As the explosion of new platforms, applications and utilities continues to take hold of the masses; the tools which we use to track and monitor this surge have grown a lot more sophisticated – the output is rich, granular, and instantaneous data, offering salient insight into the behaviours of our target consumers. This presents great challenges to agencies and clients alike. Just as many clients were starting to get a handle on the data they generate from their websites and understand how it ties to marketing; along comes a plethora of new technologies with different reporting requirements.
In the old world, the predominant method for tracking the consumer interaction with your site was counting the number of unique users and the number of page views. At the more advanced end of the tracking and reporting spectrum, analytics have traditionally tracked a linear progression through pages on a site, which is often represented as a funnel diagram that shows where users drop off in a defined path. The new world has seen significant advancements in data analytics that have made the output both more complex; however, potentially a much more powerful marketing weapon.
Analytics are not a new phenomenon, and the outputs from some of these tools have been used for years by some of the world’s biggest brands to optimise their digital ad spend and create a more compelling online experience for their customers. Tools and technology have revolutionised data analytics, moving from simple demographic targeting, through to audience segmentation and behavioural targeting, to more highly specify the impact of our messaging and communication. Behavioural analysis tools for prospective and existing customers, can now give us unique insight into the intent of the site visitor. These tools accurately deliver a prediction on the likely behaviour of this individual based on previous web browsing and purchasing behaviour habits on the client’s website and others. Analysing this data then provides a huge amount of learning’s to optimise over time.
With such a competitive landscape, especially in the travel, finance and retail categories, developing a strategy around which messages are delivered to which prospect through multivariate creative testing, can impact positively on sales. The data and tools are the central pillar to enabling this targeting exercise. With this continually rejuvenating pool of information delivering a lot of power to the marketing team, clients can finely hone advertising initiatives to optimise existing advertising campaigns thereby attracting a better quality prospect. As a client’s database of behavioural attributes develops, we can take steps in real time to influence an individual’s activities to increase sales, prevent attrition, and build loyalty.
Webmasters and clients have the choice of a large number of tools and analytics suites. These range from the free version of Google Analytics, to a full enterprise-level analytics suite from Omniture costing many thousands of dollars. The analytics industry is rapidly consolidating. Large analytics vendors are procuring smaller specialist players, to not only add new features and functions, but also expand into broader, qualitative measurements, such as customer experience data.
The granularity and volume of the data being collected by clients is growing exponentially. With all this data and consumer insight, clients must develop a clear plan as to how they will implement a strategy around it. Tracking and measurement is one thing, making sense out of what’s being reported is another. It would be easy for a lot of clients to get overcome with the enormity of this task, as it’s not like they are sitting around all day with nothing to do. This is where agencies should come into play. Many have invested in qualified strategic and digital practitioners who understand the tools, the outputs and importantly what the data means to communications planning across all platforms. Some agencies however are not equipped to offer a solution in the space. They should think very carefully about the specialist competition that will be sniffing around their big accounts.
The football field is no longer level. Clients who embrace a data strategy early and leverage this skill base, will, without a doubt, gain significant advantages over their competition.
Author: Chris Riley, OMD
