Editor's Notes

1. A busy toolbox – a toolbox that has gotten even busier for the past 4 years as you can see: facebook, twitter, youtube, more recently foursquare, gowalla, the mobile web – And, it’s not over.
2. So this is the big question nowdays: what to cut, what should you cut? What can you cut?The good news is I have the answer. Here it is
3. Kind of obvious? You’re right, but what has really changed with this big digital take over we’ve all witnessed for the past 5 years is the fact that we don’t have to rely on hunches, guesses or mere opinions anymore
4. Are you ready for this? Last MayI did a survey about the state of higher ed online analytics to find out. The survey sample is 399 – which is enough to be representative.Most institutions are ready – 95% track their web traffic according to the survey.Quick question for you before we move to the next slide: who is using Google Analytics to track web traffic?
5. Well according to the survey, 92% of people who track data actually use Google Analytics.No wonder, it’s excellent, powerful and free. With this kind of help, we should all be spending countless hours analyzing the data to back up our decisions, right?Let me pause again and let me ask you about the time YOU spend working on analytics. Please raise your hand if you don’t spend any time – okMore than half of your time per week?Less than 2 hours per week?
6. Here it is. The marketers in the room will find it pretty straight forward – but the digital channel is just a another channel after all. Goals, KPIs, Strategy, Tracking Set up, Benchmarking, Analysis and Decisions.So let’s get started with Step 1
7. So, first we start with Goals – nothing new here, but it’s so tempting with cool technology to just run to the tools – that is always good to remember that we cannot do anything without setting up some goals – Take some time, write your marketing goals on a piece of paper so you can refer to them frequently – actually, why not even pin them on the wall of the marketing or web communication office?
8. Which would lead you to identify your key performace indicators – or success metrics as I prefer to call them
9. Once you have spelled out how success will look like with those success metrics or key performance indicators, you’ll be ready to work on your strategy. Define precisely what you will do to meet your goals – which channels, the type of tactics and down to the tools.
10. You need to plan your tracking activities to make sure you collect usable and insightful data.
11. Next step – benchmark! Look at what the competition – I mean your peer institutions – is doing.
12. On Facebook and Twitter, it’s easy to spy – For Web traffic, Google Analytics does offer you a benchmarking feature for visits, site bounce rate, pageviews, average time on site, # pages per visits and % new visits.Not bad, but far from perfection as it groups websites in 3 buckets (small, medium and large) by visits – while you’d like to compare your stats with your peer institutions or competitors.
13. So, once you have your data, some info about the competition, you’re finally ready to start analyzing results and trends. That work will help you in the last step of the plan
14. Making the decision – Give you a month, 6 month, a year and cut what’s not working – and don’t worry. If anybody asks why you cut a publication, a website and ditch Twitter all together, you can base your decisions on data – not hunches, guesses or opinions.
15. Here you have it your 7-step plan to your marketing measurement strategy. But I’m not done yet.