Transcript

It is early Friday morning and you are already looking forward to a relaxing weekend when you receive a call from the CEO of MCS, Jillian Best. “Good morning, can you be in my office by 9AM?” she asks. “There is someone I would like you to meet.” Lately, Jillian has been pushing MCS consultants to develop in-house expertise in digital marketing, and you anticipate that she is in a rush to introduce you to a new client working on a project in that area.

As you walk into Jill’s office, you notice a young woman reviewing graphs and data on Jill’s computer screen. Jillian stands up as she sees you enter. “Glad you made it! Meet Ying Bao, our new associate consultant. She has just graduated from UMUC with an MBA. Ying has worked in digital marketing, web development, social media, and data analytics. She was just showing me some of the capabilities of Google Analytics when you walked in.”

After you and Ying shake hands, Jillian delivers more news: “I am appointing Ying to be the lead consultant on our company’s first ever project in the field of digital marketing. You and some of the other MCS consultants you have collaborated with previously will be staffed on this project effective immediately and will report to Ying. I am sure that you will make a powerful team and deliver outstanding results for our client.”

After you process all of this information, you start to ask about the new client. Jillian clarifies that they prefer to remain anonymous. “All I can divulge is that the client is an online merchandise store that sells worldwide. We will do what we can to protect the client’s privacy. Hereafter, we will refer to our client as CompanyOne for the purpose of this project.”

Jillian mentions that you have three weeks to complete the project and outlines her plans: “Your team will begin by participating in a series of meetings, led by Ying during the first two weeks of this project, to discuss in detail the challenges in digital marketing currently experienced by CompanyOne and to produce recommendations for the client. Ying will be emailing all team members key agenda items and some background reading everyone will need to review to be prepared for a series of meetings starting on Wednesday morning.

“Ying will lead the project team members through key tutorials in the use of Google Analytics (GA). As a valued member of the team, you will develop familiarity with GA and become proficient enough to use the tool independently. Don’t worry if you’re not well versed in Google Analytics; the tutorial will get you where you need to be. The main point is that many companies in the digital space are using GA to drive decision making, so we need you to be familiar with it as well.

“Finally, in the third week, Ying will assign client-specific questions to each project team member with the objective of using GA to find the best answer for each question and develop actionable marketing insights for CompanyOne. Alright, let’s get to work!”

Project 3: Digital Marketing Analytics
Start Here

Print Project

Transcript

Introduction

You will have a total of three weeks to finish this project: two weeks for discussion and the Google Analytics tutorial, and one week to answer the client’s data analytics questions. You should complete the four steps of this project by the end of Week 7:

Step 1: Discuss Customer Relationship Management and Search Engine Optimization
Step 2: Discuss Data Analytics and Complete Google Analytics Tutorial
Step 3: Answer CompanyOne’s Data Analysis Questions
Step 4: Submit Your Work

You must participate in the discussions within the designated time period in order to satisfy the requirements of this project.

If you have any questions, ask your instructor. To get started, click Step 1: Discuss Digital Marketing Challenges.

Check Your Evaluation Criteria

Before you submit your assignment, review the competencies below, which your instructor will use to evaluate your work. A good practice would be to use each competency as a self-check to confirm you have incorporated all of them. To view the complete grading rubric, click My Tools, select Assignments from the drop-down menu, and then click the project title.

• 1.3: Provide sufficient, correctly cited support that substantiates the writer’s ideas.
• 1.6: Follow conventions of Standard Written English.
• 2.5: Develop well-reasoned ideas, conclusions or decisions, checking them against relevant criteria and benchmarks.
• 3.1: Identify numerical or mathematical information that is relevant in a problem or situation.
• 3.2: Employ mathematical or statistical operations and data analysis techniques to arrive at a correct or optimal solution.
• 3.3: Analyze mathematical or statistical information, or the results of quantitative inquiry and manipulation of data.
• 3.4: Employ software applications and analytic tools to analyze, visualize, and present data to inform decision-making.
• 6.4: Develop and recommend strategies for an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage.
• 12.2: Analyze marketing information.

Transcript

Digital Campaigns

Transcript

My personal experience has taught me that over the course of your career you will be asked to learn new things, you’ll be placed on teams where you may not

have the deep expertise that’s called for and you’re going to have to keep learning.

My first digital campaign is a great memory.  I had an idea of something to promote and typically what I would have done is sent out a direct mail campaign to promote that type of thing.

In this instance I decided to do an email marketing campaign and it allowed us to respond to our customer personally and very quickly. So we were offering them something of value.

The results were immediate.

We had to actually build capacity which is a great problem to have.

I decided that what we would do for the initial responses we would qualify them with telephone. That was the most immediate and personal way we would get in touch with them and that for those who met our criteria,

I would actually offer in-person meetings for those for whom it was possible. So we converted 15% of our prospects and we had our best quarter ever.

What I brought away from that experience though wasn’t  just the power of digital marketing but that you had to offer something of value you had to have a message that the customer would find, be receptive to.

You had to have a good understanding of marketing strategy along with the digital marketing. The world is a competitive place,  before you know it your competitors are all doing what you do.  Everyone catches up.

Marketing has undergone an incredible transformation last ten to fifteen years.

The terminology in marketing has changed so much that five years ago we were not even using the term digital marketing.

If we were we certainly didn’t have agreement on it, some people were calling it web marketing, some were calling it online marketing, e-marketing and you’ll still see these terms in many places.

I’m not sure in five years we’re still going to be calling this digital marketing.

From beginning to end it’s about predicting human behavior and that is something that we may never crack that kuk

entirely but that’s what keeps me coming back day after day to marketing

[Music]

Professionals in the Field

Transcript

As Jillian Best had promised, Ying’s email lands in your inbox by midafternoon on Friday.

INBOX: 1 New Message

Subject: Digital Marketing with CompanyOne
From:     Ying Bao, Associate Consultant, MCS
To:         You and Team

Good afternoon,

I’m looking forward to working with you all on this project. As you may already know, we will spend the next two weeks in working meetings with the goal of producing digital marketing recommendations for our client, CompanyOne.

First, to kick things off, let’s reach a common understanding of what crafting a digital marketing strategy entails, as well as related concepts like customer relationship management (CRM), and search engine optimization (SEO).

A firm grasp of CRM is vital to understanding customers, successfully using social CRM, and implementing a CRM strategy. Reading about SEO will help this team become knowledgeable about link popularity and user insights.

To be most effective in our upcoming meetings, please supplement your knowledge of the above topics with your own research related to Google Analytics and similar analytical tools.

In addition to the readings for this project, please see the attached discussion topics below that we will cover in our meetings. You must respond to both of these discussions. Please take a look and come to the meeting ready to discuss.

We will have two senior executives from CompanyOne participating as observers and taking notes during our deliberations next week. We want to have done our homework, so that we can make a good impression. After all, MCS has a reputation to maintain.

Thanks so much, really looking forward to seeing your posts in these two areas.

Ying

Attachments:

Discussion Topics 1 and 2

Review the discussion topics via the link above, go to the discussion area, and begin by posting one main response to each of the two topics. Support your arguments under each topic with at least one source from the course readings, and three reliable nonscholarly sources derived from your own research. Then respond to at least two postings from the class. Complete all discussion posts by the end of Week 5 at the latest.

Review the MBA Discussion Guidelines for instructions on participation in discussions.

When you have finished, proceed to the next step, where you will continue your meetings and will be trained to use Google Analytics.

Glossary

Consult the Digital Marketing Glossary for assistance.

Learning Topic

Crafting a Digital Marketing Strategy

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Any activity with an end goal (whether it’s winning a war, building a city, or selling a product) should have a blueprint in place for every person in the organization to follow. In digital marketing, however, there is no single definitive approach—each business must create its own roadmap. However, there are questions you can use to guide the process.

A strategy needs to cover who you are, what you are offering and to whom, and why and how you are doing so. The steps and questions below cover what an organization should be aware of when creating and implementing a strategy that will meet its marketing objectives and solve its challenges.

