1PERFORMICS LAST MILE MARKETING vol. 1 ©2013 Performics, Inc. Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license granted.

Governance: The First MileHow to Create “Rules of the Road” to Dominate Digital EfficientlyDoes your business present a disconnected or, worse, conflicting brand offering to prospects and customers due to diverse stakeholders and complex sales structures? If so, Last Mile Marketing can help you!

Last Mile Marketing achieves a cost-effective, unified brand experience, across different devices and media. It requires examining every point where participants (consumers) interact with different levels of your business for various information needs during the purchase process.

Today, brands have to be aggressive to stimulate and meet the demand that is out there. Otherwise there is a big risk of your participants getting “detoured” by the competition. With lower barriers to entry online and ever changing technologies, there is hyper competition for an empowered shopper who has many options. If a brand doesn’t go the last mile, it stands the risk of being disintermediated by new or more nimble players who will find the holes and disrupt the legacy brand’s business model.

L AST MILE MARKE TING vol . 1

Last Mile Marketing consists of four components: Governance, Analytics, Participation and Content. The rest of this paper will focus on Governance. To enhance your understanding of Last Mile Marketing, we suggest you listen to our webinar series at http://www.slideshare.net/performics_us/videos

GOVERNANCE ANALYTICS

PARTICIPATIONCONTENT

2PERFORMICS LAST MILE MARKETING vol. 1 ©2013 Performics, Inc. Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license granted.

5 Reasons You Need Last Mile Marketing NowToday’s multi-touch, complex marketing ecosystem requires Last Mile Marketing because Marketers are expected to:

What is Last Mile Marketing?The “Last Mile” concept dates from the early days of telecommunications. It refers to mapping the total possible universe of homes that could be connected to the network with physical wires for telephones and other “hard wired” services. The price of getting a phone wire to a house in the remote Ozark hill country might cost the phone company more than the customer (and future owners of the house) could generate in revenue. As a result, the lifetime value would be negative.

To expand their markets, telecom companies wired nearly every house in order to own every single “last mile” customer – despite the losses from some of them. Expansion was achieved by taking a portfolio view of the overall market and an increase in the customer’s value at the end of the last mile by using cross-sell tactics & expanded product offerings. Does this concept sound familiar? It should —smart marketers will utilize technology and governance to eliminate redundancies and increase marketing efficiency. Using advanced analytics, marketers will more accurately understand the lifetime value of a participant relationship.

How do you maximize your Last Mile Marketing expansion opportunities for minimal cost? It is a four part answer that begins with Governance. Last Mile Marketing’s rules of the road. It establishes a consistent brand experience for participants across an array of situations on various devices. With governed business processes in place, you are ensured that your brand presents the appropriate message based on the participant’s physical location, immediate needs when seeking information, and his/her role in the purchase process.

3. Adapt to the evolving digital landscape where 90% of participant time is spent with digital media (including those using offline media).

4. Allocate appropriate human and financial resources to their digital marketing teams.

5. Ensure all integrated marketing communications and advertising are actionable and measurable.

What’s a Participant?

At Performics, we are changing both marketing models and marketing language to meet today’s evolving marketplace. We have replaced the word “consumer” with “participant” to more accurately reflect the desired nature of the relationship between brands and people. Marketing is no longer about “reach.” Today, marketing is about connecting with people and helping them to connect with each other. The only way companies can capture their full potential market, both online and offline, is by inspiring and activating Participation.

1. Manage their advertising budget effectively and consistently across the entire spectrum of biddable media to satisfy multiple stakeholders whose goals may diverge. Search, mobile, display and social media advertising are all bidded!

2. Provide a consistent brand experience and related sales process for participants regardless of where they are in the purchase process or what type of device they are using.

?

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Governance: Last Mile Marketing’s Rules of the Road In many organizations, internal and external silos are the root cause of a fragmented “participant experience.” Internal silos exist due to different departments’ involvement, and external silos occur as a result of various marketing partners and different sales and distribution channels.

