thefunnel

Before you even start looking at different web analytics vendors you should first figure out what you want to measure and why (your measurement objective). Your objectives obviously need to be connected to the higher level business objectives, but they also need to prove the value of what you’re doing on the web, otherwise your analytics system might be short lived. So talk to your stakeholders to figure out what is important to them. If they can’t articulate this you could try to educate them, but it could also mean that deep analytics is not perceived as critical enough, so it might be better to go light. Secondly you need to create a robust process to manage your measurement system. If you don’t have the resources and no one can be convinced to follow the process, the risk for failure is significant, regardless of what technology you’re using. When you have the process in place it’s best to first do a small pilot for testing purposes, using a free ware or another low cost alternative. Thirdly, select the tool. In selecting the tool depending on objectives and resources you could go either the enterprise or the specialized route. If you select an enterprise tool, such as Omniture, Unica, Webtrends, Core Metrics or Google analytics, you’ll end up with a very data rich environment, but it will also require you to have resources, money and skills to get everything configured the way you want it and that you (or your stakeholders) can understand what is going on. On the other hand if you select a specialist tool you have a lot to choose from,  it will be inexpensive, configuration will be relatively easy, but you’ll probably be limited to what’s in the tool. Here’s a few examples of some specialized tools. Google analytics – particularly good if you want to combine analytics with paid search (Adwords). Crazyegg – for building heatmaps and tracking clicks. Woopra – tracking, statistics and analysis with a plug-in for WP blogs. Mixpanel – provides real time tracking. Quantcast – provides a way to see / estimate your site demographics. Clictale – watch a video of your site users experience at the fraction of the price compared to Tealeaf. Kissmetrics – is a fairly new product focusing on easy tracking of funnels and conversions.

 ”What is your management style” or “Explain your management style”, is a question that’s often asked in interviews, at management training courses or just generally. How do you best reply to this question in a structured and concise way? One way is to break down your organizational philosophy into a few sub elements, and then address each of these separately.  Examples of these sub elements are Leadership style, Performance Expectations, Image, People and Executive Commitment. Each of these in turn can then be broken down even further. For example your performance expectations could be either Easy, Realistic, Stretched, High or Very High. Let’s say that your style is Stretched for you and your organization. Next you have to articulate what Stretched Performance means to you. It could be defined as: Ambitious, Plan is the Plan, There’s Life Outside Work, Alignment, Loyalty is Rewarded, and Clear Rules. Another example: People. What kind of people do you want to hire to your team? Value, Good, The Very Good, The Best or The Ninety-Ninth Percentile? Let’s say your philosophy is hiring The Best. You could define The Best as: Professional, Committed, Team Players, Positive Intention and with a Long Term Perspective. And what about your Leadership style. Do you Lead, Manage or Empower? If your dominant style is let’s say empowering, what does it mean for the dimensions of Professionalism, Experience, Street Visdom, Task, Relationship, Respect, Trust, and Achievement?

Depending on the company PR can mean Public Relations or Press Relations, but in the context of this article it’s defined as trade press relations. Trade press relations have always been a “soft” marketing science, because the return of a PR investment is often not immediately fully visible, and PR like advertising often works in the background changing customer’s perceptions, rather than directly driving leads into the funnel. Having said this, there are many things that can be measured, and also digital marketing has added a new dimension to the measurement PR.

There are three parties in PR, the company, the subject matter influencers (editors) and the readers. The simplest measurement of PR is through the amount of coverage received in targeted media. A one level deeper metric is to also assess the type of coverage on some kind of “positiveness” scale based on being on message, or based on the type of coverage, such as case studies, customer testimonials, product news or awards.  Another metric is counting the amount of coverage, but then comparing this against the coverage for the competition. By doing this one arrives at something called PR mind share. Mind share is simply the amount of coverage received as % of total coverage (total being your + competitors) in your targeted publications for the products you compete. This metric can for obvious reasons be a hard sell if you’re a small one product line company, comparing yourself against a multi product line large company, due to brand halo effects. For PR in print publications the amount of PR coverage is sometimes compared to the equivalent cost of advertising for the same space, multiplied with some factor based on the notion that PR is more credible that advertising, but industry experts seem not have found an agreement if this is a good measurement or not.

Digital marketing and web 2.0 in particular have brought some new positive measurement practices for PR, and some new opportunities, but also some challenges. On the “what value does PR provide”, PR SEO with its potential to increase web site inbound link equity is a something that PR professionals should become familiar with. In addition, how much PR is driving web site traffic in general, can be easily measured, and if web site engagement activities are valued and also traced to its source, this can provide another way of estimating ROI for PR. The largest change for PR is probably the fact that the third part of the PR puzzle – the reader, who used to be a passive recipient (or probably not entirely passive but there was no way knowing what the reader thought,  has now also become a contributor through social networks, blogs, review and comment boards. This has completely changed the landscape of PR, and PR professionals now need to carefully monitor what is being said about them in numerous places, participate and respond as required. Companies are forced to move into the area of reputation management, whether they like it or not, depending on the type of discussions taking place.