BUILDING ONLINE CUSTOMER

RELATIONSHIPS

Module 4

Evaluation and
Improvement of Digital
Channel Performance
 Topic 1:
Performance management for digital
channels
Introduction
Welcome to Topic 1 of your content creation for digital channels module.

Organisations should also ensure that they continuously aim to improve their digital
performance, which is done by evaluating and improving their performance. This first part of
this section looks at performance management. In the second part of this section, we review
issues involved with maintaining an online presence. We will have a look at what tools and
processes are available for improving our web performance.

We cannot just create an online marketing campaign and not monitor its success in order to
improve the performance. This is the key to digital marketing success. We can make use of
different techniques to assess and improve the contribution of digital marketing which is
known as web analytics. These include reviewing traffic volume, online reach surveys, etc.

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data, the
purposes of understanding and optimising web usage.

Key questions in evaluating process, metrics and tools for improving

the contribution of digital marketing within an organisation. (Chaffey, 2019)

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 “Take a risk and keep testing, because what works today won’t work tomorrow, but what
worked yesterday may work again.” Amrita Sahasrabudhe

Ivan Dimitrov (2018), a Digital Marketing Strategist specialising in SEM, PPC, SMM and SEO at
pCloud published an article titled “63 Best Digital Marketing Tools You Should Know About in
2018”. Dimitrov (2018) states, “Without proper planning and research, you are making your
tasks when starting a campaign, a lot harder. Always do your research and plan, this will not
only make your job easier, but you will learn a lot more things in the process.” Here are just
a few of the tools on his list:

Google Keyword Planner – “you can choose one or more keywords, choose the country and
the language you want and see approximately how many times your word is searched”.
Dimitrov (2018)

Facebook Audience Insights – “see how many people you can reach based on country,
interests, devices they are using, behaviour, habits and even life events”. Dimitrov (2018)

Google Adwords – “one of the most used and complex ad platforms ever. Google Adwords is
very important because you can use a lot of channels that are connected to Google via
Adsense and Tap into Google Search.” Dimitrov (2018)

If you are serious about becoming a great digital marketer, you should check his full list of 63
tools here: https://medium.com/swlh/63-best-digital-marketing-tools-you-should-know-
about-in-2018-f010a4e3db4b. These types of tools are extremely useful and can assist digital
marketers to better manage their strategies, tactics and actions.

Performance management for digital channels

Managing your performance is vital for long-term success. The processes and systems
intended to monitor and improve the performance of an organisation are known by business
operations researchers as performance management systems and are based on the study of
performance measurement systems.

There are three stages involved in performance management:

Stage 1: Creating a performance management system

We need to measure our performance in order to monitor how we are managing our online
marketing presence and provide insight on how we can improve. Online marketing allows us

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 to change what is not working quickly. However, sometimes people are not willing to monitor
performance because they fear it can lead to change; sometimes we do not have the
necessary resources and sometimes there are problems with the quality of the data. In order
to overcome issues like these we need to put a process in place (as seen in the diagram below).
This figure basically explains that we need to set goals so that we know what we want to
achieve, we need to measure what is happening, we need to determine why it is happening
and if necessary, and we need to put corrective measures in place.

A summary of the performance measurement process. (Chaffey, 2019)

Performance measurement is the process of quantifying efficiency and effectiveness of past

actions through acquisition, collation, sorting, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of
appropriate data.

Effectiveness is meeting the process objectives, delivering the required outputs and
outcomes, ‘doing the right thing’.

Efficiency is minimising resources or time needed to complete a process ‘doing the thing right’.

Stage 2: Defining the performance measurement framework

There are many different aspects or objectives that we can measure. We discuss a few below:

Channel promotion – these measures assess why a customer visits a site (did they click on
links from other sites, did they click on an ad? etc.)

Channel buyer behaviour – here we can look at what customers did on the site, how long they
stayed on the site, if consumers left the page straight away, if they came back to the site, etc.

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 Channel satisfaction – here we analyse customers’ opinions of the service quality on the site
and how they look at supporting services. We can ask consumers to complete questionnaires;
we can benchmark our website, etc.

Channel outcomes – this is where we look at the number of sales, how many consumers
registered on the site, how many requested more information, etc. We can also either lose a
percentage of consumers at each stage of the purchasing (attrition rate) or we can get a
percentage of consumers who make a purchase, for example (conversion rate).

Channel profitability – usually we try to achieve a certain amount of sales on our online site.
This may be difficult if we do not sell the product online.

Multichannel evaluation – there is a need to evaluate how different channels support each
other.

Multichannel performance scorecard example for a retailer. (Chaffey, 2019)

Read the following article which discusses how one creates a digital dashboard: Smart
Insights. (2015). An example of setting up a Marketing Dashboard with actionable KPIs.
Available from: http://www.smartinsights.com/goal-setting-evaluation/goals-kpis/marketing-
dashboard-example-aa08/

Stage 3: Tools and techniques for collecting metrics and summarising results
We need to select the most appropriate tools available to assist us in collecting and reporting
on metrics. We could look at the following methods:

Collecting site-visitor activity data – Here we look at how many consumers are visiting our
site and how they got to the site. There is various terminology described in Chaffey & Ellis-

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 Chadwick (2016) regarding site-visitor activity. For example, number of page impressions or
page views and unique visitors vs returning visitors.

Examples of different measures of visitor volume to a website. (Chaffey, 2019)

In the above diagram it shows how hits are much higher than page views and unique visitors
and are quite misleading in terms of the ‘opportunities to see’ a message.

Pages per visit (PPV) The average number of pages viewed per visitor to a site (this
is indicative of engagement with a site since the longer a
visitor stays on a ‘sticky site’, the higher this value will be).
Visits per (unique) This suggests the frequency of site visits. Readers will realise
visitor (VPV) that this value is dependent on the period that data are
collected over.
Hits Recorded for each graphic or text file requested from a web
server. It is not a reliable measure for the number of people
viewing a page.
Page impression A more reliable measure than a hit, denoting one person
viewing one page. Also known as page view.
Unique visitors Individual visitors to a site measured through cookies or IP
address on an individual computer.

Design for analysis – We need to plan how we are going to measure our online effectiveness
before we launch a website, for example, because there are certain tasks that need to be
fulfilled before making the site live. So, we can decide that we might want to measure which
content consumers are more interested in so we can separate the webpages, for example, so
we know exactly which pages / products the consumers are interested in.

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 AB testing is where we can design two versions of a page and show one group of consumers
one page and another group of consumers another page so that we can determine which page
design is more favourable.

AB testing is the simplest form of testing where we test two different versions of a page or a
page element such as a heading, image or button for effectiveness.

Test A

Test B

Multivariate testing is a bit more complicated because more variables (i.e. a different page
banner, different images, different headings, etc.) can be tested and more information can be
gathered. Multivariate testing enables simultaneous testing for different combinations of
page elements.

Clickstream analysis and visitor segmentation – we can use clickstream analysis to look at
visitor behaviour so that we can make improvements.

