Download Brainstorming Digital Goals and Creating the Engagement Value

Brainstorming Digital Goals and
Creating the Engagement Value Scale
Ron Person, Sitecore Business Optimization Services
Executive Summary
This guide describes a step-by-step process for brainstorming digital goals to achieve your strategic
objectives. The guide then leads you through how to develop your Engagement Value Scale that is
necessary for Experience Analytics.
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Understanding Engagement Values
Your Strategic objectives determine your Engagement Values.
The marketing effort with the highest Engagement Value should be the goal that moves the visitor
toward your strategic objective. If you pick the wrong sets of goals to represent a strategic objective
or you put an incorrect Engagement Value on the goals, then you will optimize your website in the
wrong direction and you won't reach your strategic objectives.
"What you put Engagement Value on is what you optimize for!"
For example, if the marketing objective that supports your strategic objective is to increase the
number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), then a goal where a visitor requests a demonstration
would surely be high value and might be assigned 100 points. All other goals that support
accomplishing that MQL should correlate to that.
Placing an incorrect Engagement Value on a goal can optimize your marketing in the wrong
direction. For example, watching a video shows engagement, but it does not move visitors closer to
the end goal of becoming an MQL. Placing a high value on the video would optimize your website for
moving visitors to the video. This might not optimize your website for creating Marketing Qualified
Leads, your website's highest purpose.
In most cases, Engagement Value is created at digital goals where people have an interaction or
transaction with a marketing effort. The Engagement Value of these touches is related to the level or
depth of three things common to human relationships. Those three things are,
1. Two-way communication
2. Trust building
3. Commitment
Some websites have few transaction points. For example, informational and non-profit websites
primarily have one-way communication, visitors prefer to remain anonymous and not assume even a
low-level of risk, and there are few conversion points. On sites like these "Interaction Points"
involving one-way transfer of information and no shared risk may be used.
In every case, goals that are assigned Engagement Values must meet these requirements,
•
•
Each Engagement Value is relative to the visitor's level of communication, trust, and
commitment.
All goals with Engagement Value points must move the visitor toward the Strategic
objectives.
What Do Engagement Values Look Like?
This figure shows the Engagement Value Scale for a B2B business that has a long sales cycle with a
marketing objective of capturing Marketing Qualified Leads. From bottom to top each level of the
Engagement Value Scale should move a visitor toward achieving your marketing objective. The value
of each level should be proportional to how much that level contributes to the visitor reaching the
marketing objective.
100 • Request demonstration
50 • Request Pricing
• Instant Sales Chat
25
• Sign up for Webinar
10
• Sign up for newsletter
5
• Watch video
0
Different objectives will determine the goals on your Engagement Value Scale. For example, if you
are an informational non-profit with activism as one of your key objectives, then some of your top
goals might be volunteering and donations. If you are a government entity your goals might include
self-service and more participation in the governing process.
An Overview of Creating Engagement Values
To create Engagement Values you must use the defined process that follows and its specific stages. If
you do not follow these stages there is a very real possibility that you will select invalid goals and set
the initial Engagement Values incorrectly. If you incorrectly set Engagement Values you may
optimize your marketing for the wrong goals.
Creating Your Website's Engagement Values
Terminology
Before we dive into the process, it’s important to understand the basic concepts and terminology
used in Engagement Value.
A Goal is a point on the website where conversion or completion occurs for a marketing effort.
An Engagement Value is an integer numeric value assigned to a goal. The numeric value of the
Engagement Value correlates with the success of your strategic objectives.
An Engagement Value Scale shows the goals and their Engagement Values for goals that relate to or
drive the accomplishment of a marketing objective that drives a strategic objective.
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A Strategic Theme is the distinctive thrust or focus that defines an organization's strategy. Successful
companies have only two or three complimentary strategic themes.
