Digital Gidget's Debut

What an incredible journey and evolution.

The Digital World simply continues to evolve as we continue to understand, better, what kind of data we want to extrapolate from our digital marketing efforts, how best to analyze that data and ultimately, how to apply our knowledge in an effort to optimize the customer experience with our brand.

Likewise, the journey towards completing my M.S. Integrated Marketing and Communications (IMC) program has undoubtedly been an evolution. Beyond solidifying my foundation in brand strategy, I have adopted a deeper comprehension of Digital Analytics, I've re-ignited my passion for optimizing a customer's experience and I've elevated my tool-kit in a way that is super exciting for me and my current/future-marketing self.

Turning now to Web Analytics, we'll see that the tools and our approach to measurement ALSO continues to evolve.

The purpose of this blog is to explore the role and impact of Web analytics, social advertising and SEO/SEM in online marketing. 

Web Analytics

Web Analytics will help improve your site and customer experience. By creating a tag that is embedded in your site's HTML code,  that collects data and information about your website's traffic (visitors) and packages it up to send through a platform 

(like Google Analytics); you're able to create a report with actionable data that helps you to optimize your customer's experience on your site, which can be measured and optimized, repeatedly, to meet the needs of your customer as they evolve.







Digital Analytics

Digital Analytics is the evolution of web analytics to include all of your digital properties, so you can interpret, and optimize, the customer experience across all of your digital marketing efforts, whether paid, organic or social. And, understanding how all of that supports or interacts with the customer experience, offline.

Social Advertising

Generating, targeting and delivering marketing communications on a social platform.

SEO/SEM

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is part of Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Both aim at increasing your visibility in Search Engines (such as Google or Bing!)

All of these are components of online marketing and each has it's own set of metrics and goals that help establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that should ultimately support business objectives and the priorities you've set for your website.

Website Priorities

This is actually the best place to start.

1. Why do you have a website?
2. What should it be accomplishing?
3. What are the top 3 priorities of your site? 

Establishing the Business Objectives should take place before setting up or looking at web analytics platforms or any of the other supporting tools.

Is this anything at all like brick & mortar?

When I was a teen I actually couldn't wait to get a job. Like many teenagers, I had several different jobs over the period of my Junior year of high school and into my college years. I guess I was just trying to find a "niche" that suited me and my personality. Besides bringing in some cash to spend on clothes and Bartles & Jaymes, I was mostly looking for the perfect balance of work and having fun.

Ultimately, I realized that I truly enjoyed providing customer service and making people happy. I was super fortunate to have worked for employers like "Mimi's Cafe", "The American Funds"  and "The Teddy Bear Station" (don't even get me started on Teddy Ruxpin...). 

All of those experiences provided incredible customer service training and/or instilled in me the importance of making sure the customer had what they needed whenever they interacted with the brand. And, no, they didn't refer to it as "the brand" back then, but that's really what it all meant.

"Back then" (oh Lord..I'm saying "back then..."), we had real-time customer accolades or complaints. Sometimes, "feedback" was simply reflected in a generous tip left at the table and sometimes "social shares" came in the form of loudly proclaiming  "TIP stands for 'To Insure Promptness' and therefor there will be no tip left for you." 

I also did my best to make sure the customer had whatever they needed just as efficiently and accurately as possible, whether that be their hot meal delivered just as soon as it came out of the kitchen, their bank-wire transferred before the close of business or, their Teddy Bear adorned with the coolest Teddy-Sweater in stock. That was the agreement I made with my employer, with myself and with my customer. As an employee, I agreed to get it right, to figure out a way to make it right and to do my best to make the customer smile.

The major difference between my jobs then and now in digital marketing and e Commerce is  that I no longer see customers face-to-face. I'm literally still just as eager to get it right by optimizing content and our shopping cart experience, I still strive to get a customer smile on our social media platforms and I care a lot about the conversion. 

At a minimum, we are delivering the ultimate level of convenience of serving the info to them, the way they want to consume it and however they choose to do-so; on desktop or mobile.

It all boils down to making sure the customer gets what they came for and leaves happy enough to tell their friends about and return again, often. So yes, I think digital marketing and e commerce are super-a lot like brick & mortar.