We can look at:

• Path analysis – here we look at the combination of clicks that occur on a page (where
consumers click on the page).
• On-site effectiveness – here we can look at the percentage of site exists from search
results and what consumers search for (i.e. what do consumers search for / key-phrases).
• Visitor segmentation – sometimes it can be quite difficult to determine which segments
do what on the website, but we can look at whether they are first-time visitors, whether
they came from a search engine, where in the world they are, etc.

When we select a web analytics tool, we have a variety of choices between free services and
paid services. One of the most popular tools is Google Analytics.

What else can we use the Internet for in the marketing sense? We could use it to conduct
research like questionnaires – which allows us to increase response rates and access people
all over the country. We can also make use of online focus groups to reach different segments
as well as mystery shoppers who can test the usability of the site, for example, the email and

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 phone response, etc. For example: brands like Apple could conduct research online like
conducting focus groups with consumers all over the world on Skype.

Selecting a martech stack for a business

Since the creation of the web, many marketing and digital marketing technology services have
been created that provide insight for the marketer on marketing effectiveness and also enable
them to run marketing operational processes to deliver more relevant messages to audiences.
Collectively these are now called ‘marketing technology’ (martech for short). Many of these
are now cloud-based software as service tools (SaaS) that do not require software to be
installed within a business, but the insight and management controls are accessed via a
browser. For example, Google Analytics enables businesses to measure their website
effectiveness and also test and personalise experiences with Google Optimise.

Martech stack is a combination of different software services or tools used to run all
marketing operations across multiple channels including customer acquisition, conversion,
retention, team communications and to deliver customer and market insight and reporting.

Marketing research using the Internet and digital media

Internet-based marketing research can help determine the influence of a website and related
communications on customer perception of the company and its products and services. But
it also has wider applications of gaining feedback from customers about a brand and how it
could develop in future. Smart Insights (2010) identifies these five different classes of online
feedback tools:
1. Website feedback tools.
2. Site-user intent-satisfaction surveys.
3. Crowdsourcing product-opinion software.
4. Simple page or concept feedback tools.
5. General online survey tools.

Content management process

We should implement a clearly defined process for making changes to our online presence.
We cannot simply use the same strategy forever; we need to constantly adapt so that we
attract more visitors and keep our existing base engaged. There are different tasks involved
when we maintain the site like:

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 Writing – updating the text on the site, adding new images, etc.
Reviewing – at times we may need someone to check / review the copy as well as the content.
Correcting – once someone has checked the copy and content there may be need for us to
correct content.
Publishing – once we have made the corrections, we need to publish the site for testing.
Testing – we should test the web page for technical issues, etc.
Publishing – once we have successfully tested the site, we should publish the site to the live
environment.

One of the most common questions asked by people is how often the website / content needs
to be updated? We should obviously ensure that the website is up to date and that the
content is relevant. Over time, things do get outdated and we will need to update it. For
example: we could update our gallery, update our calendar, etc.

A web document review and update process. (Chaffey, 2019)

To ensure site content remains ‘fresh’, i.e. relevant for the audience and effective for the
business, it is useful to consider different types of content and their purpose. Consider, for
example, different content types for an online retailer. These will include:

Product information: product details on product pages and higher-level groupings of data as
category pages. This includes both product descriptions and specifications that are relatively
static for a given product and product pricing and availability information that is more
dynamic.

Brand content (product brands): content about an individual brand available, as different
products may be grouped together.

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 Brand content (retailer brand): content about the company, such as its value proposition,
trust and history.

Promotional content: ‘promotion’ in this context referring to information about sales and
discounts. Support content: information about ordering and returns, for example.

Community content: user-generated content that may be in a community area or

associated with products as reviews and rating.

Blog content: regularly updated content aimed at engaging customers and products, for
example showing the latest fashion trends for a clothing retailer. This content may also be
useful for search engine optimisation.

Responsibilities for site management

If we are a small company and there is one person managing the responsibility of updating
the website and mobi site, then it makes the responsibility easier to manage. However, if the
organisation is quite large and there is more than one person involved, we need to ask four
questions:

Who owns the process?

We should bring all of the interested parties together and provide input on deciding on the
process of updating the website. We need to ensure that everyone is involved in the decision-
making to avoid possible confusion and complications.

Who owns the content?

At times it is difficult for one person to update all of the content all of the time. Sometimes it
is necessary to get other people in the organisation to assist with the updates (i.e. employees
in the financial department may be used to create the content in the annual report, for
example). In other scenarios, content developers can be used to assist with the management
of the content – these people are often dedicated to just writing content.

Who owns the format?

When we talk about the format we are talking about the different aspects of the design and
the ‘look and feel’ of the website. We should ensure that the entire site is consistent (i.e. the
same font, the same logo, the same writing tone, etc.) We should also ensure that the site
should be easy for the consumer to use.

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 Who owns the technology?
We would make use of technical staff to assist with the more technical aspects such as
webservers, live environments, etc. We can also make use of content management systems
for managing additions and amendments to the website content.

Digital campaign ROI

Marler (2015) in an article titled “How to Measure ROI for Your

Digital Marketing Campaign” states that gone are the days
when a campaign could be measured by the number of visitors
the site has produced.
Whilst these are easy to report on and measure, they do not
entirely show the marketing contribution to the bottom line.

Marler shares the view of Bosomworth that in order to

understand what the ROI is, we need to understand what the
goals or aims of the company are, what it wishes to get from a
digital marketing campaign and then measure these goals, and
that for this we need to look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) and the goals for each
one.

Here are some types of key performance indicators that Marler suggests:

General Performance – traffic, leads, reach.

Channel Based – website, blog, social networks, search engines.
Source based performance – direct traffic, organic search, referrals, email, PPC.
Campaign based performance – lead generation, click throughs, conversions, conversion
rates.
Setting realistic and measurable goals.

Once you are agreed on the KPIs, the next stage is to measure these, what style of report and
how these are presented. It may be necessary to change the KPIs over time and thus the goals
too. The report can simply be an Excel spreadsheet with incoming enquiries that result in
sales. So, collaboration between the sales department and marketing is a clear indicator here.

Marler also shares a case study on return on investment for a digital marketing campaign:

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 “If you are presenting data that only includes the number of visitors to your website, amount
of click throughs to the site and visitors from social media, you are missing out on the bigger
picture. Are these visitors the right ones?

For instance, we took on a client that had 10,000 visitors to their website every month, from
their blog. Their old digital marketing company presented reports on this and both the agency
and client were happy. But is being happy a good ROI?

In this case the company were sales consultants, offering cold calling, appointment setting
and similar services and their blogs were about HOW to make cold call sales. The visitors to
their blog and website were being taught how to do the service that they were trying to offer.
So, the visitors were mainly salespeople or sales trainees who were getting high quality
lessons on how they can do their job, they were not qualified visitors that were going to BUY
their services.

We changed the way the blogs were written and directed the blogs to qualified visitors that
wanted to buy their services. Visitor numbers dropped but their enquiries and leads grew.
This was a direct result from the content marketing, blogs, social media promotion of content
and directed to those looking for their services and the enquiries from the call to action (CTA)
on the blogs. By using Google Analytics, we added conversions to the page after the enquiry
form was completed. By measuring these we knew that the conversions increased. Their
return on investment grew.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.digitaldoughnut.com/articles/

2015/may/how-to-measure-roi-for-your-digital-marketing-camp.

