(How to) stop pretending that you're customer-centric

@jonoalderson
(how to)
Stop pretending
that you're
customer-centric

@jonoalderson
Web development
Jono Alderson
Technical SEO
Strategy + analytics
Data science + eCRM
Consultancy + Futurology
Performance + security

@jonoalderson
Let’s start with some
audience interaction

@jonoalderson
Hands up if…
You think that ‘UX’ is something which SEO
should heavily influence

@jonoalderson
Hands up if…
You think that ‘reputation’ influences
clicks and conversion

@jonoalderson
Hands up if…
You think that ‘brand’ is a ranking factor

@jonoalderson
Keep your hands up if…
Your organisation is customer-centric

@jonoalderson
Your content and social strategies clearly
connect to your core business

@jonoalderson
You deliver excellent customer experiences

@jonoalderson
You’re competing on loyalty and retention

@jonoalderson
Your SEO strategy & performance is judged
on how well you win hearts and minds

@jonoalderson
Your content strategy is judged on how well
you influence brand recall & preference

@jonoalderson
You’re running PPC ads to your educational
and inspirational resources to influence
consumer perception of your brand

@jonoalderson
http://bit.ly/2bayMFQ

@jonoalderson
You’re probably not customer centric

@jonoalderson
You’re profit/money/growth-centric

@jonoalderson
You’re focusing on visits
and conversion rates

@jonoalderson
"How many people did
we get to do the thing
we want them to do?"

@jonoalderson
Those are your KPIs, right?

@jonoalderson
But that's the opposite of
customer-centricity

@jonoalderson
Maybe that’s fine?

@jonoalderson
After all, that’s how capitalism works
Profit/money/growth are our best proxy for success/value

@jonoalderson
But that does raise an
interesting question...

@jonoalderson
Why not just be evil?

@jonoalderson
Because being evil comes with
social and reputational cost
Reputational cost = acquisition cost = less growth

@jonoalderson
So, why not just be good?

@jonoalderson
Being good comes with $$$ cost
$$$ cost = reduced capabilities = less growth

@jonoalderson
You’re balancing good and evil
across multiple dimensions

@jonoalderson
Product/service quality.
Cost. Reach. Innovation.
Differentiation. Customer service.
Technology. Geography. Speed.
Personnel. Training. Systems.

@jonoalderson
But now, balance isn’t enough
The cost of entry continues to decrease, and disruptors
can win on almost any dimension.

@jonoalderson
...And losing on any dimension can
mean being outranked for
competitive head terms

@jonoalderson
“Best LCD TVs 2018”
“Compare LCD TVs”
“Best LCD TV”
These all have different
intents, and you can’t
win just by being the
biggest or richest or
good or evil

@jonoalderson
And ‘winning’ often isn’t
enough to win

@jonoalderson
Slides: http://bit.ly/2sVgPE9
Videos: http://bit.ly/2ERBkmI

@jonoalderson
So, how do you compete?

@jonoalderson
Google’s paradigm has to
disproportionately reward good
consumer experience
...Otherwise, people (might) use other search engines*

@jonoalderson
So... Good consumer experience
means greater visibility

@jonoalderson
..and greater visibility means
greater opportunity for
commercial outcomes

@jonoalderson
Wait, consumer experience?
Not customer experience?

@jonoalderson
(not all of your customers)
Google is assessing the
experience of all of your visitors

@jonoalderson
So you need to worry about everybody
who might visit your website
...and everybody who chooses not to.

@jonoalderson
Being “customer-centric” isn’t enough

@jonoalderson
How consumer-centric you are directly
impacts your commercial performance

@jonoalderson
Everyone,
everywhere*
*not to scale
People who might
feasibly ever buy
from us
Where we should
invest the majority
of our marketing
People who might
feasibly ever visit
our website

@jonoalderson
Because senior stakeholders are
naturally risk-averse.

@jonoalderson
...and this is all a bit woolly...

@jonoalderson
...whilst other channels gave them lots
of safe, predictable numbers.

@jonoalderson
It’s their job to not screw up
...not to gamble on opportunity

@jonoalderson
NB: that’s why they still under-invest
in SEO, social and content

@jonoalderson
...and anything else which isn’t last-click

@jonoalderson
...and why they’ll only invest in
audience/consumer marketing to
solve immediate problems

@jonoalderson
Google mandate that you must
provide good experiences to your
consumers.