Step 1: Examine the Context 

The first step in crafting a successful strategy is to examine the context of the organization and the various stakeholders:

• What is the context in which you are operating (PESTLE factors) and how is this likely to change in the future?
• Who are you, why does your brand matter, and what makes your brand useful and valuable?
• Who are your customers, and what needs, wants, and desires do they have?
• Who are your competitors? These may extend beyond organizations that compete with you on the basis of price and product and could also be competition in the form of abstracts such as time and mindshare.

Thorough market research will reveal the answers to these questions.

Step 2: Examine Your Value Exchange 

Once you have examined the market situation, the second step is an examination of your value proposition or promise. In other words, what unique value can your organization add to that market? It is important to identify the supporting value-adds to the brand promise that are unique to the digital landscape. What extras, beyond the basic product or service, do you offer to customers?

The internet offers many channels for value creation. However, the value depends largely on the target audience, so it is crucial to research your users and gather insights into what they want and need.

Content marketing is the process of conceptualizing and creating this sort of content. Examples of value-based content include a DIY gardening video for a hardware brand, a research paper for a business analyst, or a funny infographic for a marketing company.

Step 3: Establish Digital Marketing Goals 

When setting your digital marketing goals, there are three key aspects to consider: objectives, key performance indicators (KPIs), and targets. Let’s look at each one in turn.

Objectives 

Objectives are essential to any marketing endeavor. Without them, your strategy would have no direction and no end goal or win conditions. It’s important to be able to take a step back and ask several questions:

• What are you trying to achieve?
• How will you know if you are successful?

Objectives need to be SMART:

• specific—The objective must be clear and detailed, rather than vague and general.
• measurable—The objective must be measurable so that you can gauge whether you are attaining the desired outcome.
• attainable—The objective must be something that is possible for your brand to achieve, based on available resources.
• realistic—The objective must also be sensible and based on data and trends; don’t exaggerate or overestimate what can be achieved.
• time-bound—Finally, the objective must be linked to a specific timeframe.

Key Performance Indicators 

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the specific metrics or pieces of data that you will look at to determine whether your tactics are performing well and meeting your objectives. For example, a gardener may look at the growth rate, color, and general appearance of a plant to evaluate whether it is healthy. In the same way, a marketer will look at a range of data points to determine whether a chosen tactic is delivering. KPIs are determined per tactic, with an eye on the overall objective.

Targets 

Finally, targets are the specific values that are set for your KPIs to reach within a specific time period. If you meet or exceed a target, you are succeeding; if you don’t reach it, you’re falling behind on your objectives and you need to reconsider your approach (or your target).

Example of Digital Marketing Goals

SMART objective:  Increase sales through the eCommerce platform by 10 percent within the next six months.

KPIs:

• Search advertising—number of search referrals; cost per click on the ads
• Facebook brand page—number of comments and shares on campaign; specific posts

Targets:

• Search advertising—one thousand search referrals after the first month, with a 10 percent month-on-month increase after that
• Facebook brand page—50 comments and 10 shares on campaign-specific posts per week

Step 4: Establish Tactics and Evaluation 

Tactics are the specific tools or approaches you will use to meet your objectives, for example, a retention-based email newsletter, a Facebook page, or a CRM implementation. As a strategy becomes more complex, you may have multiple tactics working together to try to achieve the same objective. Tactics may change (and often should), but the objective should remain your focus.

Many digital tools and tactics are available once you have defined your digital marketing objectives. Each tactic has its strengths. For example, acquisition (gaining new customers) may best be driven by search advertising, while email is one of the most effective tools for selling more products to existing customers.

The table below expands on some of the most popular tactics available to digital marketers and their possible outcomes.

Once the objectives and tactics have been set, these should be cross-checked and re-evaluated against the needs and resources of your organization to make sure your strategy is on the right track and no opportunities are being overlooked.

Step 5: Ongoing Optimization 

It is increasingly important for brands to be dynamic, flexible, and agile when marketing online. New tactics and platforms emerge every week, customer behaviors change over time, and people’s needs and wants from brands evolve as their relationships grow. The challenge is to break through the online clutter to connect with customers in an original and meaningful way.

This process of constant change should be considered in the early stages of strategy formulation, allowing tactics and strategies to be modified and optimized as you go. After all, developing a digital marketing strategy should be iterative, innovative, and open to evolution.

Understanding user experience and the user journey is vital to building successful brands. A budget should be set aside upfront for analyzing user data and optimizing conversion paths.

Social thinking and socially informed innovation are also valuable and uniquely suited to the online space. Socially powered insight can be used to inform strategic decisions in the organization, from product roadmaps to service plans. Brands have moved from a mere presence in social media to active use, aligning it with actionable objectives and their corresponding metrics. This is critical in demonstrating return on investment (ROI) and understating the opportunities and threats in the market.

Managing the learning loop (the knowledge gained from reviewing the performance of your tactics, which can then be fed back into the strategy) can be difficult. This is because brand cycles often move more slowly than the real-time results you will see online. It is therefore important to find a way to work agility into the strategy, allowing you to be quick, creative, and proactive, as opposed to slow, predictable, and reactive.

Licenses and Attributions

2.7 Crafting a Digital Marketing Strategy from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

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Customer relationship management (CRM) has existed since people first started selling things. The first shopkeeper who stopped to chat with his customers, who remembered their names, and perhaps gave them a small freebie for continually using his services was practicing a form of customer relationship management by making customers feel special. He was also probably seeing the favorable effect on his bottom line.

Today, with business interactions becoming digital and more remote, and person-to-person contact becoming scarcer, CRM is more important than ever. Businesses need to build and maintain relationships with their customers. A faceless company is not personable or engaging, and it has to work harder to fill the gap between attracting and retaining customers (and their good will). The relationship a customer builds with a company is often the reason they return, but building it today is more difficult than ever, in a society where data is protected, customers are smart in their exercise of their right to choose, and a competitor can be just a click away.

CRM is a customer-focused approach to business based on fostering long-term, meaningful relationships. CRM is not about immediate profit. It’s about the lifetime value of a customer, the purchases they will make in future, the positive word of mouth they will generate, and the loyalty they will show a brand. Effective CRM enables businesses to collaborate with customers to inform overall business strategies, drive business processes, support brand development, and maximize return on investment.

There is a truism that a happy customer tells one person, but an unhappy customer tells ten. With your customers’ voices are being heard on blogs, forums, review sites, and social media, they can talk very loudly and impact your business much more easily.

Key CRM Terms

Customer

A person who buys or uses goods or services, with whom a company should develop a relationship.

Customer-centric

Placing the customer at the center of an organization’s business planning and execution.

Customer-driven

Allowing and encouraging customers to drive the direction of a business.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

The profitability of a customer over their entire relationship with the business.

Customer relationship management (CRM)

A strategy for managing a company’s relationships with clients and potential clients. It often makes use of technology to automate the sales, marketing, customer service, and technical processes of an organization.

Data

Statistics and facts collected for analysis.

Data mining

The process of analyzing data to discover unknown patterns or connections.

Key performance indicator (KPI)

A metric that shows whether an objective is being achieved.

Metric

A defined unit of measurement.

Model

A strategic visual representation of a process to which a company adheres.

Prospect

A potential customer.

Stakeholder

A person or organization with an interest in how a resource is managed.

Resources

• The CRM Model: Analyzing Data and Understanding the Benefits

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 8: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

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With millions of people performing billions of searches each day to find content on the internet (Sullivan, 2013), it makes sense that marketers want their products to be findable online. Search engines, the channels through which these searches happen, use closely guarded algorithms to determine the results displayed. Determining what factors these algorithms consider has led to a growing practice known as search engine optimization (SEO).

Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing a website to achieve the highest possible ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Someone who practices SEO professionally is also known as an SEO (search engine optimizer).