Digital campaign ROI

It’s not easy to find calculations and formulas for measuring digital marketing ROI. It almost
seems that digital marketers are unsure of their facts and therefore can’t commit to an ROI
formula. This supports the views that marketers struggle to find the right data, and if they do,
they wonder if its accurate and then are not sure how to present it.

To this point, KVNW (2017) in an article titled “The Right Way to Calculate the ROI of Digital
Marketing” provides us with a few basic ROI calculations and formulas. We have summarised
these for you below:

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 Whelan first identifies and explains the components of the equation:

1) Average Revenue per Sale (or Average Sale Value)

To calculate your average sale value, divide your revenue by the number of transactions you
made. The quickest way for most companies to do this, is to divide the revenue by the number
of invoices sent out in any period.
If you did revenue of R1,000,000 and processed 1,000 invoices (or transactions), your average
revenue per sale is R1,000.

Revenue ÷ Number of Transactions = Average Revenue per Sale

2) Profit Margin
This is the simplest business equation. We will use this one to help determine the lifetime
value of a customer, which will help us know how much we can afford to pay to acquire a new
customer.

Revenue – Expenses = Profit

3) Lifetime Value of a Customer

The lifetime value of a customer is determined by knowing how much each customer typically
spends with your company over the lifetime of their patronage.

For example, if you are a general contractor, and your clients hire you 10 times over 5 years
until they eventually stop needing your services, and your average sale value is R1,000, and
you operate at a 50% margin, you know each new customer is worth approximately R5,000.

Lifetime Transactions x Lifetime Revenue – Lifetime Expenses

= Lifetime Value of a Customer

4) Allowable Acquisition Cost

If we know that each new customer is worth R5,000, theoretically, you could spend
R4,999.99 and it would still be profitable to do so.

Risks
KVNW points out that as with all business transactions, there are risks involved. What if your
business suddenly slows down or dries up and customers stop coming back? What if you get
sued and it throws all your metrics out the window? What if the market turns and suddenly
nobody needs what you sell?

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 We need to manage risk and hedge our bets
Let’s say you’re a successful dentist who has been in business for 20 years.
There are no signs of changes coming to the market, the business could even run, for the most
part, without you if it had to. Overall, you feel confident that, barring a disaster, your risk of
negative change is low.

Since you have a higher threshold for risk, you can probably spend a little more than someone
who is in an industry/market that isn’t quite as stable.

That being said, there are still risks. You want to build in padding and make each new
customer profitable as quickly as possible.

You don’t want to risk your money to acquire customers unless there is enough margin for
error in your profitability, and you don’t want to spend 20 years recouping your cost to
acquire them.

Let’s be conservative and say, even with a lifetime value for each customer of R5,000 (profit),
you only want to spend up to R1,000 to acquire them – just in case something happens in 2
years and you don’t get a chance to recoup your investment.

While that’s modest, it’s still a lot to pay for a new customer. You likely want to spend closer
to R100, but that may or may not be possible depending on your industry.

KVNW provides a good breakdown of a semi-realistic budget:

Widgets & Co. – Theoretical Case Study:
The details:
Widgets & Co. does R1,000,000 in annual revenue.
Their average sale value is R1,000.
New customers typically buy 10 times over 10 years during their lifetime, which works out to
a R10,000 lifetime revenue.
Their profit margin is 30%, meaning that each new customer is worth R3,000 profit over their
lifetime.
Let’s be cautious businesspeople and say that we are willing to spend R500 to acquire a new
customer (acquisition cost). This gives us lots of room to mitigate risk, should something
happen.
We now know that we can spend R500 to acquire a new customer.

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 Their goal is to acquire 240 new customers in the year, or 20 per month. They are hoping for
an additional R240,000 in new revenue, and they know their customers typically only buy
from them once per year at an average of R1,000 per transaction.

Their online presence is pretty bad, so they need a bit of everything. The breakdown is
planned as below:
• Social media management: R1,000 per month
• Pay-per-click advertising: R1,000 management plus R5,000 ad spend per month = R6,000
per month
• Blog content writing: R125/post x 4 posts per month = R500 per month
• Email Marketing: 2 email blast per month using content from the blog and exclusive,
subscriber-only promotions = R400 per month
• Search Engine Optimization: R900 per month
• Basic Graphic Design: Graphics, business cards, holiday cards and some brochures =
R300/month

Total Monthly Spend: R9,100

Annual Spend: R110,400 (R9,100 x 12 months) - roughly 11% of their total revenue.

Let’s say they exceeded their target by 10 new customers, for a total of 250 new customers
that year. Were they profitable in their efforts? Let’s do the math.
New customers = 250
Lifetime value per customer = R3,000
Total Lifetime Value = 250 x R3,000 = R750,000
Acquisition Cost (price paid to market + find new customers) = R110,400
Grand Total: R750,000 – R110,400 = R639,300
Return on Investment (ROI) = R639,300/110,400 = 5.79 times, or 579%

Let’s say it takes them 10 years to get their lifetime value of a client back, that works out to
57.9% return on investment per year (non-compounded).

That means, for every R1 invested in their marketing, they got R5.79 back.

Sometimes, it’s not the immediate ROI that counts, it’s the lifetime value. Once you have a
solid understanding of how much a customer is worth to you, you can really start marketing.
If you have no idea, you’re likely to lose money. Guesswork rarely gets results.

You can read the full article here: https://kvnw.com/calculate-roi-of-digital-marketing/.

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 Top-down pressure on marketers to prove ROI

Burney (2016) in her article titled "How to calculate ROI for marketing activities”, looks at the
increase in pressure from senior managers on marketers to prove ROI. She also feels CMOs
are unsure of how to calculate ROI for marketing activities to quantify their business impact.

Burney states that when it comes to figuring out how to calculate return on investment, the
challenge lies in identifying and tracking the multiple variables that can impact marketing
results. Burney unpacks how to calculate ROI for marketing activities, taking into account
three often forgotten factors that will help you better assess campaign impact. We have
summarised these for you below:

How to calculate ROI for marketing activities

Burney highlights that according to The CMO Survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of
Business, only 37 percent of CMOs felt they could prove the short-term impact of marketing
spend quantitatively. It doesn’t get any better in the long-run — only 31 percent reported
confidence in proving the long-term impact quantitatively.

Source: KVNW (2017)

This means that 63 percent of marketers can’t quantitatively prove their impact in the short
term and 69 percent can’t prove it in the long term.

Learning how to calculate ROI for marketing activities becomes a matter of simple arithmetic.
Subtract the cost of a campaign from its net profit, then divide by the campaign cost, and you
have marketing campaign ROI in its most basic form.

Marketing ROI formula:

ROI = (Incremental Profit – Campaign Cost) / Campaign Cost

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 This revenue versus cost ROI ratio, however, becomes more complicated for marketing
initiatives as a campaign’s timeframe gets longer.

