2013

All posts from 2013

How to track digital campaigns using Google Analytics utm codes

by Kelly Kubrick on November 27, 2013

“Tagging” Credit When Credit Is Due: Understanding Digital Campaign Tracking

Imagine a website…It’s a good website. It deserves visitors.

 

 

 

 

 

Those responsible for it agree, and the marketing / communications plans initiate:

  • Press / news releases are issued
  • Advertising is purchased
  • Keywords are bid on
  • Emails go out
  • Social media gets conversational

Good news! Website visitors start showing up…

 

 

 

 

 

Lots more visitors…

Image credit: Penguins sculpture, by Nao Matsumoto

Image credit: Penguins sculpture, by Nao Matsumoto

And right in the middle of all the celebrations, you get the dreaded question. Someone asks you which marketing or communication effort did the trick.

They start pummelling you with questions – which effort brought the visitors? Which didn’t? How did the efforts compare? Which should we do more of? Less of? Should we double down on any of them? Or discontinue any of them?

And once they hit you with all the ‘quantity’ questions, they then want to know the ‘quality’ questions: which effort(s) brought the right visitors for the campaign objective?

And you slowly back out of the room…

I am pleased to tell you there is good news – you can answer all those questions, and with flair and panache. The bad news is that it does take some advance planning.

Campaign tracking is about taking – or ‘tagging’ – credit

Web analytics tools attribute visitors to 1 of 2 ‘default’ traffic sources: the “Direct” (aka No Referral) or the “Referral” source:

“Typical” split measured as by web analytics tools - Direct vs Referral

“Typical” split measured as by web analytics tools

 

 

 

 

 

Direct is traffic a measure of brand awareness

Direct traffic website visitors are those who arrive by bookmark or memorized domain or URL. Think of this source of visitor traffic as a measure of brand awareness; visitors must have had previous exposure to your brand or URL,  to recall or type it into a browser window and / or bookmark it.

Referral traffic is closer to publicity

By contrast, the Referral traffic source ‘refers’ (get it?) to visitors arriving via a third party website. However, to make Referral more useful, we immediately segment those third parties into more specific organic (or unpaid) sources. Examples include:

  1. Search: traffic from commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN/Bing or About
  2. Social Media: traffic from social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram
  3. Publishers such as online newspapers, magazines or bloggers
  4. Institutions such as universities, hospitals or government websites

Think of these referral sources as a kind of publicity (for good or bad). And, as wonderful as all that referral traffic generally is, it can be challenging to secure, and it can be unpredictable. When it does show up, it is fabulous. And when it dries up, it can be scary.

To combat the unpredictable nature of referral traffic, we have another category of traffic source, known as “Campaigns”.

Campaigns are sources of traffic that you have defined in advance of your effort / spend

The definitions are unique to your organization’s marketing / communications / advertising efforts. When those definitions are aligned with your digital campaign tracking efforts, you’re able to isolate those visitors and report on them separately. You can answer questions such as”

  • Do particular campaigns bring more new leads vs. other sources?
  • Are those visitors of a higher quality? Do they read more content? Do they exhibit higher engagement?
  • Do they convert at a higher rate?

Campaigns are sources of traffic unique to your organization’s efforts to drive traffic

Campaigns might include:

  • Emails sent to your newsletter subscribers, prospects or customers that drive traffic back to your site
  • Display advertising (banners, buttons or other ad units) you purchased or traded for
  • Keywords you bid for via networks such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads
  • CPC (cost per click), CPM (cost per thousand) or CPA (cost per action) media buys from publishers
  • Social media updates posted to your organization’s profiles / feeds
  • Press or news releases distributed to your networks
  • Affiliate / partner websites where you negotiated placement; and even
  • “Offline” efforts such as print or radio ads (where you included a unique, or vanity URL)

As they typically require additional effort or cost, campaigns are those sources of traffic you’d like to measure return on, compared to the default direct and referral traffic sources. To do that, we need to isolate campaign visitors from Direct or Referral traffic sources.

But how do we isolate campaign visitors?

By tagging those sources of visitors:

 

 

 

 

 

Like marine biologists who tags wildlife to identify an animal later, or farmers who tag livestock to identify animals in a larger herd, digital analysts ‘tag’. We tag sources of visitor traffic to identify different segments in a larger herd of visitors to a website.

