magic numbers

Exciting news, Senior Director Joy Talbot will be speaking at Hallam's Nottingham Digital Summit on Thursday 19th September. As online shopping surges and digital ad spend continues to increase, it’s crucial for businesses to be easy to find online. It’s the end of brand vs. activation as we know it 💡 Join Joy to learn what this means for advertisers and how you can navigate the new budget allocation challenge: when to spend on Google vs Amazon. 🌟You can get £20 off tickets using the code NDSSPEAKER. Link in comments to sign up! Enjoy the summit! #NottmDigital

📢Win a free seat on one of our courses! Days are getting shorter and leaves are falling from the trees. That’s right, it’s the start of a new school year. And to celebrate we’re giving away one free seat on each of our courses, Data Works and Scaling Up Works. Follow the link in comments to enter today. You can submit separate entries for both courses if you like, but one person can’t win both of the freebies. No thorny effectiveness quiz to enter, but you will need to share why you’d like to join. So head over to our website to explore the courses and see which is for you. Chat to Imogen Howard via [email protected] if you have any questions. Deadline to enter is Thursday 26th September 5pm BST. Good luck!🍀 #marketing #competition

People trust influencers. The set of pies below shows that around three quarters of people who follow creators that promote products or brands like the recommendations they get. They believe the influencers they follow are on their side. That they promote affordable, reliable, and good quality products, and that they do it because they’re looking out for the best interests of their followers. And, just in case you were wondering whether c.75% trust is good for product recommendations, I can confirm, it is. • It’s way better than celebs see. The proportion who trust celebrity endorsements is a paltry 1-3%. • In fact, it’s pretty close to the degree of trust people place in a recommendation from a friends or family member at 92%. It means that these people offer your business a modern way to access the benefits of positive word of mouth. And that means you have an option for brand building in 2025 even if your budget won’t stretch to luxuries, or your audience is young and not watching TV any more. If you want to find out more about brand building online, including strategies that won’t break the bank and what’s worked for other businesses, check out our training course Scaling Up Works. 🚩Next intake is 15th October. Link in comments to sign up today, or chat to Imogen Howard via [email protected] for group bookings or questions. #marketing #data #training

🌟 Session spotlight - The 5 elements of effectiveness in B2B Marketing - Thurs 12th Sept 🌟 Don't miss this fireside chat between our very own Dr Grace Kite, founder of magic numbers and magic works, and Alastair Hussain. It covers the critical aspects of marketing effectiveness.   Thurs 12th September - 2:30 pm BST/ 3:30 pm CEST   𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀 𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗼𝘄. ⬇️ You can join live or gain access to the recordings and catch up when you can!   ➡️ EMEA: https://lnkd.in/ekTXewgM ➡️ USA: https://lnkd.in/e9JZ4WPA ➡️ APAC: https://lnkd.in/ekJN6nFZ   #b2bEffectiveness #B2BEvents #MarketingStrategies

Are your ads boring? Odds are, most people probably think so. According to research by System1, 52% of TV ad viewers in the UK feel neutral when seeing a TV ad. That means they feel nothing. No happiness, no surprise, no anger. Not even a little bit of good old fashioned British contempt. Nothing. Does this matter? Surely an ad doesn’t always need to be exciting? Make people aware of the product and tell them what it does and they’ll buy it, right? Peter Field looked at this very question using IPA data, comparing the business effects of rational (dull) campaigns versus the most emotional (not-dull) campaigns and found a big difference. The chart above shows the results. On average, brands are wasting £10m by running a dull TV campaign. This is because, for a dull campaign to be as effective as a more exciting alternative, you have to spend £10m more on it to drive the same level of business effects. And that’s just an average, for some categories, such as retail, it can be almost double. So, what do they say you can you do to be less dull? One key area is to stop trying to cram so much information into your ads, this can leave viewers bored or confused! There are a few more pointers in the paper worth checking out to help stop the oncoming ‘dullocalypse’, but if you’re thinking about branching into brand activity and how to balance with performance, our Scaling Up Works course starts 15th October and has lots of tips and tricks for how to execute your campaigns. 🚩Book now and read more via link in comments, or chat to Imogen Howard for group bookings or questions via [email protected] #marketing #data #training

Is your budget set at the right level this year?   We’ve done the work to establish a good rule of thumb for how to set your advertising budget relative to the size of your business if the objective is to maximise ROI.   The chart is from the ARC database – a joint initiative between the IPA and magic numbers to bring hundreds and hundreds of econometrics findings from 6 econometrics shops together.   It shows the optimal % of turnover you should devote to advertising if you're an online business and you want to maximise ROI. It's about 5%, and for online businesses the ROI is higher at that optimum than it is for bricks and mortar.   But do you know what else we found? It's that the same finding was there in 2 other reputable sources - in Nielsen's ROI study, and in an investigation by Paul Dyson. All three studies landed on spending 5-10% of turnover on advertising for the highest return on investment.   This chart is taken from our course, which is all about putting your money where the magic is. The right size budget and the right mix of brand and performance marketing.   If you like using a benchmark, meta study, or rule of thumb to make the right decisions *and* successfully sell them in to your bosses, learn more on our Scaling Up Works course starting 15th October.   🚩Read more at the link in the comments or email Imogen Howard via [email protected] for group booking or questions. #marketing #data #training

