In A Perfect Digital Marketing World...

Ampla’s Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint series is perfect for small and medium sized businesses, nonprofits, and digital marketers seeking a fresh perspective on digital strategy. This is part 3 of 7.

The previous installment of our Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint series discussed the importance of a digital audit. With that grunt work behind us, it’s now time to have a little bit of fun. Well, I supposed “fun” is an objective word because analytical-oriented folks may see this next phase as frightening. In fact, it might just give them the shakes because it involves the “B” word. That’s right, this blog is about brainstorming. Left-brain need not be present for this one.

There is One More Thing…

So, you’ve got your digital audit completed. Now, let’s paint the sky any color we want. Forget any of your previous marketing failures. Ignore your fears. This is truly a time for all ideas to be placed on the table. There will be a point where “there’s no wrong answer” will apply, but that time is not now. During this brainstorming time, never ask, “Am I thinking too big?” Instead ask yourself “am I thinking too small?”

Every few years, Apple will reveal something so amazing they usually set it up by saying, “There is one more thing.” It’s always something breakthrough that is a game-changer. These brainstorming sessions allow you to create something breakthrough for your organization’s digital marketing efforts.

Brainstorming Questions

From the digital audit, you understand the maturity of your digital marketing program and hopefully got a sense for what your competition is doing. At best, you’ve done a little bit of research to discover some of the newer or overlooked items in the digital marketing realm. Here are some questions to help nudge you in the right direction:

·What would make our website provide a better user experience?

·What digital channels have we not yet tapped in to? How would we get started in those channels?

·What do we really like about what our competition is doing?

·How can we improve our checkout process?

·How can we improve the user experience of our donation forms? (Nonprofit)

·How can we make our social media efforts “industry-leading?”

·What types of content do we need to develop and in what channels could we distribute this content?

·How can we better integrate our digital and traditional marketing efforts and messaging?

·What are some ways we can increase our email and social media audience?

·How can we drive more relevant traffic to our website?

·Are our current email designs “hot” or “not?” How can we improve them?

·What is a crazy digital idea that just might work?

Hopefully this non-exhaustive list will get your brain churning. At the completion of the brainstorming session, pair down the list to three good ideas. I’ve also seen where two brainstorming meetings occur; one that is only brainstorming, and one that narrows the list from the first meeting to the top 3 ideas. That second meeting weighs pros and cons of each idea created in the first one. Once the ideas are decided upon, prioritize them based on business goals, time and resources.

If you need help facilitating a brainstorming meeting, Ampla can help out. Otherwise, stay tuned for our next blog entitled, “The Unfair Reality of Digital Marketing,” that will cover considerations and prioritization of marketing tactics.

Add your tips for digital marketing brainstorming in the comments section!

In case you missed the other blogs in this series, here’s a link to each of them:

Part 1: Framework: Digital Strategy vs. Digital Tactics      

Part 2: A 30-Point Digital Audit Checklist

A 30-Point Digital Audit Checklist

Ampla’s Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint series is perfect for small and medium sized businesses, nonprofits, and digital marketers seeking a fresh perspective on digital strategy. This is part 2 of 7.

The first installment of our Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint series provided an overview on digital strategy versus tactics. This blog will review how to calibrate your strategy from the onset.

Why A Digital Audit is Important

Performing a digital audit can be a tedious time and resource drain. So why do it? A digital audit is important because it provides a ground-level understanding of the your company’s digital efforts. The audit helps to tell the story of where you’ve been and where you are now. It’s difficult to provide a benchmark of success for your organization’s digital marketing efforts if you don’t have performance baselines established. For example, how can you determine how much your email list size has grown if you don’t have a historic record of it’s growth? How can you tell if your SEM conversion rates are meeting your company objectives?

If never completed before, a digital audit allows you to document the digital marketing ecosystem that your company has created. It provides a snapshot of a window in time that can be expanded and updated. The audit also helps to tell the long-term story of “here was the baseline that we established in the audit, here’s what we did to improve, and here’s how we performed compared to the baseline.”