@jonoalderson
So you pitch your CEO...
...and anecdotally, they’ll “get it”

@jonoalderson
“Of course I understand that we need to be
consumer-centric, and that our reputation plays an
important role in consumer purchase decisions”
- Your CEO

@jonoalderson
“I can’t justify this expenditure without a
demonstrable return. Spend all of the marketing
money on PPC and generate more leads/sales”
- ALSO Your CEO

@jonoalderson
This isn’t an education problem

@jonoalderson
It’s a risk-aversion problem...

@jonoalderson
...it’s a persuasion problem

@jonoalderson
...it’s a data problem

@jonoalderson
...it’s an analytics problem

@jonoalderson
Imagine for a moment...

@jonoalderson
What if we could make consumer-
centric marketing more measurable?

@jonoalderson
IT’S ALREADY
MEASURABLE

@jonoalderson
Measurability isn’t the problem.

@jonoalderson
The problem is with our storytelling

@jonoalderson
So if you want to be more
consumer centric...

@jonoalderson
You need to connect your
consumer-centricity story
to the money story.

@jonoalderson
But it’s hard to do join the dots
Channels! Systems! Attribution! Stakeholders!

@jonoalderson
You need to fix your whole organisational
outlook, objectives and measurement strategy
You have to extend your reach beyond SEO and PPC

@jonoalderson
It’s okay
I have a framework*

@jonoalderson
When you change how
people are measured, you
change how they behave.

@jonoalderson
We’re going to change the way
your hippo behaves
Using only a single sheet of paper

@jonoalderson
Objective Goal KPI Performance
Make lots of
money
Sell lots of stuff to everybody
who visits our site
● # transactions
● £ sales revenue
6/10
7/10
Be loved by
everyone
Make content which people
like, share and read
● Visitors to our blog
● Newsletter signups
● Referral entrances
to blog content
3/10
2/10
1/10
Make lots of
money
Sell lots of stuff to everybody
who visits our site
● # transactions
● £ sales revenue
6/10
7/10
!?

@jonoalderson
Objective Goal KPI Key Segments Performance
Be known as the
leading brand in
our market
Produce content which people discover
and read
# new organic+referral+email visitors to blog posts (per month) Category, author
# average comments-per-post (rolling)
Grow our owned and earned audiences # Active new email signups
Double YoY
revenue
Increase sales revenue from digital
channels
# qualified sales (per month) where the sale had digital attribution Department, channel, product
£ qualified sales revenue (per month), where the sale had digital attribution
Increase customer lifetime value % of new consumers via the website making a repeat purchase within 3
months (rolling, YoY)
Channel, source, campaign,
keyword, gender, geographic
region, entry page
Average time between repeat purchases (rolling, YoY)
Provide the best
customer
experiences in
our market
Provide great content and help users
find the information they need
% task completion rate (per month) Entrance page, Channel,
source, campaign, keyword
% satisfaction rate (per month)
Delta % against average competitor satisfaction rate (roling)
Compete on
marketing
efficiency
Maintain a high conversion rate to sale % visitors to macroconversions (per month) Channel, source, campaign,
keyword, call type
Increase self-service actions on the
website
£ value of microconversions (per month) Microconverion, channel,
Ensure that audience-centric activity
drives commercial outcomes
£ qualified sales revenue (per month), where the sale had audience campaign
attribution
Campaign

@jonoalderson
Getting started is easy

@jonoalderson
Get some integrated
on-site survey data
in your analytics

@jonoalderson
Start with getting task completion rate
and satisfaction rate in your analytics
“How well are we enabling our consumers to
do the thing they want to do?”

@jonoalderson
1. “What did you come here to do today?” (list)
2. “Were you able to do it?” (Y/N)
3. “How would you rate your experience?” (x/10)
4. “Any other comments?”

@jonoalderson
Now pivot on task, channel and
landing page

@jonoalderson
http://blog.immeria.net/2009/11/iperceptions-deep-dive-in-behavioral.html

@jonoalderson
“We have loads of visitors from this
channel who land on that page, who say
they’re looking for these things but that
they can’t find them”

@jonoalderson
effectiveexperiments.com

@jonoalderson
Okay. That was step one.

