Digital Marketing Insights from Millward Brown Digital’s Matt Pace

Welcome to the latest installment of Catalyst’s Digital Tech Innovation Series, in which we interview the technology movers and shakers in the digital marketing industry. Today’s interview is with Matt Pace, Vice President of Financial Services, Retail & CPG at Millward Brown Digital.

Matt is responsible for creating customized research solutions and driving client and business growth strategy. Previously, Matt led Millward Brown Digital’s emerging markets practice, where he advised retailers, publishers and loyalty programs on methods for optimizing their digital investments through the analysis of online consumer behavior. Before joining Millward Brown Digital, Matt worked in product marketing at GXS Solutions (now OpenText) and before that was a senior associate in Deloitte’s high-tech practice.

Read our interview of Matt below, and uncover new insights into the the digital forces impacting brands and consumers today. Enjoy!

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Millward Brown Digital has identified a new “Path to Purchase.” Can you summarize this new path for our readers?

MATT: The consumer path to purchase is more complex than ever before. Shifting consumer attitudes and multiple connected devices have rendered the traditional purchase funnel diagram officially dead. This old singular, orderly sequence of purchase phases has been scrambled, and marketers need to unravel the complexity. In today’s world, in which consumers have instant access to information, each person’s path to purchase is complex and unique.

What are some of the ways that mobile plays into the new path to purchase?

MATT: With the near ubiquity of smartphones and other mobile devices, consumers carry with them easy and ready-access to shopping at the tap of an app, anytime and anywhere. Today, consumers don’t go to stores so much as stores go with them.

How do you see consumers’ use of mobile evolving in the coming year?

MATT: Increasingly, mobile devices have become complements to rather than replacements for desktops and laptops. The varied screens consumers use on a daily basis each serve unique roles. As a result, consumers use their mobile devices to shop in different ways than they would a desktop. In the year ahead expect to see heightened use of mobile devices for showrooming and webrooming and growing acceptance by consumers of location-based alerts and coupons. No doubt Apple Pay will also help at long last usher in the era of in-store mobile payment.

What are keys to reaching the mobile consumer?

MATT: I think the question really is how can you help consumers reach you? What’s striking for me is how retailers have responded to mobile shopping by largely porting the functionality and design of their desktop-based websites onto their mobile sites and apps, either out of laziness or the false assumption that consumers’ needs are the same across all platforms. They are not. On most retailer websites, search seems like an afterthought, often squeezed onto the page to make room for the full content and directory-based navigation of desktops. Like in the early days of ecommerce, mobile retail experiences seem largely built around navigation. But consumers are not browsing on their mobile devices, they are more likely to be looking for information on a specific product, and they want that information immediately to inform an immediate decision. Reaching consumers on mobile during their shopping process requires focused attention on tools and tactics that enable shoppers to quickly locate the exact product they are attempting to find. If they can’t find it on your site, they have many other places to try.

How should brands be measuring their mobile performance?

MATT: At Millward Brown Digital we help brands measure their success in mobile in three key areas:

• Consumer Insights: Understanding which touchpoints consumers engage with on mobile devices to reach them in the most cost-effective and impactful way
• Advertising Effectiveness: Developing strong synergy between clear creative and effective media placement to engage consumers
• Competitive Intelligence: Continuously benchmarking your brand’s mobile performance against competitors to develop a best-in-class mobile experience and grow your share of mobile engagement

When marketers have a good handle on how they are performing in those three areas, they have the tools they need to get mobile right.

Can you share any stories of the most effective mobile marketing you have seen recently?

MATT: One campaign I was impressed by recently was in the automotive category, specifically the Mercedes GLA car-builder tool on Instagram that launched in October. Rather than attempting to bring consumers to its site to build a vehicle, Mercedes targeted them where they already spend time on their mobile devices – social media. Understanding how consumers use their mobile devices in their daily lives is critical to getting your brand in front of them naturally, and that’s exactly what Mercedes did.

Millward Brown Digital recently purchased InsightExpress, a developer of media analytics and marketing accountability solutions. How do these solutions enable better measurement of marketing campaigns and media?

MATT: With the acquisition of InsightExpress, a pioneer in digital, media and brand measurement, Millward Brown Digital provides clients with more holistic brand and media insights, including faster and more granular analysis of cross-platform advertising effectiveness. For us, getting digital and mobile right is about embracing the role of digital in building strong brands. Our enhanced advertising effectiveness capabilities, combined with our expertise in understanding digital consumer behavior, place us at the forefront of digital measurement and marketing strategy.

How do the InsightExpress technologies enable better cross-platform or online-offline campaign measurement through the path to purchase?

With the acquisition, Millward Brown Digital gains access to InsightExpress’ Ignite Network, the world’s largest brand marketing analytics platform, to provide clients with a holistic real-time approach to digital advertising effectiveness measurement. With measurement options across all digital advertising formats and data partnerships to connect digital to sales we can help marketers assess their cross-platform and integrated media campaigns to drive ROI across the entire consumer journey.

What can you share about the future roadmap for the InsightExpress technologies?

MATT: 2015 brings with it the rollout of our proprietary framework, The ABC’S of ad effectiveness, to help marketers drive brand growth and achieve Total ROI, combining the best of InsightExpress and Millward Brown Digital’s ad effectiveness capabilities. The ABC’S (Audience Insights, Brand Lift Insights, Consumer Behavior Insights and Sales Insights) provide clients with measurement opportunities at each stage of the consumer journey. From programmatic buying to native advertising and everything in between, we believe we are at the leading edge of industry innovation, putting our clients at the forefront of marketing measurement excellence.