Google says it uses more than two hundred different factors in its algorithm to determine relevance and ranking (Avellanosa, 2012). None of the major search engines disclose the elements they use to rank pages, but there are many SEO practitioners who spend time analyzing patent applications to try to determine what these are.

SEO can be split into two distinct camps: white-hat SEO and black-hat SEO (with, of course, some grey-hat wearers in between). Black hat SEO refers to trying to game the search engines. These SEOs use dubious means to achieve high rankings, and their websites are occasionally blacklisted by the search engines. White-hat SEO, on the other hand, refers to working within the parameters set by search engines to optimize a website for better user experience. Search engines want to send users to the website that is best suited to their needs, so white-hat SEO should ensure that users can find what they are looking for.

Key SEO Terms

Alt text

The “alt” attribute for the IMG HTML tag. It is used in HTML to attribute a text field to an image on a web page, normally with a descriptive function, telling a search engine or user what an image is about and displaying the text in instances where the image is unable to load. Also called alt tag.

Anchor text

The visible, clickable text in a link.

App store optimization (ASO)

The process of optimizing mobile and web applications for the specific web stores they are distributed in.

Backlink

All the links on other pages that will take the user to a specific web page. Each link to that specific page is known as an inbound/backlink. The number of backlinks influences your ranking, so the more backlinks, the better.

Canonical

The canonical version is the definitive version. In SEO, it refers to a definitive URL.

Domain name

The easy-to-read name used to identify an IP address of a server that distinguishes it from other systems on the World Wide Web.

Flash

A technology used to show video and animation on a website. It can be bandwidth-heavy and unfriendly to search engine spiders.

Heading tags

Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, and so on) are standard elements used to define headings and subheadings on a web page. The number indicates the importance, so H1 tags are viewed by the spiders as being more important than H3 tags. Using target key phrases in your H tags is essential for effective SEO.

Home page

The first page of any website. The home page gives users a glimpse into what your site is about, very much like the index in a book, or a magazine.

Hyperlink

A link in an electronic document that allows you, once you click on it, to follow the link to the relevant web page.

HyperText markup language (HTML)

The code language predominantly used to create and display web pages and information online.

Internet protocol (IP) address

An exclusive number that is used to represent every single computer in a network.

Keyword frequency

The number of times a keyword or key phrase appears on a website.

Key phrase

Two or more words that are combined to form a search query, often referred to as keywords. It is usually better to optimize for a phrase rather than a single word.

Keyword rankings

Where the keywords or phrases targeted by SEO rank in the search engine results. If your targeted terms do not appear on the first three pages, start worrying.

Landing page

The first page a user reaches when clicking on a link in an online marketing campaign. The pages that have the most success are those that match up as closely as possible with the user’s expectations.

Link

A URL embedded on a web page. If you click on the link, you will be taken to that page.

Link bait

A technique for providing content that attracts links from other web pages.

Meta tags

Tags that tell search engine spiders what exactly a web page is about. It’s important that your meta tags are optimized for the targeted key phrases. Meta tags are made up of meta titles, descriptions and keywords.

PageRank

Google’s secret algorithm for ranking web pages in search engine results pages.

Referrer

When a user clicks on a link from one site to another, the site the user has left is the referrer. Most browsers log the referrer’s URL in referrer strings. This information is vital in determining which queries are being used to find specific sites.

Robots.txt

A file written and stored in the root directory of a website that restricts the search engine spiders from indexing certain pages of the website.

Search engine spiders

Programs that travel the web, following links and building up the indexes of search engines.

Universal resource locator (URL)

A web address that is unique to every page on the internet.

Usability

A measure of how easy a system is to use. Sites with excellent usability fare far better than those that are difficult to use.

XML sitemap

A guide that search engines use to help them index a website, which indicates how many pages there are, how often they are updated, and how important they are.

References 

Avellanosa, N. (2012). Half of 200 signals in Google’s ranking algorithm revealed [Web log]. Retrieved from http://blogirature.com/2012/07/01/half-of-200-signals-in-googles-rankingalgorithm- revealed/

Sullivan, D. (2013). Google still world’s most popular search engine by far, but share Of unique searchers dips slightly. Search Engine Land. Retrieved from http://searchengineland.com/google-worlds-most-popular-search-engine-148089

Resources

• SEO: Rules, Tools, Benefits, and Challenges

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 9: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Understanding Customers

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Customers can be seen as the most important stakeholders in a business. Without customers purchasing goods or services, most businesses would not have a revenue stream. But it can be difficult to shift from realizing this important fact to implementing it in day-to-day business decisions and strategies.

A successful relationship with a customer is based on meeting or even exceeding their needs—determining what problems the customer has and providing solutions, sometimes before the problem occurs. It depends on continually giving the customer a reason to transact with your company above any other.

CRM should not only mean implementing customer-centric processes and consider technology, but embracing customer-driven processes. Through innovations in digital technologies, enhanced customer engagement, and the introduction of mass personalisation, the customer can often drive the business.

Consumer Touchpoints

Consumer touchpoints are all the points at which brands touch consumers’ lives during their relationship. This is the starting point for all customer relationship management (CRM)—a brand needs to speak with one voice across all of these touchpoints and deliver a rewarding experience every time it interacts with its customers. Touchpoints can be brand initiated (e.g., a brand sending an email newsletter) or customer initiated (e.g.,the customer making a purchase in a store).

People don’t start out as customers; they begin as prospects—people who merely view a business’s offering. Once a prospect has expressed interest, CRM can help to convert them into a customer. Some people will always shop on price and need to be converted to loyal customers. Here, brand perception and service are often the differentiators. Consider the prospect who walks into a car dealership and is given outstanding service. In this case, CRM in the form of an aware and trained sales force can help turn a prospect into a customer.

A consumer touchpoint can be as simple as a print or banner ad. It can also be as multifaceted as a conversation between a call centre agent and a customer. It can be a timely tweet, or an outbound email giving the customer details about their account. Even statements and bills are touchpoints that need to be managed carefully to ensure that the brand continues its relationship with the customer successfully.

Customer touchpoints can generally be divided into three spheres or phases.

Prepurchase or pre-usage covers the various ways brands and prospects interact before the prospect decides to conduct business with a company. Here, the brand has several goals:

• gain customers
• heighten brand awareness
• shape brand perceptions to highlight the benefits it offers over competitors
• indicate how the brand provides value and fulfils the needs and wants of consumers
• educate consumers about products and services

Purchase or usage covers the touchpoints at which the customer decides to purchase a product, use a service or convert according to set criteria, and initiates the brand-customer relationship. The key goals are to:

• instill confidence
• deliver value
• reinforce the purchase decision
• heighten brand perceptions

Postpurchase or usage covers all the postsale interactions between the brand and customer. Now, the brand wants to:

• develop a relationship
• maximize the customer experience
• deliver on the brand promise
• increase brand loyalty
• remain top of mind
• invite repeat purchases

Customer Loyalty

The main objective of any CRM strategy should be to gain customer loyalty over the long term. But what is loyalty? This may mean different things for different organizations. Ultimately, it is about acquiring and retaining customers who meet the following criteria:

• have a projected lifetime value that makes them a valuable prospect to your business
• buy a variety of your products or use your services repeatedly during their time as a customer
• share their positive experiences with others
• provide honest feedback on these products and services, and their experiences
• collaborate with you on ways to improve their experiences

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 8: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Social CRM

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Widespread social media usage means that customer relationship management (CRM) has to be conducted in this forum in order to deliver an encompassing experience for the customer. Not only should social media be integrated into any existing CRM strategy and looked at from a touchpoint and channel perspective, but social media can also be used to drive CRM.

CRM should embrace the social customer—a stance effectively summed up by social CRM expert Paul Greenberg as follows: “Social customers are not the customers of yore. They trust their peers, are connected via the web and mobile devices to those peers as much of a day as they would like. They expect information to be available to them on demand….They require transparency and authenticity from their peers and the companies they choose to deal with” (Greenberg, 2010).