@jonoalderson
Now you need to connect the
HIPPOs to the consumers
You’ll need five things

@jonoalderson
1. Help stakeholders realise that they don’t have a shared set of
definitions for success
2. Extract their knowledge (and opinions)
3. Define the goals & KPIs
4. Demonstrate segments, define targets
5. Define an implementation roadmap

@jonoalderson
“What are your business objectives?”

@jonoalderson
“Double year-on-year revenue”

@jonoalderson
Objectives must increase revenue,
decrease cost or improve brand

@jonoalderson
Objective
Be known as the
leading brand in
our market
Double YoY
revenue
Provide the best
customer
experiences in
our market

@jonoalderson
Goals
objectives - nonsense + specifics = tactics

@jonoalderson
Objectives often
require multiple goals

@jonoalderson
Objective Goal
Be known as the
leading brand in
our market
and read
Grow our owned and earned audiences
Double YoY
revenue
channels
Increase customer lifetime value
Provide the best
customer
experiences in
our market
Compete on
marketing
efficiency
Maintain a high conversion rate to sale
website

@jonoalderson
KPIs
Ultra-specific technical definitions

@jonoalderson
“Increase sales revenue from digital channels”

@jonoalderson
● # Conversions

@jonoalderson
● # Conversions
● # Qualified macroconversions

@jonoalderson
● # Conversions

@jonoalderson
● # Conversions
● # macroconversions (valuable form submissions, valuable phone calls,
and offline conversions which cite ‘web’ as source)

@jonoalderson
Think outside of the box
Don’t use any stock metrics

@jonoalderson
Introduce audience-centric KPIs
How many people did you help?

@jonoalderson
Interweave your commercial and audience
KPIs to prevent silo’d behaviour.

@jonoalderson
Don’t worry about how you’re going to
track your KPIs (yet)

@jonoalderson
http://bit.ly/2tWeYiK
Understand that
different page types
have different success
metrics

@jonoalderson
Objective Goal KPI
Be known as the
leading brand in
our market
and read
# new organic+referral+email visitors to blog posts (per month)
Double YoY
revenue
channels
# qualified sales (per month) where the sale had digital attribution
Provide the best
customer
experiences in
our market
% task completion rate (per month)
Compete on
marketing
efficiency
Maintain a high conversion rate to sale % visitors to macroconversions (per month)
website
£ value of microconversions (per month)
attribution

@jonoalderson
Segments
...define reporting requirements

@jonoalderson
Objective Goal KPI Key Segments
Be known as the
leading brand in
our market
and read
# new organic+referral+email visitors to blog posts (per month) Category, author
Double YoY
revenue
channels
# qualified sales (per month) where the sale had digital attribution Department, channel, product
Channel, source, campaign,
keyword, gender, geographic
region, entry page
Provide the best
customer
experiences in
our market
% task completion rate (per month) Entrance page, Channel,
Compete on
marketing
efficiency
Maintain a high conversion rate to sale % visitors to macroconversions (per month) Channel, source, campaign,
keyword, call type
website
£ value of microconversions (per month) Microconverion, channel,
attribution
Campaign

@jonoalderson
How you visualise performance is
the most important bit.
Bullet charts are your secret weapon.

@jonoalderson
“Something’s
gone wrong
“Everything’s
fine”
“It’s
champagne
time!”

@jonoalderson
“How do I set targets?”

@jonoalderson
http://bit.ly/1rzdCop

@jonoalderson
Your dashboard must fit on one
piece of paper(!)

@jonoalderson
http://bit.ly/29mFsgZ

@jonoalderson
Congratulations!
Your organisation is becoming more consumer-centric.

@jonoalderson
Ok, let’s rewind and
summarise

@jonoalderson
Search engines reward audience centricity
Improved experiences = improved performance

@jonoalderson
Organisations don’t can’t
think this way
So you need to join the dots for them

@jonoalderson
When you change how people are
measured, you change how they behave

@jonoalderson
...and you always have
permission to say...
“I think we can measure
success in a better way”

@jonoalderson
So when you develop a
measurement framework
which makes audience centric
behaviour important...

@jonoalderson
...and you trap stakeholders
into committing to a better
definition of success..

@jonoalderson
You can begin to grow
investment in consumer-centric
marketing and improve your
performance

@jonoalderson
You can use this framework for
other activities, too.

@jonoalderson | @distilled
@jonoalderson
Thank you!
@jonoalderson

(How to) stop pretending that you're customer-centric

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