CHICAGO — For those who were curious, ad:tech Chicago keynote speaker Hunter Hastings suggested a concrete way for marketers to measure customer engagement across channels and adopt a model that fits tech-savvy consumers.
The new metric must be inclusive across channels and take into account the trend toward customer-controlled content, said Mr. Hastings, CEO of EMM Group.
“It’s got to be something more than eyeballs that we’re measuring,” he said. “The customer has to be involved.”
Brands should survey customers on which contact points they used as well as what effect each had in any purchasing decision, he said. The metrics could be compared with a second questionnaire that asked consumers about their experience across industry with media channels.
The result, he said, is an understanding of your brand’s share of industry customer engagement and insight into the most effective ways consumers receive product messages.
These new metrics will change how companies are structured and projects are run, Mr. Hastings said.
“Managerialism by definition produces slow cycles [of business],” he said.
A non-siloed, process-oriented model that collects customer data and lets marketers immediately react based on the results will be the business model of the future, Mr. Hastings said.
“This process is a closed-loop system and doesn’t need to be managed,” he said.
A manager’s role in the new business model is to set up the procedure and ensure that employees have the support needed, namely funding, resources and technology, to complete the process.
Many marketers currently collecting customer engagement metrics to fuel market change rely on the response to consumer surveys. Mr. Hastings thinks this will evolve.
“Eventually we will be able to track this data behaviorally,” he said. “It’s a very promising new standard.”