Consider, for example, the long-term investment in content marketing or paid advertising. In
all likelihood, a single blog post or banner ad won’t immediately lead to a sale. However, as
the number of interactions from a consistent ad or content marketing campaign increase over
time, their impact on purchasing decisions will accumulate. This builds momentum for a single
purchase, or even repeat purchases.

When considering how to calculate ROI for marketing activities by your brand, remember that
there are many unaccounted variables that can influence your formula’s outcome. Which
leads to three often forgotten ROI factors: brand awareness, customer lifetime value, and
touch points.

Measuring brand awareness with leading metrics

Burney believes that marketing activities aimed at brand awareness often have an aggregate
effect that — if measured on too-short a time-frame — will contradict their overall impact on
ROI.
For this reason, gains in brand awareness are typically measured according to leading metrics
such as impressions, clicks, and interactions. These leading metrics measure initial customer
engagement with your content on each channel and can be optimised daily.

ROI metrics, on the other hand, are metrics that attribute revenue to a specific marketing
activity or campaign. Optimising return on investment across various channels is a cyclical
rather than linear process.

Measuring and optimising leading metrics on each marketing channel provides early
indicators of success (or failure) of marketing campaigns to better track and predict their
cumulative impact on customers’ purchasing decisions in the long run.

The compounding ROI of customer lifetime value

Burney points out that three out of four global marketers reported that customer lifetime
value (CLV) is an important metric for their organisation, according to a report from
Econsultancy and Sitecore. The high value of CLV is understandable given its direct ties to
revenue and ROI.

Often, marketing departments have tunnel vision when it comes to driving buyers to convert
on their website, so much so that a single shopper’s long-term value is overlooked. Customer

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 lifetime value, however, is a predictive metric that forecasts the total future value a customer
is projected to drive for a company over the course of their entire life.

When you reconsider the revenue versus cost ROI formula, it’s clear that an understanding of
CLV is integral to determining the upfront costs to attract and convert new leads, and the
investment required to keep and grow existing customers.

Touch points: Steppingstones in the buyer’s journey

Burney highlights another factor to consider when calculating ROI, the number of marketing
touch points in the average buyer’s journey.

Unfortunately, marketing is not analogous to baiting a hook, tossing it into a lake, and reeling
in a customer. It takes a net of interwoven marketing efforts and touch points to create
resonance and ultimately influence a customer’s purchasing decision.

The typical number of touches it takes to close a deal varies across the board, but in almost
every case it’s greater than one. While the revenue from a single sale is ultimately known,
how do you assign value to the host of touch points that influenced the deal along the way?
Whether you use single-touch or multi-touch attribution, the branching of attribution across
multiple touch points complicates the net revenue to cost ROI calculation.

How marketing attribution helps

Burney states that the key to learning how to calculate the ROI of marketing activities
is marketing attribution. Looking for social media or content ROI? Track your impact on
revenue by channel, campaign, and individual post by using social media and content
marketing attribution.

Source: Burney (2016)

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 Burney reiterates what we have said before; that having the right marketing analytics tool in
place can help you track and report on marketing ROI. In a multi-touch model, you can
account for every marketing activity that has influenced a sale.

This way, marketing ROI no longer relies on leading indicators to predict success. Rather, it
can be proven with data-backed insights that tie your marketing efforts directly to revenue.

Conclusion
Burney concludes by stating that figuring out how to calculate ROI for marketing activities
goes beyond looking at rands-out versus rands-in. There are many ways to draw the line of
success in your marketing sand, and each means of analysis offers different advantages and
insights. The complications in calculating return on investment can be navigated based on
your marketing goals. Define what a successful campaign looks like quantitatively, use
marketing attribution to track campaign impact, and gather the data you need to connect the
dots.

You can read Burney’s full article here: https://trackmaven.com/blog/how-to-calculate-roi-

for-marketing-activities/.

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 Topic 2:
Clickstream data
Introduction
Welcome to Topic 2 of your content creation for digital channels module.

The Digital Analytics Association (2008) defined digital analytics as, “The measurement,
collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and
optimising Web usage.” Notice, analytics is not just about measuring but also analysing data
and using these insights to optimise online performance.

To do business effectively on the Web, you need to continually refine and optimise your
digital marketing strategy, site navigation, and page content. You need to understand how
your strategy is performing. Digital analytics provides the tools for gathering this
information and to benchmark the effects.

It’s important to remember that digital analytics are tools. They can tell you what a visitor
does on your website, mobile app, etc.; however, they cannot tell you why visitors behave
the way they do, or which improvements should be made.

Introducing clickstream data

Clickstreams, also known as click paths, are the route that visitors choose when clicking or
navigating through your website. A clickstream is a list of all the pages viewed by a visitor,
presented in the order the pages were viewed.

A clickstream will show when and where a person came into your site, all the pages viewed,
the time spent on each page, and when and where they left. Clickstream data is
fundamental in web analytics and it will highlight how long people spend on a site and how
often they return. It will also indicate which pages are the most frequently viewed.

The most obvious reason for analysing clickstreams is to gain specific information about
what people are doing on your website. Understanding individual clickstreams will provide
you with information to help make content-related decisions without guessing.

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 Clickstream data can be combined with other information such as countries, browsers, visit
duration and referral information to provide powerful insights into what site visitors are
doing and even thinking when on your website.

Capturing Clickstream Data: Web logs

Web logs are the original source of data collection from the beginning of the Web. They
were originally put in place to capture errors on a site but have been enhanced over time
to capture more analytics data, such as clickstream data. Every time the website receives a
request for a source (a file) it stores details of that request on server access logs. Server log
files will typically contain the following information:
• An IP address of the user’s PC.
• A time stamp showing the date and time of the request.
• A status code showing the result of the request.
• The URL of the referring page.
• The browser type, language and operating system.

Benefits of Web Logs

A web log is one of the easiest accessible sources of data. Every server can collect data and
create web logs. What’s more, the data belongs to you and is not shared with a third party
(as is the case with hosted solutions). Ease of implementation is a major benefit as no
changes to the website are required. The web server reliably records every transaction it
makes and does not rely on the visitors' browsers cooperating.

Web logs are not really suited to capturing business or marketing information. They are
primarily geared towards capturing technical information, such as errors, usage trends and
browser types.

Capturing Clickstream Data: JavaScript Tagging

Most vendors and web analytics solutions rely on JavaScript tagging to collect data. Tagging
requires placing a small piece of JavaScript code on every page of the site needing to be
tracked. If a visitor requests any page, the code sends information to the chosen analytics
provider. This might include Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics. It also manages the
process of assigning a cookie to the users, which can uniquely identify them during their
visits and in subsequent visits.

Benefits of JavaScript Tagging

As data is collected from the end user and not the web server, it is usually more accurate
than web server log files. Furthermore, data can be reported in real time and allows for a
greater range of variables to be gathered from each page. JavaScript tagging has lower
upfront costs. Google Analytics is free up to a certain number of impressions.