Silos not only hinder a connected participant experience, but also increase total new customer acquisition costs. Consider search engine results: ad costs are variable based on a competitive auction, and competing entities bid for every keyword imaginable including your brand. When a participant types a technology brand’s name into a search box, the corporate parent may bid on its name to show an ad for a special event; a software division may try to outbid them to show a specific product; and a hardware reseller may bid to show a different, highly discounted product. All parties may or may not represent the brand correctly or follow national ad campaign messaging guidelines.

Sounds ineffective, right? These search results confuse participants and provide sub-optimal brand experiences. From the organization’s perspective, these results represent increased acquisition costs because different departments bid against each other and potentially drive participants to different databases.

A governance program provides an overarching policy framework and related strategy across multiple stakeholders. It ensures your organization’s digital marketing is deployed effectively with sufficient flexibility. It requires a consistent approach, including a united brand perspective that talks to participants with one voice and a data-centric method for prioritizing ads and marketing assets.

Implementing a governance program in your Last Mile Marketing initiative yields the following benefits and opportunities organization-wide:

• Increases advertising coverage

• Coordinates brand approach

• Reduces overlapping advertising spend and streamlines internal processes

• Improves marketing performance by targeting advertising more efficiently

• Offers faster, more effective crisis response when needed

Any organization can benefit from governance. Businesses containing multiple areas or organizational levels that compete at different points in the purchase process derive the biggest benefit. The goal of governance is to convert participants efficiently without competing against other areas within your organization. The approach is twofold: first, solve the media bidding conflicts in search and display; second, manage messaging and subsequent “experience” to offer the most relevant marketing throughout the purchase journey. These coordinated efforts yield cost savings and reduce the risk of losing prospects to competitors.

At Performics, we help businesses design and manage flexible, accountable governance plans and strategies. In our experience, these types of business structures benefit most from governance:

• Multi-tier sales, various products and different business units

• OEMs

• Retailers

• Resellers and distributors

• Dealers and franchisees

• Affiliate programs

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Other factors influence the need for governance. They include the use of varied technologies within an organization (ad serving, CRM, tracking, and/or business analytics), increased touchpoints, and multiple marketing-related agencies. These elements typically necessitate additional marketing, headcount or manual workarounds.

Drive Toward Successful Governance At its core, governance requires the gathering of relevant information to create effective and efficient business processes that place the participant’s needs at the center of all marketing decisions. In digital marketing, participant needs are represented by data. To establish governance, start with a neutral outsider, such as Performics, to review business documentation and data. This ensures an unbiased, non-political arbitrator keeps order among various stakeholders and marketing resource owners.

Follow these six steps to drive your governance on track in your Last Mile Marketing program:

1. Internal situation analysis. Collect and examine all internally relevant business documentation including detailed marketing plans and budgets. Specifically, identify KPIs and metrics including search advertising keyword lists and ROI thresholds for each.

2. Extend to external gap and overlap analysis. For paid search, perform a detailed analysis of the top keywords. Where is the organization missing coverage, and who is best suited to “answer” the query? To maximize organization’s visibility consider a quarterly analysis. [See: Fig. 1 - Keyword Governance Plan Example below]

3. Develop guidelines. Creating business-wide processes to support marketing initiatives will provide a consistent approach for participant engagement.

4. Test the process. Create a testing routine that includes variables and frequency. Then use the established framework in real time with real scenarios to improve process effectiveness. Learn and apply the results.

5. Management process. Ensure there is a hierarchy of authority and marketing responsibility for business objectives associated with groups of keyword terms or data profiles.

6. Engage Technology. Ensure consistent data treatment and reporting to reduce conflicts and confusion. Engage tech teams to develop an integrated technology strategy that supports shared decisions.

