Issue #12 - Live - a summer special to cool your jets
In this issue: eCommerce gossip (as always) | Attribution - the challenge we face | eCommerce v Marketing - the oldest “land grab” | When terms lose their meaning (and power)
Many of our colleagues in the US are dealing with an economy that is recovering more quickly than us in Europe - with the UK in some significant trouble (I have never written that down before, it feels like cheating on my wife…).
How long will the UK struggle for? Politics is our weakness, weakness on all sides I’m afraid.
eCommerce Gossip
What gives since we last wrote? Well… GA4, of course, and there are a few updates that merchants in our community have been discussing over the last three weeks.
The GA4 lag. Next day data looks good, but pretty much all agree that it takes until the following lunchtime for the data to clean up and look accurate. Work in progress from Google, then.
GA4 organic v affiliate data is currently off - affiliate data being lobbed into organic, which a few have raised with Google but yet to be fixed.
Meta results are improving (gradually). Merchants are starting to see better ROI, having spent almost a year throwing money into a deep dark well - we love the Nest leadout report for this type of info if you don’t see it.
Threads (nobody cares currently), but we should all look for some cunning ways around privacy and targeting from Meta. A few adventurous souls are already scouting out paid opportunities. We’ll keep you all posted.
Attribution - The Challenge We All Face
Building on the subject of attribution, there is a very different picture of sales attribution in SaaS. Last week we had an impromptu gathering of 6 marketing directors over breakfast to chat about the challenges of marketing attribution within SaaS, and the tools used to get better funnel data, how to corral sales and often just how to get the numbers to match.
We’d intended to talk in a more structured way about how to attribute marketing “points” along the sales cycle, but we became distracted by talk of 2024 Trade Shows, new markets, 6th sense (yawn…) and the cunning cheap alternative.
We now have a little WhatsApp group and plan to meet in person again in Sept with a specific subject in mind. Chatham House, of course. If you wish to come/join we’ll need the 6 to agree and maybe have 10 max members. DM jamie@buyingtime.co.uk - and no doubt we’ll be talking about the pretty damning conclusions on paid advertising for B2B from LinkedIn and FB over the next few months.
Our thoughts were not doom and gloom, in fact nobody moaned about the first half of 2023. Instead what we took away was how seriously those in SaaS marketing take demand generation, how sophisticated many martech stacks are, but how often there are some old school techniques and fairly blunt instruments used in measurement.
eCommerce v Marketing - The Ageless Debate
By rights there should be no “v” symbol, a nice happy family all joined together in the pursuit of growth and margin is what we’d love to see, but politics gets in the way a lot of the time.
Another live debate this last week within the community at CF was all about who owns website demand, site traffic KPIs. The conversation arose because within one brand there was an ongoing “land grab” for control - with the marketing teams arguing that demand lay with them, and that they’d outsource performance marketing to a great agency they knew. Cue eCommerce and Digital leaders up in arms - best reaction below:
“The day I hand performance marketing over to a marketing director is the day I decide I want to tank the business I’m working for. What absolute baloney. That’s like giving brand marketing to an E-commerce Director. Can you imagine?”
Within the debate that followed the thing that stuck out was that the board had very little understanding or appreciation for the nuances of eCommerce owning performance marketing (along with that P&L). It seems obvious to all of us, but clearly the digital IQ of so many brands’ board of directors remains low if this is still a thing.
Which Terms Have Lost Their Meaning?
Of course we all have words that feel “blah blah”, and some that we just never liked in the first place. This section is just a short commentary on those words that are evergreen, which we have no choice but to use.
Whether we like it or not, “omnichannel” and “transformation” are too accurate and short to be replaced. They still carry meaning, and whilst they have carried different specifics over the last 10 years, each has settled into a degree of accuracy that we can live with.
There are some terms we’ve never enjoyed here at Buyingtime. “Phygital” goes down in history as a fail (unless you’re French, then it’s fine). “Composable” is starting to grate on some retailers… they take offence that this is an orchestra with an obligatory floppy-haired conductor (beware Gartner with that one… yes it was their idea).
Abusive term of this week:
Everest - Takes ages to get to the point (we are being kinder over the summer).