Ian Gibbs
Data and insights director
Let’s get the AI bit out of the way quickly. Yes, AI is making an indelible mark on the planning, execution and measurement of marketing campaigns.
The DMA’s (Data and Marketing Association UK’s) recent Customer Engagement survey of 260 marketers reveals that nearly half think AI will improve the marketer skillset, while two-thirds believe it will drive significant budget efficiencies.
Efficiency and effectiveness aren’t the same
However, focusing on efficiency alone plays to the mantra of ‘doing more with less’ (i.e. with less marketing budget) and leads businesses to suffer the very real opportunity cost of highly efficient spend delivering lower levels of revenue and profit overall. What would benefit the marketing industry more would be to use AI as a tool to defend and grow marketing budgets by building more effective marketing comms.
But effectiveness will never be built by AI alone. Along with advances in automation, real-time analytics and big-tech platform power, it’s become abundantly clear that best-practice campaign planning principles are falling by the wayside. Time-poor marketers are too dependent on being spoon-fed algorithm-based campaign plans, which invariably chase cheap reach and short-lived response in favour of long-term loyalty and customer growth.
use AI as a tool to defend and grow marketing budgets by building more effective marketing comms.
The consequences are published in the DMA’s Value of Customer Data report, which reveals a 33% decline in performance marketing effectiveness in the last half-decade. Previous work from the DMA, based on an analysis of over 1,700 campaigns, provides substantive evidence as to how a focus on the value of customer data, creativity and best practice measurement will turn the tide on declining effectiveness.
How Super Touchpoint planning can help
To add to this significant body of work, we’ll be publishing ‘The Value of Super Touchpoint Planning’ later in Q1. Super Touchpoint planning encourages marketers to look beyond chasing cheap reach and instead consider a myriad of other factors. These include trust, transparency, regulatory compliance, targeting capabilities, full-funnel effectiveness, emotional resonance and contextual relevance — to ascertain how to drive sustainable growth in marketing effectiveness.
These best practice planning principles are nothing new. They’ve been around for years, yet are more important now than they’ve ever been.
Head over to DMA.org.uk to take a deep dive into the vast amount of evidence we’ve accumulated around marketing effectiveness and gear yourself up for an effective future.
