(Part 6 of 6 on the Marketing Analytics Method)

We’re back with our last post of this series on quantitative marketing analytics. The last two blogs we posted were special entries to answer questions from our followers on Twitter. This returns to and concludes the marketing analytics series we’ve been working on.

In part 1 of our series, we showed that most organizations work like this soccer team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QPsL5oqwiA

Over the past several blog posts, we’ve endeavored to show how your organization can perform like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWFpPST94wU

That’s incredible coordination. What separates clip 1 from clip 2 is their level of understanding. The first team has only a rudimentary understanding of what they are supposed to be doing and how to act in sync. The second team acts like a well-oiled machine, because they have a common vision that they understand how to translate into results.

We’ve used the vinyl wall art industry as a case study, highlighting specifically www.ellemenopea.com. Each post developed in some detail each of the following steps in the marketing analytics cycle (the text next to the boxes is from the case study):

We proved that by communicating the corporate vision to all employees, and then linking that vision to measurable goals, and then executing the strategy and monitoring progress – again communicating to the organization – that Ellemenopea would be much more able to achieve what they wanted. By linking the high-level vision into daily operations, bottom-line improvements can be made.

As you do the same things in your organization, you can achieve similar results. However, we understand that the difficulty of the above process comes not in setting the vision or goals, but in measuring those and adjusting the strategy accordingly. Our next posts will dive deeper into how to become a company driven by analytics.

Let us know how you compete on marketing analytics and turn them into strategic advantages or share with us your questions. We appreciate your feedback!

(Part 5 of 6)

Continuing with our case study, we have tackled one hypothetical goal of Ellemenopea.com. We decided they wanted to focus on search optimization to drive targeted website traffic to their site and become the leader in wall art. They chose several key terms that would help them rank at the top of the search engines (though several other factors are also necessary to rank highly) and have launched their initiative.

The next step now is to track the data and visualize it for rapid insights and action and communicate progress to all employees. Remember the purpose of this series is linking organizational vision all the way to the bottom-line. By creating a strategy that everyone understands and buys into, and then tracking progress and posting the results, the owners and employees of Ellemenopea.com are able to see exactly how their efforts are impacting the bottom-line.

First, the owners build a tracking spreadsheet of their key terms.

Search Engine Rank Tracking

This allows them to track how long it takes to improve search engine rankings as well as track their progress towards their goal.

Then we being tracking our marketing KPIs. We decided on two:
• Improve overall traffic share by increasing visits per month from 500 to 10,000 in six months
• Improve conversion rate by increases purchases per month from 2% of site visitors to 10% within six months

To track them, Ellemenopea taps into their web marketing analytics data. They run Google Analytics on their site for free. They pull a spreadsheet of raw data and run it through a graphing program to instantly see trends, data anomalies, outliers, or strengths and weaknesses. Visualizing marketing analytics data drastically reduces data crunching and error rates, and increases the number of insights that can be acted upon.

Daily Website Traffic per Day

As we can see, the data correlates with their efforts. As they strive for search optimization and a social media footprint on blogs and forums, as well as talk to friends, leave fliers around town, and perform other offline initiatives, they can see that their site traffic is increasing, bringing them closer to achieving their goal. This not only creates unity of purpose for all employees but also creates enthusiasm and brand evangelism, exactly what Ellemenopea needs to reach the top.

Next post, we will show a much more detailed analysis on analyzing variables to improve site conversion rate (browsers into purchasers). Let us know if these posts are helpful to you or if you would like to see more insight into certain topics or areas of marketing analytics.

Thanks for reading!

