While 31% of Irish SMEs have no website, just 32% of those that do can take orders or process transactions through their site. These findings come from the SME Digital Health Index 2019, which analyses Irish SMEs and consumers’ attitudes to digital technology.

By not selling online, CEO Lorcan Kinsella of Brand Nova Digital says Irish businesses are losing their share of Ireland’s €12.3 billion e-commerce market.  Lorcan got an opportunity to speak to Gavin McLoughlin of Newstalks Business Breakfast about how we need to monitor the performance of digital spend to make sure we are getting bang for our buck.

If you do have an eCommerce website plug your digital marketing campaigns into Nova360 Marketing Dashboard to monitor the progress of your campaign. In the meantime, enjoy the interview and welcome any comments below.

Gavin: You’re listening to Breakfast Business with Gavin McLoughlin. Now, more and more business is being done online. Of course, the pandemic is accelerating that. But the internet is very cluttered and it can be difficult to get cut through for your business in the midst of all that material and then companies are often tempted to spend big on digital marketing, but you need to make sure you get bang for your buck. Joining me now to discuss how to do that is digital marketing expert Lorcan Kinsella, chief executive of Brand Nova Digital. Good morning, Lorcan.

Lorcan: Good morning, Gavin.

Gavin: So, I suppose there’s a bit of skepticism about this whole area. A lot of people use ad blockers. They automatically hit skip on those YouTube ads. Am I right in saying it’s hard to get attention?

Lorcan: It’s very hard to get attention at the moment given the cluttered space considering that the amount of money that’s being thrown at digital and getting online with e-Commerce through government programs, which are doing fantastic, has provided a very, very cluttered space where businesses are getting there, but then they’re not really sure what they’re doing. And pretty obviously, the existing businesses are there where— trying to understand like, you know, kind of where to put the marketing budget. It’s quite difficult to see kind of where to do it, when, and having the information to do it at the right time.

Gavin: Yeah. You’ve identified a couple of areas where you think people are getting it wrong. And one is that people aren’t monitoring the performance of their digital strategy properly. So, you know, maybe they’ve picked an area out like Facebook or whatever, but they’re not analyzing properly what it’s delivering for them.

Lorcan: Yeah. For me, Gavin, it really kinda comes down to— If you actually look at a digital strategy or look at anyone’s kind of website, it comes down to two things really if you want to really kind of filter it down and that’s traffic and conversion. And when you actually have so many different platforms or different tools that are available, tools whether it be search engine optimization, pay per click, social media— And considering that there is 52 different social media platforms out there that we can leverage to draw traffic to our websites or what I call our digital marketing real estate and e-mail marketing, the four— So, you’ve got SEO, PPC, social media, and e-mail marketing. Not considering them just display. So, we just consider those four. That’s all our traffic. Our objective, our responsibility is the conversion of that, converting that to paying clients. And that really boils down to how do we know where to get that information or how do we analyze the information of who’s coming to our website. And that’s really the monitoring of the progress or performance. 

Gavin: That’s digital analytics too. You need to do that.

Lorcan: Exactly. But what’s happening is like— and what I find like in the marketplace at the moment that there is so much overwhelming information in relation to all of these. I suppose at Brand Nova where we’ve kind of launched our own Nova platform, Nova 360, is try to bring all of that information into one place where you can actually see, and understand, and ultimately get more information to make better information around, make better I suppose decisions around marketing budgets. So, for example, I can remember myself funny enough— I can remember myself paying for an ad in the Irish Independence in 2006. And it was a case of just an article. 54,000 people. It was a circa. It was a small ad. Quarter of a page. And I paid €2,500 for that ad. Now, considering if I had €2,500 now, what I would do with that, it would be a case of I might put it in— and it’s not about hope marketing. It’s actually providing a place where you can actually see exactly where your traffic is coming from whether it be search engine optimization, pay per click, Google My Business, Google Analytics. And all of that is in one place where you can access it in one place, but it’s important that if we’re €2,500 that we know that we can get a return on investment within the first week in terms of where it’s working or it’s not working. Remember, when I actually could have paid for that ad in 2006, it was a case of the next day it was gone. So, we’re trying to actually kind of look at— I suppose just being small, but clever. Given that we have all of these businesses now who’ve gone on to e-Commerce— And they’ve done the hard bit. They’ve gone online or actually now trading. But it’s important that they’re not flying blind and that they, I suppose, are now going to the next phase. A really interesting and exciting phase which is at marketing. And when you’re marketing, you want to know now where you have the facility to access to access all of this fantastic information. And when you have access to that information is when you can have a real return on investment. But if not, it’s a case of “Well, how come my competitor is doing so well and I’m not?” And it usually comes down to just understanding simple information. 

Gavin: Yeah. The analytics thing very important clearly and interesting point as well about kind of seeing how it’s doing in the fourth week. I suppose that means you can peel that advert if you need to. So, look, we leave it there, Lorcan. Thanks very much for that very interesting tips there. That’s Lorcan Kinsella, chief executive of Brand Nova Digital.