The evolution of the Web site as a marketing tool has been remarkable. With 1.2 billion people online today, there’s more pressure than ever to improve Web site conversions and turn online initiatives into maximum ROI. Opportunity and challenge in the online milieu are two sides of the same bill. And let’s face it – marketing is about the green stuff. But marketers who think that’s all there is to it, can end up doing more than barking up the wrong tree; they may forget what they’re chasing.

Aligning Goals and Tools for Online Marketing
Sometimes the most obvious things are the easiest to overlook. Online marketing is about content. Technology continues to redefine the scope of digital marketing activities and the ease with which they can be managed. But that’s little good if the content isn’t useful to the end user.

Technology is quite the leveler - the same innovations that facilitate better management of online marketing have also empowered Web users to choose how they want to be marketed to. It is this fundamental readjustment of hierarchies that has Web content and marketing visionaries insisting on the need for a different marketing schema than the models that prevail offline. Their counsel is succinct – “be useful”. And the good news is that current technology solutions are making it much easier for marketers to understand their audiences and optimize content for them. 

Some Typical Challenges
The mind-boggling number of variables, the sheer quantum of information and the relative anonymity of user action mean that online marketers have to deal with challenges like:

1. Developing a marketing philosophy for the Web
   Traditional offline models like ‘reach-and-frequency’ marketing are outmoded online. Effective management of marketing content begins with respecting the medium’s advantages, its restraints and the imperatives they place on established marketing logic.

2. Establishing the relationship users have to your content
   Effective marketing depends on knowing what users are looking for and how you can best optimize your offering to meet that need. Gaining precise strategic intelligence that can make marketing more agile and relevant has been a typical challenge. 
   
3. Unifying your content strategy
   The considerable content that represents most businesses online is often authored and maintained across isolated pockets. Such a scenario can result in what The Rockley Group calls the ‘Content Silo Trap’ – a setting that can breed incoherence, inaccuracy and uneconomic cycles of content generation and reuse.
   
4. Securing accurate and actionable analytics
   On the technical front, Forrester has identified three challenges that most impact web analytics users – a) Missing or erroneous page tags, b) Obtaining reliable unique visitor counts and c) Cookie deletion by users or Spyware removal applications. Resolving these aspects is vital to acquiring the quality of analytics necessary for effective management of marketing content.
5. Finding the right interplay of tactics, tools and metrics
   A dynamic Web environment and the implications of change for the business make it challenging for marketers to determine the right interplay between strategies, software systems and metrics.

Mapping an Effective Approach
No doubt there are several measures marketing managers can take to ensure their content does what they hope it will. Here are a few key aspects we think will define an effective approach:

1. Plan to engage...not blitz
   Branding, lead generation and even ecommerce on the Web is best understood in the context of a genuine focus on meeting real prospect and customer needs. Marketing must aim to steward information and engage users in meaningful conversations that create value rather than browbeat them with hard-sell.
   

2. Leverage technology for better eyes and ears
   An efficient combination of software and strategy can give marketers and web managers 360 degree visibility and help them understand just how users relate to current content.
   
3. Stay outward-focused and agile
   An effective Web site and marketing content strategy designs itself according to the target audience’s needs rather than the company’s structure. The Web architecture is constantly sensitive to market and user intelligence and attempts to deliver desired information or services with minimum effort. Additionally, it adopts elements (meta-data, automated workflows, dynamic content and XML) that make design, creation and management of marketing content as easy and effectual as possible.

What a CMS Can Do for You
Technology innovations in the CMS space have now made it possible for marketing teams to enjoy the sort of control necessary to rapidly optimize Web marketing content and improve business results. A good CMS and Web analytics tool working together can give your marketing team some serious teeth!

For a start, it will confer the ability to display complete conversion metrics, visitor segment behavior and automatically execute rules and workflows based on the Web analytics results. Detailed campaign drilldown reporting will make evaluation possible at both high and granular levels and enable deep optimization.

Best-in-breed site management solutions offer much operational latitude and integrate easily with other systems at minimal risk. They also provide reliable reporting interfaces to determine true ROI and utility.

A CMS can also function as the hub of online marketing efforts by simultaneously publishing HTML content along with RSS feeds while it integrates content into an email campaign management system (with dynamic content, customized demographics and filters, integrated search results) and directly imports user generated content.

So Just What Are We Chasing?
Relevant marketing content, accurate user intelligence, efficient and well-integrated processes, business agility, meaningful conversations… top dollar! That’s all true, to be sure. But Web content and marketing sages see the potential for a far more valuable long-term outcome to effectively managed marketing. Guy Kawasaki calls them ‘customer evangelists’.
Marketing that creates marketers! There are still some things money can’t buy.