5 Keys to Increasing Marketing ROI

With the new year in sight, one of the pressing issues for managers is how to improve upon the marketing successes in 2011.  While acquiring new customers is an obvious growth strategy, marketers must also use analytics to unlock the real secrets behind marketing success. After all, your marketing dollars should stretch well beyond customer acquisition.

Often companies will focus on “net adds” as a success indicator, and fail to recognize the revenue growth potential by meeting the needs of their existing customers. I am not saying it is by design, but top-line growth is “sexier” to the management, and extracting that incremental dollar out of your existing customers needs a bit more work than designing a catchy marketing campaign – right analytics focus can help solve for the latter. The following 5 steps seem to have worked in my experience.

• Know your customers – demographics, location, spending habits, targeted wallet share, etc.
• Identify and create a portfolio of products that aligns with your customers’ needs and extends your brand beyond core product(s)
• Build relevant external partnerships to extend your products beyond the core competencies
• Target the products offerings to specific customer segments and avoid the “one-size-fits-all” approach to selling  
• Lastly don’t forget to utilize all the available customer touch points including, social forums, newsletters, email and others

These steps need to be repeated periodically to capture any changes in market, customer needs, etc. But, the key is to consistently evaluate (say, during quarterly reviews) your portfolio strategy on all of the above drivers and refine as needed.

Remember, it is much cheaper to manage a customer than acquire a new one!

Small Business Cloud Solutions

According to US Census bureau, there are more than 5 Million small businesses in the US with less than 20 employees and spanning all industry verticals including, services, manufacturing, non-profits, etc. 

With technology changing at a rapid pace and resource constraints at these organizations, need for “pay per use” technology solutions has been gaining momentum. In a recent Parks Associates survey (2011), 50% or more of the respondents indicated that they would prefer hosted solutions in one or more of;

• Online security
• Back-up and recovery
• Site hosting, design and management
• Email, hosted exchange and other

The market need is for a portfolio that can not only be branded and managed, but also is affordable to the target small business market. Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and others have several bundles/pricing, but with a large set of options available, small businesses are finding it difficult to make the right choices – although, that may only explain part of the hesitation and low adoption currently seen.

Based on my recent engagements, I believe service providers should;

• Understand the needs of the target market segments, since one size probably will "not" fit all
• Build a simple portfolio of products that does not require an expert to be evaluated
• Minimize the number of integration points from various solution providers
• Include business class customer support as a key component of the bundle

The challenge for the service providers is to understand that there are few small businesses that will buy or, can afford the bundle of services on offer, at least in the current environment. However, pricing a-la-carte for the client may not be ROI positive, given the nature of diversified services as outlined above. It will be interesting to see the business models evolve over the next 1-2 years, where an “a-la-carte bundle” is not encumbered by licensing and integration challenges, as well as, is cost-friendly to service provider and price-friendly to customers at the same time.

Mobile Internet Opportunity

Mobile solution across Wi-Fi networks is a territory that has yet to be explored from the perspectives of consumer experience, usage and revenue potential. There are several challenges that will need to be addressed as the right mobile strategies evolve that cater to the needs of all stakeholders – is there a mobile portal on the horizon? Here’s what we know thus far;

• Consumers are mostly interested in their favorable apps, social sites, weather, local events and deals, for the most part
• Device types are proliferating but also offer consistent pointers to consumer preferences (read iPhone type of smart devices and tablets)
• Advertisers are not sure of relevant pages for high-value ads
• Wi-Fi providers want a piece of the revenue (advertising & search) pie, however small that may be, but they also see mobile Wi-Fi as a marketing and branding channel
• Technology community is faced with creating an experience that caters to all these groups and still be scalable for relevance and locations (zip codes or other)
• And, the winner between downloadable apps and web based applications is yet to be decided

The solution probably lies in simplicity:

• Consumers want access so they can do whatever it is that they do on the web
• Local content and promotions appear to be the most viable long-term revenue drivers
• Branding and in-store coupons present another monetization channel to the service provider(s)

Signing in to mobile Wi-Fi internet during your next restaurant stop or hotel stay should not be that “boring.”