I’ve often seen businesses and nonprofits measure marketing success based on “industry-related” benchmarks. I would caution your organization to not measure itself against industry benchmarks as the main driver of success or failure of its efforts. It’s good to know industry benchmarks as a data point; however, it’s more important to set benchmarks against your own unique company’s performance. Better or worse, your company may not have industry average budgets, audience size, mix of customers/clients/donors, etc. Measure against yourself and strive to get better.

30 Point Digital Audit Checklist

At a minimum, I’d recommend creating a spreadsheet to track metrics over time. A thorough audit may look at hundreds of different data points to provide a super comprehensive picture, including competition comparisons. Some audit items might be very basic, while some more complex. Depending on the maturity of your organization, you might look at the previous 12 months worth of data, or previous 30 days for new companies.

For the sake of getting started, here’s a checklist of items that you might consider when putting your audit together:

1.   Current cost to acquire a new customer/client/donor online:

2.   Average revenue per transaction:

3.   Lifetime value of a customer/client/donor:

4.   Facebook audience size:

5.   Peak time of day your Facebook audience is online:

6.   Twitter audience size:

7.   Peak time of day your Twitter audience is online:

8.   Pinterest audience size:

9.   What email platform are you currently using?

10.  What are the limitations of this platform?

11.  Email list size:

12. Email conversion rate:

13.  Email open rate:

14.  Email click through rate:

15.   Revenue per thousand emails:

16.  Adwords click through rate:

17.   Adwords conversion rate:

18.   Bing Ads click through rate:

19.   Bing Ads conversion rate:

20.  Website sessions per month:

21.   Average time on website:

22.   Percentage of mobile vs. desktop visitors:

23.   Return on ad spend:

24.   Donation page abandonment rate (nonprofits):

25.    Shopping cart abandonment rate:

26.       Have you established consistent user names across social media sites?

27.        Have you set up accounts on social media sites that you aren’t using yet?

28.        Click through rates on display ads:

29.        Current net promoter score:

30.        Is website mobile optimized?

This list is not even the tip of the iceberg for a complete digital audit; however, it’s enough to get you started and expand for your own company. If you’d like a thorough audit performed, Ampla can assist with providing this valuable cornerstone for your digital marketing strategy. Just reach out to us!

The next blog in our Digital Marketing Strategy Blueprint series will reveal what happens once your digital audit is complete. Entitled, “In a Perfect Digital Marketing World,” the blog will reveal tips, tricks, and ideas on how to put a framework around creating and accomplishing big goals for your digital marketing.

Add any additional items to the digital audit checklist in the comments section!

In case you missed the first blog in this series, here’s a link to it: Part 1: Framework: Digital Strategy vs. Digital Tactics

Marketing Ops Is Now a Must-Have: The Six A's of Marketing Performance Management

This blog post originally appeared on MarketingProfs by Laura Patterson. 

The role of operations management was originally applied only to manufacturing processes and systems. With the proliferation of marketing automation tools and increased pressure from the C-Suite to prove the value of Marketing, marketing ops management is gaining traction; for all but the smallest organizations, it is now a "must have."

Our performance management study first explored the role of marketing operations (marketing ops) in 2007. It found that companies were beginning to explore adding marketing ops to the marketing function to help ensure that systems, processes, and tools were in place to support marketing performance measurement and management.

By 2009, the Lenskold Group and others began to incorporate questions about marketing ops into their studies. The 2009 Lenskold Group/MarketSphere Marketing ROI and Measurement Study uncovered a key business statistic that supports the benefit of implementing the marketing ops role: Companies with marketing ops in place were twice as likely (11% vs. 5%) to be high-performing companies—i.e., they report having highly effective and efficient marketing.

Five years ago, the scope of Marketing Ops was typically marketing project management and marketing governance. With marketing performance management moving to the front burner, especially for best-in-class marketers (those marketers earning top marks from the C-Suite for the ability to measure Marketing value, impact and contribution), the role of Marketing Ops is expanding.

