IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The way councils are going about marketing their ‘e’ services is to be explored in a new piece of research announced this week by Socitm Insight, publisher of the annual Better connected survey of local authority websites.

The new research will identify and report on examples of best practice in the marketing of online services by councils, and will focus on the marketing of specific services like leisure, planning, street scene reporting and education, rather than looking at the marketing of the council website as a whole.

Interest in the marketing of online local government services is currently high not least because of the current £5m national and local take-up campaign from the DCLG (formerly ODPM. The need for councils to get some return on the significant investments made in online ser vices over the last five years, and the opportunity to reap efficiency gains by getting customers to self-service their needs via websites, are also factors.

The Socitm Insight research aims to uncover, through a series of case studies, how councils have approached, planned and implemented marketing and communications activities that have led to increase take up of specific online services. ‘This is not just about promotional activity like advertising and leaflets’ says Martin Greenwood, programme manager for Socitm Insight, ‘We also aim to explore how councils have researched the online customer’s needs, developed their online products, and engaged with internal and stakeholder audiences to support the take-up activity. There is a clear need for advice in this area, including the examples that show how developing effective marketing can produce results.’

The project will be published as a report with around six case studies, together with practical advice on how to approach the marketing of online services. The publication will be aimed at a wide audience comprising service managers, marketing professionals, customer service managers, web managers and efficiency managers.

The project complements the work of the Socitm Insight website take-up service that provides information to participating local authorities, drawn from a visitor exit survey, about the number of unique visitors to their sites, why people are visiting, how they got there, what the experience was like, and whether they are likely to visit again. The report will be published later this year.

Quelle/Source: Publictechnology, 19.05.2006