While more and more marketers are throwing money into digital marketing they are doing so blindly as report state “marketers lack the necessary information to tell leadership which digital marketing efforts have the highest return.” In other words we know we need to do it but we don’t have the tools, foundation or structure to understand what we’re doing. Digital marketing has a lot of components and budget dollars can quickly be eaten up by tactics like SEM and online advertising. If you spend too much on one tactic you might not have enough for other tactics that provide a higher ROI.
Right now there is a rush to “get it done” but while you’re getting it done you probably don’t understand why you need to get it done or how to measure in ways that management understands (i.e. direct support of the brand marketing plan). Welcome to the club it has a lot of members and the line to get in is getting longer and longer.
First let me say that data can be both a friend and and enemy to marketers. The issue is not lack of data it’s having someone who can take that data and translate it into business opportunities for senior managers.
Here is a great example: Your website had over 800,000 visitors last month. Some might report that as a key metric but that alone means little. You need to be able to tell the following story;
1ne: Where did they come from (i.e. organic search/paid search/online ads) and what was the bounce rate ?
2wo: Once they came to the site where did they go ?
3hree: What were the top search terms within your site ? What were people looking for ?
4our: What were the paths through the site ? This could tell you how customers were thinking about conversion.
5ive: How much time did they spend on the site and each page ?
It’s not the data it’s having someone who can look at the data and find nuggets of gold that leads to business opportunities that is the data Eden that marketers are looking for. This is why you need a marketing person working in digital not someone who is an Internet whiz or knows social media inside and out.
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- When are executives going to come back to earth around digital marketing ? (newmediaandmarketing.com)
- P&G says “digital marketing more efficient” (newmediaandmarketing.com)
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