Corporate Communications – untouched by web analytics and insight

SEO
August 12, 2009

Having a website is important everyone knows this. However, don’t be fooled that those that don’t generate revenue – aren’t important!

industrial-142 I’ve been working in this game for some time now and yes as the client list will show I’ve worked mostly in retail banking. Wow exciting I hear you say. Well to be honest yes it is. Its difficult to get things done because of the massive legal and compliance restrictions (some totally unnecessary in my humbled opinion). However, it has worked well and we’ve delivered insight and actionable results for many of our clients. They are able to see which marketing is working for them in terms of propensity to purchase, brand awareness and cross sales.

What about those sites which are non-transactional? Which don’t have corporate objectives? Which are there simply because the world’s perception is that they NEED TO BE THERE! If you don’t have a web presence then people consider you to be a non-entity. The internet is where most people do their research and word of mouth now includes the very popular term “social networking”. How much more interested in an organisation (or individual) would you be if they have positive recommendations on linkedin.com or if their facebook profile didn’t include photos of them being drunk every weekend (or in some cases announcing to the world that they were going to pull a ’sickie’ because of a hangover).

So…

Where do we start?

Firstly, look at the site and answer the following questions:

1. Do you have an analytics solution in place?

2. Is there a preferred analytics solution on other sites within the group?

a. if so the implement and find a consultant to do this if in-house resource is unavailable.

b. if not and budget available do an effective vendor selection project

c. if not and budget isn’t available then find out whether implementing Google Analytics or Yahoo Web Analytics (if you know someone within the YWAC Network) is a viable alternative.

goals

So then what do you want to measure? Now this may sound easy but it is even easier to get wrong. Objectives are best if they are tied to your corporate objectives. So you can say. “Ok, they company needs to increase sales by 10% in the first half of the year. “ Great that’s something that you can use to your advantage. You look at your sales statistics and say:

1. Sales via the online channel have increased by “x” percent (hopefully over 10%) in the first half of the year.

2. Marketing effectiveness has improved by 25% meaning that the marketing cost per product is reduced by “x” and the total saving is “x” which can be transferred into second half of the year where we will make more cost savings.

Remember that we’re all working for accountants at the end of the day.