So you’ve got a kick-ass website, thousands of Facebook followers, and produce daily tweets that are witty and gain plenty of traction. However, when the monthly reports come in, do you really know how much comes in from your digital marketing channels? What about when its time to ask for that bigger marketing budget because you just know you should be investing more in social media – do you have the right figures, data or evidence to back it up?

With digital channels becoming a crucial and major part of any marketing media plan, the ability to track and measure effectiveness of online marketing activities is crucial.

“The focus on ROI for marketers is more important now than ever before. Marketers are required to be highly accountable to avenues where they invest marketing budgets,” says Calum Russell, group marketing manager at Adobe ANZ.

With various online channels to track and keep updated with, Russell believes that it is important for marketers to be equipped with marketing software that can provide timely, accurate and analytical data that helps with marketing decisions.

Speaking to Marketing, he said: “It’s important that marketers, from the get-go, have the ability to make informed choices, execute their campaign, track and measure the response and success, and make alterations based on this information”.

Adobe, while traditionally associated with creative software such as Photoshop and InDesign, also provides marketing optimisation software called the Adobe Online Marketing Suite. Russell explains: “For 20 years, Adobe has been in the business of content creation. However, we understand that with digital, it has the ability to allow us to measure and get feedback, and we want to provide our users with that capability as well”.

The Adobe Online Marketing Suite, already used by multinational companies like MTV, has the ability to deliver real-time reports to measure marketing performance of specific channels or campaigns, chart customer interaction with company touch points and produce insights that will further inform marketers on how to optimise future marketing strategies.

Russell explains: “For example, many local brands now have an online store. However, they cannot quite pinpoint the exact interaction-path of the consumer, for instance, why a consumer does not end up making a purchase. It could be something as simple as a generated form asking for the consumer’s age, and that discourages the consumer from proceeding.

‘With the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, marketers will be able to have a holistic and complete view of the way their consumers engage with the brand, and be able to find out what is working, what isn’t working, and how best to retain consumers”.

“With online marketing, it is no longer just how many fans you have or how many clicks your banner ad generates. Marketers need to be able to provide ROI and end-sales accountability”.

For more details on how MTV has used this marketing software to support their marketing activities, watch the video here.