It’s just that we do our tagging via campaign tracking tags, otherwise known as “utms” codes in Google Analytics. FYI, ‘utm’ stands for Urchin Tracking Module. Urchin was the predecessor technology to Google Analytics, and the legacy term has stuck.

Examples of tags

Picture of a penguin tag

Penguin tag

Animals are tracked via physical tags that are attached to them. And digital campaigns are tagged via ‘extensions’ to the URLs we send visitors to.

Every digital analytics tool has a unique set of extensions available to track campaigns.

As a result, the specifics of campaign tracking implementation differ depending on whether your organization uses Google Analytics, Webtrends, Adobe Analytics or another tool.

Below, I’ve provide campaign tracking tags for Google Analytics vs Webtrends:

Google Analytics campaign tags

utm_source=source1
utm_medium=medium1
utm_campaign=campaign1

Webtrends marketing campaign or paid search tags

WT.mc_id
WT.srch=1

Web analytics tools recognize their own campaign tracking tags

When visitors arrive at your website via URLs that contain your campaign tracking tags, your digital analytics tool will recognize them as belonging to particular segments of traffic, and will attribute their arrival to the correct segment for you. Here’s how the magic happens:

When you create content that drives visitors to your website, you typically provide a link: http://www.mysite.ca

In digital analytics, we consider that an “untagged” link. And, regardless of which analytics tool you use, visitors who arrive via untagged links are attributed to the “Direct” source of traffic.

If you want to attribute visitors to a different source of traffic, you need to tag the link accordingly. To tag links, you ‘extend’ the link with extra information. And – the best part is that the extra information does not interfere with the way the web page is displayed to visitors.

Here’s an example of a tagged link:

https://www.onlineauthority.com/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=signature&utm_campaign=2013

What makes the link above special?

image of a question mark

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously. It’s the question mark.

The question mark signals that the link is what’s knows a ‘parameter’, and in the case of particular parameters, they are contain messages recognized by particular technologies, and ignored by others. So web servers ignore campaign parameters. Internet browsers ignore campaign parameters. And thus, there’s no impact on the user’s experience of your content.

Parameters have a particular structure: a question mark followed by an ‘equation’ separated by an equal sign:

?parameter-name=parameter-value-decided-by-you

So, if the parameter name were “source”, then you might decide the parameter value is a publisher or your house email list.

Or if the parameter name were medium, then you might decide en the parameter value is a banner or a particular email edition or issue.

Or, if the parameter name were campaign, then you might decide the parameter value is a campaign name like thanksgiving or rrsp-season-2013.

Examples of untagged links:

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/learn-google-analytics

Examples of those same links, tagged:

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=adwords&utm_campaign=2013

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/learn-google-analytics/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=adwords&utm_campaign=2013

Notice how there are actually three parameters in there, all strung together by ampersands?

Examples of those same links, tagged in colour:

In the first URL, I’ve shown the parameter name in blue:

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=segment-a&utm_campaign=2013

And, in the second URL, I’ve shown the parameter value in red:

onlineauthority.com/digital-analytics-courses/learn-google-analytics/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=segment-a&utm_campaign=2013

Once you’ve tagged your URLs with campaign parameters, or utms, and distributed them via email, social media, or as the destination URLS for your display ads, those visitors will appear in your campaign reports.

Where do the tagged visitors appear in my reports?

Look for them in your Traffic Sources, or Acquisition reports:

Screenshot to show where campaign-tagged visitors show up in your Google Analytics or Webtrends reports.

Campaign-tagged visitors are found in campaign reports in Google Analytics, Webtrends or other digital analytics tools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each parameter represents one report. Thus, the values of your campaign parameter utms will will appear in your Google Analytics campaigns report:

 

 

 

 

And, your Source and Medium parameter values or utms will will appear as secondary dimensions in your Google Analytics campaigns report, and as a stand alone Source/Medium report.

 

 

How do I tag my emails with Google Analytics utms?

Example of an HTML email with links circledIn the code of an HTML email, an organization can include links to their website. And those links can be extended, inside the HTML, with campaign tracking tags or utms.

