Digital marketing plays a vital role in the marketing strategy of the industrial sector (Deiss and Henneberry, 2017) (Ryan, n.d.). According to the total marketing budgets, the industries invest 26% in the activities of Digital Marketing (Järvinen and Karjaluoto, 2015). When compared with the traditional marketing strategy, digital marketing approach has many added advantages such as cost effectiveness, enhanced customer behavior and it brings motivated results (Ahuja, n.d.). Throughout the digital marketing strategy, the customers can easily interact with companies. So the performance will be increased. In this strategy, “Web Analytics” is an essential parameter. It can be described as a tool for measurement, analysis, collection and reporting the status of internet data.
In an organization, it is very difficult to measure digital marketing’s effectiveness (Hudson, 2018) (Marketo.com, 2018). The main purpose of Web analytics is to understand the usage of website in an optimized way. The Web analytical tool is used to collect the data regarding the website traffic source such as advertisements, e-mail, social links and search engines. When the customer visits the website, the customer behavior is analyzed and it will be stored in a meaningful format. This web analytical data will be applied for measuring the responses given by online customers. To enhance the growth of digital marketing strategy towards business, web analytics is a very essential tool. The main aim is to analyze the usage of analytics in Digital Marketing strategy. Because, data analytics assists the business to discovery, interpret and communicate effective data patterns, which supports to take right decision for the business.
The objective of this report is to understand digital marketing analytics, where the current practice towards the web analytics of the digital marketing strategy used in the industry will be discussed. The theory will be analyzed, then how the theory is applicable in the real world organizations will be discussed in detail. The Simbound game will be analyzed and how the theory is applied on Simbound game will be determined. Further, the set of recommendations for effective implementation of the selected digital marketing element will be determined.
In today’s digital world, data analytics helps the organization to discovery, interpret and communicate effective data patterns. It mainly works on quantifying the performance by using operations research, which helps in decision making. Any organization requires application of analytics on business data for describing, predicting and improving the performance of business. Data Analytics and data visualization advances with the evolution of technology.
The current marketing trends must be used for accomplishing in digital marketing. This requires cutting edge technology for developing best strategy. Similarly, when it comes to analytics more efforts are put on it, to take smart decisions in business and to develop good strategy, which balances the competing priorities. Improved analytics can benefit the business and have positive effect on the lifecycle of customers (FICO® | Decisions, 2018).
Analytics utilizes statistics, mathematics, machine-learning techniques and predictive modeling for finding the effective patterns and information from the gathered data. At present, highly powerful computers are used for storing large amount of data and to run the software algorithms which help to take decisions. Descriptive statistics, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics are the predominant analytics types that are used at present (Sas.com, 2018). The big data, provides more data for the analysts to work on, which increases the work of predictability. Therefore, at present in-memory analytics, hybrid transaction/analytical processing (HTAP), Deep learning, NoSQL, SQL on Hadoop, Blockchain, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and big data analytics in cloud are used to benefit the businesses. Distributed analytic frameworks, like MapReduce are advancing today (Mitchell, 2018). These technologies change the customer interaction and even the perspective of viewing the data is can be changed. The marketers target the new generation customers are targeted with omni-channel strategy for various channels including mobile platform and online (Chhabra, 2018).
The high use of mobile devices by people lead to the evolution of mobile analytics and web analytics. The mobile analytics is divided into mobile web and mobile applications, where the mobile web denotes mobile browser through smartphones or tablets are used by the users for viewing the online content. To stay with the trends, most of the companies redirect their users to mobile-specific site (for instance, m.example.com depicted in te below figure), or they utilize a responsive design which fits to all the screens of the users (For example, desktops, mobile phones and tablets) (Analyticshero.com, 2018).