Social media platforms allow customers to easily share their brand experiences (good or bad) with their online social connections, who in turn can share this experience. This means a potential word-of-mouth audience of millions could witness a single user’s brand experience and weigh in on the situation. Social customers place a great deal of value on the opinions of their peers, and are more likely to look favorably on a brand, product, or service if a peer has recommended or praised it. In fact, the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual trust and credibility survey, saw trust in social media increase by 75 percent, noting that respondents are placing increasingly more importance on information gathered from this space (Edelman, 2012).

Brands have realized that they need to leverage this in their CRM strategies and now understand that communication is not one way (from brand to consumer), or even two way (between consumer and brand), but multidirectional (brand to consumer, consumer to brand, and consumer to consumer).

The convergence of social media with CRM has been termed social CRM or CRM 2.0, and has developed into a field on its own.

Social CRM and Support 

Social customers are increasingly turning to social media channels for support. With the immediate accessibility offered through mobile devices, they see this as a convenient channel to communicate with brands. This means that brands need to respond quickly and transparently to consumers’ questions, gripes, and even compliments. A support query going unanswered on Twitter, for instance, is likely to cause frustration for the consumer, and prompt them to take a situation that is already visible to other consumers even further, potentially causing a brand crisis. Brands should carefully consider whether all social media channels are appropriate for them, and be prepared for any eventuality. Brands that are well liked will generally have positive responses on social media, those that receive a mediocre response from consumers will have a bit of a mixed bag, but those that have a lot of support issues are likely to experience very large numbers of complaints that need to be addressed.

Social support staff should have access to all the historical data relating to customer issues—such as all the data collected about previous complaints and reference numbers. In this way, they can respond directly to the consumer in the social channel that they’ve selected and escalate the problem appropriately.

Social CRM and Online Monitoring 

Social CRM can also make use of online reputation management and monitoring tools. Online monitoring, or reputation management, entails knowing what is being said about your organization and ensuring that you are leading the conversation.

By using these tools, brands can rate and sort these mentions based on their sentiment. This allows them to effectively test the temperature of the online community’s feeling towards the brand, which can then guide any future action.

Customer-centric vs. Customer-Driven Organizations 

Effective CRM places the customer’s needs first in all dealings with the brand. However, there is a vast difference between a customer-centric organization and a customer-driven one.

Placing the customer at the center of an organization’s business planning and execution is different from having customers drive the direction of a business. Many new, web-based businesses rely on the latter, and actively encourage customers to take the lead and add value to the business.

Services such as Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com) are user-driven rather than user-centric. They provide tools that enable users to make the service their own, often by allowing outside developers to create supplementary services. Flickr users can export their images and use them to make custom business cards on Moo (www.moo.com). There are many auxiliary services based on Twitter, such as analysis services and access services. Savvy organizations can also provide tools to customers to drive their business, passing on tasks to customers that might ordinarily have been performed by the organization.

Customer-centric strategy, on the other hand, uses data to present the best possible experience to the customer. Amazon’s collaborative filtering is an example of a customer-centric approach. Using customer data, Amazon will share products that you are more likely to prefer.

Uses of Customer Data

Amazon provides recommendations based on what customers with similar profiles are looking at.

Customer-centric experiences are about personalization: using data to create a tailored experience for the customer. Customer-driven experiences are about customization: providing the tools that let a customer tailor their own experience.

References 

Edelman. (2012). Edelman Trust Barometer 2012. StrategyOne. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/79026497/2012-Edelman-Trust-Barometer-Executive-Summary

Greenberg, P. (2010). The impact of CRM 2.0 on customer insight. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 25(6), 410–419.

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 8: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Implementing a CRM Strategy

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Step 1: Conduct a Business Needs Analysis

A major part of determining where to begin with a customer relationship management (CRM) implementation is having a clear understanding of business needs and where CRM would most benefit the organization. CRM touches on sales, marketing, customer service, and support both online and offline. It’s important to review the needs of each business area so that you can determine your strategy for CRM.

Ideally you should have individual goals for each department, and all members within the organization should buy in to the strategy in order to drive it successfully, from the highest rank to the lowest. Implementing successful CRM across the organization is a process, with stakeholders making decisions collectively and sharing their views and needs. Decisions should be based on realistic budgets and resources, and full calculations should be carried out before any kind of loyalty currency is decided upon.

Step 2: Understand Customer Needs   

CRM is about the customer. you might have identified a range of business needs, but what about the needs of the customer?

Two elements of CRM in particular—service delivery and customer support—are actually all about meeting the needs of the customer. And what’s the best way of determining customer needs? By asking them, of course. There are various ways to find out what customers want, but in all of them, it is important to listen. Use online monitoring tools and insights from social media to gather a more rounded view of what your customers think, feel, and want. Look at past behavior, churn rates, and successes; a detailed data mining exercise could also be on the cards, as you will need to understand which of your customers is the most valuable and why.

Step 3: Set Objectives and Measurements of Success

CRM is a long-term commitment, and you need to consider a long-term approach. Depending on the business needs, your objectives and success measures could include the following:

• increasing customer numbers
• increasing profitability per customer
• increasing market share
• improving responses to campaigns
• raising customer satisfaction
• improving end-to-end integration of the sales process cycle

The metrics you select for measurement will depend on these objectives. There are numerous metrics that you can choose from when measuring your performance, and the actual metrics you choose are generally referred to as your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Step 4: Determine How You Will Implement CRM 

Once you’ve identified all of the objectives of your CRM implementation, you will need to determine how you are actually going to roll it out. What channels will you use? What touchpoints will you leverage? What data will you need for this? And what tools will you need to gather this data and implement your initiatives across these channels? How will you address the shift and communicate with your internal stakeholders before you launch the initiative to your external ones?

You will need to make choices based on what is available to you, or what you intend on embracing. The digital space offers a range of innovative spaces for CRM delivery; you simply need to get creative in your execution.

Step 5: Choose the Right Tools 

There are lots of excellent CRM tools available, but these are useless without a clear CRM strategy in place. You can only select your tools once you know what your objectives are, what touchpoints and channels you are going to use, and what data you need to collect and analyze. CRM systems that gather information on customer preferences and needs, as well as information on competitors and in the industry in general, let organizations focus on providing customer solutions instead of simply pushing products.

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 8: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Link Popularity

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Links are a vital part of how the internet works. The purpose of a link is to allow a user to go from one web page to another. Search engines, doing their best to mimic the behavior of humans, also follow links. Besides allowing search engine spiders to find websites, links are a way of validating relevance and indicating importance. When one page links to another, it is as if that page is voting or vouching for the destination page. Generally, the more votes a website receives, the more trusted it becomes, the more important it is deemed, and the better it will rank on search engines.

Links help send signals of trust. Signals of trust can come only from a third-party source. Few people will trust someone who says, “Don’t worry, you can trust me!” unless someone else, who is already trusted, says, “Don’t worry, I know him well. You can trust him.” It is the same with links and search engines. Trusted sites can transfer trust to unknown sites via links.

Links help to validate relevance. Link text such as “Cape Town hotel” sends the message that you can trust that the destination site is relevant to the term Cape Town hotel. If the destination web page has already used content to send a signal of relevance, the link simply validates that signal.

The Parts of a Link 

Here is the HTML code for a link:

<a href=”http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm”>Anchor Text</a>

You can decipher the meaning of this string of text as follows:

• <a href> and </a> are HTML tags that show where the link starts and ends.
• http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm is the page that the link leads to. You should make sure that you are linking to a relevant page in your site, and not just to the home page.
• Anchor Text is the visible text that forms the link. This is the text that should contain the key phrase you are targeting.

The link sends a signal that the target URL is important for the subject used in the anchor text.

There is a lot more information that can be included in this anatomy, such as instructions telling the search engine not to follow the link, or instructions to the browser about whether the link should open in a new window or not.