For high ROI evolve your marketing strategy as the business grows.   This new killer chart - based on econometric evidence from magic numbers and other reputable providers- shows that, in the early stages, a performance heavy mix is what delivers the highest returns.   It’s because, when you’re a start-up, performance marketing is enough. You can get growth just by reaching people who are ready to buy and introducing them to your product.   But the chart shows that, as you grow, the ROI from a more balanced mix gets better, and eventually overtakes the payback from sticking with performance.   Bigger businesses leave money on the table if they don’t diversify into media channels with more reach, richer creative, and the sound on. The biggest wins for as you grow come from brand building.   Change is hard... Performance marketing seemingly provides tangible results like clicks, visits, and conversions. And you don’t pay unless real people do those real things. It’s no wonder the big bosses love it.   🚩Our course Scaling Up Works will help you lead your business through this journey. It includes practical things you can do with your own data to release cash for new things and ensure you get those new things right. The next intake is 15th October.   Link in comments to read more and sign up. If you have questions or for group bookings, contact Imogen Howard via [email protected].   #marketing #data #training

Facebook’s got creaking knees and Instagram’s wondering why it can’t party like it used to. Yep, Meta’s audience is getting older. It might not surprise you much to know that Gen Z’s Facebook usage has more than halved from over 30% in 2019 to 14% in 2023. But did you know that Instagram is also ageing? Pre-covid, Insta was quite young, and with both platforms in your social buy, Meta could offer coverage of all age cohorts. But that’s changing. In the chart of Gen Z social media usage above, Instagram has dropped from being the number 1 platform in 2019 to number 3 in 2023. And Facebook from 4th to 6th behind YouTube and X (not shown). 🎉TikTok is the big success story with this age group. Showing the power of sound on short form video, it’s gone from last to first in only 4 short years. But that doesn't mean the future is entirely bleak for Meta, just that we need to use it in different ways now. For the right audience, and using the right objectives, we at magic numbers have measured strong effects of Meta ads many times. There are many ways of working out how best to allocate your media budget, many of which don’t need expensive research, but can be tackled with data you already have in simple frameworks. Our course Scaling Up Works covers this, next intake is 15th October 2024. It’s all about how to get the mix of performance and brand right and unlock a new phase of growth. 🚩 Link is in the comments or email Imogen Howard via [email protected] for group bookings or questions. If you’re interested in using econometrics contact [email protected] #marketing #data #training

There’s a short-term benefit of being the oldest in your year at school... but just like some media channels that look great at first, the initial head start disappears as time goes by. The chart shows that the month kids are born in affects the grades they achieve. Kids born in September – so that they’re the oldest in their class – are much more likely to achieve expected grades, in their early school years. But kids that’re born in August, and youngest in the class, find it much harder to make the grade. So, September babies get a head start, but here’s the thing: It reduces as they and their classmates get older. By the time they’re grown up, there’s no evidence that birth month matters. This is exactly the same for media channels. Some are born lucky so that their biggest sales effect happens straight away, but others, which are equally as good, and often better, take time to blossom. 🔍We see it time and time again at magic numbers. Paid search, for example, nearly always beats TV on sales performance per £1 spent in the week of airing. But the head start typically disappears by the time 4 or 5 weeks have passed. Businesses that don’t have the right context or expectations for the different channels in their media mix make short-sighted decisions, and it turns out, over time, that these aren’t the best choices. If you want to get the mix right, and get your business on board, check out our course Scaling Up Works it’s all about unlocking a new phase of growth and is full of practical tips and tricks along the way. 🚩Course starts 15th October. Link in comments to book now and read more. Contact Imogen Howard for group bookings or questions via [email protected] For analytics consultancy, contact [email protected] #marketing #training #brandvsperformance

Don’t be misled by a colourful map… it’s very easily done. A few weeks back, Labour recorded a landslide victory in the general election, but that doesn’t look to be the case according to the chart on the left. You could easily conclude, looking at it, the Tories actually won! But why is this the case? Constituencies are far from evenly distributed around the UK and there tend to be more in areas with greater population. Cities, therefore, are packed with lots of smaller constituencies which you can’t see on geographically correct maps, because they’re all on top of each other.🏙️ Cartograms, like the map on the right, fix it because they standardise constituency area. All constituencies are worth one seat no matter how big they are, so making their size in the picture equal just makes more sense! The right-hand side in our diagram shows a better visualisation of the election results data. Where the vast majority of inner-city seats were won by Labour, there is now much more red. Have you been misled by any other coloured maps like this? Are you sure? 🚩Interpreting, visualising and communicating data is just as important in marketing as it is in politics. If you want to get better at it, you should check out our course Data Works starting 8th October. Link in comments or for groups or questions talk to Imogen Howard via [email protected] For analytics consultancy email [email protected] #marketing #training #data