Figure: Difference between mobile analytics and web analytics (Analyticshero.com, 2018)
But, back in 2005 the existence of mobile devices hardly existed. Thus, there was no signs of negative impact on the good and services. But over the years, the introduction of mobile phones has changed the way we see the life. For instance, it was not expected that it can have drastic impact on the good and service, rather it was regarded as a communication service. However in 2013, the smartphone users drastically increased and the buyers mostly reviewed the goods and services by other users. But, before the existence of smartphone the world followed the “word of mouth”, to know about the same. Currently, the United Kingdom is welcoming the tablet market and is awaiting for a more flexible future. On the other hand, the population here is becoming more comfortable on using their smartphones for activities like, payment for retail purchase. Thus, in UK by 2021 it is predicted that the increased retail m-commerce will be of whooping £58.50 billion. More than 57.6% or over 24 million individuals are termed as digital buyers. Their age group ranges from 14 and above. Apart from travel and event tickets, retail ecommerce purchases were done through smartphones in 2017. The eMarketer determine that, the smartphones’ sales is increasing and they predict that, by 2021 in UK, mcommerce is expected to reach £58.50 billion ($78.96 billion). But in 2017, the retail ecommerce market in the United Kingdom crossed £81.55 billion ($110.07 billion), where mobile commerce is £35.31 billion ($47.66 billion (Emarketer.com, 2017). New stimulating borderline for digital analysts, is agreed by understanding the subtle differences between the web analytics and mobile analytics. For analysts, this introduces to cross-channel analysis like, the use of applications, mobile phones, and web. The current analytics practice is represented using the below table (Analyticshero.com, 2018).
Figure: Based on analytics, the similarities and differences between web analytics with mobile web and mobile Applications (Analyticshero.com, 2018).
On the other hand, it helps in determining the explanation of technology, analytics and data management which drives digital marketing to strengthen its success. To achieve all this, digital marketing tools such as, search engine advertising, email marketing, and landing page development and optimization are considered. To accomplish this, the fixed budget is estimated as fifteen thousand pound. Ultimately, the organization requires to see online profit.
According to eMarketer smartphones are utilized for purchasing goods and services and it is a common practice in United Kingdom.
As per the study of Järvinen and Karjaluoto, marketing performance measurement has immense benefits for the organization. The authors utilize Web analytics for measuring the performance measurement. It is expected that the web analytics today supports the organizations with a metrics system, which helps in measuring the digital marketing performance. The in-depth study on Web analytics in industrial companies determine that, unless the reason for selecting the metrics, data processing of metrics, and the contextual surrounding of the company are known, the efforts of the companies to utilize the marketing metrics systems and its results could not be known. The researchers’ investigation has proved that, the constant sprouting growth of digital marketing has advantages in the industrial sector. The authors work on portraying the benefits of digital marketing activities for the businesses through web analytics. In the world, at present web analytics is applied by 10 million best websites, which is over 60 percent. Besides the usage of valuable data from the Web analytics procedures, the adoption rate depends on Web analytic tools. One of the best example of Web analytics tool is Google Analytics. Regardless of its increased adoption rate, Google Analytics is used with free of cost. Generally, the web analytics is used based on ad-hoc, then for strategic use the metrics data is unused and thus its usage remains unclear (Järvinen and Karjaluoto, 2015).
The researchers Germann, Lilien and Rangaswamy has expressed the advantages of marketing analytics. For instance, the company’s development of marketing analytics is related with its conceptual framework. The major favorable outcomes that are required for the firm’s development are evaluated by its performance, especially when there is a tough completion in the market. This point is proved based on 212 senior executives’ survey, from thousand companies. The research also highlights that, intense competition along with drastic changes in the customer preferences can maximize the positive influence on marketing analytics’ development, based on the performance of the company. Further, help from the higher management, analytics skills, right data, supportive analytics culture and information technology acts as vital aspects in the marketing analytics’ growth. The growth can result to maximize the return on assets by 8 percent (Germann, Lilien and Rangaswamy, 2013).
Figure: Tool to analyze traffic (W3techs.com, 2018)
It is observed that Google Analytics helps today’s business to achieve successful digital strategy despite of its size, using the web analytics approach (Professionalacademy.com, 2018).