A Strategic Objective is an overarching end result that must be accomplished for an organization to
be successful at its strategic theme. The strategic objective is usually composed of multiple crossfunctional objectives such as financial, marketing, customer, human resources, IT, etc.
A Marketing Objective is a strategic objective within the domain of marketing. Accomplishing the
marketing objective will help the organization succeed at its strategic objectives.
A KPI is a Key Performance Indicator. An organization may have hundreds of performance measures
or indicators, but the Key Performance Indicators are those critical few performance indicators that
are critical to success.
Prerequisites
Prerequisites for this process are:
•
•
Clear strategic objectives and marketing objectives for your organization. Although clear
definitions produce better results, even if you do not have well-defined organizational
strategic and marketing objectives this guide can help a team of experienced marketers
identify website goals and develop an Engagement Value Scale.
Use of the Sitecore Customer Engagement Platform.
The goal of this guide is to walk you through the process related to creating an Engagement Value
Scale, without focusing on the specifics of how this is configured in Sitecore.
Five Steps
The five steps to creating an Engagement Value Scale are,
1.
Strategic
Themes
2.
Strategic and
Marketing
Objectives
3. Digital
Goals
4.
Engagement
Value Scale
5. Key
Performance
Indicators
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1. Identifying Strategic Themes
In this first step you will identify the two or three strategic themes that identify at what your
organization wants to succeed. These are the two or three themes by which your organization
should be known.
To develop an effective system you can use to track and improve your cross-channel online
marketing performance, you need to follow a chain that begins with your organization's strategic
themes and objectives and ends with implementing an Engagement Value Scale.
The starting point for this chain is your organization's strategic themes. Once you know those you
can identify the marketing objectives your company needs to succeed at its themes. Your marketing
objectives will in turn determine your Engagement Points, the Engagement Value Scale, and related
Key Performance Indicators.
Every marketer must understand their company’s marketing objectives — how marketing
contributes to the organization's success. To understand the marketing objectives they must know
their company's strategic themes and the objectives required to make that theme successful.
Strategic themes are broad statements of how the company expects to succeed and how it wants to
be perceived by customers. Every successful company operates with one or two strategic themes.
Companies that have more than three themes usually fail because they are not focused in their use
of resources or in the minds of their customers. When you think of the most successful companies
you usually have an image of what makes them unique in their industry.
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There are a limited number of strategic themes used in organizations no matter their business model
or whether they are profit or non-profit. The following table lists some of the 15 strategic themes
and some USA-based companies that operate with one or more themes:
Theme
Highest Quality
Leading Edge Products
Company
Lexus
BMW
Intel
Apple
Total Solution
Sitecore
IBM
Operational Excellence
Dell
General Electric
Lowest Cost
Wal-Mart
Dell
McDonalds
Starbucks
Build the Franchise
Customer Intimacy
Land’s End
Customer Value
Wal-Mart
System Lock-in
Microsoft
Oracle
Corporate Citizenship
P&G
Vodafone
Whole Foods
Description
Products or services are recognized
as having the highest quality.
Products are the most innovative and
advanced in their industry or
segment.
Provide everything needed by the
customer. In the case of IBM this is
hardware, software, consulting, and
support.
Manufacturing, operations and
distribution are vastly superior to
competitors.
Initial cost of purchase is the lowest.
Increase the number of outlets to
meet the customer at every possible
location.
Know the customer's needs so well
you can make recommendations to
them they will appreciate.
The sum of total benefits for the
customer beats all competitors.
Once you start with this company’s
products or services it is very difficult
to switch to a competitor.
Stand-out as the leader in corporate
and social responsibility in legal,
ethical, environmental and
community areas.
You don't have to be on the executive planning committee to identify most organization's strategic
themes. Some mid-level managers have effectively identified their organization's strategic themes
by interviewing key cross-functional vice-presidents. This interview process is also an excellent way
to increase communication and raise awareness between marketing and other functions.
