Maximize the Impact of Your Digital Marketing with Better Insights.

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Forrester Research has estimated that by 2021, businesses will spend nearly

$120 billion on digital marketing; including website, search, display advertising,

online video, email marketing and more.* In order to optimize spend and stay

ahead of the competition, measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing

efforts has become a critical component of the modern marketer’s arsenal of

tools.

Today’s consumer no longer follows a clean, predictable, orderly purchase

process. The customer journey is not a funnel or a road, but a jumble of

interactions that span multiple devices, multiple touch points and require utmost

transparency. The average consumer owns 3.8 connected devices, and will

typically consume 5 pieces of content before concluding a transaction – often

accessing the same content on different devices at the same time. Consumer

interactions usually begin with organic search as users leverage media across

multiple devices to learn about products and services. Along the way, consumers

encounter generic and branded paid search, social media posts, emails,

referrals, and display ads, all hopefully leading to an eventual purchase. Each of

these channels can serve to assist or deter consumers from a transaction. It is

therefore essential to monitor as many of these as possible in a single, unified

view of your digital world.

In a fragmented, multi-device world, it is critical that marketers understand

where and how their target consumers are using these different channels to

create a plan to engage and inspire consumers effectively. Today, about 50% of

search is performed on a mobile device and 65% of smartphone visitors continue

over to a desktop or a PC. Often, Marketers still view search as being conducted

on desktop and mobile, independent of one another. Trends suggest otherwise.

Consumers view the same piece of content up to 5 times – often on different

devices at the same time. Users migrate between desktop and mobile and

leverage search history that is archived across devices to help create a seamless

experience. Research also indicates that these interactions on mobile devices

eventually lead to conversion. Today, approximately 2% of first time visitors to

your website complete a purchase.

Modern consumer behaviors create specific challenges for marketers. The huge

rise in usage of mobile devices means speed continues to be top of mind, with

more than 70% of users abandoning a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to

load. Ensuring that consumers can find you – across all devices and all channels

– is also a huge issue for marketers, as is the need for conversion. While there

are many challenges that modern marketers deal with daily, three are critical to

the digital marketer:

INTRODUCTION

WHAT’S IMPACTING YOUR

BUSINESS

CHALLENGES FACING BRANDS

Can they find me?Making sure that consumers can find your business is the top concern for

any marketer. Consumers typically engage in one of three types of searches;

informational, navigational, and transactional. Eighty two percent of mobile

searches are informational, with users searching for information about your

business or products. In these situations, it’s critical to ensure that consumers

can easily find your business information across different channels including

social media outlets, local listings sites such as business directories and review

channels like Trip Advisor or Yelp.

Will they click?About 90% of users are uncertain of what they will buy when searching. A

business must ensure the right keywords are being used to maximize return

on investment. Marketers must carefully analyze the balance of keywords and

compare them to competitors to ensure that the business is ranking for the

keywords that are most likely to lead to increased traffic.

Am I fast enough?Fast loading sites matter more than ever. In fact, page speed is a key challenge

which businesses face. A fast loading site can maximize user retention and lead

to higher conversions. 70% of users abandon a site if the page takes more than

3 seconds to load, and slow sites are inherently harder to find since speed is a

critical ranking factor for search engines.

To have a truly successful marketing strategy, marketers must measure

interactions like these across the entire customer journey and leverage the

power of data-driven decisions to optimize marketing spend and maximize

return on investment. Analysis of benchmarks and key performance indicators

coupled with techniques like conversion rate optimization and design can create

the type of unified digital presence businesses need to succeed.

Faced with a fragmented and uncertain customer journey, Brands have adapted

a variety of strategies to attract their well-informed customers.

The right key wordsFIAT® cars used a brand campaign focused on the right key words depending

on the device type. If the user was on a desktop, they were directed to a “car

configurator” experience – letting them create the car they wanted to purchase

in real time. On the other hand, if the user was on a mobile device, the FIAT®

user experience was optimized towards a “Find a Dealership” experience, using

specific calls to action and tools aimed at making the process quick and simple

on a mobile device. Additionally, FIAT® tried to make key words “City Car” and

“Small Car” synonymous with their brand. Not surprisingly, this campaign saw

a 127% increase in unaided brand awareness.

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GETTING IT RIGHT

Getting foundNext up, Argos, a British retail group, bridged the gap between store and digital

by focusing on key words “be everywhere”, by using those keywords online

across their campaigns but also being present offline where possible in their

marketing. Argos made it possible for consumers to answer the question “is

this product near me?” and directed users to the most appropriate locations.

The result was a 38% growth in mobile commerce by driving customers to the

location where inventory was available.