The below table represents the name of the popular advertising networks.
Figure: Popular advertising networks (W3techs.com, 2018)
Nearly 11,441 websites use Google Ads for advertising, which is 24.4 percent of the total websites, with a market share of 92.3 percent (W3techs.com, 2018).
The traditional marketing forms are Television advertisements, mails, billboards and posters. These forms were complicated to be measured, to determine the message’s effectiveness (Hebert, 2014). Additionally, the following three steps are present in the traditional marketing model:
To help analytics, the Mobile applications (Apps) have a shorter session timeout than that of websites. In general, a session will end after 30 minutes of inactivity for websites. However, for mobile apps the session timeout may be as short as 30 seconds of inactivity due to a shorter perceived attention span. In addition, when users are multitasking and the app remains idle in the background for longer than the timeout duration, a new session will be triggered when the user returns to the app.
Depending on how the application was developed, a user may not need to be connected to a mobile network to use the mobile application. Analytics tools can store what offline interactions occurred, record when they happened with time stamps, and then upload the data to the collection server when the user re-connects to their mobile network.
For mobile devices you can measure more than just what appears on the screen as mobile app analytics can access other built-in features such as the device’s accelerometer, gyroscope, GPS, and storage capabilities. Web measurement is limited to just the content that is seen in the web browser and some basic information about the computer, IP address, and referral source. Mobile app measurement offers the ability to track new types of user interactions that aren’t seen on the Web (Analyticshero.com, 2018)..
The new technologies are giving a tough competition for the traditional marketing approach, by overpowering the traditional marketing. Technology has projected a drastic change in customer interaction and on the perspective of viewing the data. The new generation is targeted by the marketers with Omni-channel strategy for various channels including mobile platform and online. Where, television is targeted with 42%, mobile videos with 18% to 20%, online with 38% and direct mailer with 18%. The important thing to observe here is that, the traditional medium and digital medial both are catching up with each other (Chhabra, 2018).
In business, Traditional Marketing Management includes a significant investment, because, it comprises of public relation coordinator, multimedia production coordinator, copywriter, marketing manager and social media coordinator (Marketing Management Solutions, 2018).
Today the world is not quite same as it was before. The method of traditional marketing is utilized for digital marketing. The difference is that the hard copy marketing material is used to make the relationship between the client and company strong (Cave, 2016). Here, digital marketing refers to making the individuals to view and interact using their digital content (Hebert, 2014). The consumers tend to use mobile devices, and it has become an important part of their life. The device existence allows them to connect to anything, like any data they want. This has dramatically changed the way of how the consumers think and react. This is when Google introduced Zero Moment of truth (ZMOT), which helped in collecting a great deal of information. It is arranged before the first moment of truth. ZMOT is a pre-shopping stage (I-store), where the consumers evaluate the collected information about the product or brand.
Thus, if marketing is operated digitally all the views and interactions are easily accessible in the form of raw data. Moreover, it helps to calculate the performance of the digital marketing campaign and depending on the metrics the questions like what has to be preserved and improved can be answered easily (Hebert, 2014).
ZMOT occurs with web presence. The actions of ZMOT are messy, as lot of data sharing takes place, which requires constant research, reading reviews, watching related videos and asking your network. When the consumers check and collect information from the existing data sources about the product, it is the crucial time for the marketing analysts to understand the consumers. Hence, it is where the consumer can be moved in their decisions, also it is a vital time when the market analysts can produce customer information and expose vast amount of information about themselves. Thus, it is the perfect time for the marketing analysts to collect information about consumers to draw conclusion about the consumers.
The marketing technology landscape shows drastic surge i.e., in 2011 only 100 companies accepted web analytics, then in 2012 the number increased to 350, in 2014 it reached 950 companies, 3500 companies in 2016 and in 2017 it has reached to 5000 companies (Brinker, 2017).
