As another year begins we all find ourselves looking back and looking forward. Or, as we say in Marketing Science – analyzing and predicting.
We would also be the first to point out that predictive modeling relies on the analysis of historic data. Or, in regular-person speak – only by looking back can we look forward.
So, stick with us in our predictions for 2012 because as we focus on the future we will be taking some detours into the past.
Prediction #1
Social media measurement will focus less on ROI and more on brand affinity and purchase decisions.
Legend has it that once upon a time, in a land far, far away websites were once considered an expensive and optional marketing channel. (“This interweb thing is nothing more than a fad.”).
There was also a time when social media was viewed by many as a fad. 2008-2009 saw businesses start to take social media seriously. (“Maybe this Zuckerberg kid is onto something.”).
By 2010 executives wanted to know what their social media marketing spends were doing and social media measurement took off. The listening platform industry was born and several companies offered products that measured how much conversation was there about a brand, what were the key topics of conversation, and what was the sentiment of those conversations.
As social media marketing budgets grew, those same executives wanted to know how their spends were performing. And so 2011 became the year of social media ROI (return on investment). A prior post speaks more to this topic.
As we turn the corner into 2012 we predict that the focus on measuring ROI will lessen as companies stop wondering if social media has value and accept that it is now a fundamental part of the marketing mix. The measurement of social media will evolve into measuring its impact on brand affinity and purchase decisions. Social media will stop being viewed in a silo and seen as part of an end-to-end marketing mix.
Prediction #2
Companies will begin to focus on digital optimization programs for their main online properties in addition to their usual approaches to innovation.
In the earliest days of the internet testing meant building a whole new website, launching it, waiting while the audience learned their way around it and then comparing the new site’s performance to the old one.
Then technology evolved and it became possible to show some visitors the main website, and others (a virtual focus-group if you will) an alternate version of the site. Instant comparison was available and online A/B testing was born.
Statisticians will tell you that A/B testing can only tell you so much. Unless each webpage is identical except for one element such as a picture, then how can you tell why one page performs better (or worse) than the other? Enter multivariate testing. Imagine multiple A/B tests happening simultaneously on the same webpage, being controlled by some clever algorithms and analyzed by some even cleverer statistical models. That’s multivariate testing in a nutshell.
The end result is an online property can ascertain (within a very fine degree of statistical significance – for any math majors reading) which elements (words, pictures, color schemes and so forth) work best in which combinations on particular areas of a website.
In 2012, with the testing marketplace crammed with vendors offering solutions ranging from free to very costly, expect to see more organizations focused on optimizing via testing, rather than following their traditional methods of innovation.
Prediction #3
Web analytics will move more and more towards ‘digital analytics’ – a wider view of customer interactions, incorporating new data from a variety of sources.
In the early years of web analytics a company’s web analyst (Singular! There was often only one) looked at website data in isolation. How many visitors came to the website? What pages did they look at?
Meanwhile, the email marketing team were looking at their reports. And, the media buyers were looking at their reports and the brand managers were looking at surveys and questionnaire data. Then along came social media and the social media people were looking at their reports.
Today, it is possible to combine these quantitative and qualitative data sources with each other without the need to build costly, customized data warehouses. Many of these types of tools integrate with each other through plug and play APIs – it’s often as simple as giving one tool the other tool’s password.
This gives us the ability to look at one set of data through the lens of another. In practical terms this means answering such questions as ‘what are the most popular pages on the site for females?’ The web analytics system telling us the popular pages and survey data telling us the user’s gender.
In many cases it also gives us the ability to make these tools work with each other. For example, the web analytics tool can identify which users abandoned their shopping carts. It tells the email tool this, and the email tool can send an email to those users offering an incentive to complete the transaction. In turn, the web analytics tool will be able to tell if that email was successful.
As the prevalence of these data integrations increases and the cost decreases, expect to see more companies moving away from siloed web analytics and towards integrated ‘digital analytics’ in 2012.
This trend will also include more integration with non-digital data sources such as traditional business intelligence and data warehouse systems containing transactional data and customer information.
Prediction #4
Real time analytics technology will come into maturity and be leveraged in a wide variety of areas.
There’s generally been a lag between activity occurring on a web site and that activity showing up as data in a web analytics tool – a delay of anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours. The 15 minute delay was considered ‘real time’ and was the exclusive domain of some of the more expensive, customizable web analytics tools. Big companies with deep pockets were able to take advantage, but not everyone.
Near the end of 2011 Google Analytics (the most used, free web analytics platform in the world) unveiled true real time analytics. Within seconds of someone arriving on your website you can now see their presence and follow along with their activities.
This is very impressive and certainly has a wow-factor, but how useful is it?
Currently, few companies are making changes to their websites on a real-time basis. Many websites are only updated sporadically throughout the year. The one exception is content web sites: news, sports and weather sites for example. For these sites a 15 minute data lag has traditionally been acceptable, and editors are able to change headlines, pictures and story positions based on performance feedback from their web analytics tool. However, the cost of tools with this near real-time capability has limited this to major sites with serious budgets.
In 2012 expect to see smaller websites starting to make use of real-time analytics and making more on-the-fly updates. It won’t just be content sites. As real-time data becomes more ubiquitous expect to see it used in novel and innovative ways.
Prediction #5
Mobile measurement will expand rapidly as companies rely more and more on mobile as a key marketing channel.
There are zeros and ones all around us, all the time. Mobile data is everywhere and mobile internet use is growing rapidly and it can’t be stopped. Every day new statistics emerge: 77% of the world’s population has a mobile handset. 85% of new handsets have access to the mobile web. Even in the United States and the UK, 20% of internet users are mobile-only.
With numbers like these abound, it is surprising that for many organizations mobile measurement is still an afterthought. The major web analytics tools all offer some sort of mobile measurement, but it is often basic and not as customizable as their web offerings.
This gap in service offerings has led to several companies specializing in mobile measurement. However, in most organizations any analytics gathered from these tools is analyzed in a silo and not, as discussed in Prediction #3, integrated into a holistic digital analytics approach.
As apps continue to supplement websites, and as websites start to look better on mobile screens (more automatic resizing, less user pinching and zooming) expect executives (who’ve also read the stats on mobile usage) to want more details about the performance of their mobile sites. This demand will lead to a renewed focus on mobile measurement and analysis in 2012.
In general, all the measurement ideas outlined above are achievable by a variety of tools and products. In almost every case prices (and feature sets) range from free (basic) to very expensive (extremely customizable). The more tools available the better. Competition encourages innovation and it pushes prices down. The consumer wins. Free tools, even if their functionality seems limited, are a great way to dip your toes into the new waters of measuring things you haven’t measured before. Not only will it give you the confidence to explore a new measurement field, but, often it will help you build a business case for investing in a paid solution. (“Look at the progress we made with a free tool. Now imagine what we could do with a budget to spend!”).
Why not make it a new year’s resolution to measure at least one more thing than you measured last year? Add a new tool, try something outside your comfort zone. What do you have to lose?