FIG. 1 - KEywoRD GovERNANcE PLAN ExAMPLE

Instructions: Use this template for each major keyword (or phrase) to initiate your free governance plan. Reference Step 2 in “Drive Toward Successful Governance.” Download the Excel template at http://www.slideshare.net/performics_us/performics-keyword-governance-plan-template.

Participant Focused campaign Specifics

Needs/context[word(s), Device Used, Location]

Decision Making Role [Maker, Influencer, End User]

Landing Page/ Info Expected[content]

Needs new smartphone, Desktop search

Decision maker & end user Price, functionality, service providers

Brand Focused campaign Specifics

Keyword TypeKeyword Business owner

[Name/Business]other Stakeholder(s)[Name/Department]

core brand “Apple” Apple CorporateRegional & local stores, resellers,

affiliates & servicers

Product name “iPhone” Apple CorporateRegional & local stores, resellers,

affiliates & servicers

Brand + Generic “Apple Smartphone” Apple CorporateRegional & local stores, resellers,

affiliates & servicers

Brand + Geo-modified “Apple New York” Regional Manager Apple Corporate

Geo-modified + Generic “Manhattan Smartphone” Local Store Apple Corporate

Generic “Smartphone” Apple CorporateRegional & local stores, resellers,

affiliates & servicers

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Develop Your Governance Strategy NowWhile an outside partner such as Performics is critical to any Last Mile Marketing program, your organization also needs these elements to maintain a successful governance program:

Have a project champion. Choose an employee with sufficient clout to require involved players and stakeholders to take appropriate action when necessary.

Streamline the process to make it predictable. Keep your process simple and focused. Last Mile Marketing isn’t a do-it-once-and-forget-about-it effort. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that’s integrated into your digital marketing campaigns. Streamlining allows you to manage the process easily and review at least quarterly to maximize results and savings.

create an escalation procedure. Provide efficient means for dealing with exceptions and/or conflicts. This is particularly important when you first implement changes, since there will undoubtedly be issues you didn’t anticipate.

Build relevant metrics. As you gain knowledge and experience, track results to ensure you are monitoring the important information accurately. Where necessary, adapt your metrics to reflect gained knowledge of your participant’s total value. As you build “progressive profiles” of your participant base, you may want to change reporting metrics.

Prioritize goals. Determine the order of importance of your objectives. They must be aligned with the rest of your business.

Reassess the processes. Remember, “test and learn” applies here, too! Once you implement your procedures, review them periodically to ensure your business remains on track and modify any parts of the processes that aren’t effective.

Governance Success: A Last Mile Marketing Case StudyA global auto manufacturer saved 33% on paid search media, plus saw a 14% increase in leads.

Situation: A large global automotive brand with independent regional auto groups, as well as thousands of local auto dealers, was spending millions of dollars on search marketing branded and “generic” key terms such as “new car.” Action: Performics collected information on the business’ current processes, interviewed stakeholders, and analyzed the current paid search (PPC) buying strategy. Based on this knowledge, we developed a governance model that included a new set of business rules to streamline

search purchase. This process was tested on a group of 10 priority search keywords, most of which had a high cost-per-click, across a test group of dealers. In addition, education programs were rolled out at national, regional, reseller, and dealer levels. Each program also included local-dealer campaign assistance.

Result: Implementation of a governance strategy resulted in reduced costs and increased efficiency and volume. Total clicks from paid search increased 14% and cost-per-click decreased 10% through coordinated bidding and the application of a cross-tier governance model. Even better, since the pilot study, costs have remained at reduced levels.

Do you want to increase cost effectiveness and reduce redundancy in your

marketing bidding programs? Does your firm need an experienced neutral

outside perspective to help you get your governance program on track? If so,

then contact Performics at 1-800-615-5126 or info@performics.com

Not ready to commit but want to find out more about how Last Mile Marketing

and governance can help you? Sign up for our email newsletter, follow us on

Twitter (@Performics), or find us on Facebook!

National Brand

Regional Group

Local Dealer

Local Dealers

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