Figure: Marketing technology landscape from 2011 to 2017 (Brinker, 2017)
This determines that the data is captured, analyzed and interpreted repeatedly. The impact of analytics has grown exponentially. Hence, the data availability and access has completely changed shopping forever; the computing power has increased whereas the devices have become smaller; and the growth of web analytics services has surged dramatically, where the digital impact is noticed in brand investments of other channels. Henceforth, the smartphones has made their inevitable role in the life of consumers.
How Theory is Applicable in Real World Organization?
The digital marketing is determined on how to make the consumers visit the firm’s site and work on luring the consumer to purchase, fill a specific form, or makes the user to pick up their mobiles (Jemann and Burbary, 2013). Thus, the web analytics tools assists in viewing what happens after the consumer visits the website. The available web analytics tools count the number of time the consumer visited the website, how many times each page was viewed and how many visited, how much time they spent on reading the page / website and so on. As a whole, the observations interpret the website’s effectiveness, if not the website demands modifications related to its design and content. Likewise, web analytics tools also help in determining visitor’s location (Hebert, 2014).
As per Järvinen, digital analytics generates data which is utilized to measure and optimize the performance of digital marketing. However, the company’s capacity of processing the data into meaningful insights and constantly working on the insights can only improve the final outcome. Large use of digital analytics is considered as a move toward the data-driven marketing, and here the experience and intuition are hardly considered for taking marketing decisions. Because, it considers only the gather information. It is observed that the company’s short-term revenue increases based on the cost of long-term marketing performance (Järvinen, 2016).
Analytical data is capable of generating geographical demographic information of the website visitors. This information can be utilized in the marketing strategy, for the business (Professionalacademy.com, 2018).
The common aspects of digital consumers includes- Television is no more the only commonly used device. Today the consumers mainly spend their more time on smartphones, tablets, computer and television. Therefore load speed, Funnel performance, Landing page performance and consumer metrics are the criteria for monitoring customer behaviour.
The smartphone plays a vital role to interact with the media on a daily basis. These devices are context driven. They have portable screens, where searching is the main bridge between the devices. The customers use multi channels and even a second of delay in loading of page can abandon 40 percent of visitors (Hausman, 2018).
The analytics help the business in developing a digital strategy which is effective and it can moreover help to include new features to the overall marketing/business strategy for the future. To accomplish the digital strategy, the data is analyzed by analytics, which describes, predicts and improves the business performance. Analytics helps to understand the customer behaviour and optimizes the performance. The monitored critical customer behavior metrics includes- Load speed, Funnel performance, Landing page performance and Consumer metrics. Google analytics provides a tool for assessing load speed in various browsers for evaluating how long it takes to load the page, where even if one second delay is observed in the load time, it can decline nearly 7 percent of conversions which is not good for any business. It is important to identify which sites sends traffic that converts, the visitors. Concentrate on engagements like sharing, on the platforms which performs very well (Hausman, 2018). High usage of digital media for purchasing activities completely depends on how the consumer reflects on the change with the media. If the company has no information of how the consumers react to consumption of media, then it can have negative impact on purchasing activities (Järvinen, 2016).
The digital markets like eBay which provides multi-directional transactions among Consumers and Consumers (C2C), Businesses and Customers (B2C), Customers and Businesses (C2B), and Businesses and Businesses (B2B), interaction and recommendations is exactly like word of mouth through electronic means.
If the industrial buyer experiences the necessity of hiring a new advertising agency depending on the LinkedIn’s post. This shows that the consumer’s decision to purchase any product can depend on use of other users in the world (Järvinen, 2016).
Simbound referred as a digital marketing simulation game, in which your team competes with your peers in a digital marketing competition to gain the highest scores in a range of metrics, including return on advertising spend (ROAS), impressions, click-through rate (CTR), conversion and profit. Simbound helps to understand the online advertising mediums, which supports to develop significant skills that are valuable for e-marketers. Simbound improves the skills of digital marketing, decision making, skills for analyzing the cost and benefit, target audience, management of budget etc (Capatina and Bleoju, 2015).
