How much can increasing a company's awareness improve its business results? A new challenge by XICA and Cross Marketing Group to expand the possibilities of the research industry

In February 2020, XICA announced a business partnership with Cross Marketing Group, which operates marketing research, IT solutions, and digital marketing businesses in over 20 locations in 11 countries around the world, and the launch of joint services.

When we spoke with Masakazu Yano, COO and director of XICA, who led this business partnership, we heard about his thoughts on this new challenge that will expand the possibilities of the marketing research industry.

Solving a long-standing problem in the marketing industry

── First of all, please tell us about the outline and purpose of this business partnership.

Many of our national clients conduct regular surveys on awareness and favorability every quarter, half a year, or year.

Despite investing large budgets in this research, the marketing industry felt that there was a problem in not knowing to what extent awareness and favorability indicators were related to business results.

This business partnership will provide a solution to this long-standing challenge in the marketing industry.Visualize how much business results will improve if awareness increases by 1%This is what can be achieved through this business partnership.

── This business partnership was realized in order to solve a problem facing the marketing industry, which is that "despite investing large amounts of money in research, we are unable to quantify the degree of its contribution to the business."

Why Cross Marketing and XICA?

── There are many research companies that conduct awareness and favorability surveys, but why did you decide to form a business partnership with Cross Marketing Group?

I think the most important thing when entering into a business partnership is that the two parties' philosophies are aligned.

Don't form a partnership if you just want to borrow the other party's strengths. The important thing is whether you can envision the same future. | XICA Co., Ltd.

this time too, The idea of ​​"not just pursuing profits for our own company, but solving problems for advertisers and providing value" was a perfect matchHm.

Our businesses have a strong affinity, and we have been holding regular discussions since around 2018. As we had built a strong relationship, we decided to enter into a business partnership.

Take the first step to grow your market

── What benefits will this partnership bring to both Cross Marketing and XICA?

In common terms,This will be the first step in growing the market.I believe.

We have heard from clients that they are not making full use of the results of awareness and favorability surveys.I couldn't explain the importance of awareness and favorability data, and I had a hard time understanding how to connect it to the next action..

but,The awareness and favorability figures are very close to brand equity (the overall value of the brand), and will eventually have an impact on sales..

Therefore, we thought that if we created a system to quantitatively visualize the relationship between awareness/favorability and sales using ADVA MAGELLAN, an advertising effectiveness analysis tool provided by XICA, we would be able to use the results of awareness/favorability surveys with deeper insight, which would help evolve our marketing.

Cross Marketing was looking for a way to use awareness and favorability surveys to help them design new products. In addition, I think it would be ideal to have a continuous relationship with the client, rather than just conducting a one-off survey.

Meanwhile, we at XICA wanted to meet the needs of our customers to "make better use of awareness and favorability data." We thought that if we could link this data to business results, the value of Cross Marketing's research and Magellan's output would increase even more.

I believe this partnership will help resolve these issues that both parties have.

Overcoming the hurdles to launching the service

── Were there any hurdles to overcome when starting the service?

The biggest hurdle was that Magellan analyses daily or weekly data, while the awareness and favorability surveys only have semi-annual or annual data. Since analysis is not possible without a complete mesh, we ran into the issue of how to incorporate the data into the daily and weekly data.

Simply put, data can be collected on a daily or weekly basis, but then the problem of the number of survey panels (respondents) arises. For example, if there are 100 respondents, and 1 people are surveyed per day, it will take 10 days to survey everyone. Even if you survey the same panel again on the 10th day, you will not be able to obtain an accurate level of awareness because they were asked the same questions 11 days ago. For this reason, in the marketing research industry, survey panels for the same survey are kept dormant for a certain period of time.

── I see. How did you solve that problem?

Actually,Cross Marketing is a company with one of the largest survey panels in the marketing research industry.In fact, Cross Marketing was in charge of conducting surveys for companies that conducted daily awareness surveys, so the discussions moved forward significantly as we realized that this would enable us to obtain awareness data on a daily and weekly basis.

Hold marketers accountable for their return on investment (ROI)

── Please tell us what value this business partnership can provide to our advertiser clients.

This is really simple,The link between awareness and favorability survey data and business results can be visualizedBut that is the biggest benefit.