So, again – instead instead of attaching a tag to an animal…we tag the link inside the HTML code in the email that brings visitors to the website. The tagged links inside this email might look like:

cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/trades/apply-who.asp/?utm_source=bulletin&utm_medium=email_03&utm_campaign=aut2013

cic.gc.ca/francais/immigrer/metiers/demand-qui.asp/?utm_source=bulletin&utm_medium=email_03&utm_campaign=aut2013

 

How do I tag my social media with Google Analytics utms?

Social media screenshot with shortened linkIn a social media update, organization can include links to their website. And those links can be extended prior to being shortened, with campaign tracking tags or utms.

How do I tag my display advertising banners with Google Analytics utms?

 

 

 

 

When providing creative to your agency or to the publisher you’ve purchased advertising with, you also provide them with the URL you want them to link to. The button and banners above might have the following tags:

digitalstrategyconference.com/ottawa/2013/?utm_source=publisher-a&utm_medium=250×250-ros&utm_campaign=dscott13-eb

digitalstrategyconference.com/vancouver/2013/?utm_source=publisher-b&utm_medium=728×90-biz&utm_campaign=dsvan13-reg

In the examples above, the value of the source parameter is the name of publisher where the button ran (publisher-a vs b), the value of the medium parameter represents the size of the ad unit (250×250 vs 720×90) and its placement (run of site vs business section) and the campaign name represents the offer: the city and pricing codes.

How do I create my utms?

You can certainly create utms and tag URLs manually, using something like Google’s URL builder:

 

 

 

 

But, it’s far more efficient to do it via a spreadsheet, which will help you create and organize Source, Medium and Campaign naming conventions. That way, over time, you’ll maintain consistency, adding more value to your reporting and analysis efforts. In addition, you can use very simple formulas in Excel to automatically build the URLs and thus eliminate potential tagging errors.

Below is an screenshot of an example spreadsheet I created for my clients:

 

 

 

 

And with that – congratulate yourself! You’re now ready to ‘tag credit’ for your brilliant campaigns!

And of course, you’ll be annotating your Google Analytics reports throughout to provide context to the changes in traffic, right?

If this intrigues you enough to begin developing your organization’s digital campaign tracking strategy, contact me to request my campaign tagging spreadsheet template.

When you and your team are ready to roll up sleeves and dive in, we would be happy to provide a proposal to provide your team with training or consulting to implement digital campaign tracking for yourselves.

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Kelly KubrickHow to track digital campaigns using Google Analytics utm codes
Credit: Penguins sculpture, by Nao Matsumoto

Proving Value in Communications Efforts

by Kelly Kubrick on November 8, 2013

As your website visitor numbers increase, how do you know you’ve found the right ones?

One of the biggest challenges in communications relates to understanding which of your efforts brought the right visitors to your website. Was it the news release? The emails you sent? Your social media activities?

In the pressure to launch a new program, the best intentions to measure impact often get lost in the hundreds of details driving the project forward. However, with a bit of advance planning, digital analytics can be a powerful tool can let you define, segment and report on your individual communications efforts after the fact.

Many thanks to Systemscope for hosting me on November 28, 2013 to talk to Ottawa’s public sector communications community about how to prove the value of their efforts. And yes – there will be penguins and cows…

Campaign tagging helps isolate pre-determined sources of visitors

It’s done through “campaign tagging“. Campaign tagging is a process that allows us to isolate sources of digital visitors that we’ve defined in advance, so that our web analytics tools – like Webtrends or Google Analytics – recognize them, and attribute them to the ‘correct’ (as we’ve defined it) source.

When you create content that drives visitors to your website, you typically provide a link such as http://www.yourorg.ca. In the digital analytics world, we consider that an “untagged” link. If you were to extend that link with a bit more information – called a campaign parameter – you would have yourself a tagged link.

Once you begin tagging your communications collateral, you’ll be able to show exactly how much traffic you drove, what kind of traffic you drove, and how those visitors engaged with your content. To learn more, see my blog post How to track digital campaigns using Google Analytics utm codes.

Looking forward to catching up with old friends and new – see you on November 28, 2013!

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Kelly KubrickProving Value in Communications Efforts

Web Analytics Fundamentals Online Training

by Kelly Kubrick on September 20, 2013

I’m looking forward to delivering next month’s session on the Fundamentals of Web Analytics for attendees of Instant eTraining‘s online certificate in Web Analytics.

Instant eTraining logo

 

 

The session will cover a user friendly definition of Web Analytics vs. the “official” definition Web Analytics:

“The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.” As always, thanks to the crew at the Digital Analytics Association for helping our industry articulate the concept.

