Online advertising trends in 2019

A recent study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Google has confirmed what we at Autopilot have known for quite some time: data-driven marketing allows brands to achieve better results.

The study, which surveyed 200 advertising companies and interviewed more than 40 employees, was designed to identify the most common strategies that successful businesses deployed to achieve remarkable results. It was found that companies implementing data-driven digital marketing strategies achieved 1.4 times more cost savings and twice as much revenue than companies that did not. This study also found that only 2% of all companies were among the leading advertisers in data-driven marketing. Keen to be one of the 2%? Read on to find out just how the top-performing companies did it:

Using advanced data-driven technology to increase revenue

As part of the study, the advertising companies were introduced to — and encouraged to use — data-driven technologies such as machine learning. And after just 4-6 weeks, companies saw their online transactions increase by as much as 50%! As a result, companies saw up to 33% higher ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) combined with almost 44% lower CPA (cost-per-action).

Understanding that success does not rely on technology alone

There’s a lot of impressive technology in the market, available at our fingertips. However, technology can only be successful with the right people behind it. You may have the most expensive or top-of-the-range piece of software on the market, but you won’t see results without an effective strategy, the knowledge to optimize the technology, and the right insights to shape social media campaigns. Essentially, hiring the right people or outsourcing the right contractors are crucial decisions for your business to make. Creating a data-driven culture should also be part of your overall plan for success.

Implementing organizational and technical best practices to increase their chances of success

The study discovered that companies implementing technical and organizational best practices were more successful than those that didn’t. The companies in the former group were found to have achieved 1.5 times more cost savings and up to 2.5 times more revenue from data-driven marketing than companies who weren’t quite at that stage.

Best practices are used to maintain quality and can be based on either self-assessment or benchmarking against industry standards. A commitment to using the best practices in your industry is a commitment to using all the available knowledge and technology at one’s disposal to ensure success. For example, you may want to stay on track with trends affecting your industry by reading publications or blogs. Or you may wish to set a goal to be as up to date as possible with your tech stack by implementing commonly used communication tools such as Slack — you can even go one further with Slack by using it to automatically notify your team of any new sales opportunities that come through the pipeline.

Thinking long term

Finally, the most successful companies understand that success requires long term thinking and sustainable change. Long term success is only possible if everyone in the company works in a cross-functional manner, share the same goals, and make decisions that would benefit the entire business, not just one team.

Let’s say you want to introduce a new piece of marketing automation software to a C-suite in your company. You wouldn’t just pick a random option right then and there. First, you’ll need to systematically test different brands, draw insights from your experience with using them, ask for feedback from other teams, and then present a clear picture of the value achieved to the decision-makers in your company.

You, too, can achieve remarkable results

If you’re not data-driven, you may be missing out on significant opportunities to achieve the sort of results top-performing companies are achieving. But by having a long term focus on data-driven marketing and taking inspiration from the companies surveyed in the BCG study, you’ll be in a better position to make smarter decisions that will have a tremendous impact on your business’ performance.