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 The paradox of data

Web analytics providers enable organisations to gather

clickstream data. As previously explained, this is the
information that is collected when site visitors move from
page to page and click on items within your website. Have a
look at this image which summarises the paradox of data. Site
owners have a host of clickstream data, telling them about
what users are doing on their websites but the data that can
turn into actionable insight is the small dot!

Source: Kaushik (2010)

There is such a small amount of actionable insight from clickstream data, because the data
is great at the what, but not the why – so why did this happen? Why are visitors doing what
they are on a website? As marketers, we need qualitative and quantitative data to provide
actionable insights.

The job of a digital marketer is to select the right data, gain information from that data,
analyse it, produce insight and then use it to draw conclusions.

Web analytics 2.0

Key areas covered by and answered by web analytics. (Kaushik, 2010)

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 Kaushik (2010) suggests that businesses needed to rethink web analytics, and we need to
include not just the what but also key questions that can help make intelligent decisions
about an organisation's web presence. The framework outlined above suggests the key
areas covered by and answered by web analytics.

Let’s review each of these in a bit more detail:

• The What: This is the clickstream data and includes the collecting, storing, processing
and analysing of website click-level data, using Google Analytics or any other web
analytics tool(s).
• The How Much: This multiple outcome analysis focuses on what the data means in
terms of outcomes for the company. In other words, tying web analytics to the
company’s top and bottom line. The ‘how much’ states what this means in terms of
value to the business, either as revenue or profit.
• The Why: This is all about experimentation and testing, i.e. using tools to test and
optimise, change strategy and approach, to see what works and what doesn’t.
• The Why: Voice of the Customer is one of the most important aspects as this enables
direct feedback from the customer, using tools such as surveys and usability testing.
• The What Else: Competitor intelligence tools enable organisations to see what the
competition is doing and see how they compare. It’s important to benchmark
performance against the competition.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what clickstream data is, let’s look at some of
the tools you can use to capture this information.

Clickstream analysis: key vendors

As already stated, clickstream provides the foundation of data

for web analytics, enabling organisations to measure pages and
campaigns as well as site behaviour, such as visits, visitors, page
views and bounce rates. We’ll look at these key metrics in more
detail later in this course. There is a host of clickstream or
analytics vendors available. We have listed some of the more
popular here. Google Analytics is one of the most popular web
analytics vendors. Prior to Google Analytics, web analytics was
only available for larger organisations that had the finance to
fund it. However, Google Analytics has made it easy for anyone
to add a few lines of Java script code to the footer file on their

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 site. By doing this, you will have access to an easy-to-use reporting tool, which will enable
you to gather large amounts of data about your web presence.

Google’s introduction of Google Analytics opened the door to thousands of other free and
low-cost tools that enabled measurement of onsite activity, such as Crazy Egg, which helps
organisations generate heatmaps of user activity. A key differentiating factor in clickstream
vendors is whether the service is free or not. Standard Google Analytics is free, whereas
others will require more significant budget. For example, IBM digital analytics is an
enterprise level platform. Google Analytics also offers a premium service called Google
Analytics 360.

Other differentiating factors to consider when choosing a clickstream analytics tool include:
• The amount of data provided and from multiple sources.
• The flexibility in data gathered (i.e. an organisation can change what it wishes to
collect).
• The ability to provide competitor and industry benchmarking.
• Reporting options (including custom reporting).
• Specialist tools and features.

Experimentation and testing: key vendors

As previously mentioned, experimentation and testing tools

can be used to help optimise your website and improve
performance. Too often, website design and user experience
are decided by the highest paid person’s opinion (HIPPO!).
Tools like those listed here will enable you to leverage the
power of experimentation to change your strategy and find
out what works best.

There are free tools available, such as Google Content

Experiments, which is integrated within the Google Analytics
platform. Content experiments enable you to create different pages and compare how they
perform using a random sample of users. You can also define what percentage of users are
included in the experiment.

Some tools are also integrated within other web analytics platforms. For example, Adobe
Target enables experiments to be undertaken within the Adobe Analytics interface. Visual
web optimiser is a standalone tool. It enables you to test, change and optimise web pages

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 with ease and without having to change the code (and therefore, using technical resources)
to do it. It provides a range of tools to track changes, including heat maps and conversion
reports. We’ll discuss more about the fundamentals of testing later in this course.

Voice of the customer: key vendors

Voice of the Customer (VOC) is one of the most important aspects

within web analytics as it enables direct feedback from the
customer and provides an understanding of why users do what
they do on a website.

Key tools for VOC (including vendors who offer surveys and user
testing) and some of the key players are listed here. We’re going to
discuss these in more detail later in this course.

Competitor intelligence: key tools

Competitor intelligence data can enhance your decision-making process through providing
additional context on your organisation’s performance and helps you to better understand
industry trends using actionable insights.

Previously, competitive intelligence data was only available

through Alexa (a toolbar), Hitwise (ISP data) and comScore (a
panel) but there are now many more tools that are low cost or
even free that are available for you to use.

Some of these tools are shown here. Google Trends is another

useful and free tool. While it doesn’t provide specific data, it can
help monitor basic trends within an industry as well as with
keywords.

SEMrush is a superb tool in understanding competitor search

activity (both SEO and PPC). It is a subscription service, but it offers a free trial. Compete
also provided some basic competitor information but required subscription to access
further detail.

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 Topic 3:
Testing strategy
Introduction
Welcome to Topic 3 of your content creation for digital channels module.

Accurate tests can make a huge difference to an organisation’s bottom line. Using controlled
tests and gathering empirical data, will allow you to figure out exactly what approach,
design, copy and marketing strategies work best for the company and product or service.
Without undertaking some form of testing, an organisation cannot successfully improve on
its performance. It helps identify what works and what doesn’t, and provides evidence to
back it up, so it’s easier to make decisions. It’s also important to keep testing regularly, since
the effectiveness of anything can change over time.

Benefits of testing

There are several clear benefits of an organisation adopting a testing strategy. Remember
testing should not be confined to testing the website design but a wider testing strategy
within the organisation should be adopted.

There are some clear benefits of undertaking a testing strategy:

• Through testing, a strategy geared around customer needs can be developed, making
the organisation truly focused on the customers and improving their overall
experience.
• Any decisions taken by management can be based on science rather than perhaps
optimism or folklore.
• The right direction in which to go to meet specified objectives can be identified.
• Through conceiving and undertaking more radical testing, this can help improve
competitiveness of the organisation.
• Cost efficiencies and effectiveness can be maximised through adopting wider testing
within a business.
• Waste can be minimised.
• Complacency can be eliminated.

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 Questions answered by testing

You can test virtually anything in your marketing materials, for example, headlines, calls to
action, body copy, images, etc. If you can change it, you can test it. But that doesn’t mean
you should necessarily spend months testing every little thing. Instead, focus on the things
that are most likely to have a big impact. Some of the wider questions you can answer
through testing are listed below:

• How can the organisation get more customers?

• How can you get customers to respond more frequently?
• How can you communicate with customers more effectively?
• How can you reduce costs for the business and at the same time increase revenue?

More specifically, testing on your website is likely to include aspects such as design, sales
and product/service copy, calls to action, creative and imagery. Testing can also be applied
to digital marketing techniques such as email, PPC adverts and display advertising.

