Corporate websites, the cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy.

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1 Corporate websites, the cornerstone of your digital marketing strategy. Never before have companies had so many different ways of reaching their target audience. Social networks, new technologies and the change in customers' habits have changed traditional marketing methods. The efficient management of this whole ecosystem represents an opportunity as well as a challenge for all of them. This White Paper shows why corporate websites play a key role in the digital strategy of any company.

2 Digital Marketing Marketing and technology, increasingly closer. The gap between marketing and technology is becoming increasingly smaller. According to Gartner, by 2014, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) would have lost control of 25% of their IT budgets, and by 2017, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) may have larger IT budgets than the CIOs. Multiple communication channels and information saturation. How do we put our message across? In the current recession, demand generation and marketing are becoming a top priority for many companies. To reach the right target audience is essential but also more complicated. It is very dispersed and saturated with information. Traditional methods of communication and marketing; press, TV, radio, etc are showing an increasingly lower return on investment. It is necessary to change strategy. Digital Marketing. Something has changed 5% Real-time nature of customer data gathered 3% Other 20% 10% 16% Lower cost of customer acquisition 9% Lower cost per lead 7% Lower cost of impression To reach our audience we need to use multiple communication channels, many of them digital, such as social media, search engines, mobile apps, etc. This is the part of the marketing strategy which we call Digital Marketing. A new way of marketing with many advantages 20% Increased measurability and accountability 18% Increased customer engagement 13% Better ability to glean customer insights 10% Better customer conversion Source: DataXu Inc

3 New challenges in the digital marketing era Where is our target audience? As we have seen previously, our audience is more and more dispersed. We must carry out research and analytical tasks which will permit us to know where our target audience is and create a strategy for reaching it. How to get there? There are three types of media for reaching our target audience. - Owned. These are media owned and managed by us such as corporate websites. - Earned. Social Media. Not managed by the company. The user has total control over them and decides who to like or follow, who to recommend, etc. The cornerstone to social media marketing is to earn users' confidence by having good content to capture their interest. - Paid. This is media that is paid for, such as Online advertising, search engine advertising, etc. Generate and manage content and messages. In the digital marketing era, generating good content and managing it efficiently plays a key role in its success. Analysis of large volumes of information. It is necessary to capture, store, manage and analyse information to know the result of our actions thus facilitating the continuous improvement of our strategy. Collaboration between Marketing and IT. Choosing the right technology and managing it easily are key factors in its success. This is a joint, team effort to be carried out by both marketing and technology staff. 2

4 Corporate websites, the centre of digital marketing strategy. The web serves as the cornerstone to digital marketing. It is the focus of all information and content, products, services, news, events, videos, opinion articles, white papers, etc. The company has total control over it, it is a communication channel managed by the company both in publication as well as the posterior analysis of results. Maximum diffusion of content Maximum distribution of content is the company's goal and should therefore not be done solely from the website. As we have previously commented, there are other methods of reaching an audience including via social media and paid media such as online advertising, search engines, ing, etc. Therefore everytime we display content on Facebook, Twitter, on a Linkedin discussion group or a blog, this should lead people to our website. In the same way that any content on the internet can be shared on social networks with just one click. Control of results and return on investment. By having its website at the centre of a company's digital marketing strategy, the company has total control over the results of its marketing campaigns and on its return on investment. Not only can we know how many visits a content has had but also on many occasions we can obtain user data when a call to action response has been received. Old style corporate websites do not work in the digital era. Before most corporate websites contained static content. Business users cannot implement any changes to the content without first going through the IT department that has control over it, which greatly slows down the updating process. Websites were optimised for a specific browser and a determined size. If it was accessed from a mobile device, the user experience was very bad as the website had not been designed for these types of devices. The website was an isolated entity without any type of connection to social networks. 3

5 Web portals In the digital marketing era As we have seen, company websites are a foundation for the digital marketing strategy of any company, but for this they must have certain characteristics which convert them into high-performance portals. User experience Users now surf the internet via a large number of devices, operating systems and browsers. It is increasingly important that this message is loud and clear. Too many options, menus and information make browsing more complicated. Liquid design The content must be adapted to suit different screen resolutions Social It must have bidirectional links to company social network sites. Any relevant content on the website must be shared on social networks, and it should be possible to consult what is happening on company social media from the website 4

6 Web Content Management In the digital marketing era, the volume of content has increased whereas its lifecycle has reduced. To achieve efficient content management, the control must be as close to the source as possible, i.e. the communication and marketing department. A good Web Content Management System (WCM) has become an essential factor for managing website content efficiently. Due to its importance, a little further on we will be looking at the necessary features a WCM should have, along with the different options available on the market. Analysis An essential part of the success of digital marketing is being able to measure the results and take corrective actions. Among other things we must be able to measure the traffic on any part of the website, the success of a marketing campaign, optimise design based on user performance, etc. SEO An important part of a good digital marketing strategy is in search engine optimisation (SEO). Our website must facilitate SEO with the possibility of entering Keywords, metadata and URL's which can be easily understood by browsers, etc. 5

7 Searches. With increasingly higher volumes of information, users must be able to find what they are searching for through semantic searches, social searches, filtering and previews of results, related searches, etc. Accessibility Website accessibility refers to the capacity to access the Web and its content by everyone, regardless of disability (physical, intellectual or technical) or those deriving from the user context, for example accessible from any mobile device. This quality is closely related to user experience as previously discussed. Content viewers. New ways of viewing multimedia content and documents in a more interactive and attractive way for the user. 56

