Today's Online Business Intelligence

Notice how I did not say web analytics? A large chasm exists between marketing, technology, and business in connecting the dots between what is the value of their efforts. It's a gap I have seen in digital strategies inside and outside of the real estate industry. Building a bridge across these disciplines requires insight on valuing ROI into a strategy, and ensures consumers are given an experience appropriate for the brand.

Several of my latest projects had me sitting in C-level meetings discussing marketing activities. Questions asked by the CEO or president of the company where:

• How do we know if our digital strategies are meeting the business objectives and goals?
• How profitable are the digital assets in meeting the business objectives and goals?
• Where are consumers coming from and are they satisfied?
• Do we know what efforts are NOT contributing or delivering profits to the company?

These questions and many more need a holistic approach to measure and evaluate end-to-end online business strategies.

This is where the chasm develops. Web and marketing analytics perform specific functions—functions which are easily siloed when reviewing digital assets' value proposition to the company and the consumer. Further widening this chasm is the broad knowledge required in marketing, technology, and the business to create a successful digital strategy.

What Is Online Business Intelligence?

Online business intelligence is the marriage of web and marketing analytics into a structured view of consumer behavior and outcomes. Understanding how they differ offers an opportunity to build an online business intelligence dashboard to quickly answer questions and decision-making ability based on performance or data gained from the results.

Web Analytics

Web analytics' focus is wrapped around the consumer's journey through particular elements of marketing campaigns, websites, and mobile apps—an analytic that captures potential customers site visit interactions from Key Performance Indicator (KPI) metrics. These metrics are in the form of:

• Page views and view rates
• Number of visitors and unique visitors
• Time on site
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Consumers' navigational pathways or task objectives
• Click-through rates on expected actions
• Query terms

All these factors build clarity on consumers' behavior when interacting within our digital world.

We have known this for many years by utilizing tools similar to Google Analytics, a smart way to garner insight into consumer behavior.

Marketing Analytics

Marketing analytics' broader view focuses on marketing campaigns and activities. Measuring multi-channel attribution performance and marketing mix modeling (MMM) are just a few of the methods to discover ROI on a marketing strategy.

At the end of the day, it is about measuring each and every marketing activity in order to make smart decisions.

Client story

A client launched a small, redesigned website with specific objectives and goals. They outsourced the design and engineering to a marketing firm. The firm did an outrageous job in developing the design and creating a brand message that was spot on with the client's business objectives.

But that is where it stopped.

What I found missing were several important pieces of data to support their web and marketing analytics.

Inquiry Forms

It so easy to build one inquiry form and use it on every page within the site. I don't have a problem with this approach; just make sure you capture from which page the inquiry form is producing a goal conversion. It's a piece of important information to have when employing marketing tactics to a consumer segment.

Don't stop at just ensuring your web analytics tool is capturing the data; passing information to the CRM and the Sales process is where the gold lies.

What data do you need?

Link tagging data is critical to pass from an inquiry form to the customer record in a CRM and aales tool. An example of a link tagging tool is Google URL Builder. The purpose is to capture which banner advert, pay-per-click, newsletter, social media or email campaign call-to-action delivered the consumer who engaged with the inquiry form.

Adding this data to the CRM and sales process enables you to quantify – through online business intelligence – what marketing tactics are working, and which ones are not.

If your marketing platform doesn't integrate link tagging with a traffic analytics tool, use Google URL Builder to craft your own links.

Summary

Online business intelligence is here now. A certain level of expertise is required to evaluate the implementation of web and marketing analytics and how to obtain the data needed for analysis. Without the correct data, an analysis in the context of ROI to meet business objectives and goals are lost.

The future: Use machine learning and deep learning in an online business intelligence strategy. This is the nirvana of data-driven marketing—marketing that companies in the real estate industry have significantly invested in this strategy.

Machine learning is a process which analyzes all the web and marketing analytics to find patterns in how consumers are reacting to marketing activity. Deep learning takes this a step further in amplifying a found pattern to form a prediction.

Executing an online business intelligence approach requires a broad set of skills. Knowledge of how to execute marketing and advertising strategies, technology integration knowledge, and operational business prowess ensures alignment of business goals and objectives.

Building a bridge over disciplines is a specialty of WAV Group. As the market tightens and downward pressure on margins continue, we can research your online business intelligence to see if it is aligned with your goals. Call Victor, Marilyn, or David for a conversation.

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