I was gobsmacked – sitting in a meeting last week, I found myself wondering how a company can invest $100,000 in establishing a B2C website but never investigate if it’s doing the job it was designed for?  We’re not talking about a small company here but a major New Zealand FMCG producer who is expanding aggressively offshore with hip products that are challenging international market leaders. Like most New Zealand companies it doesn’t have the dollars to mount an extensive international advertising campaign, but it targets the internet-savvy 18-34 year market, and thus the Internet has to be considered a vital part of the international marketing mix.

Yet the marketing manager freely admitted the company didn’t track the website or “do” anything with it.  Having put the URL on all their products they still had no idea as to who was responding, from where or why.  The question was raised in all seriousness that if the URL was put on their TV ads did I think it would improve traffic to the site?  I remain incredulous.

Companies like this are unfortunately still common in New Zealand, and many of them are typical casualties of the upsurge in website development over the past few years.   A classic case of “let’s build a website” in a kneejerk reaction to everyone else doing it. The site completed, the URL is printed on the packaging and the job is done.  Sorry, it’s only just begun.

Monthly tracking of such metrics as ‘brand image’ and ‘advertising awareness’ is bread and butter for many market research companies and essential reading for their clients.  Millions are spent annually in New Zealand alone tracking consumer usage and attitudes.  Yet while companies routinely commission this offline tracking, they ignore the most immediately accessible medium that can be real time monitored – the Internet and its interactive media cousins. 

If you could find out as much about your TV, radio and print activities as good internet consultants can tell you about what happens with your interactive activities it would start a revolution.  Imagine your newspaper ad hitting the streets at 7am and then being able to see, only hours later, how many people read it, re-read it, what aspects of that ad were liked, disliked, relevant, recalled, acted upon, and so on – for ALL those who viewed it.  Interactive media such as the internet, WAP / iMode, and interactive TV gives you that feedback now.  Even if you are only using server logfiles, with the ongoing inaccuracies those suffer, it is still better than nothing. 

However, while gathering the hard data that is just sitting on your website waiting to be collected is a good starting point, interactive media consultants are now able to put highly sophisticated quantitative and qualitative research in place that will paint a complete picture of how your interactive and digital media is working for you.   All standard marketing measures routinely used for offline media are now available, with considerable more accuracy and turnaround.  Use this information in conjunction with traditional market research and you will turn that fuzzy black and white sketch of your customer interactions into a highly detailed, technicolour painting.  The sheer responsiveness of the medium allows interactive marketers to obtain highly targeted, integrated business solutions, achieving virtually instant results very cost-effectively. 

So when the hard questions are asked about your company’s online performance you can now have the answers – comprehensively complete and strategically accurate answers.  And believe me, if you have spent any amount of company time and money establishing an online presence – sooner or later - questions will be asked. 

Jonathan Dodd