Testing techniques

There are two types of testing

techniques that are widely used:
A/B testing and multivariate testing
(MVT). We’re going to look at these
in turn now.

A/B Testing
A/B testing (also known as split
testing) is a method of comparing
two versions of a web page against
each other to determine which
performs better.

Members within an organisation may disagree on the approach to take with site design or
creative execution and one way to resolve these disagreements and understand the best
approach, is through designing and running a series of experiments to evaluate the best

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 approach. A/B testing is one technique an organisation can adopt to evaluate design or
digital campaign choices and improve results.

When undertaking A/B testing on web pages, each version of the web page should be
unique and be visually different from the control (original page). The two web pages are
compared by showing the two variants (let’s call them A and B) to visitors who are randomly
selected by a predetermined percentage (usually split 50/50). The goal is then to identify
which version delivers the desired outcome.

All websites on the web have a goal – a reason for them to exist. Ecommerce websites want
visitors buying products, B2B websites may want to encourage leads, while news and media
websites want readers to click on ads or sign up for paid subscriptions. Most business
websites want visitors converting from just visitors to something else, therefore, it’s likely
that the desired outcome for A/B testing is seeing an increase in conversions.

Almost anything on a website that affects visitor behaviour can be A/B tested: headlines,
sub headlines, paragraph text, testimonials, call to action text, call to action buttons, links,
images, content near the fold, media mentions, awards and badges.

Getting started with A/B testing

Getting started with A/B testing on a website is relatively straightforward. A good place to
start is by running a landing pages report within the analytics provider and then identifying
pages with both high traffic and high bounce rates. As part of this, it would be useful to
analyse the conversion rates for those pages too to see how they compare and differ from
other better performing areas of the site.

Source: Google analytics, 2019

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 The next stage is to have a brainstorming session for ideas on how to improve the identified
page (or pages) and then collate the most promising, before then working with the
designers and developers to create one or two versions of the pages with new ideas. These
can then be launched.

Remember there are tools within analytics vendors that allow for experiments and testing,
such as Google’s Experiments tool. This helps with the setup of the test and ensuring traffic
is randomly assigned to each page variant based upon a predetermined weighting. For
example: a test running with two-page variants might have the traffic split 50/50 or 60/40.
Visitors are typically ‘cookied’ so that they will always see the same version of the page
throughout the duration of the test (to maintain the integrity of the test).

Once the test is completed, the results need to be analysed based on the KPI goals to see
which was the winner.

One aspect to consider at this stage is statistical significance. Simply basing tests on quantity
may not be accurate. There are plenty of reliable calculators on the Web that can help
calculate the statistical significance by evaluating the number of conversions generated
from the control and test groups.

With any A/B testing we should aim for a confidence level of at least 90%, which means we
have only a 10% chance of interpreting the result incorrectly. An organisation should only
record a final decision for tests that are deemed to be statistically significant and if in doubt,
it is recommended to run the test again to validate the results!

Benefits of A/B testing

A/B testing offers some core benefits to organisations:

• It’s cheap and easy to implement. While it may incur costs developing different versions,
most of the time this is fairly minimal, with small differences between them. Tools within
analytics and also third-party tools that are now available make it even cheaper and
easier to implement A/B testing.
• A/B testing provides clear results that are statistically significant and also unambiguous.
• We can see which variation was the most successful at achieving the required outcome.
• A/B testing is more than just answering a one-off question or settling a disagreement, it
can be used consistently to continually improve a given experience, improving a single

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 goal like conversion rate over time, which can help a business improve revenue and
profitability.
• A/B testing also enables a business to make more out of its existing traffic – the cost of
acquiring traffic through paid-for sources can be high, but the cost of optimising
conversions through A/B is relatively low; therefore, an organisation can increase its
conversions for roughly the same marketing spend.

Effective A/B testing

It’s important when undertaking A/B tests that only one test is run at a time. Testing more
than one thing at a time muddles up the results. For example, if you A/B test an email
campaign that directs to a landing page while you’re A/B testing that landing page, your
results can get muddled very easily. How would you know which change caused the
increase in leads or sales?

It’s also important to test one variable at a time. To evaluate how effective an element on
a page, email or other aspect is, it’s important to isolate that variable in the A/B test. So,
test one element at a time. Don’t wait to test the variation until after the control has been
tested. It’s important that both versions are tested simultaneously, and website traffic is
split between the two versions. Testing versions separately will lead to inaccurate results.
For example, if one version is tested one week and the other the next, there are many other
variables that could affect the overall outcomes (such as changes in traffic).

Don’t conclude too early. This considers the statistical confidence in the test, which
determines whether the test results are significant (or more simply, whether the results
should be taken seriously). It prevents us from reading too much into the results if there
have been only a few conversions or visitors for each variation. Most A/B testing tools will
include tools for calculating statistical confidence, but there are online calculators available
if tests are being undertaken manually. Don’t surprise regular visitors. If a key part of the
website if being tested, shocking regular visitors can be avoided by only testing variations
on new visitors to the website. Make A/B tests consistent across the whole website. if a
sign-up button is being tested that appears in multiple locations, then a visitor should see
the same variation everywhere. Showing one variation on page 1 and another variation on
page 2 will skew the results.

Know how long to run a test before giving up or stopping. Giving up too early can mean
results are missed out on but giving up too late could cause the organisation to lose

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 conversions. There are helpful online calculators that can advise on a good length of time
to run a test for.

Multivariate testing (MVT)

Multivariate testing model. (Chaffey, 2019)

Where A/B testing will test different content for one visual element on a page, multivariate
testing, or MVT, will test different elements across one or more pages at the same time to
identify the combination of changes that yields the best outcome, usually the highest
conversion rate.

In multivariate testing, different elements of a website page or landing page are selected
on which to test on. Using a suitable testing tool, different variations of these individual
elements are then created and combined to create different versions of the page. These
could include different images, calls to action, body copy, etc. Based on the chosen setting,
visitors are then shown a dynamically created page with a variation of the elements in the
test. The results are then measured to determine which version provided the highest
conversion rate, generated the highest number of leads or revenue or whatever the
required outcome is. In turn, this then allows an organisation to select the best combination
of elements in the page design.

The process works in real-time, taking the guesswork and gut feel away from campaign and
website design and replacing it with an accurate measure of what works and what doesn’t
for real visitors to websites or campaigns, while also enhancing the opportunity for
creativity and experimentation.

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 Testing ideas

For the rest of this module, we’re going to look at potential tests that you can undertake
using A/B and MVT testing for the following:

• Landing pages.
• Conversion, registration and lead pages.
• Optimising number and layouts of ads.
• Price testing.
• Email campaigns.

It’s important to realise however, that what might work for one organisation or brand, may
not work for another as each business will execute a different digital strategy. However,
these will hopefully give suitable ideas of actionable tests you can undertake.

Landing Pages
Before you start testing and optimising landing pages, it’s worth remembering that there
can be a few instances in which testing might hurt your marketing efforts. One of those
instances is if the site has only just launched and there isn’t a lot of traffic going to the site,
with few conversions. Testing and optimising landing pages is all about statistics and
probability; therefore, little traffic will limit the numbers required to make an informed
decision.