(Part 4 of 6)
We’ve been using Ellemenopea.com as a hypothetical case study. In our last posts, we determined the following:

Vision:
To become the leader in the vinyl wall art business

Goals:
1. Drive targeted website traffic
2. Build brand loyalty
3. Use competitive intelligence for effective niche marketing

Critical Success Factors (for goal number 1, the only one we focused on in our last post)

• Improve overall traffic share by increasing visits per month from 500 to 10,000 in six months

• Improve conversion rate by increasing purchasers per month from 2% of site visitors to 10% within six months

Now, Ellemenopea must find a way to convert their goals into action. They know that they want more targeted site traffic and that they want to boost conversions. They also know that their competitors are attracting most of their potential clients, at least from the Internet. They decide to utilize search optimization and web analytics to achieve their goal.

Search Optimization

Search optimization is the science and art of getting to the top of the search engines naturally. Imagine Google as a massive filing system. Every website gets a unique folder with their name on it. Hence if you type in your company’s name, or even your own name, oftentimes you will show up at the very top of the search engine rankings. The disadvantage is that you have to spend a lot of time and money letting people know what your name is so they will search for you.

It’s far more beneficial to know how to attract site traffic from key search terms, rather than from your name. You not only want your website to have its own file, but also to be put in as many other relevant files as possible.

If a site’s content and structure is organized in such a way that it is deemed useful and relevant, Google or other search engines will put your folder at the top of each category. That’s what Ellemenopea decides to do.

Using Google Adwords as well as SEO Chat’s Difficulty Checker, Ellemenopea builds a spreadsheet of tons of key terms and analyzes them. They look for how high the monthly search volume is as well as how difficult it is to rank for each key word. The result looks like this:

Search Term Monthly Volume and Difficulty

This dashboard highlights several important pieces of information. Several terms exist that are fairly easy to rank for in searches, and these terms have high monthly search volumes. The box in the above chart encapsulates all the terms that Ellemenopea might want to rank for.

Search Term Monthly Volume and Advertiser Competition

This graphs shows that there are search terms with low advertiser competition, enabling Ellemenopea to become a heavy contender fairly quickly. It depicts selected keywords that have low levels of advertiser competition. The bluer the bar, the easier it is to have a pay-per-click ad show up at the very top.

Ellemenopea focuses on some key terms and organizes their site in such a way that it will optimize in the searches. They chose some terms that have very high monthly search volume that are moderately difficult to rank for, as well as some low volume words that are easy to rank for. They also run a pay-per-click campaign for terms that are hard to rank for naturally, but easy to get to the top with a paid ad. Within a matter of weeks, their site can start to generate much more business for them.

In this post we have shown how to set up a strategy to obtain the goals for one of the critical success factors that we have set up. If more detailed treatment of this topic would be helpful, let us know and we’ll write more on the subject. Otherwise, we will continue outlining the marketing analytics approach in our next post.

(Part 3 of 6)
In our quest to apply actionable marketing analytics to corporate visions, we’ve discussed creating visions and then linking them to objectives. Now, we are going to show how to tie the objectives into specific, measurable, key performance indicators (KPIs).

Ellemenopea logo

Defining KPIs

Those goals are made actionable by linking them to something measurable. That’s what marketing analytics is all about. A key performance indicator includes a goal statement, a metric, a target, and a timeframe. KPIs are tied to the factors that drive long-term business success. This post will focus on Ellemenopea’s first hypothetical goal of increasing targeted website traffic to their site.

Site Traffic Metrics

Ellemenopea first decides to look at the competitive landscape, seeing how much traffic their site generates in comparison to other sites. This is the site traffic report for Ellemenopea and its competitors, using Compete.com data.