8 WCM Web Content Management Although most companies understand the importance and value of having a presence on the internet to generate sales, improve customer service or expand brand value, they don't always know how to achieve it. In this section we will see that a web content manager plays a vital role in making the internet shift from being a static catalogue to a website with dynamic content offering an exceptional user experience. The following are market trends that should not be forgotten. Trends: Cost reduction. A reduction in costs is sought through an increase in efficiency, above all for big savings in time spent managing and updating content. More content, more savings. Reduction in time to market. Business agility is a vital factor when it comes to competing. It is necessary to considerably reduce the time spent from the production of content to its publishing on the internet. If a campaign is not getting the expected results, adjustments can be made and the results can be monitored in real time. Homogenized Systems. It is normal to see companies with multiple platforms, all of them different, for each company website, (countries, departments, brands, products), which causes inefficiencies and replication of costs. Centralising web management facilitates its command and the total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced drastically. Leverage of content. The content increasingly flows more from inside the company. New customers, product launches, successful projects, new solutions, all come from within, normally from the company's intranet. If the WCM and Intranet share the same management platform, the exchange of information and publishing of internal content are facilitated. 7

9 There are many options on the market, but what characteristics and functionalities must a good WCM have? What criteria must be taken into account? Security A WCM System must have a user s permissions, groups and roles to allow the right balance between flexibility and control. Flexibility As web portals start to focus on branding, content and user experience it becomes necessary to have a web content manager which is both flexible and scalable. Integration In many cases it is important to have the ability to integrate with applications such as CRM, Intranet or ERP. Easy to use It has to be easy to update, review and publish content whilst keeping the process under control. Business Intelligence A good WCM must permit continuous analysis of website user performance, pages they visit, clicks, etc. W Process oriented It must permit the launching of processes or workflows for review and approval for content publishing. Cross Site Publication Must be able to publish the same content on various sites at the same time. When the initial content is modified, it is automatically changed on the rest of sites, Multilingual Integrated multilingual support in the same content logic structure. To enable this it must include or be able to be connected to an automatic translation service. C M E-commerce If the website is e-commerce orientated it is essential that the WCM includes tools to facilitate the management of product catalogues. Marketing Tools It must facilitate SEO, launch and control of campaigns, compartivie analysis of results according to design, etc. 8

10 What does say? At Raona we always support Gartner's opinion through its now infamous Magic Quadrants to see the principal players in each one for the markets we are working in. In this particular case we have found three quadrants in three different categories that influence this market. Web Content Management. Web content management. Enterprise Content Management. Internal content management, Intranet. Enterprise Social Software. Social and collaboration solution. Web Content Management Enterprise Content Management Enterprise Social Software 9

11 Raona s Choices Digital Marketing Technologies SharePoint is the world leading collaboration and business productivity platform. There are many reasons why we put our trust in SharePoint in the world of Digital marketing. The principals are the following: Investment leverage. Many of our customers already use SharePoint for their Intranet environment which permits them to leverage the investment by maximising the same platform for Internet. Leading solution. SharePoint is one of Microsoft's star products for the business environment, a leader in various Gartner quadrants. Integration. SharePoint is totally integrated with various productivity tools such as Microsoft Office suite, MS Dynamics, etc. Cloud version. SharePoint Online within the Office 365 suite offers all the functionality of SharePoint but in the Cloud. Its stability and performance are guaranteed by Microsoft. Launch of SharePoint The new 2013 version is appearing with huge improvements in the area of digital marketing. Below is a quick review of the principals: Multiple devices Multiple browsers SEO E-commerce Cross site publishing Multilingual Social tools Fast search If you want to learn more about SharePoint 2013, download the white paper 2013 Social Intranets from 10

12 Cardiolog When web analytical and advanced marketing tools are required, at Raona we supplement SharePoint with the Marketing Suite solution by Cardiolog. This allows marketing managers to optimise the digital marketing actions made on the web and provide customers with a much better online experience. Web analysis. Real time statistics, scorecards, activity reports at a granular level, automatic alerts. Campaign monitoring. Monitoring of marketing campaign results. Traffic source statistics. Campaign pipeline. Optimisation Comparative studies of A/B results. Segmentation User segmentation by demography, engagement level, activity, etc. Voice of Customer. Questionnaires, voting, competitions, etc. SEO. Identifies which browsers and keywords attract traffic to your website. Detects errors, broken links and SEO errors. Session recording. You can record what users are doing on your website for posterior analysis. Integration. Integration plug-ins with CRM, Facebook, etc. Insight. Permits setting internet objectives and monitoring them. 11

13 EPiServer, as we have previously seen, is like a visionary in Gartner's quadrant for Web Content Management. Episerver is developed in.net technology. It is a very easy WCM to use and its marketing functions are the best you can find. Episerver belongs to the Swedish company Eswhich, which has undergone an enormous international growth in Europe and the USA. Business users love its graphic interface and the ease with which the user experiences can be personalised for different devices such as Tablets, Smartphones or traditional websites. Its modular architecture permits the client to choose those functions they are most interested in according to their needs. At the start of 2012 for example, three modules have been added to its suite: Social Reach, which acts as a connector with many of the most popular social networks. SiteAttention, which provides editors with tips in real time for content optimisation. Google Analytics add-on, which offers ideas for optimising web structure. At Raona rely on Episerver for those projects demanding a high level of personalisation, as many of their components considerably reduce the time to m arket of a website. Its marketing and analytical tools are impressive and a very important added value for those customers wanting a return on investment of their actions. It has a connector with SharePoint for those customers wishing to keep SharePoint for Intranet and Episerver as a public website. Real time site activity 12