The other instance to be aware of is seasonal variation in traffic and specific times of year
where traffic might increase, and/or different segments will visit the site. For example,
Christmas or Mother’s Day. This again might skew the testing results, so it is worth bearing
in mind.

To get actionable results straight away, look at the Landing Pages report in the analytics
provider to see the top entry pages by traffic, identifying those with the highest bounce
rate. Other useful metrics that could be used to judge the landing page performance could
also be average visit duration as well as percentage of new visits. Overlaying these metrics
by looking at traffic sources will provide useful insights into what may need to be fixed.

Campaign landing pages are also a useful place to start. These are pages that are being used
for paid search, affiliate activity or other digital advertising. The organisation is paying to
acquire this traffic, so if the pages are fixed and optimised, then costs will be reduced.

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 So, what should be tested first? This can be tricky, and often organisations are eager to test
the whole page at one time. But too many changes, too soon, will give mixed results without
ever giving any definitive answer on what really worked.

With this in mind, let’s think about the key aspects of a landing page:

The headline – like in newspapers or magazines, the objective of the headline is simply to
get the visitor to read the next line. Therefore, a great headline will grab the attention of
the visitor. Is the headline clear and enticing for the audience? Is this something that could
be tested?

Hero image – this is the main image or creative on the landing page and should work with
the headline, reinforcing the organisation's value proposition and drawing users toward the
call to action or key benefits. Is this image suitable for the page and does it tie in with the
page content? What other images could be used and tested?

The body copy – this is the main copy of the landing page. It needs to be short, simple and
to-the-point. The focus should be on underlining benefits or providing answers to
problems/questions that visitors might have. Visitors don’t have time to read through a
huge amount of content that doesn’t immediately give them what they need.

Data capture form or call to action – depending on the type of landing page, there may be
either a form to collect data, a call to action (like a button to download your app), or both.
A strong call to action can help move visitors forward into the beginning of the sales funnel,
rather than risking that they click elsewhere – think about the wording, is it simple, clear
and compelling? Optimising the data capture form should go beyond changing the
background colour or button. How can the data capture process be made simpler? What
data is needed vs. what would be nice to have?

Social proof – this includes aspects such as testimonials and other elements that validate
the brand or product. What additional social proof can be provided for your visitors to trust
the brand and products/services being sold?

Third-party endorsement – this is the use of existing brands that are recognised by the
target, in order to gain trust and confidence in the website and brand. For example, trust
seals that can be used for e-commerce sites, or even endorsements or features in news
publications. Consider how these could be included or added to the landing page to
improve performance.

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 Conversion, Registration and Lead Pages
The checkout, registrations and lead submission pages are important pages and are classic
funnel pages. Visitors will have a structured
experience on a website and will move through
a specific set of pages to complete the desired
outcome. Identify these pages and focus on
them as they are directly connected to the
organisation’s outcomes and its bottom line.

For e-commerce sites, look at the checkout

process. Could the process be changed or
optimised? Could the process be made quicker? Look at the success of brands such as
Amazon with its one-click ordering. Think about the importance of users registering, could
utilising guest checkouts be tested? How could the elements previously discussed about
landing pages be used to improve registration or lead capture forms?

Optimising Number and Layout of Ads

Advertising can be the main source of monetisation for a website, yet often, little testing is
undertaken to understand the impact of the number and layout of ads. Do more ads on a
page mean more clicks and therefore, more revenue? It’s unlikely! It’s only likely to reduce
the number of visitors who decide to return to the site.

Test the number of ads on a page using A/B or

multivariate testing to see the impact on
outcomes (which might be ad clicks). It’s also
worth testing different layouts of ads on pages
as well as different types of ads. Users are
increasingly blind to banners, so moving
placements around can help reduce banner
blindness and increase outcomes.

Price Testing
One key element within any landing page is the offer (or benefits)
made to a user. Testing can be a powerful tool to help understand
the role of an offer and pricing in driving site visitors to site
outcomes and it can even reinvent business models.
Key aspects that could be tested include looking to offer visitors
something for free to trial the service or product. This doesn’t have to be for every visitor
but can be run in a controlled fashion through A/B testing and only testing this to a small
proportion of the website traffic and then viewing the results. Other testing ideas could

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 include changing the offer, perhaps increasing the discount or changing the offer mechanics
to provide better value. Different offers will resonate with different site visitors, so
changing aspects of what is being presented and how, could make a significant difference
in getting and keeping visitors’ attention and increasing onsite outcomes.

Email Campaigns

A/B testing and multivariate testing should not be limited to just the website. The same
principles can be applied across a range of digital media, including display advertising,
search marketing, affiliate marketing and email marketing. There really are unlimited
possibilities for gaining the best ROI from any testing efforts.

There are some key tests that are beneficial to undertake to further optimise and improve
email campaigns. The most basic of these is subject line testing through A/B testing. Most
email service platforms now offer organisations the ability to run A/B tests easily. Some will
even allow split testing to be undertaken for a small proportion of the database, before
then automatically emailing the winning subject line to the rest of the database. It’s
important to remember, as with any A/B testing, that the tests are designed to measure
impact. For example, rather than just testing two different random subject lines, A/B testing
subject lines should look to understand the impact of the inclusion or exclusion of various
elements, such as personalisation, values, or using key words such as ‘Free’.

Other key tests that can be undertaken with email campaigns include copy (arrangement
of copy, length or wording), calls to action (this could include wording, placement of the
call to action as well as the inclusion of a phone number), different landing pages (adding
straight to basket vs. product information page) as well as the overall design itself.

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 Topic 4:
The digital marketing funnel
Introduction
Welcome to Topic 4 of your content creation for digital channels module.

A digital marketing funnel is not too different from a sales funnel other than it is developed
to gain insights and measure online customer behaviour. Matt Ackerson from Autogrow in
his article “17 Best Sales Funnel Examples to Help Your Website Convert More Customers”
defines a sales funnel as:

“A series of steps designed to guide visitors toward a buying decision. The steps are
composed of marketing assets that do the work of selling, like landing pages and email.”

A bit later in this module we will share two of the ‘best sales funnels’ as identified by
Ackerson. You can read his full article here: https://autogrow.co/best-sales-funnel-
examples/.

For further understanding of an

online sales funnel, watch this useful
video at:

https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=O98fHbbMHug&t=11s

White (n.d.), on TrackMaven.com, provides further insights that will help with
understanding how the marketing funnel can serve as a visualisation for understanding the
process of turning leads into customers.

According to White (n.d.), the idea is that, like a funnel, marketers cast a broad net to
capture as many leads as possible, and then slowly nurture prospective customers through
the purchasing decision, narrowing down these candidates in each stage of the funnel.
Ideally, your marketing funnel would be shaped more like a cylinder, with all your leads

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 turning into customers. Unfortunately, this is not possible. It is part of a marketer’s job to
turn as many leads into customers as possible.

It’s important to note that not all funnels are the same; some have many ‘stages’ while
others have only a few. In the following diagram, you can see the most common and
relevant funnel stages, terms and actions.