Competition for Ellemenopea

• Rightonthewalls.com (green) ranks #2 in Google’s natural search when the phrase “vinyl wall art” is typed in

• They have traffic at 11,500 visitors per month

• Vinylattraction.com (orange) ranks at #3 on Google

• They have monthly site traffic at 8,300

• Wallsneedlove.com (red) ranks #4 on Google

• They have traffic at 7,600 visitors per month

•Vinylwallart.com (blue) surprisingly trails in traffic even though they rank at #1 on Google
•Ellemenopea (yellow) only has around 500 visits per month

• They do not rank at all on Google, either in the natural or paid searches

To achieve their goal of driving targeted website traffic, they decide on 2 KPIs:
• Improve overall traffic share by increasing visits per month from 500 to 10,000 in six months
• Improve conversion rate by increases purchases per month from 2% of site visitors to 10% within six months

Quantitative Marketing

Let’s assume the following scenario:

Price = $20
Total Cost = $7
Profit per sale = $13
Profit Margin = 65%

500 visitors/month * 2% conversion rate = 10 visitors who buy

10 visitors * $13 in profit = $130 per month

In six months, if they achieve their goal, the equation changes to this:

10,000 visitors/month * 10% conversion rate = 1,000 purchasers/month

1,000 * $13 profit = $13,000/month

This transforms their business from making a profit of $1,560 per year to $156,000 per year. Suddenly, what was once a part-time side business/hobby has turned into a full-time enterprise with plenty of opportunity for further growth and expansion.

As Ellemenopea drives targeted website traffic as well the number of visitors who actually make purchases, then they not only improve their bottom-line, they also improve their brand loyalty and market position. These two metrics not only quantify what success looks like, it also creates a timeframe for realizing such results.

Linking It Together: Vision to Bottomline

As the owners of the site understand this and communicate it to anyone else on their staff, every action is then evaluated in these terms: will this action help increase traffic to our website or convert more visitors into buyers? If it does, they will do it. If they do not, they will avoid this action in favor of something more focused. This is exactly why marketing analytics is so important. It can mean the difference between a hobby and a successful business.

Part 4 of this series will discuss how to actually achieve these goals. We chose to focus this post on only one goal so we could examine it in depth.

If you are interested in learning how to flesh out the KPIs, let us know. Also, if there is anything that is working or isn’t working for you, let us know. We want to make this blog as useful to you as possible.

To turn a corporate vision into something more than just a nice plaque on the wall, you must tie your marketing efforts to your bottom-line. This means everyone in your organization understands how their contributions help move the company forward, achieve goals, and increase profits.

Niche Marketing Strategies

Take a site like www.ellemenopea.com. They create vinyl wall art like this:

Wall Art by Ellemenopea

Let’s assume their vision is to become the leader in vinyl wall art and decals. That’s a big goal: to become the recognized authority in their field. Achieving this goal would no doubt bring much success, but if there is no action plan, then they might as well stencil their vision on their wall and then forget about it. They need to set clear marketing goals backed up by measurable marketing analytics in order to achieve their vision. Some potential goals to achieve their vision:

Drive Targeted Website Traffic

Ellemenopea may decide that one way to achieve their vision is to optimize their website and get to the top of Google or other search engines. This achieves three purposes simultaneously:
• Get noticed by people most interested in what they offer (non-intrusive marketing)
• Build brand awareness (recognized as authority by ranking highly)
• Increase chances of turning browsers into buyers

Build Brand Loyalty

Another way they might decide to become the leader in the field is to create valuable content for their customers. They may choose to blog and showcase examples of how to take a wall and turn it into art. They may run contests. They may give discounts for referrals. They may run classes. This does the following:
• They are recognized as the trusted source for wall art.
• They get people talking
• These people tell friends
• They post pictures on their own blogs
• They tweet about their satisfaction with Ellemenopea

Pretty soon, Ellemenopea has a whole cadre of brand evangelists who purchase repeatedly and invite their friends to do the same. Their success snowballs, and eventually their goal is in sight.

Gather Competitive Intelligence

Then, the Ellemenopea owners may analyze other websites offering similar services. They could look at the products or services offered. They might look for clear calls-to-action. Then they could determine underserved niches and develop a niche marketing strategy to capitalize on missed opportunities.

By driving targeted website traffic, building brand loyalty, and gathering competitive intelligence, Ellemenopea implements niche marketing strategies to achieve its vision of becoming the leader in their field.