Approaching your portal strategy & design

Portals or business websites are an important element of consumer branding and engagement. Defining a portal largely depends on the business and its “key” goals. And, goals vary widely as we go from business to business. For instance, shopping cart for easy consumer purchase (amazon, eBay, etc.), content promotion (MSN, Yahoo, Aol, etc.), account management (CapitalOne, Verizon, etc.), or brand presence on the internet (corporate sites).

While apparently disparate, these goals have a fair amount of overlap and managers see it as such, which is the primary reason portals tend to be “one size fits all” hodge-podge of “stuff.” In other words, managers often try to cater to their “diverse audience,” instead of focusing on the core products/services that the audience comes to their portal for.

I am purposely staying away from calling out the specific site designs that are prompting me write this article, but I am sure, if you see it you will know!

I believe all portals serve 3 common goals, irrespective of their market focus:

1. Improve brand image – this is letting the consumers feel a sense of pride as and when they connect with your brand. The key to achieving that is to offer the best-in-class product/service, complemented by such features as; intuitive/easy navigation, simple user interface, access to FAQs & customer support, etc.
2. Educate – from bringing most current and relevant content to the audience, or educating about your company’s products and services.
3. Drive sales – make it easy for the consumer to complete the cycle of product research to order (be it online or offline) – don’t forget to complement this with the industry best post sales support.

Note too that the above goals are not mutually exclusive, but need to complement each other, with focus on the key corporate objective.

 These goals are sure to address many of the seemingly divergent goals. But, if done right, we have the opportunity to create a great touch-point for our brand that will bring the consumer back and refer us to their family and friends (http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2010/03/one-metric-to-define-website.html).

The audience is always diverse, but our product or service – by design – addresses a specific need. The more we focus on the need, the better we serve our “diverse audience” through our communication vehicles (such as portal!).

Scorecards - Adopt a More Dynamic Approach

Is our scorecard serving business needs of the moment? Scorecards are widely debated within organizations and what I have found is that scorecards end up reflecting personalities rather than business imperatives. We argue and sell the concept of a consistent set of metrics and a standard format, so business can be monitored and decisions can be made. But, I have found that the theory of standard format and set metrics only says that “I don’t want to rake my brain on a frequent basis and make decisions dynamically.” There are a very few businesses that do not pose a new challenge every day – some days we are fixing what is broken, on the others, we may be finding ways to optimize the operations, yet another, we may be trying to find new ways to grow the business. So, why should the scorecard always look the same?

There are ways, a lot of managers pretend to get by that problem – add more metrics to the scorecard, make the font small to fit on one-page (often as a result of the former), etc. But, do they solve the tactical business challenges that are discussed in the review meetings every day/week/month? A better approach would be to identify what metrics are meant to be the health indicators of the business and what metrics need to be monitored for making tactical decisions by pointing out wins/challenges. To achieve this, we need scorecards that are not repetitive indicators of our performance, instead can dynamically capture the data points that help executives hone-in on the issue and make a call quickly during the review meetings.

I am not suggesting we dump the old formatted view of our metrics, but instead, we create one that speaks to our most current challenge (today, this week, etc.) – which retail department is moving ahead and which is hurting, which promotions worked for us, how do we help our dealers and vendors be more successful, what helps the consumer buying decision, how do we grow revenue to meet this months targets, etc. This slight change can help surface underlying issue, as for example; With stagnant sales – increasing the share of consumer’s wallet is tough in these times, but bringing more consumers in through the door is still a viable growth strategy. If we can dynamically demonstrate the value of our key projects through the right scorecard, it might be just that much easier to gain executive approval and show the results as they come in.

Building an analytics culture!