Write down the two or three strategic themes you feel your organization wants to achieve. This is an
excellent exercise to conduct with a group of experienced managers. There should be no more than
three themes. Themes should not contradict each other, for example, Leading Edge and Lowest Cost
is a pair of themes that would be difficult to execute together.
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2. Identifying Strategic and Marketing Objectives
In this step you will dive into your organization's strategic themes and identify the strategic
objectives and marketing objectives needed to make that theme succeed.
Although there are a limited number of strategic themes, there are thousands of ways of executing
each strategy. To create a strategic theme an organization must reach or build strategic objectives. It
is the execution of these strategic objectives that make a strategic theme successful. The strategic
objectives executed by marketing are known as marketing objectives. (Importantly, history shows it
is not the best strategy that wins, but the one who executes the best.)
For example, one strategic theme is "Leading Edge", being a company with products and services
that is always a thought leader and technology leader. In this case, marketing's objective would be to
build demand for leading edge products, create discontent with old products, and build an image of
the Next New Thing. A marketing objective here might be,
Increase visitors with an "early adopter" persona by 25% in the next quarter.
Not all marketing objectives directly drive the success of organizational strategy. A marketing
objective may reinforce the strategy in the minds of the targeted audience. For example, if a
strategic theme is "Build the Franchise" then the marketing objective might be to,
Increase awareness of our products and services by 12% in new geographic regions before
we enter.
Other strategies might have different marketing objectives such as,
Increase by 25% the rate of visitors in the X niche profile over the next six months.
Identify the three top marketing messages for revenue and focus those messages on existing
customers.
Increase the cross-sell rate by 8% and the up-sale rate by 10% for the X product line sold into
the Y audience segment.
In order to identify and understand your marketing objectives, you may want to create a table
where you can identify strategic themes, their definition, strategic objectives, and the associated
marketing objectives. Identify your top one to three marketing objectives for each of your strategic
themes. Make them specific and keep in mind that these are objectives you want to drive with your
cross-channel online marketing.
The following is an example of such a table,
Strategic Theme
Customer Intimacy
Definition
Know customers’
needs before they do
Strategic Objective
Increase Revenue
Marketing Objective
Increase Lead
conversion
Get Customer Email
Permission
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3. Brainstorming and Identifying Digital Goals
In this third step you will brainstorm goals on your website, such as a registration, that might
contribute to the success of each marketing objective. The goals you brainstorm here will be
reevaluated in later steps.
As you look at the marketing objectives you identified in the previous section, you should be asking
yourself what you can do in your online marketing efforts and on your website to make those
marketing objectives succeed. Do you need a detailed registration form? Would more interaction
help? What online marketing effort or action will move visitors toward your marketing objectives?
These website interactions with your visitors are usually referred to as "goals" in websites. Goals
could be a registration, completing a survey, requesting a free offer, chatting online, and so on. Not
every visitor action or response is important, but some goals on your website are related to or drive
the success of your marketing objective.
When you think of marketing objectives and goals remember that they may change over time, so
keep your focus at the highest level. Start with high level marketing objectives and identify the goals
that either drive them or are critically related.
After you brainstorm a list of goals that contribute to your marketing objective you should step back
and examine your list with these questions,
•
•
•
Which goals are most related to overall success?
Which goals are the most important for each marketing objective?
What goals do you not have that would help you reach your objectives?
In many cases goals may drive success in more than one marketing objective. Even if a goal
contributes to more than one marketing objective, write the goal next to the objective it relates to.
Remember, these are potential goals. In further steps you will use processes to identify which goals
are most important and what their Engagement Value will be.
In order to identify and track what goals contribute to each marketing objective, you may want to
create a table where you can list the marketing objectives and their goals. In this example table the
Rank column can be used to identify the top goals for each marketing objective.
