This post isn’t about Brexit. Your views about Brexit shouldn’t be a barrier. Nor whether you regard Dominic Cummings as a hero or villain. There are huge ideas for Marketeers hidden inside Dominic’s January 2nd 2020 Blogpost.
Actually Dominic is assembling ideas rather than generating all of them. Other people had original ideas that he draws on. The ideas themselves have nothing to do with politics. So business should be rushing to investigate these ideas. Government and policy making is merely another application area.
I have to warn you there isn’t a ready to go solution (oven ready or not). But there is a hugely valuable chat that’s worth starting. Watch the video and drop your details in the box below – I’ve got a number of ideas for improvement and would like to start that chat.
Once a business is making sales, improving conversion rate is obviously attractive. And Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is a great way of tackling this.
But there is preparation required to make CRO successful. Before you have to commit to a CRO program. And before you can decide what order the various projects should be tackled in.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some great tools. From the Google Experiments Framework through to specialist tools like Optimizely and VWO. And marketing agencies to help. But they can’t define the business context for you. They can’t decide what is most important. Or what the criteria for success would be.
Think of it like employing a new staff member.
Before you get anywhere near the interview, and stuff that varies with the particular job.. You need some context, some criteria. You need to prepare
what you want them to do.
how you’ll judge success or failure
and a candidate shortlist.
It’s the same with Conversion Rate Optimization.
Google Analytics is a great tool for preparing, and setting context It’ll help you identify:
the candidates for optimization.
what the baseline is.
what an acceptable improvement goal would be
And inform the wider business discussion
why improving a particular step is important?
whether AB split testing (best of two) is appropriate?
or we should do more complex multivariate testing?
how the improvement goal would impact the broader business context?
I’d be happy to have a chat about putting the foundations in place. So you’d be in a much better position to set the context for a successful CRO program.
You can have the freedom of designing sandcastles as kid.. if you want..
Does the business executive in you sometimes long for the sense of freedom you had on the beach as a kid?
Where you could build the sandcastles you wanted.
Straightforward, or more elaborate, exploring options as you wished..
Pursuing your ambition…your vision
But few people working to make a business great, needing to use Analytics, will feel they’ve got much of that long lost summer freedom…
You see many people will suggest..
– Your data and reports are a result of the technology you’re using? [picture of high security prison fences]
– Proposing change is risky – particularly if the board could identify you as the culprit? [warning signs..]
– It’s safer to stick with what’s working (supposedly) than disrupt it all in the hope you get easy to understand reporting.
But what if talking to the right people could make all these imagined barriers disappear?
Setting everyone free to develop and realise their vision of what the reports and the business could grow into?
Using simulations to produce real Google Analytics reports..
Using this reality to excite people about opportunities. Stopping Google Analytics being part of the prison wall keeping your
Is look and feel the determinant of a great Dashboard?
Well the first dashboards had a very different look and feel (picture of carriage).
They were the wooden or leather boards on the front of the carriage that stopped the mud and stones hitting the driver..
And as the meaning of the word changed car designers worked to achieve a classic look and communicate information effectively
And of course the modern marketing dashboard is nothing if it doesn’t communicate information effectively.
Now look and feel is obviously an important contributor to that… but I’d argue that for any marketing agency your experts
are your greatest differentiator.. The source of the agency’s creativity… the major reason the client picked your agency..
Now your experts gain power from their expertise, and clients want the human connection – not least to answer questions.
So shouldn’t the marketing dashboard for your clients also share the personality and expertise of your people?
How does an Excel spreadsheet do that?
Or a web page full of pretty pie charts?
Of course an obvious answer might be – that’s why we have a monthly meeting…
But how often have you found corporate demands made it impossible for all the people interested in the report to attend.
Deprived of personality your dashboard can become another dry report circulated to the busy executive, so your visibility reduces.
So what kind of content would best share your people’s expertise and get clients excited?
Shouldn’t the meaning and information content of dashboard be changing once again! At least in part to help agencies build better relationships with their clients?
Welcome to a video about online Dashboards that isn’t like the others..
For a start – there’s no visuals of the dashboard…which’ll probably seem odd…
But showing you a screen of what your dashboard could look like would be sensible
only if we’d decided our dashboard should limit your choice to our ideas…
And we think that’s daft.
And we could have shown you pictures of charted trend lines & pie charts…
but we figure that wouldn’t is innovative or worthy of your time…
The different approach we’ve taken is more like the way wordpress and web “themes”.
So it’s not light or dark – but any look and feel you want..
Anything that can be shown on the web (audio, video) and yes even text!! if it makes sense.
No fancy drag and drop editor to stifle creativity.
No pretence of self service, forcing you to find staff capable of being training and accepting yet more workload.
Instead powerful, flexible automated cleansing and customisation of data unlimited by spreadsheet like functionality.
So why not grab some paper, doodle some ideas and arrange a chat about possibilities…
opening up the prospect of really innovative dashboards for you and your clients…
Are your marketing reports mute like grainy silent mime?
Quick extract of Marcel Marceau..
You see charts / spreadsheets aren’t anywhere near as good as Marcel Marceau was at conveying meaning through mime.
Any accompanying commentary won’t be in a repeatable form. Chances are it’s verbal via phone conference, meetings, Q&A. And you know how easily messages get lost as these get sidetracked.
I’m not advocating writing it all out longhand. For many purposes tables and charts are much better. They make it much easier to communicate. But where do you put the soundtrack (the expansive explanations that are really needed)?
Many important corporate stakeholders won’t get to the meeting or hear you. All they have is the report without the sound track..
Worse – people who heard the sound track and thought they understood – will try and explain, putting their spin onto it.. Your clarity, pearls of wisdom get lost… misrepresented even..
And what happens when your contacts are off sick or leave? Evidence of your insights, understanding & hard work are lost to your client.
It’s broken. Ridiculous. It shouldn’t be like this. Not in this day and age?