The Marketing Funnel. (TrackMaven, 2019)

Marketing funnel stages and conversions

Awareness: Awareness is the top stage of the marketing funnel. Potential customers are
pulled into this stage through marketing campaigns and their own research and discovery.
There are many ways to create awareness including with events, advertising, trade shows,
content posts, webinars, direct mail, viral campaigns, social media, search, media
mentions, to name but a few. Here, lead generation takes place. Prospect information is
collected, and leads are pulled into a lead management system for nurturing further down
the funnel.

Interest: As leads are generated, they move on to the interest stage. Here interested
parties learn more about the company’s products and services. The opportunity at this
stage is to develop a relationship with individuals and to introduce the company’s

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 positioning. Nurturing can be done through through emails, content marketing,
newsletters, and more.

Consideration: At this stage, leads become qualified leads and are treated as prospective
customers. Prospects should receive more information about products and offers through
automated email campaigns. Targeted content, case studies and free trials all help to get
the prospect to consider taking an action.

Intent: In this stage, prospects demonstrate that they are interested in buying a brand’s
product. This can happen in a survey, after a product demo, or when a product is placed in
the shopping cart on an ecommerce website. The opportunity here is to make a strong case
for why the company’s product is the best choice.

Evaluation: In this stage, prospects are ready to make a final decision about whether to
purchase. Marketing and sales usually work together at this point to nurture the decision-
making process and convince the prospect that their product is the best solution to fulfill
the prospects needs.

Purchase: This is the last stage in the marketing funnel. Here, a prospect makes the decision
to buy and becomes a customer. Sales take over and facilitate the purchase transaction. A
positive experience can lead to referrals that push more leads to the top of the marketing
funnel, restarting the process.

Nonlinear funnels

White (n.d.) goes on to explain; “some experts argue that the marketing funnel is no longer
relevant because the buying process is no longer linear.

Leads are coming into the funnel at different stages. Sometimes this happens because they
are referred and already know they want to buy a brand’s product, so they jump in at the
intent stage. It also might happen because they have pursued their own education and
jump in at interest or consideration.

As access to information has increased due to technological advances (meaning, the rise of
the Internet) and customers are increasingly doing their own research and depending on
digital content to inform them about products”.

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 An alternative to the marketing funnel is Court et al. (2009)’s consumer decision journey,
which employs a circular model to show how the buying process fuels itself and to highlight
pivots or touch points. (You can read more about this model at Mckinsey.com:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-
consumer-decision-journey.)

Customer Decision Journey. (Court et al., 2009)

Marketing vs. Sales: Owning the funnel

White (n.d.) also brings to the fore the heated debate happening in the marketing and sales
worlds over who exactly owns the funnel. “One side argues that consumers have become
more dependent on digital content to inform their purchasing decisions, marketers have
taken on more responsibility for the funnel, as they continue to nurture prospects through
the purchasing process.”

Look at the diagram on the next page to see how marketing and sales ownership of the
funnel has changed.

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 The Marketing Funnel Split. (TrackMaven, 2019)

White (n.d.) goes on to say: “there are even some who see the funnel as being split
vertically, with both sales and marketing owning the full funnel. They argue that the sales
people are increasingly becoming thought leaders to drive awareness by doing outbound
outreach. In this scenario, both marketing and sales would work to nurture leads and
prospects from awareness to purchase.”

Flipping the funnel: Marketing and the customer

experience
An increasingly common practice for marketing, sales, and customer service and
experience managers is to ‘flip the funnel’ into a customer experience funnel. This flipped
funnel shows how you can turn customers into advocates. This process in turn refuels the
top of the marketing funnel by driving awareness and lead generation.

Here’s a diagram of the customer experience funnel:

The Customer Experience Funnel. (TrackMaven, 2019)

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 White (n.d.) has distilled the most important stages of the customer experience funnel
which we have summarised for you below:

Repeat: The next step after a customer has made a purchase is to make them a repeat
customer. This means improving retention and nurturing customers to make more and
bigger purchases. Marketers continue bottom of funnel activities to encourage repeat
actions by the customer.

Loyalty: When customers begin to identify with a brand, engagement becomes key.
Marketers can nurture the customers’ connection to a brand through community
development, engagement and outreach.

Referral: Loyal customers are more likely to refer friends and make recommendations
about the brand and its products.

Advocacy: Ultimately you want to turn your customers into advocates. You want them to
be writing writing product reviews, posting about your products on social media, and
driving more new leads for your marketing funnel. External recommendation not connected
to a brand can strongly influence prospects.

Marketers can work to develop their communities to better support advocates, ask them to
participate in case studies, or engage them around consumer-generated content on social
media.

The ultimate goals are to increase number and size of purchases and to drive more
awareness and referrals to fuel the marketing funnel.

For this content and more on marketing funnels and other useful digital marketing tips visit
the TrackMaven website to view the article, which can be found here:
https://trackmaven.com /blog/marketing-funnel-2/.

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Reference list:

Chaffey, D. & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019) “Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice.” 7th ed.
Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson.

Alexa Blog (n.d.) “Here Are 10 Buyer Persona Examples to Help You Create Your Own”, Available at:
<https://blog.alexa.com/10-buyer-persona-examples-help-create/> [Accessed: 16 December 2018]

Braiker, B. (2014). “The ice bucket challenge: a case study in viral marketing gold.” Available at:
<http://digiday.com/brands/ice-bucket-challenge-case-study-viral-marketing-success/> [Accessed: 5
December 2018]

Ducker, C (n.d.) “The Easy-to-Follow Guide to Building an Online Brand” Available at:
<http://www.chrisducker.com/building-an-online-brand/> [Accessed: 12 November 2018]

McCarthy, Bill, (2016) “Location-based marketing success stories: Three retailers driving ROI”. Available at:
<https://www.shoppertrak.com/article/location-based-marketing-success-stories/> [Accessed: 28 December
2017]

McCormick, Kristen (2016). “Combining Offline and Online Marketing for Small Business” Available at:
<https://thrivehive.com/combining-offline-and-online-marketing-for-small-business/> [Accessed: 12
December 2018]

Mybroadband (2017) “Biggest online shops in SA” Available at:

<https://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/207168-biggest-online-shops-in-south

africa.html> [Accessed: 13 November 2018]

News24 (2017) “SA e-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds” Available at:

<https://www.fin24.com/Companies/Retail/sa-e-commerce-growing-by-leaps-and-bounds

20170222> [Accessed: 28 November 2018]

Statista (2017). “Percentage of mobile device website traffic worldwide from 1st quarter 2015 to 3rd quarter
2017”. Available at: <https://www.statista.com/statistics/277125/share-of-website-traffic-coming-from-
mobile-devices/> [Accessed: 18 December 2018]

YouTube (2016) “History and Evolution of DIGITAL MARKETING” Available at:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soSswwfn108> [Accessed: 5 November 2018]

YouTube (2013) “Sayduck - Make your space beautiful with augmented reality” Available at:
<https://youtu.be/ewpPfknIUZI> [Accessed: 7 November 2018]

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