The following table is an example of such a table,
Potential Goals Form
Marketing Objectives
Increase Lead conversion
Get Customer Email Permission
Online Goals
Schedule Demonstration
Request for quote
Survey completion
Newsletter Signup
Rank
1
2
1
2
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4. Creating an Engagement Value Scale
You can use different methods for creating an Engagement Value Scale for your organization. In any
method it is critical to get buy-in from key stakeholders. Innumerable studies have shown that
without buy-in from key stakeholders and endorsement from key communicators performance
improvement efforts usually fail.
Two Ways: People and Brainstorming, or People and Analysis
There are two primary methods of creating your Engagement Value Scale. The first method uses
structured facilitation with a team of experienced marketers to guesstimate the Engagement Value
Scale. The second method works well if you have a significant amount of data that you can use to
determine which goals have a high correlation with your objectives.
Creating an Engagement Value Scale, like the one shown on page 7, takes about half of a day of work
for a cross-functional team of experienced marketers. You should follow the initial development of
the scale with a time for reflection and examination that may stretch over one or more weeks.
Building Your Team
Whichever method you use to develop the Engagement Value Scale you should involve the most
important stakeholders. You need their buy-in, their communication to others, and most importantly
their cross-functional experience in selecting and weighting the most important goals.
The team you bring together should have six to ten people who are highly experienced in marketing
or online marketing. (The experience factor is there so they respond from the pain and exultation
they have felt, not just from anecdotes they have read.) It should include people from all marketing
functions, from the CMO to campaign managers and content editors to marketing analysts. Many
studies have shown that cross-functional teams develop more and better ideas than homogenous
groups.
Team members should be stakeholders. You need them to buy in to Engagement Value metrics,
understand how and why it works, and act as evangelists for optimizing marketing. Some examples
of team members might be,
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
CMO or CMO representative
Customer engagement/brand manager
Email manager
Social media manager
Paid manager
SEO analyst
Analytics analyst or manager
E-Commerce manager
If you use the brainstorming method of developing the Engagement Value Scale the team will be
selecting goals and assigning Engagement Values. If you use the analysis method the team will be
checking hypothesis and results.
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Method 1: Creating by Brainstorming and Ranking
Once you have completed your "homework" and have gathered a team you can use the following
process. This is a divergent/ convergent process that takes two to three hours. The divergent process
at the beginning generates as many ideas as possible for current and future goals. The convergent
process aggregates these ideas and sorts out the best. At the end you can rank ideas by what can be
done now, near term, and future.
Preparing for the Meeting
1. Before the team meeting,
• Distribute the homework for Step1-3. This will give all team members the same
concise background. The following chart shows part of one Strategic Theme and its
hierarchy.
Customer
Intimacy
Strategic Theme
Strategic Objectives
Marketing
Objectives
Increase Lead
Conversion
Online Goals
•
•
•
•
Increase Revenue
Schedule
Demonstration
Request Quote
Get Customer
Email Permission
Survey
Completion
Newsletter
signup
Distribute a note describing the purpose of the meeting, "Identify goals that drive or
are highly related to the marketing objectives." Ask attendees to consider whether
the goals listed are correct or whether new goals will work better.
Distribute a Visual Gallery of Engagement. This is a PowerPoint presentation
showing examples of many leading edge digital goals. This is firestarter for
brainstorming new ideas about goals.
Buy large format Post-it© notes. These are 6" X 8" and should have the adhesive
along the top of the long side so you can stick them in landscape orientation on a
wall or whiteboard. Make sure you have enough dark colored dry erase markers for
all team members. (Dry erase are safer if someone accidentally writes on a table or
wall.)
Create banners to post in the meeting room. At the front of the room post a banner
stating the focus of the meeting,
"What digital goals that visitors act on drives success in our marketing objectives?"
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Adjacent banners should state your marketing objectives. You want these in front of
the team at all times. This is IMPORTANT to keep everyone on focus.
2. Schedule the meeting for three hours in a morning later in the week. Mornings are best for
innovative thinking. Later in the week people usually have more free time.
