A CNA (customer needs analysis) is a critical first step to building a good relationship with a media partner, but it’s even more critical to seeing positive ROI across your marketing campaigns. We took a good look at what a CNA is and what it entails in a previous post.

Essentially, a CNA is a business profile that helps media partners understand where your company has been, where your business is now, and where you want to see your brand go in the future. It involves asking questions you should often already have the answers to, and highlight areas where you need help developing better answers. You should expect it to be the first step a new media partner takes because without it, you can’t create a meaningful marketing strategy or achieve the best possible ROI for your efforts.

From CNA to ROI

Take a moment to consider this thought experiment: When you go to a doctor, do you expect them to write a prescription before they’ve even asked you how you’re feeling or taken your blood pressure? Or do you expect them to ask as many questions as possible, inspect your symptoms, and listen to your concerns so that they can provide accurate treatment? One might seem like it saves a lot of time and money, but is that actually preferable?

The same is true of a CNA and your media partner. Without a CNA, they can’t know what you’re already doing right, and they can’t identify or fix what you’re doing wrong. They can’t develop a marketing plan that’s going to win over prospective customers and help your business grow if they don’t understand what your company’s unique position is. If they can’t build the right plan for your company specifically, then how can you possibly expect them to deliver positive ROI?

3 Things that Can’t Happen Without a CNA

We’ve put together the three biggest factors where a CNA is used to develop so that you’ll understand the direct impact it has on ROI.

1. Impactful Creative

Advertising creative is the single most powerful element in a campaign, responsible for 47% of sales contribution. It’s what encompasses the heart of your message and tells your audience everything they need to know about your brand. Strong creative relies on capturing your USP (unique selling proposition), and it can only be identified by conducting a CNA. Similarly, it needs to resonate with your audience in order to influence them to trust your brand and take action; this can only be done if your media partner correctly identifies your best audience through a CNA.

2. The Right Media Placement

Media’s impact on sales has doubled over the last decade, and while it may still seem to have the smallest direct impact on sales, it has a huge impact on creative, reach, context and targeting. Reach and targeting rely heavily on understanding your audience’s behaviors and interests. Good ROI can only come from a campaign that does more than reach a lot of people; you have to reach the most qualified audiences in a way that makes the most sense to them. The CNA is necessary to understand what media you’ve been using and how well that has or hasn’t performed.

3. The Right Timing

There are two factors at play here. First is frequency, which defines how many times your audience needs to hear your message before they’ll take action. If they aren’t exposed to your ads often enough, they probably won’t take any action at all. By the same token, if they’re exposed too often, they’ll become annoyed with your brand on the whole. Second is recency, which says that ads are most effective when they reach the audience right before they’re ready to make their purchase decision. A CNA reveals your audience’s purchase behaviors, and in conjunction with their media habits, further reveals the optimum way to reach them.

Remember, the CNA should always be among the first things a new media partner handles. You should always expect it to be a priority for them. If it’s not, the points we’ve made above should illustrate that you can’t expect them to deliver the kind of results you want to see.