Analyze THIS

A few years ago, everyone knew they need an online presence. Companies started taking their offline marketing budget and throwing it online marketing. Web agencies flourished and big ad agencies scrambled to make alliances with smaller web companies to outsource the work to.

All marketing departments were getting the directive:
Put up a website, make some banner ads, get the top search engine ranking, send some emails. "Hell, send a LOT of emails."

Last year it went more like this:
Do some promotions, put up some mini-sites, make banner ads to promote the mini-site, do viral marketing. "Hell, does anyone even know what viral marketing is?"

What marketers like about the web is that you can track user behavior. They like being able to say that a million people watched their video on YouTube. And it does indicate a higher level of interest than say, a million people seeing your billboard on Wilshire Blvd. However, it doesn't tell you much more than that. You don't know why they watched it, whether they sent it to a friend, what they said in the email to that friend, or whether (ultimately) they're more likely to be a customer.

Think of it like a car lot. You've got cars sitting there and people drive by. Sometimes they stop. Sometimes they park get out, come into the office, tell the salesman what kind of car they want to buy and actually drive off the lot with it. Would you attribute any of that behavior to your sign on the side of the road? No.

Would you want to know the background of each customer with the product - their exposure, beliefs and feelings - AND the exact details of their conversation your salesperson? The ones who bought, the ones who said they'd come back and the ones who showed no interest? Yes!

So the web has given marketers a lot of exposure and a bunch of numbers, and even some interaction. How many people just drove by. How many stopped. How many bought cars. Unfortunately, it isn't telling them very much about their marketing and they know it. Now, the marketers' bosses want to know "What's our ROI on web marketing?" because they've been told that everything can be tracked. But it's not like they could ever measure their ROI BEFORE on billboards, print ads, radio and TV commercials.

So analytics becomes very scientific. You have to form hypothesis - known as use cases - what do you think people are going to do? Track it, find out. Make educated guesses as to what's happening. Tweak it and track it again. See, analytics aren't to show ROI, analytics are to improve your offering to your customer. Analytics are what brings the marketer into the user lifecycle.

Lifecycle marketing 101

Most agencies are still doing one-off marketing. We make websites! We make banners! We make ads! And even worse, companies are hiring them to do it. So you think maybe the marketing managers and brand managers hiring these agencies are thinking about integrated marketing and working these pieces into their user lifecycle. Not so. They're paying another company to produce web analytics that don't tell them anything valuable. And the agency isn't helping them! They are making decisions about whether to continue a website or campaign based on them. And the agency is letting them! They're leaving out email and letting an entirely different department make those marketing decisions. And the agency isn't stealing that business!

Selling is not a one time act. You don't knock on a person's door and convince them to buy something that they've never heard of before. Doesn't happen. They first have to read about it, hear about, see their neighbor using it, and be asked to buy it (maybe many times) before they even consider it. That's the acquisition phase.

Once they've considered it, you're in very valuable territory and this is where most marketing strategy breaks down. You have a captive audience that wants to know more (even if they aren't aware of it). All you have to do is push them past that point to convert. That's the conversion phase and it's the most crucial and the most difficult.

After that, a lot of marketing strategy disappears. We sold a widget, yay! Let's celebrate! Why stop there? Why not sell a hundred more widgets to the same person, or better yet, get THAT person to sell a hundred widgets for you by being your evangelist? That's the retention phase. All together, it's the user lifecycle.

The user lifecycle is a living growing thing that changes constantly for each customer. A marketing strategy has to be able to tailor it's approach at any given moment based on the feedback (analytics) about the consumer's behavior. Banner analytics change the website, web analytics informs email and other CRM pieces, data from those emails in turn feeds changes to the website, and the revised website dictates the content of the next round of banners. It's all interconnected. It's not easy so think BIG and start SMALL.