Interactive talent - Integrated Marketing

As I sift through job postings and aggregate all the requirements listed by companies it becomes apparent that many companies need help in identifying what it is they need from an Interactive leader. Yes, you see the common required skill sets regarding online media, strategic planning, etc but what I find lacking is the vision for finding a leader who is truly business minded and integrated in other channels of marketing.

No longer can you pick a Interactive leader solely based on his/her digital experience. Typically, Interactive agencies work in silos with no real business analytics to back up their strategy. Finding someone who understands strategy, web analytics, social media, mobile, UX, lead generation, SEM ,persona studies, CRM, ecommerce, brand awareness, and someone who has been in a agency environment with top clients can be a daunting task depending on the market you are in. Not to mention finding someone who has the INTEGRATED and business experience it takes to plan and execute a fully integrated 360 degree initiative. What about the other extras? Does s/he author a blog? Publish industry content? Influence the online community? Can this person roll up their sleeves and get down and dirty into web analytics and segmentation?
For the most part, in this role, you tend to see a sales-type person. Not that there is anything wrong with sales (our business IS sales) but you need someone who can walk-the-walk. Not just talk a good game. Your business depends on it.
The operations side of this is for another chapter but I believe I have raised some awareness for the would-be hiring companies out there.
God speed!

Stewart Severino
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Interactive Agencies Don't Get Twitter

It's funny that the 'experts' in our industry talk a big game when it comes to Social Media but so few actually live it for themselves. If you are a client, take a look at the roster in your digital agency. Google their names or simply look them up on Twitter or FriendFeed, or any other social platform. I bet over 95% of your results come up with very little to no usage in those accounts. Yes, we are all busy but if you are not intimately involved with these platforms you cannot truly appreciate their value nor gain the trust of your client.

Stewart Severino
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Non-ecommerce sites - web analytics

It has been difficult providing metrics on a non-ecommerce site because, aside from Goals you need industry benchmarks to compare to. Unfortunately, there isnt much out there so you would have to improvise with what you have. Google Analytics makes this very easy and you can provide your client or yourself some real context and understanding behind these metrics.

To put things into perspective, determine what are people looking for when they come to your site.

What are your goals or KPI's ?

Are you looking for visitor loyalty? Time On Site? Page depth? 

By the way, all of these should be part of your KPI's. If you have determined additional metrics thats great too but dont go overboard. It is very easy to report on data but it is entirely different to be able to provide context to that data.

Let's take a look at Visitor Loyalty - 'how often do people visit my site?'

You can see by this image below that not many people come back to the site. So thats step 1 in identifying an issue.

Set a goal for the number of visits you expect for a time period (each week, month, qtr, etc), pick one and make sure your Visits are realistic, compare to the chart above. Compare your performance over time to ensure progress is being made or not made. Either way you can now guage what is happening on your non-ecommerce site. Speaking of comparissons, Google Analytics has a great benchmarking tool. Make sure you choose the industry that most resembles yours when benchmarking.

The image above shows what I believe to be a pretty common thread amongst non-ecommerce sites, particullary branding sites.

Their 1 time visits are pretty high but their return visits are pretty poor. Now that you have focused in on what is going on you can begin making changes to your site in order to increase Visitor loyalty. Give visitors a reason to come. 

If your Bounce rate is contributing to your low Visitor Loyalty, which I am sure it is, try to guide the visitor from page to page. For example; If a visitor lands on a page with a news story, try paginating the story so you continue the meaty part of the story on page 2.

This will help decrease your Time On Site and your Bounce rate. It will also increase your page depth.

WOW! All that with one little tweak from a simple lesson you learned from really looking at your data.

Hope this was helpful.

Stewart Severino
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