Rockerbox

It's been 3 weeks since the formal launch of Rockerbox Testing and I've honestly been blown away by the reaction from customers, prospects and partners. For years we've believed that having all types of outcome measurement (MMM, Attribution, Testing, Surveys etc...) in one product is the right destination. We also believe the only way this can be done is if they're all available atop a consistent, standardized marketing data foundation that the same product maintains. Today, we're closer than ever to this vision at Rockerbox. We still have a long road ahead as there are always real trade-offs to make when building a product. But the road ahead is more exciting than ever. It's a fun time to be in marketing measurement.

I think Post-Purchase Surveys haven’t received their fair share of attention, especially now that Triangulation has become the buzzword of the moment. A prime example of where surveys are particularly valuable is podcasts. You can’t really run an incrementality test for podcasts, and MMM isn’t an ideal option either, given the challenges in determining when a podcast actually aired—not to mention the difficulty in assessing reach or frequency. You can supplement conversion paths with pixel-based attribution from companies like Podscribe, but even that approach has gaps. In contrast, we’ve often seen that surveys (and promo codes) provide the clearest picture of a podcast’s value. At Rockerbox, we address this by ingesting survey results and creating Synthetic Events that allocate credit back to podcasts based on survey data. So, when you’re evaluating measurement companies, it’s worth asking: ‘How do you integrate survey data? Which partners do you work with? And how much flexibility do I have in mapping my survey responses into your dataset?’

Had the chance to talk marketing measurement with Paul Kovalski on the The Efficient Spend Podcast. Outside of some usual topics (MMM, MTA, experiments, identity resolution) we touched on the concept of Paid Marketing Fit (a riff off Product Market Fit). Paid Marketing Fit is when a business has a repeatable way of acquiring customers via paid marketing with finance-determined marketing KPIs. Once you have Paid Marketing Fit, you’re well-positioned to start investing in marketing measurement. I’ve spoken to many brands that are looking for marketing measurement help before they have Paid Marketing Fit. I think this is the wrong approach. All that measurement will tell a brand before Paid Marketing Fit is that you need to start from zero and scale back up because none of your media is repeatable or hitting the marketing KPIs you’ve been assigned. The brands that most often come to Rockerbox without Paid Marketing Fit are early/earlier-stage, VC-backed companies. Admittedly, this has gotten better since VC Winter started in Q2 2022, but it’s still far too common.