How McKinsey sees the funnel’s role in marketing strategy

Creative concept marketing advocates can coexist peacefully with their teammates crunching the numbers when the right funnel strategy is deployed.

This is the view of global consulting firm McKinsey. The organization has found that when branding and analytics are put on a level playing field, marketing results improve.

I recently asked McKinsey Senior Partner Julien Boudet and Kelsey Robinson to comment on how the funnel strategy should be designed and executed.

Paul Talbot: How can the top leadership of an organization bring together what we often think of as two marketing camps… one focused on brand building and the other on performance driven campaigns?

Julien Boudet and Kelsey Robinson: Brand building and numbers have always had a tough alliance in marketing, but the idea that creativity and data are adversaries is outdated.

Two years ago, we interviewed senior marketing executives and tracked their companies’ performance. We’ve found that “integrators,” the marketers who combine data and creativity, grow twice the average rate of companies in the S&P 500.

But bringing brand and performance closer requires a few changes:

• Treat brand and analytics equally. Integrators are more likely to inject creativity into analytical functions and vice versa, especially when it comes to consumer insights and customer experience.
• Connect teams with an operational model updated by agile marketing. This means digital and brand marketers work from brief to full execution, ensuring that brand marketers start to embrace their own version of testing and learning, bringing in partners agency to table and encouraging full testing and impact of the funnel.
• Define clear, unified KPIs that are linked across the funnel, including analyzing and quantifying the impact of non-conversion events such as awareness points, increased and qualified traffic generation.
• Invest in a measurement ecosystem that includes brand building measurement, including addressable TV analytics, brand lift studies designed for more consistent reading and reaction, as well as attribution and testing geo-specific.
• An updated media mix model for embedded spend, including a pressure tested MMM based on market incrementality testing.

Before undertaking any of the above, marketers should try a few tests to show the increased power and efficiency when these muscles work together. It can go a long way.

Talbot: How do you tackle the measurement challenges that can throw unflattering perceptions on branding?

Boudet and Robinson: There are new ways to measure brand building, such as addressable TV / video, rapid large-scale brand lift studies on mobile, and market-specific spend testing that can help prove it. impact of brand spending on traffic levels.

Businesses should seek to determine the most important KPIs of brand activity by performing correlation and other analysis to identify which top funnel metrics relate to subsequent purchase and loyalty.

Talbot: When the CEO of the organization has climbed the ranks of finance rather than sales and marketing, do we know if the organization’s strategy tends to be more predisposed to performance campaigns?

Boudet and Robinson: We have not investigated this, although it is important for leaders (CMO, CFO and CEO) to understand the risks they face if they only optimize and prioritize high ROAS / response. immediate and a capture of the lower conversion funnel demand.

While performance marketing can be attractive from a measurement perspective, it has its own limitations, often focusing too much on short-term impact.

For many categories, the initial review is often the most important battleground and one that performance marketing cannot easily affect.

Talbot: For a full funnel strategy to be articulated and executed, what must happen?

Boudet and Robinson: The CMO and / or the management team should articulate the case for change with good fulcrums which often include a low level or degradation of brand awareness, brand equity and an increase the cost of acquiring traffic or revenue from pay channels.

It is essential to have a strong partnership in the areas of marketing and analytics as well as with partner agencies, as is the assurance that creation can evolve both at brand speed and from digital to digital. high frequency in an integrated way.

Talbot: Do you have any other full funnel marketing strategy ideas you’d like to share?

Boudet and Robinson: We see full funnel marketing as a complete shift in mindset when it comes to marketing strategy, and we believe the majority of marketers have focused too much on performance / demand capture or brand building / generation. demand.

Very few of them strike the right balance and really approach it as an integrated, full-funnel approach.