3. Post the banners at the front of the room.
4. Begin the meeting by discussing
• What Engagement Values are and their benefits
• The strategic objectives Framework
• How Engagement Value analytics will help optimize marketing
• Show an example scale from one of the examples later in this paper
Brainstorming Goals
1. Distribute a few of the large 6" X 8" Post-it notes to team members. A rule of thumb for how
many Post-its each person gets is to divide 40 by the number of people on the team.
2. Remind the group of the marketing objectives.
3. Post these rules on notes at the front of the wall to make sure everyone writes their ideas on
the Post-Its so they are readable.
• Write the Engagement Point in 3 – 5 words.
• Use BLOCK letters.
• One idea per Post-it
4. Give the group five to ten minutes to brainstorm current and future goals that drive the
marketing objectives. Brainstorm INDIVIDUALLY!
(Research consistently shows the best ideas come from individual brainstorming that is then
aggregated and reviewed by the group.)
5. Ask everyone to break into teams of three or four. Groups should discuss their ideas and
pick the "best" 30% of their ideas for all marketing objectives.
• Which marketing objective a Post-it is for does not matter
• Do not throw away duplicates
• Rewrite if necessary so there is one idea per note and notes are readable
6. Collect the 30% of Post-its.
Grouping Goals
1. Arrange the first 30% of the Post-its across the bottom in a "smile". This will give you more
room to rearrange notes in the open space above.
2. As you post each note, read it off. If the idea is not clear, ask for an explanation from the
person who wrote it.
3. Ask the group to rearrange Post-its into pairs of similar or identical engagement. KEEP THEM
IN PAIRS. Do not aggregate and throw away too early. Aggregating into large groups too
early reduces flexibility and stifles diverse thinking.
4. Collect the rest of the Post-its and post them in a "smile" across the bottom. Ask the group
to help you add them to existing pairs or create new groups as needed.
5. Continue grouping until you have homogenous groups. You may want to put symbols at the
top of each group, as shown in the figure below, to make it easier to talk about a group.
Labeling or naming a group too early can reduce new ideas.
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6. Review notes to make sure that groups are small and all contain a homogenous idea, such as
variations on "Detailed Registration", "Free Trial Download", or "Online Chat."
7. Identify each group by writing a label on a Post-it at the top of the group, for example,
• Detailed Registration
• Order Completion
• Free Trial Download
• View 70% Webinar
• Schedule Appointment
8. Remove the Post-it notes from the group leaving only labels.
Attributing Goals to Marketing Objectives
1. Have the group read each marketing objective banner.
2. Move Post-it notes under the marketing objective banner to which they most highly
contribute.
You may need to create duplicate notes at this point.
3. Use a digital camera to record all notes under all marketing objectives.
4. Discuss which goals (notes) are the Critical Few (3 – 5) under each marketing objective.
5. Remove non-Critical notes.
6. Have the group review the Post-its for missing transaction/interaction points.
7. Photograph the final result as a record.
Sorting and Weighting Goals
1. Sort the Post-it notes under each marketing objective with the largest drivers on top.
a. Judge the level of engagement by the amount of two-way communication and risk
involved. Remember the stages of engagement,
1. Attraction
2. Two-way communication,
3. Building trust
4. Commitment
b. Transactions that show solid commitment, such as calling for an appointment,
making a donation, or talking to an expert should receive higher points.
c. Discuss the relative contribution and order until you have consensus.
2. Write the Engagement Value point on each note in red.
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a. A good method is to use 100 points for the highest engagement value and a value of
10 for the next to lowest. A value of 0 is used for goals you want to track, but do not
want to place an Engagement Value on. (See the Considerations section below for
discussions where this is valuable.)
b. Use decreasing values down to the smallest interaction.