We’ve now discussed setting your vision and linking it to actionable marketing goals. Next time we’ll talk about determining measurable critical success factors. See you then!

The importance of getting your business on the same page is paramount: from top management to business divisions to internal office processes to individual employees. Lack of a unifying direction can lead to unexpected consequences. Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, performed a survey of companies and employee engagement. He then compared the results to a soccer team. The results are chilling.

In a poll of 23,000 employees:

This then is what most organizations look like: One is focused, one is upset, most are confused; and while a few are excited to be there, they have no idea what’s going on. Scary.

Setting the Vision

A vision is an achievable ideal that both motivates as well as provides direction. It pulls the whole team together and gives them a common goal to strive toward. A shared vision rallies the organization together around a shared passion, which is a hallmark of truly innovative companies. When enough people understand where the organization is trying to get and are empowered enough to create and implement ideas, innovation happens.

Google is a great example. Their vision is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible.” 20% of Google employee time goes to whatever project an employee thinks will help achieve that vision. As a result, Google manages to innovate in their field at a ridiculous rate.

Some other examples include:
• American Express – “To be the world’s most respected service brand”
• Avis Rent-a-Car – “To become the world’s preeminent rent-a-car brand”
• IBM has 2: “To lead in the creation, development, and manufacture of the most advanced information technology” & “To translate advanced technologies into value for our customers as the world’s largest information services company”

For 300 more, you can check out this book.

Vision or Hallucination?

Most organizations create a vision that gets slapped on marketing materials or on the front desk or even on their websites, yet nothing is actually done. The employees are aware of it, but do not understand how their jobs relate to it. Covey’s survey proved this.

So how do you move from corporate hallucination to corporate vision? You link the vision all the way to the bottom-line, showing each person in your organization how their efforts contribute. This turns everyone into your organization into marketers, because each one is now more empowered to help promote the business.

In our next blog post in this series on utilizing marketing analytics to generate business leads and build brand loyalty, we’ll discuss how you can create this link to empower your organization and improve your marketing ROI. Thanks for reading.

With brazen confidence, and maybe even a note of defiance, MC Hammer responded to reporters who asked him if he felt self-conscious about being a middle-age rapper at his recent Utah concert: “I’m the guy who went to the Tokyo Dome and sold out five nights. Who’s the other rapper who sold out five nights at the Tokyo Dome? Oh, that’s right, there isn’t one.”

What makes The Hammer “too legit to quit?” Hammer spills his secret. It’s marketing analytics. Check him out on YouTube.

What Are Marketing Analytics?
Analytics is the science of making intelligent business decisions based on quantitative data. Marketing analytics applies specific analytical techniques to the marketing process.
To be of any use, collected data must be presented in such a way as to gain actionable insight. Analytic competitors use information visualization techniques to take raw data and transform it into true intelligence.

Website Data, Spreadsheet Format

Website Data Visualized

We used analytics for one of our clients, helping them not only collect the right data, but then visualize it for at-a-glance understanding.
This information highlighted that their pay-per-click campaign was costing them 70k a year for almost no return. By combining this information with other analytics, the company is now in a position to optimize its website and drive more targeted website traffic, while simultaneously reducing its costs.

Why Are Analytics So Important?
This recession has tightened everyone’s belt. Cutting costs, improving operational efficiency and maximizing marketing ROI are key ingredients to surviving these times. Wouldn’t you sleep better at night knowing that your decisions were based on facts instead of gut instinct?

With marketing analytics, it is possible – even easy – to:
• Drive targeted website traffic
• Generate business leads
• Build brand loyalty
• Optimize your website

And you can do this on a considerably reduced budget.

How Do I Use Analytics in My Organization?
The process is summarized below:

THe Marketing Analytics Approach

Our next few posts will take each of these steps and break them down into further detail.

With analytics, you can maximize your marketing ROI. Our goal, here at Vault Analytics, is to make your competitive position so strong that you can sing in an oh-so-satisfied way, “Can’t touch this.”