At a recent networking event, one of the speakers said something that really resonated with me around companies spending big on digital marketing activities. To paraphrase, they advised: “Park social media and get your website sorted out first!”
When you look at the key metrics that some digital marketing campaigns are based upon, they are often about driving traffic to a site, with some sophisticated campaigns being more targeted around conversion – to complete a transaction, sign up for something or buy a product. But all of this activity is useless if your website is not built to catch the traffic and deliver a consistent experience across all devices and browsers. These interactions also need to be well integrated with your back-end customer relationship management (CRM) and transaction processing systems. And, the activity should result in a pleasant and hopefully personalized experience that enhances customer engagement, whether they are a first time or a long time visitor.
This got me thinking about how to create the right foundation for digital marketing activity. A recent McKinsey Global Survey highlighted that CEOs and other senior execs are increasing their support of digital strategies and programs – which is a great thing, as their sponsorship is one of the key drivers of a successful program. The survey also revealed themes around branding consistency, advanced customer targeting, leveraging big data and analytics as well as personalized information or targeting of offers, which speaks to the customer intimacy aspect that I mentioned in a prior post. But, if you don’t have the right platform to build upon to unlock the power of these features, you may end up delivering a bunch of new visitors to your digital front door that will get, at best, a bland generic experience or, at worst, a confusing and frustrating one, which may negatively impact your brand.
The key contributors to customer engagement failure, aside from the support of senior leadership in the business, mainly revolve around the IT systems that support this activity and the quality of the data. It is imperative that companies have a solid technology foundation to help build and evolve their digital strategy and extend customer engagement. A recent Harvard Business Review blog asks the same question – “Do You Have the IT For the Coming Digital Wave?” In most cases, when it comes to the infrastructure, analytics and capabilities that companies need to be successful, the answer to that question is “not yet.”
Finally, as the old adage from Peter Drucker says: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it!” The same is true for your digital strategy – those key metrics matter. What corporate strategy or goal does your digital strategy tie back to? What measures are important to track the effectiveness of your spend? Are your systems wired up to track these metrics? Can you see the effectiveness of your efforts and results across your customer base? Are you building “raving fans” or just pouring your marketing dollars down the drain in the pursuit of more “likes” than your peers?
The key takeaway for me is two-fold:
- Ensure you have the right technology foundation in place that can flex to your future digital needs and create a clear view of your customer engagement model; and,
- Get clear on how your digital marketing efforts tie back to your business strategy and vision, and work out the measurements that matter.
If you address these issues, you’ll be better positioned to reap the results of an effective digital marketing campaign.
