This is my inaugural column so let me set the tone for all future articles. I will dedicate this column to the promotion and advocacy of a data-driven marketing methodology. As I wrote on my Adobe blog, “I like to think the future of digital marketing lies in the intelligent use of data and the ability to inspire desired digital behavior based on an unparalleled understanding of content, channels and the target audience.”
In October, Adobe relaunched its digital marketing solutions under the Marketing Cloud brand name. Along with this launch, we also began a fully integrated digital campaign to increase awareness and demand for the solution. The “Metrics Not Myths” campaign was launched to dispel the perception that marketing is a bunch of B.S. and that its value could not be established in numbers. We set goals for ourselves on multiple terms – overall awareness, media and social sentiment, social engagement, community growth, website traffic, and conversion.
Results within 1 week:
- Our relevant content increased its reach: In less than a month, our Facebook community grew by more than 40 percent — up to over 21,000. Also, engagement on Facebook, measured in PTAT (People Talking About This) grew to 30 percent over a normal weekly average of about 3 to 5 percent.
- Our digital ads performed well: Adobe Analytics dashboards suggested that traffic to our website was up nearly 10 times on the day of launch. Display advertising was the referring source of 47 percent of total traffic and Typed/Bookmarked referrers (those influenced by view through from the ads and other coverage) accounted for a third of the traffic.
Results after 3 weeks:
- People like rich media content especially videos: Our paid and social media leveraged three videos: BS Detector, The Slap, and The Robot. Within paid media, videos gave us a CTR and visit rate four times the overall campaign average. On the social media side our video seeding strategy has worked well with over 1 million views of the videos on YouTube.
- The passive experience of our Facebook app failed to sustain engagement: The Facebook app built using Adobe Social sparked considerable social engagement using the initial live debate on Oct. 25 but was subsequently being used only to replay the debate video. As a result views and engagement fell sharply. The team thereafter looked at adding further engagement features to the app.
- The integrated campaign approach is working: Adobe Analytics suggested that the campaign had driven direct inquiries at 1.2 times the weekly target and that website inquiries were 40 percent higher than the three weeks prior to the campaign launch.
Results after a month:
- Brand-focused paid media drove significant traffic to our website, but at lower engagement rates than other traffic sources: Overall bounce rates decreased by 5 percent post-launch and were down by 13 percent for organic traffic.
- Promoted Tweets improved the performance of the Facebook app, and helped build our social community: Views and unique visitors to the Facebook app increased about 2.5 times over the daily average since Oct. 26, when we initially stopped paid media. This was due primarily to the Promoted Tweets. Our social communities on Facebook and Twitter were up by 75 percent.
Conclusion
I have run through a lot of metrics and numbers and I hope they’ve been succinct and self-explanatory. We have since then tracked our conversion of visitors to leads and the overall conversion has been 45 percent better than our pre-campaign period. Lots of useful data, analyzed correctly, and the analyses used to make the right marketing decisions can result in a successful campaign. And Adobe’s recent campaign was an attempt to prove just that!