I’ll go through the benefits of Web Analytics and make sure that everyone grasps the key takeaway of “Objectives Before Data”.

I’ll talk about how web analytics allows us to measure awareness and usage of digital properties, and how you can use web analytics to keep your digital efforts accountable.

We’ll cover what you need to get started: an understanding of data collection methods, some details about the how / why of website tagging and just enough about filters to help you understand some basic mechanics.

Given how critical it is to web analytics, I promise a simple and clear definition around website visitors versus visits. Using burritos. Seriously. We’ll also talk about website traffic sources.

Finally, I’ll talk about some of the unavoidable challenges of digital analytics – why even though it offers so much great data…it can still be difficult to find value in that volume.

Looking forward to meeting you there!

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Kelly KubrickWeb Analytics Fundamentals Online Training

Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 Wrap Up

by Kelly Kubrick on June 6, 2013

Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013We did it! Ottawa came together to get strategic with digital – and what an adventure: Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 has finished. Thank you, thank you, thank you – to our attendees, to our speakers, to our sponsors and to our team – you ALL rock.

Following the success of Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver 2013, Ottawa dove deep into the fundamentals of digital strategy. Over 20 speakers delivered a packed agenda of content, tackling key areas of learning including digital maturity, content strategy, mobile strategy social business strategy. We heard some amazing keynotes and case studies – from arts to tourism to pizza – from a wide range industries, and across sector.

Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013The room buzzed with great conversations and the #dstrategy Twitter hashtag was on fire!

As in Vancouver, I was particularly pleased about the audience’s response to both our definition of digital strategy and to the dStrategy Media Digital Maturity Model. The model is a business planning tool that my business partner, Andrea Hadley and I developed to help organizations identify necessary resources / investments to implement digital strategy.

Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013To learn more about the model, please feel free to listen to “Understand Your Organization’s Digital Maturity” podcast from IABC Ottawa’s The Voice – many thanks to Danny Starr for a great conversation about digital strategy!

I’d also like to thank Chamika Ailapperuma and Arianne Mulaire, who put in yeoman’s effort to capture the sessions via the Ottawa 2013 blog posts and  Twitter.

What a great experience – I can’t wait for next year!

Updated – thanks to Les Faber of WebFuel and David Bird of Bird’s Eye Marketing for their blog posts on the conference – enjoy!

  1. WebFuel: Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 Recap
  2. Bird’s Eye Marketing: Ottawa Digital Strategy Conference Review of Day 1 and 2

See you next year!

 

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Kelly KubrickDigital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 Wrap Up

Establishing Digital Maturity

by Kelly Kubrick on June 3, 2013

First published on the Digital Strategy Conference blog by Arianne Mulaire. Arianne is a co-founder of Reachology, an Ottawa-based digital marketing firm. As managing partner, she creates and manages online presences for organizations both large and small, private and public. Follow her on twitter @amulaire.

Session Presented by:

Kelly Kubrick, Partner and co-Founder, Digital Strategy Conference and President, Online Authority   – @KellyKubrick
Andrea Hadley, Partner and co-Founder, Digital Strategy Conference  –  @AndreaHadley

“Maturity models exist to give perspective on your current state and prepare you for moving forward. You will learn how to assess your organization’s level of maturity with respect to digital, and the degree of formality and optimization of processes currently in place.

Understanding your organization’s digital maturity provides an effective approach toward improving related processes. We’ll help you recognize key signposts to help with your planning so you’ll understand where you stand today and how to anticipate the next curve in the road.”

This is to help you planning your digital strategy by first determining the digital maturity of your organization.

The maturity model is a traditional tool that has been reformatted to reflect the digital world.

This is a process where you move from milestone to milestone.

The dimensions for digital maturity are:

  • human resources
  • technology resources
  • data strategy
  • content strategy
  • channel strategy
  • social business strategy

These are the dimensions that should be considered and rated individually. From level 0 to level 3 (none, low, medium, and high).

Over the next three days you will be able to assess where your organization is and how to move it forward.

As you map your organizational readiness, you will see how it maps out. There are no right answers. All organizations map differently. The goal is to have a balanced maturity level through all dimensions.

Use the summary of indicators, dimensions and ratings to define where your organization is.

Human resources

Level 0 – There is no presence.

