driven content. If you’re ready to take the next step into a sustainable, consumer-first advertising future, contact us today.

Read Next

All Blog Posts
Forward Thinking

Focus on Marketing, Not Measuring

Our new video tools let marketers automate optimizing a video campaign for viewability, completion rates and in-demo targeting simultaneously. Director of Product Marketing Ethan Lubka explains what these new features mean for marketers.

February 1, 2017

Perspectives

How Amobee Powers Your Marketing Success

Here's how Turn puts global scale and human solutions to work driving marketing success for brands & agencies

February 23, 2016

Perspectives

Customer Journey Marketing in 3 Simple Steps

Product marketing director Nayef Hijazi goes over three steps marketers can take when navigating the customer journey.

November 3, 2016