In the link

<a href=”http://www.targeturl.com/targetpage.htm” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor Text</a> ,

rel=”nofollow” is included when you don’t want to vouch for the target URL. Search engines do not count nofollow links for ranking purposes. This practice was introduced by Google to try to combat comment spam.

Not All Links Are Created Equal

Of course, not all links are equal. While link volume is the number of links coming to a specific page of your site, link authority looks at the value of the links. Some sites are more trusted than others. So, if they are more trusted, then links from those sites are worth more. Likewise, some sites are more relevant than others to specific terms. The more relevant a site, the more value is transferred by the link. Well-known and established news sites, government sites (.gov) and university domains (.edu) are examples of sites from which links can carry more weighting. Links from websites that have a higher PageRank also carry more link weight.

Search algorithms also consider relationships between linked sites. By analyzing various factors, the search engines try to determine if the links are natural links, or if they are manipulative, artificial links created solely for ranking purposes. Manipulated links are worth very little compared to natural links and may even lead to a drop in search engine rankings.

The search engine algorithm will also determine the relevance of the referring website to the site being linked to. The more relevant the sites are to each other, the better.

Also consider that linking to valuable, relevant external resources can help to improve the visibility of a site.

How Does a Website Get More Links? 

With links playing such a vital role in search engine rankings and traffic for a website, everyone wants more of them. There are certainly dubious means of generating links, most of which can actually result in being penalized by the search engines. However, the sections below outline some ways for ethical and honest website owners and marketers (and that’s what you are) to go about increasing links to their websites.

Create Excellent, Valuable Content that Others Want to Read 

If people find your site useful, they are more likely to link to it. It is not necessary (or possible) to try to write content that will appeal to the whole of the internet population. Focus on being the best in the industry you are in, and in providing value to the members of that community. Make sure that valuable content is themed around your key phrases.

Creating Great Content

Ensure that you create remarkable, valuable content that people want to link to.

Infographics are visual and graphic representations of data. They are a popular type of content that is useful to users and can encourage lots of traffic and inbound links.

Create Tools and Documents that Others Want to Use 

Interview experts in your field and host those interviews on your website. Create useful PDF guides for your industry that people can download from your site. Think outside the box for quirky, relevant items that people will link to. Calculators are popular tools, and we don’t just mean the ones that add two and two together. If you have a website selling diet books, for example, create a tool that helps users calculate their body mass index (BMI) and target weight. Importantly, be unique!

BMI Calculator

The BBC website has several interactive elements, such as this BMI calculator.

Create Games 

Creating a game that people want to play is a great way to generate links. Make sure that the theme of the game is based on the key phrases for your website, so that when others talk about and link to the game, they are using your key phrases.

Capitalize on Software and Widgets 

Widgets, browser extensions, and other software that users love to use all help to generate links for a website. Quirk has released a Mozilla Firefox extension called SearchStatus that is exceptionally useful to the SEO community. Each time someone mentions this SEO tool, they link to Quirk. People also like to include fun widgets in their forum signatures. Create a widget, make sure that the link is included, and let people spread these around the web for you.

Competitor Analysis 

You can find out who is linking to your competitors and which noncompeting sites are ranking highly for your key phrases. Use this information to identify sites to target for link requests.

Using Google search, the following search operators can be used to find these links and websites:

• Link:url.com
• Link:http://www.url.com/page.html
• Link:url.com –site:url.com

With all link-building tactics, make sure that you use your key phrases when communicating. You will be telling people how to link to you and ensuring that search engines notice your authority.

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 9: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Discussion Topics 1 and 2

Discussion

As a requirement for this series of meetings, post one main response to each of the two topics; one of them should be by Saturday midnight ET of Week 5. Then respond to at least two main postings from the team by Tuesday midnight ET of Week 5.

Topic 1

What is a social media CRM platform? Why would an online merchandise store like CompanyOne combine CRM and social data? What is the impact on its brand? Explain.

Topic 2

How can CompanyOne use social CRM tools to track and engage its customers across different social platforms? What should CompanyOne do to ensure a successful social CRM strategy? What challenges can it face? Explain.

Source:

Scheiner, M. (2021).  What is social CRM? 10 Best social media CRM tools & software platforms. https://crm.org/crmland/social-crm

Course Resource

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MBA Discussion Guidelines

Throughout the MBA program, you will be asked to participate in discussions. Assigned discussions, both individual and group work, are part of the process of developing your project deliverables.

In general, address your discussion posts to your classmates, rather than the instructor. Do not attach files; use only the discussion textbox. Your posts do not need the structure or format of formal business memos or reports. These discussions should be an informal exchange of ideas with your peers. You should, of course, still adhere to the norms of standard written English.

To receive the maximum benefit, you should participate in accordance with the guidelines provided below.

• timeliness
  • initial posting(s) submitted by 11:59 PM ET on Saturday
  • response(s) to other discussion postings submitted by 11:59 PM ET on Tuesday
• proper citation
  • cite sources any time you quote or paraphrase an idea or evidence from another work
  • use APA citation style (example below)
• meaningful engagement
  • posts contribute to substantive scholarly discussion
  • student demonstrates professionalism in interaction with peers
  • posts critically discuss topics presented in the current week and, when appropriate, in previous weeks
  • posts are grounded in the theories and concepts presented in the course

Example:

Based on the UMGC library’s guidance on APA citations, including guidance on how to cite content from the UMGC online classroom, please use the following format for classroom resources with no author or no date:

Title of resource. (n.d.). Document posted in University of Maryland Global Campus Course Name Course Number online classroom, archived at: hyperlink

SWOT analysis. (n.d.). Document posted in University of Maryland Global Campus MBA 610 2182 online classroom, archived at: https://lti.umgc.edu/contentadaptor/page/topic?keyword=SWOT%20Analysis

Step 2: Discuss Data Analytics and Complete Google Analytics Tutorial

While you are about to continue attending meetings and participating in discussions in Week 6, Ying sends out the following email to you and the team.

INBOX: 1 New Message

Subject: Digital Marketing Follow-Up for CompanyOne
From:     Ying Bao, Associate Consultant, MCS
To:          You and Team

Hi team,

Great work on the first two topic discussions at last week’s meetings. I can tell we’re heading in the right direction. To keep the momentum going, I’d like you to complete two more group discussions at our meetings scheduled for this week. You can review these discussion topics in the attachment below. It is required that you respond to both of these topics as well.

As you discuss these topics, be sure you understand the following concepts related to data analytics:

• working with data
• tracking and collecting data
• key elements of web analytics
• segmentation in web analytics

Also for this week, please complete the excellent Google Analytics for beginners tutorial that is available free online. I’m providing step-by-step access instructions for the tutorial in the attachments below (see How to Access Google Analytics for Beginners Tutorial).

To get some hands-on practice from what you learned in the tutorial, activate the Google Analytics demo account when you are done.

Thanks for your focus, everyone. Review the readings, participate in the discussion activity, and finally complete all four units of the Google Analytics tutorial.

Regards,

Ying

Attachments:

• Discussion Topics 3 and 4
• How to Access Google Analytics for Beginners Tutorial

Instructions for activating the Google Analytics demo account are available in the next step.

Review the discussion topics via the link above, go to the discussion area, and begin by posting one main response to each of the two topics. Support your arguments under each topic with at least one source from the course readings, and three reliable nonscholarly sources derived from your own research. Then respond to at least two postings from the class. Complete all discussion posts by the end of Week 6 at the latest.

Review the MBA Discussion Guidelines for instructions on participation in discussions.

When you have completed your discussions and all four units of the Google Analytics tutorial, proceed to the next step, where you will answer the questions CompanyOne has posed to MCS about the extent of their online merchandise store’s success.

Glossary

Consult the Digital Marketing Glossary for assistance.

Learning Topic

Data Analytics

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Picture the scene: you’ve opened up a new fashion retail outlet in the trendiest shopping center in town. You have spent a small fortune on advertising and branding. You have gone to great lengths to ensure that you’re stocking all of the prestigious brands. Come opening day, your store is inundated with visitors and potential customers.