Many of our client companies routinely collect data on awareness and favorability. However, just looking at the changes in these numbers over time doesn't tell us how much sales have increased as a result.

For example, if the company recognition rate was 65% last year and increased to 70% this year, I feel like we've achieved results. But if we invested 100 billion yen and it only increased by 5%, I think people would start to wonder, "Is this really enough?"

I think marketers live in a world where they are evaluated based on results. When a marketer reports, "The awareness survey showed that awareness rate increased by 5%. It was a good result in terms of the results of the promotion investment," the management asks, "How much did sales increase as a result of this 5% increase?" They can't answer that question.

So,It also helps marketers quantitatively explain return on investment (ROI) and ensure accountability.I think it's a valuable service.

Aiming for a major evolution in marketing

── It's been nine months since the release, how is the service progressing?

We are already working on several projects, and our customers are saying, "I've never seen numbers like these before!" and we are very satisfied with them. We are also able to clearly visualize the connection to business results.

Although there are still issues that need to be resolved, I feel that there is definitely market potential.

── Could you also tell us about the issues you would like to solve in the future?

First, XICA's challenge is:To develop Magellan into the de facto standard service

From Cross Marketing's perspective, acquiring data on a daily or weekly basis incurs operational costs. If they could streamline the design of their service in that area, I think they could expand the service even more widely.

── How do you plan to grow this service?

In an ideal world, all client companies that collect awareness and favorability data would use this scheme in conjunction with Magellan.

Awareness and favorability surveys are leading indicators that are linked to business results. Basically, you can’t access a site you don’t know, so you choose the one you think is good from among the ones you know.

If we can create a world where we can explain that "if awareness increases by x%, business results will increase by this much, so the ROI is right," we can bring about a major evolution in marketing.I think so. Nowadays, the easy-to-understand harvesting type is mainstream, and communication is often done to increase customer interest through targeted advertising, but this is limited in terms of marketing channels. It is a worldview that is the opposite of a more comprehensive, mid- to long-term investment. If we continue with this worldview, there will be limitations.

While marketers ideally make mid- to long-term investments in marketing activities that produce great results, the best leading indicators are awareness and favorability surveys. This scheme links that data to the final goal of business results.It has the potential to become an essential part of the evolution of marketing.I think.

── Thank you. Finally, please tell us about the future you want to provide to your customers through this partnership.

Through this business partnership,I want marketers' activities to be more highly evaluatedI think.

It's a common story, but for example, if you make 1,000 million yen in sales per month, it's obvious that you're doing work worth 1,000 million yen per month, and anyone can easily compare it. On the other hand, even if you're doing really important work, I think it can be hard to evaluate it if it's not clear how much your activities are linked to business results.

In terms of marketer activities,Not being able to explain how awareness and favorability contribute to business results may lead to narrowing down the work that needs to be done. This will surely be a negative for the company..

If marketers can become more accountable and confident in taking action towards their ideals, it will lead to better results for their companies.

We believe it is our job to provide that support.

Finally, we received a comment from Yuichi Kanamaru, Executive Officer of Cross Marketing Group Inc., who was involved in promoting this partnership.

── What benefits and changes have been brought about by entering into a business partnership with XICA and starting to provide joint services?

What made a big shift was the proposal to "obtain awareness data" to "provide sales contribution (ROI) for each funnel, including awareness and favorability," which is a proposal for marketing activities that are essential for a company's business growth.
For us, whose mission is to support marketing activities, our collaboration with ADVA MAGELLAN, which does more than just "research = obtaining factual data"; it can also compare that data with a company's business activities and propose specific measures, is a major evolution that will enable us to provide new value to our clients.

── Please tell us about your aspirations for the future.

ADVA MAGELLAN is a service that can output the ROI, which is essential for marketing activities, using daily data sets. It is a great service in that it can simulate the ROI of not only the verification of implemented measures, but also measures under consideration.
On the other hand, in marketing, it is very important to listen to the opinions of customers. By collecting and supplementing the raw voices of customers, such as "Why did the measures work?" and "Where do we need to improve?", which cannot be understood from data alone, we hope to work together to create a system that can better support the activities of marketers.

*The affiliation and title of the interviewee are those at the time of the interview.