3. Review the relative value of points. A good way to estimate value is to compare the relative
ratios of different transactions and interactions. For example, "Are ten newsletter
registrations at 10 points each the equivalent to a 100 point donation?"
Method 2: Creating Goals by Data Driven Hypothesis
If you have access to a significant volume of data over time showing goal conversions and visits, you
may be able to use this data-driven technique. This method also requires data from a CRM or
accounting system that identifies which visitors completed a sale or final commitment.
Analyze CRM or Sales Data
1. Prior to the team workshop export marketing data that includes the conversions at each
website goal you hypothesize relates to or drives a marketing objective. Include in the
marketing data the visitor identifier such as email address and last name.
2. Export from your CRM or accounting system data showing successfully completed sales if
that is your success goal. Include in the export data the visitor identifier such that you can
match the closed account with the marketing data from step 1.
Or, in the marketing data identify the website goal that signifies success for the objective.
For example, if the marketing objective is to increase marketing qualified Leads, you might
identify the Thank You page after scheduling a sales appointment as the goal indicating
success.
3. Run a correlation analysis between the success goal from either the sales data (if that is your
success goal) or from the marketing data.
The correlation values will give you a relative weighting of each goal’s contribution toward achieving
the marketing objective. If you assign 100 to the highest goal under each marketing objective you
can adjust the other points underneath to their relative value.
Create a Map Showing How Goals Drive Objectives
In this process the team will use its experience to verify the results from the correlation and to
decide which goals are the Critical Few.
1. With the cross-functional team, review the marketing objectives.
2. Identify which goals are most related to or drive marketing objectives.
3. Post the marketing objectives on banners at the top of a wall and put the goals determined
by the correlation under each objective. Use Post-it notes under each marketing objective.
Reevaluate the Engagement Value Scale
1. Display the results from the correlation analysis.
2. Open up the meeting for what will very probably be some interesting discussion.
3. Reevaluate, renumber, and re-sort as necessary.
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Selecting Valid Goals and Engagement Values
One intuitive approach to whether you have set your Engagement Values correctly is to look at the
ratios between Engagement Values under the same marketing objectives. For example, if a simple
registration is worth 10 points and a call for a sales appointment is worth 100 points, does that mean
the outcome will be the same for 10 registrations as it is for one sales appointment? Does that feel
reasonable?
Remember that using Engagement Values optimizes marketing for those goals where you have set
Engagement Values. This means that if you place Engagement Value on the wrong goals you will
optimize your marketing to improve those incorrect goals. This happens most frequently when
marketers set Engagement Value on page search, logins, viewing a page, or watching a generic
video.
Be sure to select the correct points around a goal when creating an Engagement Value. For example,
imagine you want to test visitors’ interest level by presenting them with an offer for a "Free
Sample;" however, after clicking the button visitors learn they must pay $4.95 for shipping and
handling. You use this charge of $4.95 and their entry of a credit card number as a test of their
resolution and commitment. If you put the Engagement Value points on clicking the "Free Sample"
button you will receive a lot of invalid data because you are getting responses from visitors who
thought they would get a free value. Instead, if you put the Engagement Value at the completion of
the credit card process you will get a valid response showing the number of visitors who have
resolution and commitment to your product.
You will face this same issue of where to put the Engagement Value points when you create a
newsletter or whitepaper registration form. If you put the Engagement Value points on the sign-up
page then visitors will earn value even if they bail out of the sign-up page. Instead put the
Engagement Value points on the sign-up confirmation or Thank You page so you are sure the action
you want has been completed.
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Implementing an Engagement Value Scale
Strategizing and planning are necessary and great intellectual exercise, but without execution they
are worthless. You must know how to best implement your plan on using Engagement Values. The
best practices you'll read here are taken from real world experience that produced pain, insight, and
now foresight.
Entering Engagement Values
After creating your Engagement Value Scale you can enter Engagement Values for goals by selecting
the appropriate Engagement Value from the drop-down in the Create a New Goal option.
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