And yet, you are hardly making any sales. Could it be because you have one cashier for every hundred customers? Or possibly it is the fact that the smell of your freshly painted walls chases customers away before they complete a purchase? While it can be difficult to isolate and track the factors affecting your revenue in this fictional store, if you move it online, you will have a wealth of resources available to assist you with tracking, analyzing, and optimizing your performance.

To a marketer, the internet offers more than just new avenues of creativity. By its very nature, it allows you to track each click to your site and through your site. It takes the guesswork out of pinpointing the successful elements of a campaign, and can show you very quickly what’s not working. It all comes down to knowing where to look, what to look for, and what to do with the information you find.

Key Data Analytics Terms

A/B test

Also known as a split test, it involves testing two versions of the same page or site to see which performs better.

Click path

The journey a user takes through a website.

Conversion

Completing an action or actions that the website wants the user to take. Usually a conversion results in revenue for the brand in some way. Conversions include signing up to a newsletter or purchasing a product.

Conversion funnel

A defined path that visitors should take to reach the final objective.

Cookie

A text file sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. Cookies are used for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping carts.

Count

Raw figures captured for data analysis.

Event

A step a visitor takes in the conversion process.

Goal

The defined action that visitors should perform on a website, or the purpose of the website.

Heat map

A data visualization tool that shows levels of activity on a web page in different colors.

JavaScript

A popular scripting language. Also used in web analytics for page tagging.

Key performance indicator (KPI)

A metric that shows whether an objective is being achieved.

Log file

A text file created on the server each time a click takes place, capturing all activity on the website.

Metric

A defined unit of measurement.

Multivariate test

Testing combinations of versions of the website to see which combination performs better.

Objective

A desired outcome of a digital marketing campaign.

Page tag

A piece of JavaScript code embedded on a web page and executed by the browser.

Ratio

An interpretation of data captured, usually one metric divided by another.

Referrer

The URL that originally generated the request for the current page.

Segmentation

Filtering visitors into distinct groups based on characteristics in order to analyze visits.

Target

A specific numerical benchmark.

Visitor

An individual visiting a website that is not a search engine spider or a script.

Resources

• Data Analytics: Goals, Tools, Benefits, and Challenges

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 18: Data Analytics from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Working with Data

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In the days of traditional media, actionable data was a highly desired but scarce commodity. While it was possible to broadly understand consumer responses to marketing messages, it was often hard to pinpoint exactly what was happening and why.

In the digital age, information is absolutely everywhere. Every single action taken online is recorded, which means there is an incredible wealth of data available to marketers to help them understand when, where, how, and even why people react to their marketing campaigns.

This also means there is a responsibility on marketers to make data-driven decisions. Assumptions and gut feel are not enough; you need to back these up with solid facts and clear results.

Don’t worry if you’re not a “numbers person.” Working with data is very little about number crunching (the technology usually takes care of this for you) and a lot about analyzing, experimenting, testing, and questioning. All you need is a curious mind and an understanding of the key principles and tools.

The sections below outline the data concepts you should be aware of.

Performance Monitoring and Trends

Data analytics is all about monitoring user behavior and marketing campaign performance over time. The last part is crucial. There is little value in looking at a single point of data—you want to look at trends and changes over a set period.

For example, it is meaningless to say that 10 percent of this month’s web traffic converted. Is that good or bad, high or low? But saying that 10 percent more people converted this month, as opposed to last month, shows a positive change or trend. While it can be tempting to focus on single “hero numbers” and exciting-looking figures (“Look, we have five thousand Facebook fans!”), these data really don’t give a full picture if they are not presented in context.

Big Data

Big data is the term used to describe truly massive data sets—the ones that are so big and unwieldy that they require specialized software and massive computers to process. Companies like Google, Facebook, and YouTube generate and collect so much data every day that they have entire warehouses full of hard drives to store it all.

Understanding how it works and how to think about data on this scale provides some valuable lessons for all analysts.

• Measure trends, not absolute figures—The more data you have, the more meaningful it is to look at how things change over time.
• Focus on patterns—With enough data, patterns over time should become apparent. Consider looking at weekly, monthly, or even seasonal flows.
• Investigate anomalies—If your expected pattern suddenly changes, try to find out why and use this information to inform your future actions.

Data Mining 

Data mining is the process of finding patterns that are hidden in large numbers and databases. Rather than having a human analyst process the information, an automated computer program pulls apart the data and matches it to known patterns to deliver insights. Often, this can reveal surprising and unexpected results, and tends to break assumptions.

Data Mining in Action: Target

The US retail chain Target uses data mining to market specific products to consumers based on their personal contexts. Target gathers a range of personal, psychographic, and demographic data from customers and then analyzes this against their shopping habits. They analyze their data and predict the products customers might be interested in, based on their lifestyle needs and choices (Duhigg, 2012).

Each customer is given a unique code called the Guest ID number. This is linked to all interactions the customer has with the brand, from using a credit card or calling in to the help line, to opening an email. They then gather data, including the following:

• age
• marital status
• whether the customer has children, and how many
• estimated salary
• location
• whether they’ve moved house recently
• which credit cards they use
• which websites they visit

Target is also able to buy supplemental data on their customers from other companies, including the following:

• ethnicity
• employment history
• favorite magazines
• financial status
• whether they’ve been divorced
• which college they attended
• their online interests
• their favorite coffee brands
• political leanings

For example, Target markets baby- and pregnancy-related products to expectant moms and dads, from as early as the second trimester. How do they know to do this? Using this data, combined with customer shopping habits, Target has created a pregnancy-predictor model, determining whether a woman was pregnant (sometimes even before she knew it herself).

One father of a teenage girl complained to the store about sending his daughter marketing materials of this nature, though he apologized to the retailer after discovering that his teenage daughter was in fact pregnant, indicating that the predictor model did actually work (Duhigg, 2012). However, Target has decided to be a bit subtler in how they use their valuable insights!

A World of Data

Another consideration to keep in mind is that data can be found and gathered from a variety of sources—you don’t need to restrict yourself simply to website-based analytics. To get a full picture of audience insights, try to gather as varied a set of information as you can. Some places to look include the following:

• online data—Aside from your website, look at other places your audience interacts with you online, such as social media, email, forums, and more. Most of these will have their own data-gathering tools (for example, look at Facebook Insights or your email service provider’s send logs).
• databases—Look at any databases that store relevant customer information, like your contact database, CRM information, or loyalty programs. These can often supplement anonymous data with some tangible demographic insights.
• software data—Data might also be gathered by certain kinds of software (for example, some web browsers gather information on user habits, crashes, problems, and so on). If you produce software, consider adding a data-gathering feature (with the user’s permission, of course) that captures usage information that you can use for future updates.
• app store data—App store analytics allows companies to monitor and analyze the way people download, pay for, and use their apps. Marketplaces like the Google and Apple app stores should provide some useful data here.
• offline data—Don’t forget all the information available off the web. such as point-of-sale records, customer service logs, in-person surveys, and in-store foot traffic.

References 

Duhigg, C. (2012, February 16). How companies learn your secrets. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 18: Data Analytics from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Tracking and Collecting Data

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Currently, there are two main approaches for collecting web analytics data: cookie-based tracking and server-based tracking. A third option, called universal analytics, is set to dramatically change how data is gathered and analyzed. Universal analytics is one of the most exciting examples of non-cookie-based server tracking.

How Information Is Captured 

Cookie-Based Tracking 

The most common method of capturing web analytics is to use cookie-based tracking. Here’s how it works:

1. The analyst adds a page tag (a piece of JavaScript code) to every page of the website.
2. A user accesses the page using their browser.
3. When the browser loads the page, it runs the page tag code.
4. This tag sends an array of information to a third-party server (like Google Analytics), a service that stores and collates the data.
5. The analyst accesses this data by logging in to the third-party server.

The data gathered this way can capture a wide array of factors about each visitor, from their device, operating system, and screen resolution, to their long-term behavior on your website. This is currently the most common option for most website tracking.