As a researcher of this report, my personal experience testify that, small groups for Simbound simulation can help in decision making. For instance, online marketing (Yang, 2018). Time allotted and number of rounds must be considered in the game. Because, lengthy time lapse in the rounds tend to decrease the contact and engagement level. The simulation game must commence with proper guidelines that directs to easy decision making process (Vos, 2014). The important point to be noted is, prior to any digital marketing decision consider all the objectives and strategies of marketing.
Simbound provides free-risk environment for the learners to manage e-Marketing strategies. Simbound tracks the results and completes team evaluation. It also helps in take decisions for business plan and for e-Marketing (Jakab, 2018).
First log on to the Simbound website. In this game, at the end of the round each team is provided with a financial report. This report helps them to improve in the further rounds. The Bartle model is used for analyzing the strategic behaviour of the players. The major challenge in this game is benefiting from the collective Intelligence resources, where the explorers are is to transform as socializers (Capatina and Bleoju, 2015).
Page previews, time on page, bounce rate and page load time are the metrics considered in individual landing pages other than on conversions. The results must not just concentrate on the demographics and interests, instead it should also concentrate on the new and returning visitors, based on the used device. Because, the number varies based on the devices. Example: The desktop conversion’s performance can be less when compared to mobile phones The consumers don’t wish to wait for a page to load, and this can abandon nearly 40 percent of the visitors (Hausman, 2018).
The campaign is related to the following products that are sold online:
|
Brand |
Conversion Value |
|
Window Processor |
0 |
|
Smart Technology |
490 |
|
Apple Products, and |
4 |
|
New Samsung iPad |
0 |
From the above table, Smart technology appears as the main target to be focused.
Tablet and Android Tablet scored 90500 as large search volume, whereas Dell tablet scored least search volume 9900. So, this made me to be unsure again
From the above figure, the result of week one showed smart technology with high conversions i.e., 490. Teams’ performance is also displayed to check and evaluate their performances.
The keywords are checked and its results are displayed in the below figure.
Totally, 6 rounds were played, where Round 1 costed 0 EUR, Round 2 costed 444 EUR, Round 3 costed 374 EUR, Round 4 costed 512 EUR, Round 5 costed 524 EUR and Round 6 costed 388 EUR. The impressions, clicks, CTR and conversions are determined. The results are depicted in the below figure.
Conclusion
To enhance the growth of digital marketing strategy towards business, web analytics is a very essential tool. The main purpose of Web analytics is to understand the usage of website in an optimized way. The Web analytical tool is used to collect the data regarding the website traffic source such as advertisements, e-mail, social links and search engines. This web analytical data is applied for measuring the responses given by online customers. The main aim is to analyze the usage of analytics in Digital Marketing strategy. The current practice towards the web analytics of the digital marketing strategy used in industries is discussed.
It is concluded that web analytics increased the optimism of enhanced measurability, because in the digital environment the customer behaviours can be easily tracked. The companies could make use of digital analytics to measure and optimize their digital marketing performance.
The freely available tool like Google Analytics can help the business to achieve success despite of its size, using the web analytics approach which measures the success based on a digital strategy. Web analytics helps to generate valuable data that helps to determine the website’s performance. On the other hand, its understanding can have a great impact on the marketing campaigns. From brouchers to digital marketing, the industrial marketers have had a long journey, to target their customers. The investigation proves that the customers are targeted based on their online behaviour.
It is studied that Simbound is a business simulation which helps to address the digital marketing subject, using a functional method. Aspects of digital consumer are listed. The digital landscape is determined. The traditional marketing and the digital marketing is distinguished. The Simbound game is analyzed. Digital marketing campaign’s effectiveness is evaluated. Role of digital marketing in the organization is represented. The theory is analyzed and its application are discussed with the real world examples.
References
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