The 2014 VisionEdge Marketing/ITSMA study found that the role of Marketing Ops now includes the following (in no particular order):

• Performance measurement and reporting
• Campaign analysis and reporting
• Technology and automation and pipeline management
• Budgeting and planning; financial governance and reporting
• Data management
• Workflow process development and documentation
• Project management
• Strategic planning
• Organization benchmarking and assessments
• Customer, market, competitive intelligence, research, and insights
• Analytics and predictive modeling
• Talent and skills development

Best-in-class (BIC) marketers can be characterized as value creators because their primary focus is on using data to make market, customer, and product/service decisions that create value for customers and shareholders. Accordingly, the following are top roles for marketing ops function among the value creators, in priority order:

1. Customer, market, competitive intelligence, research, and insights
2. Analytics and predictive modeling
3. Data management
4. Campaign analysis and reporting
5. Budgeting and planning; financial governance and reporting
6. Organization benchmarking and assessments

The emphasis on intelligence, insights, analytics, modeling, and data management makes sense, considering the focus on value creation. With the pressure increasing on Marketing to measure its value and contribution, Marketing Ops is the logical entity to champion and orchestrate the six A's of marketing performance management: alignment, accountability, analytics, automation, alliances and assessment.

To join these BIC marketers, focus on the following:

1. Alignment: We know with statistical significance that BIC marketers take a different approach to aligning marketing with the business. They connect marketing activities and investments to business results, and take their alignment efforts beyond the sales function. Marketing ops in these organizations facilitate the alignment process and oversee the development of a customer-centric marketing plan that ensures that the marketing investment portfolio supports measurable marketing objectives that will have a direct impact on the business.
2. Accountability: BIC marketers have a framework for establishing the metrics to measure and report on Marketing's value, impact, and contribution. They know which outcomes and metrics matter to the leadership team. Marketing ops drives the development of the framework and key performance indicators (KPIs). They manage the mechanics of measurement, perform the analysis, and publish the performance results. Marketing Ops translates marketing metrics into an actionable marketing dashboard that the leadership team and the marketing team can use to make strategic, tactical, and investment decisions.
3. Analytics: In today's fact-based environment, data and analytics are table stakes. Marketing organizations need to be able to quickly synthesize data and gain actionable insights. Marketers need the analytical muscle to build and use models to make smart investments and strategic decisions. Marketing Ops constructs and maintains an environment that enables Marketing to better use data and analytics.
4. Automation: The technology available to help Marketing measure and report on performance is extensive and growing. From marketing resource management to business intelligence to data management systems to reporting platforms to scenario analysis tools, Marketing Ops selects, deploys, and manages the automation and technology infrastructure to support the department. The deployment of a technology infrastructure, training, and change management falls under the auspices of Marketing Ops and serves as the big "I"—the infrastructure that Marketing needs to guide decisions, improve its capabilities, and prove its value.
5. Alliances: Much has been written about the need for Marketing to form strong, more explicit, alliances with Sales, IT, and Finance, as well as with the service and product functions. Marketing Ops is the conduit between Marketing, Sales, Finance, and the executive team. It forms and manages these alliances so everyone on the team is "rowing in the same direction." As part of its work, Marketing Ops should craft the operating level agreement that serves as the "rules and roles of engagement" for each of these partnerships and ensures that the liaisons from each group are included in appropriate meetings and decisions.
6. Assessment: Continuous improvement is at the heart of assessment and benchmarking. It can only be achieved within a culture where there is genuine concern, dedication, and a willingness among management and employees to improve. While the marketing executive sets the direction and vision for the team, Marketing Ops conducts the benchmarking and assessments to determine what standards, best-practices, processes, and skills are needed to help the marketing team realize its aspiration. Marketing Ops enables marketing organizations to become, and serve as, a center of excellence.

The role of Marketing Ops is expanding, especially within marketing organizations serving as value creators. Within these organizations, the marketing ops function is moving beyond campaign automation and financial governance to facilitate alignment, accountability, and agility.

Marketing Ops has the opportunity to enable Marketing to become more effective by developing and managing the processes for setting performance expectations, monitoring progress, and measuring results. By creating or expanding the marketing ops role and skill set to include performance targeting skills and process and technology optimization, as well as strategic capabilities to drive change, Marketing can reach the next step on its performance management journey.

Although it is the responsibility of every marketing professional to engage in performance management, Marketing Ops brings all of the components together to enable Marketing to optimize performance and to serve as a center of excellence.

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2014/25875/marketing-ops-is-now-a-must-have-the-six-as-of-marketing-performance-management#ixzz3BVfJSjcw