Server-Based Tracking 

Web servers are the computers that websites are stored on so that they can be accessed online. Server-based tracking involves looking at log files—documents that are automatically created by servers and that record all clicks that take place on the server. A new line is written in a log file every time a new request is made—for example, clicking on a link or submitting a form.

Server-based tracking is very useful for tracking mobile visitors (since many phones cannot execute the cookie-based JavaScript tags) and is also essential for universal analytics, discussed below.

Comparing the Options

Because these two options use different methods of collecting data, the raw figures produced will differ. For example, caching occurs when a browser stores some of the information for a web page, so that it can retrieve it more quickly when you return. Opening this cached page will not send a request to the server. This means that the visit won’t show up in the log files, but would be captured by page tags.

Website analytics packages can be used to measure most, if not all, digital marketing campaigns. Website analysis should always account for the various campaigns being run. For example, generating high traffic volumes by employing various digital marketing tactics such as SEO, PPC (pay per click), and email marketing can prove to be a pointless and costly exercise if visitors are leaving your site without achieving one (or more) of your website’s goals. Conversion optimization aims to convert as many of a website’s visitors as possible into active customers.

Universal Analytics 

Google recently announced a new feature in its analytics suite called universal analytics. The biggest problem web analysts have faced up until now is that they can’t actually track individual people—only individual browsers (or devices), since this is done through cookies. So, if Joe visits the website from Chrome on his home computer, and Safari on his work laptop, the website will think he’s two different people. And if Susan visits the site from the home computer, also using Chrome, the website will think she’s the same user as Joe.

An additional concern is that cookies are on the decline. Most modern browsers allow users to block them, and many mobile devices simply can’t access or execute them. With growing consumer privacy concerns, and new laws like the EU Privacy Directive (which requires all European websites to disclose their cookie usage), cookies are falling out of favor.

Universal analytics allows you to track visitors (that means real people) rather than sessions. By creating a unique identifier for each customer, universal analytics means you can track the user’s full journey with the brand, regardless of the device or browser they use. So, that means you can track Joe on his home computer, work laptop, mobile phone during his lunch break, and even when he swipes his loyalty card at the point of sale.

Crucially, however, tracking Joe across devices requires both universal analytics and authentication on the site across devices. In other words, Joe has to be logged in to your website or online tool on his desktop, work laptop, and mobile phone in order to be tracked this way. If he doesn’t log in, we won’t know it’s the same person.

With universal analytics, you can glean a lot of information:

• How visitors behave depending on the device they use (e.g., browsing for quick ideas on their smartphone, but checking out through the eCommerce portal on their desktop)
• How visitor behavior changes the longer they are a fan of the brand. Do they come back more often, for longer, or less often but with a clearer purpose?
• How often they’re really interacting with your brand.
• Their lifetime value and engagement.

Another useful feature of universal analytics is that it allows you to import data from other sources into Google Analytics—for example, customer relationship management (CRM) information or data from a point-of-sale cash register. This gives a much broader view of the customers and lets you see a more direct link between your online efforts and real-world behavior.

The Type of Information Captured 

KPIs are the metrics that help you understand how well you are meeting your objectives. A metric is a defined unit of measurement. Definitions can vary among web analytics vendors depending on their approach to gathering data, but the standard definitions are provided here.

Web analytics metrics are divided into two categories:

• counts—raw figures that will be used for analysis
• ratios—interpretations of the data that is counted

Metrics can be applied to three different groupings:

• aggregate—all traffic to the website for a defined period of time
• segmented—a subset of all traffic according to a specific filter, such as by campaign (PPC) or visitor type (new visitor vs. returning visitor)
• individual—the activity of a single visitor for a defined period of time

The key metrics used in website analytics are covered in the sections below.

Building-Block Terms 

Building-block terms are the most basic web metrics. They tell you how much traffic your website is receiving. For example, looking at returning visitors can tell you how well your website creates loyalty. A website needs to grow the number of visitors who come back. An exception may be a support website, as repeat visitors could indicate that the website has not been successful in solving the visitor’s problem. Each website needs to be analyzed based on its purpose. Building-block terms include the following:

• hit—one page load (Note that hit is an outdated term that we recommend you avoid using).
• page—unit of content (downloads and Flash files can be defined as pages).
• page views—the number of times a page was successfully requested.
• visit or session—an interaction by an individual with a website consisting of one or more page views within a specified period of time.
• unique visitors—the number of individual people visiting the website one or more times within a set period of time. Each individual is counted only once.
  • new visitor—a unique visitor who visits the website for the first time ever in the period of time being analyzed.
  • returning visitor—a unique visitor who makes two or more visits (on the same device and browser) within the time period being analyzed.

New and Returning Visitors in Google Analytics

Visit Characteristics 

These are some of the metrics that tell you how visitors reach your website and how they move through the website. The way that a visitor navigates a website is called a click path. Looking at the referrers, both external and internal, allows you to gauge the click path that visitors take. These metrics include the following:

• entry page—the first page of a visit
• landing page—the page intended to identify the beginning of the user experience resulting from a defined marketing effort
• exit page—the last page of a visit
• visit duration—the length of time in a session
• referrer—the URL that originally generated the request for the current page
  • internal referrer—a URL that is part of the same website
  • external referrer—a URL that is outside of the website
  • search referrer—a URL that is generated by a search function
  • visit referrer—a URL that originated from a particular visit
  • original referrer—a URL that sent a new visitor to the website
• clickthrough—the number of times a link was clicked by a visitor
• clickthrough rate—the number of times a link was clicked divided by the number of times it was seen (impressions)
• page views per visit—the number of page views in a reporting period divided by the number of visits in that same period to get an average of how many pages are being viewed per visit

Visitor Behavior in Google Analytics

Content Characteristics

When a visitor views a page, they have two options: leave the website, or view another page on the website. These metrics tell you how visitors react to your content. Bounce rate can be one of the most important metrics that you measure. There are a few exceptions, but a high bounce rate usually means high dissatisfaction with a web page.

• page exit ratio—number of exits from a page divided by total number of page views of that page
• single page visits—visits that consist of one page, even if that page was viewed a number of times
• bounces (or single page view visits)—visits consisting of a single page view
• bounce rate—single page view visits divided by entry pages

Conversion Metrics 

These metrics give insight into whether you are achieving your analytics goals (and through those, your overall website objectives):

• event—a recorded action that has a specific time assigned to it by the browser or the server.
• conversion—a visitor completing a target action.

Goal Conversions in Google Analytics

Mobile Metrics

When it comes to mobile data, there are no special, new or different metrics to use. However, you will probably be focusing your attention on some key aspects that are particularly relevant here—namely technologies and the user experience. Mobile metrics include the following:

• device category—whether the visit came from a desktop, mobile device, or tablet
• mobile device info—the specific brand and make of the mobile device
• mobile input selector—the main input method for the device (e.g., touchscreen, clickwheel, stylus)
• operating system—the OS that the device runs (some popular operating systems include iOS, Android, and BlackBerry)

Mobile Device Categories in Google Analytics

Now that you know what tracking is, you can use your objectives and KPIs to define what metrics you’ll be tracking. You’ll then need to analyze these results and take appropriate actions. Then the testing begins again!

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 18: Data Analytics from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Key Elements of Web Analytics

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In order to test the success of your website, you need to remember the TAO of conversion optimization: track, analyze, optimize.

A number is just a number until you can interpret it. Typically, it is not the raw figures that you will be looking at, but what they tell you about how your users are interacting with your website. Because your web analytics package will never be able to provide you with completely accurate results, you need to analyze trends and changes over time to understand your brand’s performance.

Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, recommends a three-pronged approach to web analytics (2007):

1. Analyzing data about behavior infers the intent of a website’s visitors. Why are people visiting the website?
2. Analyzing outcomes metrics shows how many visitors performed the goal actions on a website. Are visitors completing the goals we want them to?
3. A wide range of data tells us about the user experience. What are the patterns of user behavior? How can we influence them so that we achieve our objectives?

