Successful online marketing starts with a strategic process backed with data insights. Have you wondered who owns web analytics data in your organization? Does more than one team member use the data? Are they talking to each other to understand different perspectives and opportunities? Most often they are not. This is where web analytics governance comes into play. It provides a process to ensure success. However, there are some challenges.

What are the challenges?
A study by Jupiter Research showed the top challenges cited by decision makers in companies with $50 million or more in revenue. The top three challenges include the following.
51%: Improving usability of site
44%: Demonstrating ROI
44%: Understanding/influencing customer satisfaction

How can I overcome the top online marketing challenges?
By being ruthless in your pursuit of excellence. To start, you will need to structure a web analytics governance committee. This should include your search engine marketing strategist, social media marketing strategists, digital strategist, technology, creative and other groups. The executive leading this committee will help to define the strategic process.

How does the Web Analytics Governance process work?

Step 1: Establish the team structure and assign ownership and accountability.
Step 2: Gathering and presentation of facts.
Step 3: Data analysis and reporting.
Step 4: Predictive modeling and recommendations for improvement.
Step 5: Plan and prioritize initiatives.
Step 6: Optimization. Return to step 2.

Why is Web Analytics Governance important?
Web analytics governance helps to avoid hunches that can cost time, money and competitive advantage. The process improves an organization’s productivity and knowledge base thus delivering greater customer value and profitability. It will also help to inform business intelligence and will show you how you can engage customers to deepen relationships and improve satisfaction.

How do I ensure success?
Teamwork. The dynamic interaction of your web analytics committee will mirror the social market space and empower your team to capitalize on real-time communication. With the introduction of real-time search, explosion of social media and mobile applications, marketers will need to develop a marketing mix that can evolve and adapt to changing technologies. This is achieved with a web analytics committee and a strategic digital marketing mix. And again, this happens with teamwork!

How does my marketing plan keep up with changing technologies?
What happens when real-time search interferes with the users’ experience? Where will they go to search for information? At Wayfinder we have our finger on the pulse of market trends and monitor them to ensure that your marketing performance doesn’t skip a beat.

For more information regarding web analytics governance and developing a digital marketing strategy, please call Luca Angeli at Wayfinder at 415-277-6968.

The Harvard Business Review’s article on “Competing on Analytics” affirms my own personal religion for data. The article highlights a few challenges that must be met in order to be competitive in today’s business climate. These challenges include the lack of leadership, the lack of intelligence on rising competition and the lack of meaningful data in general. With these three major riddles solved an organization can transform fragmented sources of data into a powerful strategic weapon. Let’s delve deeper into the challenges and why they are important.

Organizations require leadership to be able to act on usable intelligence. Roadblocks to look out for include: lack of a clear and well-defined focus from top-level leadership, a culture unable to embrace change, or simply not having the right people or technology to process data. If your organization exhibits any of these characteristics you’ll want to get them in order, and quickly. If any one department is not contributing to your source of strength it will be weakened, and all business and marketing efforts will be as well.

Organizations often lack the ability to exploit competitive data and turn it into intelligence. Rising global competition has intensified the need for proficiency in data analysis. Western companies are having a difficult time beating their Chinese and Indian competitors on product cost, but there’s hope. Analytics can provide the insights on which business processes should be optimized to squeeze greater performance where there’s slack. Furthermore, research can provide insights into your competitors’ pricing strategies and levels of inventory. Segmentation analysis can also provide the details to emphasize in your value-communication strategies. These insights and others can get your organization back on even playing ground with the competition.

Organizations may lack historical data sets. This basically sets them up for failure since decisions are not based on data insights. To paraphrase the old adage: history will repeat itself if it is not recorded for us to learn from. Mental modeling simply can’t compete with computer-aided modeling to inform business decisions. So take the guesswork out of decision-making and invest the time in developing a model that provides performance metrics that your organization can act on.

There’s a long road ahead. Analytics insights will only blossom after the following requirements have been satisfied: data strategy and sourcing, technology and time. Hang in there because it will take time to have enough data to be able to use it with confidence. “Presto e bene non vanno insieme.” Translation: Fast and good don’t go together. So be patient as the right type of data takes time to amass to support future forecasting.

But the time it takes is well worth the benefits. As Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah’s frequently puts it, “Do we think this is true? Or do we know?” The correct answer is very comforting. And from there, the rest is all details in my book.

Here comes the soft sell. It always shocks me when a client says, “This is the first time that we’ve developed a completely integrated campaign that provides quantitative data.” This is obviously an accomplishment for them and we’re always glad to be a part of it. But at the same time, it is only the beginning; there’s always more to be done. And we’re always glad to be part of that too. The right process will allow you to take action, and measure your performance. Ready to discover the gaps? Looking to embrace data to inform business and marketing decisions? Let’s talk.