Low – Very limited resources and not supported by training.

Medium – Teams are forming around digital (internal or external), limited support, some expertise by leads, management has no training. Still have to sell digital to the organization.

High – Resources are embedded in cross functional teams, digital specialists are on staff, ongoing training including industry certification, resources are supported, management has understanding or expertise.

Technology resources

Technologies necessary: marketing and communications, collaboration tools, customer relationship management tool, analytics to measure

Level 0 – There is no presence, no investment in technologies necessary.

Low – Little bit of everything, everyone in different directions, using different tools, it’s like “herding of cats.”

Medium – More organization, uniformity in training, can manage complex processes, some departments are looking to participate, it is a dedicate line item – budget.

High – Everything is talking to one another, you use the systems and help them talk to one another,  you have the people that are part of the system, in the center of it.

Data strategy

Data strategy: reflects all the ways you capture, store, manage and use information. How you use data is key to your success.

Level 0 – Information is in cabinets, there is no digital data.

Low – Online and offline data, but still in silos, decision velocity is quarterly or annually, you are therefore using old data, there are data gaps and denial of the risk (lack of governance) of not having digital data.

Medium – Value the data, use the data in some strategic ways to optimize/improve, tools are implemented, decision velocity is daily or weekly, act on the data regularly, nothing is automated, governance is planned and initiated.

High – Data is an asset, decision velocity is now realtime, can take advantage of data, automated, secured, formal risk management plan.

Content strategy

The term is starting to come up more frequently.  It’s a comprehensive process that builds a framework to create, manage, deliver, share and archive or renew content in reliable ways.

Looking at: inventory and formats, location and storage, development process, publishing process, performance measurement and evaluation as well as archiving process.

Level 0 – Developing content for single use.

Low – Digital format is now starting to appear, not consistent, silos of production within the process, awareness of repurposing through different formats, content is becoming available digitally, but not online.

Medium – Source content is now consistent, centralized production, multiple digital formats, starting to allow user generated content (e.g. comments), content is available on the network, objectives are set and evaluation is now ongoing rather than once a year.

High – Adaptive content (format free, device independent, transformable and in an automated fashion).

Channel strategy
Three categories :
  • Marketing – paid, owned
  • Transaction enabling – financial/e-commerce, application forms, voting online, lead generations
  • Digital distribution – OEM, direct, partner and affiliate
Level 0 – No digital communications, no use of transaction enabling or distribution.

Low – Pieces are in play, but not aligned with business objectives, vertical siloes, ad hoc.

Medium – Multichannel marketing, objectives are validated, planning and funding are in place, a need for governance is articulated.

High – Multichannel strategy, regular evaluation, governance established.

Social business strategy

“Ways social media tools and practices are being adopted within organizations to support both internal employee collaboration and external customer engagement.”
– Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim, Designing a Social Business (recommended reading)
  • External – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
  • Reviews and ratings
  • Internal applications for employees and suppliers

Level 0 – No use of any customer facing application, low awareness of social business.

Low – Silos of social activity, fragmented, ad hoc representation, an employee is becoming the defacto social media person, sporadic usage.

Medium – Awareness across the organization that social media can be used above marketing and communications, understanding of value, key performance indicators, cross usage.

High – Customers help you, social media and collaboration is both internal and external, social media is no longer only a marketing tool.

 

 

References:

  1. “Social Business By Design” · Dachis Group · June 3, 2013 · www.socialbusinessbydesign.com
  2. “@jeffhorne” · Jeff Horne · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
  3. “@mandirv” · Mandi Relyea-Voss · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
  4. “@ResultsJunkie” · Laura Wesley · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
  5. “@StruttinMyStuff” · Lisa Georges · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
  6. “@scottduncan” · Scott Duncan · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
  7. “@joegollner” · Joe Gollner · June 3, 2013 · Twitter
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Kelly KubrickEstablishing Digital Maturity

Digital strategy for Ottawa Chamber of Commerce Members

by Kelly Kubrick on May 23, 2013

First published in the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce email Newsletter, May 23, 2013

What is Your Company’s Digital Strategy?

Many businesses are aware of the potential digital represents – perhaps for cost savings and improved efficiencies; perhaps for increased sales – but ultimately, for improvement in the overall business. Yet, there is also a sense of feeling overwhelmed by digital and its never-ending waves of change. Which path to take: web? Email? Mobile? Social? All of the above? What to do?