Behavior 

Web users’ behavior can indicate a lot about their intent. Looking at referral URLs and search terms used to find the website can tell you a great deal about what problems visitors are expecting your site to solve.

Some methods to gauge the intent of your visitors include the following:

• click density analysis—Looking at a heatmap to see where people are clicking on the site and if there are any noteworthy clumps of clicks (such as many people clicking on a page element that is not actually a button or link).
• segmentation—Selecting a smaller group of visitors to analyze based on a shared characteristic (for example, only new visitors, only visitors from France, or only visitors who arrived on the site by clicking on a display advert). This lets you see if particular types of visitors behave differently.
• behavior and content metrics—Analyzing data around user behaviors (e.g., time spent on site, number of pages viewed) can give a lot of insight into how engaging and valuable your website is. Looking at content metrics will show you which pages are the most popular, which pages users leave from most often and more. This data provides excellent insight for your content marketing strategy and helps uncover what your audience is really interested in.

A crucial, often-overlooked part of this analysis is internal search. Internal search refers to the searches of the website’s content that users perform on the website. While a great deal of time is spent analyzing and optimizing external search—using search engines to reach the website in question—analyzing internal search goes a long way to exposing weaknesses in site navigation, determining how effectively a website is delivering solutions to visitors, and finding gaps in inventory on which a website can capitalize.

For example, consider the keywords a user may use when searching for a hotel website, and keywords they may use when on the website. Keywords to search for a hotel website may be Cape Town hotel or bed and breakfast Cape Town. Once on the website, the user may use the site search function to find out more. Keywords they may use include Table Mountain, pets, or babysitting service. Analytics tools can show what keywords users search for, what pages they visit after searching, and, of course, whether they search again or convert.

Outcomes

At the end of the day, you want people who visit your website to perform an action that increases your revenue. Analyzing goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) demonstrates where there is room for improvement. Look at user intent to establish if your website meets the users’ goals and if these match with the website goals. Look at user experience to determine how outcomes can be influenced.

Website Performance

Reviewing conversion paths can give you insight into improving your website.

In the figure above, after performing a search, one hundred visitors land on the homepage of a website. From there, 80 visitors visit the first page toward the goal. This event has an 80 percent conversion rate. Twenty visitors take the next step. This event has a 25 percent conversion rate. Ten visitors convert into paying customers. This event has a 50 percent conversion rate. The conversion rate of all visitors who performed the search is 10 percent, but breaking this up into events lets us analyze and improve the conversion rate of each event.

User experience 

In order to determine the factors that influence user experience, you must test and determine the patterns of user behavior. Understanding why users behave in a certain way on your website will show you how that behavior can be influenced to improve your outcomes.

References 

Kaushik, A. (2007). Web analytics: An hour a day. San Francisco, CA: Sybex.

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 18: Data Analytics from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Learning Topic

Segmentation in Web Analytics

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Every visitor to a website is different, but there are some ways in which we can characterize groups of users and analyze metrics for each group. This is called segmentation.

Default Segments in Google Analytics

Examples of segments include the following:

• referral source—Users who arrive at your site via search engines, those who type in the URL directly, and those who come from a link in an online news article are all likely to behave differently. In addition to conversion rates, click path and exit pages are important metrics to consider. Consider the page that these visitors enter your website from—can anything be done to improve their experience?
• landing pages—Users who enter your website through different pages can behave very differently. What can you do to affect the page on which they are landing, or what elements of the landing page can be changed to influence outcomes?
• connection speed, operating system, browser—Consider the effects of technology on the behavior of your users. A high bounce rate for low-bandwidth users, for example, could indicate that your site is taking too long to load. Visitors who use open-source technology may expect different things from your website than other visitors. Different browsers may show your website differently—how does this affect these visitors?
• geographical location—Do users from different countries, provinces or towns behave differently on your website? How can you optimize the experience for these different groups?
• first-time visitors—How is the click path of a first-time visitor different from that of a returning visitor? What parts of the website are more important to first-time visitors?

Licenses and Attributions

Chapter 18: Data Analytics from eMarketing: The Essential Guide to Marketing in a Digital World, 5th Edition by Rob Stokes and the Minds of Quirk is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. © 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 Quirk Education Pty (Ltd). UMGC has modified this work and it is available under the original license.

Course Resource

Print

Discussion Topics 3 and 4

Discussion

As a requirement for this series of meetings, post one main response to each of the two topics; one of them should be by Saturday midnight ET of Week 6. Then respond to at least two main postings from the team by Tuesday midnight ET of Week 6.

Topic 3

There are three key elements to be considered when CompanyOne conducts a digital brand analysis. These elements are:

1. Brand share 2. Brand audience 3. Brand and consumer alignment.

Explain the role that each of these elements plays in CompanyOne’s digital brand analysis.

Topic 4

Most social platforms provide huge amounts of data; however, in the aggregate, which is not very useful. Accordingly, it is not advised that CompanyOne analyze its traffic in aggregate. Web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik argued that “data in the aggregate is useless;” companies should segment or die! (Hemann & Burbary, 2018, p. 13).

Explain six of the segmenting strategies that CompanyOne may pursue when using Google Analytics (GA), and the pros and cons of each of them.

Source:

Hemann, C., & Burbary, K. (2018). Digital marketing analytics (2nd. ed.). Pearson

Course Resource

Print

MBA Discussion Guidelines

Throughout the MBA program, you will be asked to participate in discussions. Assigned discussions, both individual and group work, are part of the process of developing your project deliverables.

In general, address your discussion posts to your classmates, rather than the instructor. Do not attach files; use only the discussion textbox. Your posts do not need the structure or format of formal business memos or reports. These discussions should be an informal exchange of ideas with your peers. You should, of course, still adhere to the norms of standard written English.

To receive the maximum benefit, you should participate in accordance with the guidelines provided below.

• timeliness
  • initial posting(s) submitted by 11:59 PM ET on Saturday
  • response(s) to other discussion postings submitted by 11:59 PM ET on Tuesday
• proper citation
  • cite sources any time you quote or paraphrase an idea or evidence from another work
  • use APA citation style (example below)
• meaningful engagement
  • posts contribute to substantive scholarly discussion
  • student demonstrates professionalism in interaction with peers
  • posts critically discuss topics presented in the current week and, when appropriate, in previous weeks
  • posts are grounded in the theories and concepts presented in the course

Example:

Based on the UMGC library’s guidance on APA citations, including guidance on how to cite content from the UMGC online classroom, please use the following format for classroom resources with no author or no date:

Title of resource. (n.d.). Document posted in University of Maryland Global Campus Course Name Course Number online classroom, archived at: hyperlink

SWOT analysis. (n.d.). Document posted in University of Maryland Global Campus MBA 610 2182 online classroom, archived at: https://lti.umgc.edu/contentadaptor/page/topic?keyword=SWOT%20Analysis

Project 3: Digital Marketing Analytics
Step 3: Answer CompanyOne’s Data Analysis Questions

The past few weeks have flown by. You have just completed the GA tutorial when you receive a memo from Ying marked CONFIDENTIAL. You scan the memo to find a list of client questions that have been assigned to you. You are expected to use Google Analytics to answer the 10 questions in the memo by the end of Week 7. The Google Analytics demo account will give you access to data from the Google Merchandise Store, which in this project represents CompanyOne’s data.

Review these instructions for How to Activate the Google Analytics Demo Account.

Submit your answers to each of the ten questions and the accompanying screenshots in a Word document to the dropbox located in the final step of this project.

Remember to include one or more screenshots of the relevant Google Analytics page to support your answers. If you need help with creating screenshots, review theseinstructions on capturing screenshots for your Microsoft, Apple, or Android system.The next step provides a summary of all deliverables due during this project.

The next step provides a summary of all deliverables due during this project.

Glossary

Consult the Digital Marketing Glossary for assistance.

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