Organizations apply analytics in mostly ad-hoc manner, often to answer a query from management about business performance. But, companies with more advanced analytics capabilities apply the models to unearth value in their businesses and create competitive advantage.

Since I am working with organizations with less than robust analytics capabilities, I find answering questions as the more prevalent reason for looking into the data. However, the bigger challenge with such organizations is the lack of, what I call the “analytics culture” or, the mindset for data-driven decision making. There may be several reasons that organizations are handicapped on this front, and in my consulting experience, I have found the following three factors to be extremely helpful in alleviating the problem to a large extent.

• Management support – senior leadership needs to support investments in analytics function and insist on data-driven decision-making.
• Knowledge of relevant metrics – business unit heads should take a critical look at the metrics that drive their business and not just the ones that make them look good in weekly reviews.
• Ownership of data models – a data model owned and managed by a neutral team within the company is a priceless resource to managing business performance, finding opportunities and enabling the data-driven decision making.

 I have come to believe that analytics culture needs to be established, supported and nurtured to really benefit from the insights. Where does it sit, who runs it, who needs to be hired in, what processes need to be in place, what are the key metrics, how is the accountability defined, etc.

First answer the question – what is my organization’s goal? Do we sell widgets online? Do we engage users to drive offline sales? Do we push content based on user preferences? Etc. While revenue is the bottom-line for however you look at a business, knowing the above goals will help us qualify the right set of metrics and analysis.

If I look at the business as an outsider, I believe for any business to succeed, it needs to build the analytics function outside other functional groups, simply to ensure the neutrality and to prevent the analysts from being encumbered by business unit goals.

The larger the organization, the more imperative it is for its management to recognize the subtle impacts of not following this policy. Often, marketing and data reporting teams would be asked to provide business analysis. This may not be the best strategy – marketing has personal interest in showing that the conversions are working well, and reporting is often too technical to understand the nuances and make educated recommendations for business improvements. Either is not an ideal strategy to provide a neutral view and critique into the business performance!

Are there lessons learnt in your organizations that you would like to share? Feel free to post your views below.

Online analytics for B2B business

Success of web strategy in a B2B environment depends on generating “qualified” leads for the sales teams. Although, growing brand awareness, increasing user engagement, drawing qualified applicants, etc. are also equally important, yet ignored, aspects that require increased focus. However, the data trends may not be as apparent as is the case with B2C online analytics. Hence, online analytics for B2B organizations need to be organized around the 3 guiding principles of Measurement, ROI and Management Communication.

In one of my recent engagements, I was working with a client to build an effective web analytics strategy and framework - the key was to monitor and achieve positive results on the above goals. The project success was mainly achieved by addressing the above 3 guiding principles; in that, once the metrics were identified that tracked the progress towards the established goals, it was a question of building frameworks for models that could define ROI and management commitment to effectively communicate the need and benefits of an effective online strategy.  

Measurement – Google Analytics is one of the more popular analytics implementations among B2B businesses, which helps measure the key metrics that most organizations would need to understand their consumers and site usage. The key is to identify process of lead conversion between traffic to the site and a successful sale (read customer conversion). For this reason, it is important that the scorecard shows the traffic, engagement and sales metrics, from web and sales analytics packages, respectively. I have also recommended revenue metrics, such as, revenue per visit, revenue per lead, etc., based on average sales to quantify web traffic.

ROI – models and business analysis capabilities help establish the value of traffic to the site, prioritize investments and measure returns.

Management Communication – effective scorecards and metrics reporting helps senior management see the value web strategy drives for the business, however long the lead conversion process takes. Metrics showing engagement growth, positive reviews, more applicant inquiries, etc. are all good indicators of a successful web strategy, and should be included as part of regular business updates.

Also, important is for the business to build data management tools such that web traffic and sales success can be correlated for clear measurement, ROI and management communication. Last, but not the least, hiring the right skill set and assigning the team to the right organization will be critical factors in achieving success with B2B goals.