Online marketing works, but our Web sites dont?

Bob Rose

The Internet is the worlds biggest marketplace, allowing both buyers and sellers unprecedented access, flexibility and capability to scale the business of buying and selling. Not surprisingly, the amount of money being spent in online business initiatives is consistently registering greater heights. A joint report by The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP shows that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. continued upwardtotaling $16.9 billion in 2006exceeding spending in 2005 by 35%! eMarketer predicts that this number will go up to $29.4 billion by 2010. These astronomical figures highlight increasing significance of Internet and its ability to help firms progressively generate more revenues.  With the size of online retail sales crossing $130 billion in 2006 in the US alone, it is no surprise that Web sites have moved into the center stage for all business activitiesin fact, 210 million Americans are slated to go online in 2007. From corporate communication to branding, from lead generation to lead nurturing the Website has become the most influential and visible touch point. Accordingly, businesses have been busy discovering and harnessing new communication channels like banners, blogs, Microsites, portals, product brochures, pay-per-click online campaigns, and search engine marketing.

Hollywood Store Fronts: Are your content changes lagging behind real time?   On the Universal Studios Tram Tour, the guide will tell you that most of the sets you come across are facades, giving the illusion that there actually is more to what you see. They are also, in a sense, for public use. Similarly, in a world where information changes rapidly, Web sites need to be constantly updated and continuously monitored. Static content cannot not hold users or search engines alike. Wouldnt you care if customers motored past your sloppy Websitelike one of these decaying frontson route to your competitor?  The sheer variety of delivery channels gives marketers multiple options to choose from. However, it is also a nightmare if these delivery channels do not complement each other. Like modern banking that have multiple delivery channels to deliver services to a customer, they must manage their services for the telephone, Web, POS or the ATM. Effective communication from a Website can only happen if different pieces of the content landscape such as banner ads, blogs, online communities or pay per click ads work in tandem with each other to engage users effectively.  Similarly, for measuring the success of online initiatives, organizations have to understand and integrate multiple technology tools cohesively for tangible results. For example, you may have Web analytics software that gives you the details about the most popular sections in your site, a CRM application that gives a complete picture about your customer, and e-mail marketing software that blasts out customized mails to selected list of people who have visited or downloaded content from your site. Most organizations see these initiatives as silos of information, and invariably fail to exploit the potential.  So the challenges are multifold. These include continuously updating content, integrating with backend CRM or Web analytics software, ensuring personalization of content according to user types, and leveraging newer concepts such as Wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and everything else Web 2.0.

Changing gears into overdrive

Well managed content can make your marketing campaigns rock. For this to happen, your Website needs to have the ability to perform the following functions:

Deliver content relevant to your online marketing campaigns  Ensure brand consistency across various content channels   Improve brand visibility through increase in quality Website visitors  Convert Website visitors into qualified leads with appropriate content  Track effectiveness of marketing campaigns using appropriate tools and technologies.   Easily update your Web sites based on user feedback

To acquire such capabilities, organizations are obligated to make their Web sites more interactive, relevant and search engine friendly. This is extremely significant as a Web site with inappropriately tagged content or a few missing links can turn away prospective customers and deliver them into the hands of the competition in a matter of few seconds.  Content is paramount to online consumersfar more than search. A recent study by Online Publisher Association (OPA) found that consumers are now spending 47% of their time (up from 34% in 2003) on content as compared to 5% on search. This clearly underlines the importance of customizing the content, and continually keeping it fresh and meaningful. Manual configuration and content updating on the Web site can take a long time, be prone to errors and can be messy if it involves integration with multiple systems such as a campaign management or a CRM system. Further, as content management involves a host of tasks including usability, design, and information architecture--most organizations find it extremely challenging to put out a Web site that reflects the dynamic needs of the business.

