Five Questions About Digital Strategy and Analytics

As digital technology races ahead of our experiences and expectations, we continue facing questions about what to measure in our digital marketing programs. Not only what to measure, but also how to measure it – and how to analyze and apply what we’ve learned to create even better uses of technology and more engaging experiences for constituents.

To share some ideas for evolving both strategic and tactical approaches to digital analytics, I spoke to Margie Chiu, vice president for strategy, Avenue A | Razorfish, New York. Margie cuts through the mumbo-jumbo with advice about using analytics to help achieve branding, marketing and sales objectives

Q: What is the question you hear most often from clients?
CHIU: A common question I get is, “We’re not a transactional site; so how do we measure success?” We start with the overall business objectives and map those down to the strategy, tactics, and finally metrics. This framework often reveals metrics that otherwise may not be considered and also ensures that you always know why you’re measuring something. Metrics such as unique visitors, pages views and visits are the most commonly used site measurements, but if your goal is to increase the likelihood of purchase, you should consider creating a custom key performance indicator based on page views of product-locator pages, time spent on product detail pages and repeat visit rate.

A client who wants to increase brand relevance may aggregate engagement metrics such as registrants, referrals, frequency and recency of visit. I also advise clients to go beyond the site and consider metrics such as offline purchases, site survey data, call center interactions and the like. You won’t find one simple answer to this question, and the best path forward is to start with your objectives and gather the set of metrics that’s right for your business.

Q: What is the biggest challenge facing marketers in the near term regarding their data and analytics?
CHIU: The metrics that most companies still rely on today haven’t kept up with the changes in the digital landscape. For example, what is a “page view” when the entire site is served within a single Flash page? Should a “rollover” be given the same value as a “click”? And that doesn’t even begin to address things such as social media, rich-Internet applications, video and mobile. Right now, there’s no agreement on metrics beyond the basics like visits, conversions and page views. The near term solution may be to map some of these interactions to Web 1.0 metrics but ultimately we’re going to have to redefine how and what we measure.

Q: What has been the biggest recent change in the field of digital analytics?
CHIU: One of the most significant changes I’ve noticed is in companies’ attitudes about analytics. Years ago, many marketers were measuring anything and everything. Then with the era of downsizing and budget cuts, some of the more ambitious efforts didn’t stand up to scrutiny, because much of the data collected simply was not really being used. Or it was being looked at once or twice and then never again, because it required too much effort. Today’s programs are much more disciplined, grounded in a strategy aligned with business goals, and supported by the right people and processes.

Q: Is convergence making your job harder? In what ways? How are you meeting those challenges?
CHIU: Convergence is making my job more exciting. Interactive marketing has evolved from an “add-on” to become a critical element of our clients’ marketing toolkits.

Each channel has its unique strengths. The clients who have taken an integrated planning approach and leveraged the best of each channel have seen a real difference in the success of their campaigns.

Another big challenge is measuring the value of different tactics within the convergence marketing mix. At the end of the day, how do you know what worked and in turn what to invest in going forward? One approach we’ve taken is setting up a robust testing and measurement plan -– for example, you can test different combinations of tactics at a geography market level. So in Market A, you use TV and online. In Market B, events. In Market C, mobile. And so forth. Then overlay in-store and online sales or traffic against each of these markets. That’s just one idea. Other approaches include our proprietary ChannelScope method, surveys, tracking codes and consumer panel data like Nielsen Homescan.

Q: How do you believe business intelligence and dashboards will evolve during the next few years?
Margie Chiu: Over the past few years, clients have become very sophisticated in their measurement of everything from media campaigns to site activity to e-mail programs. Often, each of these tactics is supported by a standalone measurement system, and it’s still very cost and labor intensive to get them to “talk” to each other. There’s no doubt this will change – we’re already doing it in the business intelligence dashboards we’ve been creating for clients. However, as the ease of gathering and integrating data improves, the need for actionable analytics and interpretation of the data will also increase.

The key is to look at the data across all the different tactics and even channels and to learn from it.

Dave Friedman, president of the Central Region for Avenue A | Razorfish, is a monthly contributor to Chief Marketer. Contact him at [email protected].