Docklin

Next Generation Performance Marketing.

What is Next Generation Performance Marketing?

The digital marketing industry is undergoing massive changes right now. The fundamentals of how one needs to operate in order to be best-in-class is very different from just 18 months ago.

Our vision is to deliver Next Generation Performance Marketing. That means we want to innovate together with our clients to always stay one step ahead of the competition. 

This is our view on the biggest challenges currently facing our industry and how we work with you to address them. 

 

Digital marketing needs a stronger alignment with strategy

Optimizing marketing towards business goals sounds basic. In reality, we often come across ecommerce businesses optimizing towards ROAS when focus is on profitability, and lead gen players focusing on target cost per lead when they should focus on customer lifetime value. This means potentially investing millions towards the wrong performance metrics. 

Why is this? Digital marketers often use the out-of-the-box measurement solutions available. When Google launched conversion tracking, advertisers moved from optimizing towards traffic to conversions. When conversion value was introduced, marketers maximized revenue at a specific ROAS. Today, it is possible to optimize for business centric KPIs like profit and customer lifetime value, however there aren’t standardized solutions available yet. Many advertisers are stuck optimizing based on what’s available rather than what really drives their business forward. 

The solution is to change your mindset from accepting the status quo and limitations of standard measurement and instead invest in measuring and optimizing towards true business value:

Translate business goals into digital KPIs: Define how your digital marketing should support your overall business strategy.

Implement the right tracking solution: Make sure to implement a solution that measures the true value of your marketing. 

Optimize and prioritize: Beyond optimizing your investment and measuring what matters, make sure to prioritize the actions that have the greatest impact on your bottom-line.

 

The old school approach to optimization is not enough

Performance Marketing used to be straight forward; tight control, granular account structures and continuous iteration got you ahead of the competition. But things have changed rapidly with Google and Facebook leading the push for automation and use of machine learning features. 

Those old frameworks, best practices and optimization strategies are not cutting it anymore and advertisers that are holding on too long will be left behind. As algorithms are becoming a commodity, the approach to optimization needs to change in order to leverage automation and make the most of first party data.

Docklin is embracing this new world. We’ve re-configured our approach and built frameworks and tools to be a leader in this new cycle of Performance Marketing. We center our delivery and assets on the following topics.

Embrace automation: Account structure and optimization processes built to get the best out of Google and Facebook’s machine learning solutions.

Data Activation: Your own data is your competitive advantage when algorithms are becoming a commodity.

Proprietary technology: In order to get an edge on the competition you need smarter solutions. We’ve built our own optimization platform leveraging Google and Facebook Ads APIs.

 

How we measure needs to change

Digital has revolutionized marketing, making it measurable and quantifiable, but there is a massive shift ongoing. How we measure online is changing. Quickly. Between ad blockers, ITP and other privacy initiatives, the way we view online data will never be the same. The old way of measuring is flawed – GA as a single source of insights has never given us a complete picture. Even though many have pretended that it did. 

What we have to do is what we should have done years ago; embrace complexity. Accept that our data is incomplete, that there are blind-spots in measurement and that we have to use more than one data source to understand our business. Rather than viewing measurement as static, we need to see it as an ongoing process making us smarter every day. 

When online data is becoming less reliable, we need to leverage data in a way that maximizes data quality and minimizes data silos while making it accessible for those who benefit from it will be key in building a data-driven business.

Utilize all relevant data: First party data and ad platform data all contain valuable information that can be used to generate insights into our business.

Invest in measurement: Start seeing measurement as an ongoing process. More changes are coming and we need to be prepared. 

Maximize data quality: Invest in the data you have and be aware of blind spots in the measurement set-up to ensure that we make the best possible decisions with the data at our disposal.

 

Agencies need to act as partners

The role of a digital marketing agency has changed. Rather than deliver fringe services to a single person in the marketing department, agencies need to understand the full scope of marketing activities from strategy to execution. 

We believe that the best way to achieve great results is to partner with our clients. To understand strategy, agencies need to be able to talk to management. To understand profitability, agencies need to be able to talk to finance. To understand the data infrastructure, agencies need to be able to talk to IT & Analytics. We believe that creating true business value will come from understanding the customer’s context, goals and unique challenges to tailor an approach to each customer case. 

Understand capabilities and limitations: Rather than proposing a one size fits all approach, we make sure to understand what resources and capabilities you have and how we can work together to make the most of them. 

Build client understanding: Beyond the basics of owning and accessing your own data, we want you to be able to take ownership of digital marketing strategy and execution by understanding how we tackle your problems and why it drives your business.

Drive maturity: Whether you’re getting started in scaling digital marketing or if you’re an established advertiser, constantly improving and developing new capabilities is key. Together, we work with prioritizing projects and activities to make sure that capabilities and results improve quarter by quarter.