Digital strategy is about competitive advantage

Take a step back to see the larger horizon: your company’s digital strategy is about more than the latest buzzword. Instead, its potential makes it about the larger issue of competitive advantage – identifying it, articulating it, and achieving it.

Yesterday, digital opportunities were limited by bandwidth and a lack of critical mass in the marketplace. Today, digital allows us to better connect our people – customers, constituents, donors, employees, partners – to improve the experience of doing business with our organization. Improving that experience pays off – retaining a customer, employee or supplier is simply more cost effective than acquiring new.

Yet, we’re also challenged by the simple reality that the way our digital stakeholders interact, learn and share has outpaced business’ ability to respond. And every succeeding generation appears to have an instinctive understanding of this world which most of us are still learning. Great. Now what?

Address organizational expectations vs. operational readiness

Make a plan that addresses the realities of organizational expectations and operational readiness. It will become the road map that connects the reality of where you are and where you need to go, to meet those evolving expectations. Identify the risks digital might bring, but don’t let them stop you from uncovering new opportunities. Finally, take advantage of the insights digital data generates – it’s what makes digital fundamentally different from our offline world.

In reality, digital is impacting across all channels, is forcing transparency, and is making it easier for new competition. Organizations that take digital out of its marketing and technology silos and see it a competitive advantage are weaving their digital strategy into their business strategy – challenging what was, acknowledging what is and planning for what could be.

Get advice from other companies facing the same challenges

What’s the next step? Attend Digital Strategy Conference, the first of its kind in the National Capital. From June 3-5, 2013, benefit from three days of advice on how to articulate your company’s digital strategy.

Ottawa Chamber of Commerce members receive a special discount!. Please visit members only section on the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce website.

It’s time to get strategic with digital.

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Kelly KubrickDigital strategy for Ottawa Chamber of Commerce Members
rating scale

Understand Your Organization’s Digital Maturity podcast episode from The Voice

by Kelly Kubrick on May 22, 2013

Assessing digital maturity can help your organization prioritize

With Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver 2013 behind us and our next edition, Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 only days away, I was very pleased to be invited to participate in IABC Ottawa’s the Voice podcast, to talk about the concept of digital maturity that we proposed last month in Vancouver.IABC Ottawa’s the Voice podcast logo

I had the chance to sit down with Danny Starr, host of The Voice podcast for a chat about the launch of dStrategy Media, our proposed Digital Maturity Model and the upcoming Ottawa conference. The podcast, The Voice Episode 58: Understand Your Organization’s Digital Maturity with Kelly Kubrick runs about 20 minutes long, and in it Danny and I discuss:

  • What digital maturity is
  • Why is it important for an organization to assess its maturity
  • Why digital maturity should be looked at horizontally, across your organization, not simply as a marketing-communications issue
  • The Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity, and how they are rated
  • What types of indicators are used in the dStrategy Media Digital Maturity Model
  • How to manage an organization’s tendency to rate itself too highly
  • Who could take charge of the effort to rate your organization’s digital maturity
  • Symptoms or signs that your organization may not be as mature, digitally, as it thinks
  • What the next steps are once an organization has assessed it’s maturity

My thanks to IABC Ottawa, supporting sponsor of Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013, and the crew from The Voice, for giving me the chance to explain more about our proposed business planning tool

Listen: Understand Your Organization’s Digital Maturity podcast from the Voice

Have a listen to episode 82 and let us know your thoughts. During the Ottawa conference, we’ll be presenting two case studies – from a non-profit and from a for profit company, who undertook our digital maturity assessment.

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Kelly KubrickUnderstand Your Organization’s Digital Maturity podcast episode from The Voice

It’s a wrap: Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver 2013

by Kelly Kubrick on April 30, 2013

What an excellent three days!

I’m back from Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver 2013, where we dove deep into the fundamentals of digital strategy. Over 20 speakers / 20 sessions, great conversations in-person and via Twitter (search for the hashtag #dstrategy).

My brain is full.

In particular, I’m very pleased about the audience’s response to the dStrategy Media Digital Maturity Model, a framework that my business partner, Andrea Hadley, and I developed. It’s intended as a business planning tool, to help organizations better understand all the moving parts needed to develop their digital strategy.