Take a breather! Help is on the way

Web content management systems have emerged to address precisely these requirements. Armed with this tool, an organization can take end-to-end responsibility for streamlining the process of managing and publishing digital content to remove a major impediment in the success of their online marketing programs.  Some key benefits that a Website content management system can deliver are:

Content as you need, when you need: Your marketing programs need content specifically tailored to the needs of the campaigns. A Web CMS lets you create new landing pages and Microsites on the fly as well as update existing content just as easily.   Brand Consistency: Website CMS ensure brand consistency across a companys Web site so that branding and design are controlled to the level desired (style sheets, templates, etc.), regardless of who is responsible for the actual content.   Improving visibility: Organizations who focus on giving non technical subject matter experts tools that are simple to use, will succeed. Content specialists can focus on creating content and not worry about formatting changes. Website visibility can be considerably improved using search engine optimization techniques. Organizations can use a Web CMS to write search engine friendly URLs, optimize their directory structure, create individual title and meta tags per page which when used in combination with each other can significantly improve ranking of a Web site in search engines, as well enhance the usability of Web pages.   Measuring effectiveness: Centralization allows organizations to measure the performance for different sections of the Web site more effectively. Further, seamless integration with Web Analytics or CRM software means that organizations do not have a disconnected view of their digital assets. Key performance indicators can be set and measured, campaigns can be tracked automatically, and leads can be followed up to closure.   Ensuring quality and freshness of content: A Web content management system incorporates intelligent workflow automation, ensuring that content passes through appropriate quality gates before being published. Additionally, completely configurable workflows enable organizations to assign tasks to any person, and are scaled when defined thresholds are crossed. For example, e-mail alerts can be sent to content owners of specific sections on a Web site when these sections dont get updated after a specific time period. This is difficult to do in a manual system.

Icing on the cakethe SaaS way

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model magnifies the benefit brought in by Web CMS by sparing organizations the high cost of purchasing, installing and customizing enterprise software. As the software is hosted, there is no hardware to buy and no software to install and no infrastructure to manage. The user organization just pays on a fixed monthly or quarterly fee and leaves the task of managing, maintaining and upgrading the software to the service provider.  Organizations save costs as they do not have to invest in resources like templates, actual coding, or a Webmaster that takes care of hosting. By using a SaaS model, organizations can also cut down on their risk, and choose different functionalities as they grow. Further, as billing is on a monthly or quarterly basis, costs are spread across the lifetime of a products usage. This is an extremely attractive value proposition when compared to the traditional software model, where costs are paid upfront and the risk of product implementation and adoption is totally on the customer.  In a recent study of support calls over the last 3 years 91% of support requests are unrelated to software. They consist of requests for input and output template edits, config changes, workflow revisions and training. This means that only 9% of your calls to a traditional software vendor for bug fixes and actual software issues will actually result in any assistance on their end without a professional services engagement of some sort, or contacting your system integrator, or Web agency. The reason for this is that the hard part of any CMS implementation doesnt begin until after the Web site goes live and you actually start using the CMS. This is why players like CrownPeak are providing Lifelong Active Support. This takes the Services in Software-as-a-Service to a whole new level with a dedicated account manager for the lifetime of the service, who is the same person who actually implements the CMS for your site, as part of your monthly cost. They are there to answer any question you have about the CMS and how you use it in your organization as well as provide strategic services for Search Engine Optimization, integrations and how you can actually measure the ROI of your CMS. All this result in a sweeter ROI for businesses who employ SaaS delivered Website CMS to manage their content. Businesses are becoming savvy and demand increasing ROI from their marketing programs. A Web CMS that can deliver superior results at a much lower total cost of ownership (TCO) will fall right in the sweet spot.

Harness the power of your Web site

In order to succeed, organizations try to keep pace with the speed at which business and technology trends are moving. A Website CMS seeks to addresses most of their content challenges by providing a holistic approach for managing and executing content management strategies. By using a Web CMS, businesses can gain real time capability into understanding and measuring results of the marketing campaigns. They can realize significant ROI by injecting these insights into their Web sites to turn them into even more powerful marketing assets. 

This article is contributed by Rob Rose - Vice President of Crownpeak. In order to succeed, organizations try to keep pace with the speed at which business and technology trends are moving. A [Website CMS] (link: http://www.crownpeak.com/) seeks to addresses most of their content challenges by providing a holistic approach for managing and executing content management strategies. By using a Web CMS, businesses can gain real time capability into understanding and measuring results of the marketing campaigns. They can realize significant ROI by injecting these insights into their Web sites to turn them into even more powerful marketing assets.