SpeedPage speed is an important factor to drive user engagement. 1-800-Contacts

(World’s largest contact lens store) improved their mobile usability and speed to

make it easier to buy products from their mobile site. This led to a 24% growth in

mobile commerce.

Having optimized your presence across multiple digital channels, the next step

is to be able to adequately measure performance. By leveraging performance

tools and metrics, marketers can optimize and evolve their digital presence and

strategy across various channels, and take control of the user experience and

conversion path. Marketers need to understand which channels are optimal

at each stage of the customer journey and cultivate a presence in each. At a

minimum, marketers must monitor inclusion in five key areas:

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MEASURING & BENCHMARKING THE RIGHT DATA

Website TechnologyThe website platform is central to building an effective digital presence. Any

benchmarking and digital health product must help you monitor whether the

right technology is in place on your site. Technologies that natively include

sitemaps, robots.txt files, HTML elements, duplicate content monitoring, schema

creation as well as supporting an architecture and infrastructure that enables a

fast load time are all critical elements that must be measured and monitored.

Other items to consider include:

• Structured data (coded bits of information that make it easier for search

engines and searchers to comprehend your site with rates, reviews, and

key services) to boost exposure in the organic search results.

• Properly optimizing your website for search using an SEO audit to

increase traffic and gain attention from potential customers in order

maximize your chances for long term success.

An overview of your digital landscape as seen in the Milestone Insights dashboard

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Mobile readiness and usabilityMarketers must stay on top of mobile performance metrics including mobile

page speed, mobile keywords, and AMP compatibility. Marketers need access to

ways of measuring the mobile experience presented to visitors. 50% of search

queries come from mobile devices, thus it is imperative to have a well-optimized

and usable mobile site as part of your digital strategy. Mobile friendliness has

been upgraded as an important factor for SEO and serves as one of the main

factors differentiating sites that have a solid conversion rate and sites that have

a high bounce rate.

SEO visibilityGetting visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is still one of the

most critical elements of any digital marketing strategy. Analyze your keyword

performance against your competitive landscape to understand what’s working

and to spot opportunities. Also review your backlinks to discern external

authoritative websites that are linking to your website. Be sure that your

business listings on Google, Yelp, Foursquare, and other data amplifiers are

optimized and present an accurate and compelling picture of your business. In

addition, irrespective of the customer journey path, users must be able to reach

you at the right phone number, drive to your physical location and engage with

accurate social profiles.

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An example of the SEO Visibility portion of the Milestone Insights dashboard

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Voice searchVoice is not the future of search, it’s the present. For maximum compatibility

with the voice-powered world, structured data enables your content to surface in

experiences like voice answers, maps, and Google knowledge graphs.

In addition, it’s important to review the presence of schemas and break down

how schemas impact your business.

Omnichannel presenceReview your messaging across all your digital marketing efforts to analyze

whether it is uniform and reliable. This includes checking to see if you have a

consistent presence across your local, social, and paid media.

Checking content effectivenessWhen launching new content such as a new webpage or updating content on a

current page, it’s important to track the effectiveness of the keywords utilized.

New content is analyzed relative to competitor search engine rankings as well.

Optimizing on-page keywordsAlways stay relevant and own who you are. A customer who is ready to

purchase knows what they are looking for and targeting the right keywords is

critical to attract the right customers. If you have something unique to offer to

your customers, own it. For example, if you are a pet friendly hotel or offer free

parking or Wi-Fi, make sure you highlight that in your promotion and marketing.

Paid searchPaid search, used effectively, can augment and complement SEO and effectively

target your customer through their journey. Be sure to research and understand

how efficiently you are bidding on paid keywords as part of your inbound

strategy to attract customers. It is critical to ensure paid keywords are tracked

and to understand the traffic attribution and conversions.

Your social healthMilestone Insights empowers today’s businesses and marketing professionals to

review digital performance, measure campaign impacts and harness competitive

intel to optimize their presence and performance at every touch point in one

place making it very easy to stay on top of your digital health.

OTHER KEY AREAS TO TRACK AND

MEASURE

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Digital Marketing is constantly evolving; the right tool can help businesses

understand their current digital health by turning the data noise into actionable

quantitative metrics.

As technology evolves, and the online marketplace continues to morph, the user

experience and purchasing journey becomes harder to measure and dominate.

Knowing that the customer utilizes every modern channel to make informed

buying decisions, and understanding how to tap into the conversion funnel with

the right content, is key to your online performance.

Milestone Insights empowers today’s businesses and marketing professionals to

review digital performance, measure campaign impacts and harness competitive

intel to optimize their presence and performance at every touch point in one

place making it very easy to stay on top of your digital health.

*https://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2017/01/26/us-digital-marketing-spend-

will-near-120-billion-by-2021/#67ce85ee278b

CONCLUSION