Thanks to the furiously-fast writing of Joanne Probyn, we were able to capture an overview of the sessions via the Vancouver 2013 blog posts.

Finally, huge thanks Big thanks to Juliana Loh and Trevor Jansen for their expert photography and visual media services. Take a moment to enjoy the show for yourself via the Vancouver photo gallery.

And the countdown is now on… we’re only a few shorts weeks out from Digital Strategy Conference Ottawa 2013 – hope to see you at the University of Ottawa from June 3 – 5, 2013!

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Kelly KubrickIt’s a wrap: Digital Strategy Conference Vancouver 2013
calm-before-the-storm-by-bob-nardi

Eye of the Storm

by Kelly Kubrick on March 1, 2013

How to find calm inside a surge of innovation

First published by Business in Vancouver, Business Excellent Series – Marketing Digital Strategies, March 2013

Eye of the Storm - How to find calm inside a surge of innovation, part of the Marketing Digital Strategies, Business Excellence Series from Business in Vancouver, March 2013

Eye of the Storm – How to find calm inside a surge of innovation, part of the Marketing Digital Strategies, Business Excellence Series from Business in Vancouver, March 2013

A recurring theme in conversations with colleagues is the sense of feeling overwhelmed by digital – by wave after wave of emerging technologies and trends, by the multitude of channels and the fragmentation of platforms, by the potential they know to be significant, but which is so fluid that it’s hard to get any kind of traction.

This sense of feeling swamped by digital has flowed into many functional areas: marketing and communications, customer service, sales, operations and IT. It’s a digital deluge and it’s not getting easier – in fact, in the short term it may be getting harder.

There is a solution. It’s one that is often intuitively understood, but escapes our reach. It’s about getting perspective, accepting what is and shifting our thinking. We need to step back, see the larger horizon, and remain open.

An organization’s digital strategy needs to be about the bigger issue of competitive advantage – how to identify it, how to articulate it, and how to execute to achieve it.

We need to ask how digital allows us to better connect our people – customers, constituents, donors, employees, partners – to improve the experience of doing business with our organization. And as we all know, improving that experience pays off – retaining a customer, employee or supplier is always more cost effective than acquiring new.

How do you address these issues? Where do you begin?

You need the perspective that can only come from stepping out of the turbulent vortex and into the calm that will result from having a plan. You need to create a framework to address the realities of both organizational expectations and operational readiness, and then establish a road map that connects the reality of where you are to the evolving expectations of your customers, constituents and members.

One of the expectations you need to address is scope – to help the organization understand that digital is not simply part of a marketing or advertising strategy. It is not the launch of a Twitter account or a mobile application. It is not simply a bulk purchase of tablets for your sales team so that you can claim to have a mobile workforce. Your digital strategy is much bigger than any one sales, marketing, communication or technology tactic.

In reality, digital is impacting across all channels, is forcing transparency, and is making it easier for new competition.  While the majority of organizations keep digital in a marketing and technology silo, those with a holistic understanding and an eye  for competitive advantage are weaving their digital strategy into their business strategy – challenging what was, acknowledging what is and planning for what could be.

What to do?

Here are some basic first steps towards planning your digital strategy.

  1. Identify the risks digital might bring, but don’t let them stop you from discovering and leveraging new opportunity;
  2. Although intriguing, intuition is neither replicable nor scalable; it cannot give you competitive advantage. Instead, take advantage of insights from  data that digital generates – it’s what makes digital fundamentally different from our offline world; and
  3. Depending on your organization’s digital maturity, chances are that the thinking that got you where you are today is not the thinking that will move you into the digital age. It would be short-sighted of you not to learn from those who’ve gone before; it is worth asking for input. Don’t be surprised at how accessible insights of others can be; don’t underestimate that the very nature of digital is how it thrives on openness and transparency.

So, when you are feeling overwhelmed, take a step back and get some perspective. Start looking at the bigger picture of how digital can weave into your business strategy, and then start planning your road map that considers new opportunities, data and openness. Suddenly, the noise and distraction of what’s new today will no longer provoke stress, but instead it will take its place as opportunities to be evaluated against your larger plan.

Co-authored by Kelly Kubrick, Vice-President and Partner of dStrategy Media and Andrea Hadley, President and Partner of dStrategy Media, producers of Digital Strategy Conference.

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