Monday, July 11, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
MythTech: the Holy Grail of marketing
And Lo, there shall come a time when marketing shall pervade the land. It will be of such relevancy, born of such creative talent that it will be welcome wherever it appears. It will be like meat unto the starving and drink unto the parched.
I believe in great marketing. Getting just the right message in front of just the right person at just the right time.
I believe in customer analytics. Getting just the right insight from just the right data that informs just the right action at just the right time.
I believe that if you combine the best and brightest creative people with the best and brightest data gathering people and the best and brightest analytical people you end up with a marketing machine that's bigger than Procter & Gamble, more ubiquitous than Coca Cola and able to win more hearts and minds than Apple.
You may remember a movie called "Up in the Air" wherein George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham constantly flying hither and yon. Funny premise with some choice bits of travel advice.
Dark movie. But not near as dark as the novel, Up in the Air by Walter Kim. The main character is not as handsome, glib or whimsical as Mr. Clooney. His fate is more painful to watch unfold.
This book contains a passage that concisely explains the basic tenets of my marketing religion and spells out why my religion must inevitably lead to greater harm.
Ryan Bingham is desperately after a job with the mysterious marketing company MythTech. When he comes across an ex-employee, he presses for detals and she describes her consulting job as:
Marketing Ecology. The study of non-obvious interactions among diverse commercial entities.... You've heard of the human genome project? The human gene map? That's what they're after at MythTech only with commerce. All the angles. All the combinations. And they know it won't be a 'eureka.' It won't just pop some day... It won't take forever but it won't be quick....
That's why they don't worry about profits... Because the second MythTech gets this map, the second they lock those files in the vault, everybody else is just a plowboy on their farm...
What drives investment? The fear of the code. The fear that there might be a code and somebody else is going to crack it...
But it's all a racket. It's sheer extortion. The code is a bluff. It's all Beware of Dog and Daddy's Deep Loud Voice."
That passage burst my bubble, I can tell you.
But still, when I see companies like Motion Loft making the effort to combine real world store traffic with web traffic and radio ad results and god knows what...
When I see people playing with neural marketing as described by Martin Lindstrom in his book Buy-ology...
When I see companies like Marketshare take a break-through software approach to calculating multi-channel attribution to determine marketing budget allocation...
Then I think that maybe - just maybe - there is a marketing deity somewhere and one day we shall all be happily entertained by advertising that informs us about things we actually want.
Just the right message to just the right person at just the right time.
It could happen.
Amen.
Jim Sterne is a respected author and speaker. He is also the producer of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. You can follow Jim on Twitter here.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
10 essentials of e-commerce optimization & attribution: Part One
Posted 26 May 2011 18:12pm by Paul Cook with 3 comments
Online shoppers are a fickle lot and the competition for their attention and their spend in utterly fierce. Consequently, optimizing every aspect of your e-commerce program, and the tags that manage them, is absolutely essential.
Since we’re working mainly with e-commerce businesses, we compiled a list of the key steps they can – and do – take to optimize online sales.
This is only part one and mixes tag-based optimization issues with general best-practice tips dealing with on and off-site activity.
We’re discussing the list in full at the Econsultancy Peer Summit in New York on June 2 and we’ll publish part two after the event.
1. Don’t be the tortoise
When it comes to page loading times, lack of speed kills. Our own study suggested that every 100 milliseconds of extra load time can cost 1% of your potential sales, while the Aberdeen Group found that every 1-second delay costs 7% of conversions.
And, while lots of rich media content can slow you down, so too can all the tags you’re using to track performance. Some analysts are now recommending tag management systems to mitigate the page weight related issues created by all your tags.
2. Start at the top
Since we’ve already established the importance of a fast loading page, you now have some decisions to make as to what should load first.
The answer is surprisingly basic. Work your way from the top down, loading items above the fold first, demonstrating to your visitor that you value his/her time. It is a simple truth that if a site looks fast on first glance, people are more likely to hang around long enough to complete the page load, and eventually, a transaction.
3. Serve no tag before its time
Without a tag management system in place, sites simply load all their tags at once, even when they’re irrelevant to the visitor.
This slows down the page and ignores all the data you probably have on your visitor. For example, why load the re-targeting tag if the user has already been cookied? Or if a visitor has come in search of a low-margin product why load Live Chat?
Aligning the tags you serve with visitor data improves results all the way round.
4. Not also but only…
Just like in the real world, a messy storefront will cost you customers, a loss that will be compounded if the mess carries over to the inside of the store.
Both your landing page and subsequent pages need to be more than broom clean, carefully organized with idiot-proof navigational paths. Avoid the “and another thing” syndrome after the initial site launch or makeover, substitute new for old rather than trying to cram in more.
5. Get the band back together
Even a cleanly designed site won’t make the cash register sing if all the marketing contributors aren’t marching to the same drum.
Whether you do all your marketing in-house or with a myriad partners, e-commerce won’t be optimized until email, display, social, re-targeting, SEM and SEO activities are all working in concert. Orchestrating monthly/quarterly meetings of the whole “band” is crucial.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Traffic Blast Friday
Traffic Blast Friday
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Thursday, June 2, 2011
96ofpeoplewhodothisarenolongen: 96% of people who do THIS are no longer tired...
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Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Why Some Social Media Experts Are Good
Why Some Social Media Experts Are Good
Why I Will Never, Ever Hire a Social Media Expert" earlier this week, and it struck me as pretty silly, but the more I've been thinking about it through the week, the more I realize that it is good for a nice, cathartic snark. (Because I mean, seriously. How tired are we of self-proclaimed social media experts? But it's actually pretty seriously misguided about what the job really is.
Lord knows I love a good cathartic rant, and there are some zinger lines in there ("Will you please shut up before you make me vomit on your shoes?"), but the arguments are myopic.
Shankman's got two main arguments: First, "Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service." The second argument is a bit more esoteric, but basically he implies that you can do it yourself and don't need an expert. Or your trusted marketing buddy can do it. Shankman goes on to state all the obvious hallmarks of good social media: relevance, brevity, customer insight and good writing. All true. But all just part of the picture.
Let's delve into each one.
Now, I am a marketer. And we offer social media services. But even I know social media is about much, much more than marketing and customer service. The obvious third example is PR. And yes, this is different from marketing. Things are blurring, but marketing is still about talking to a large(ish) group of people, whose individual characteristics are more or less unknown. PR is about talking to known, influential individuals. They are different arts, practiced in different ways.
Let's just go look at any large company's Twitter account. Let's pick Delta. Right off the bat, you will see there are two accounts for Delta - a marketing account and a customer service account. They do different things, differently. So yes, social media touches marketing and customer service. Let's pick another one. Let's try a hotel. Let's go with Marriott. Right now, a quick glance at the Marriott account shows that they are dealing with marketing, reservations, customer service and billings issues. They also have separate accounts dealing with the activities at an individual hotel or resort. Things are now more complex. Let's pick a really tough one: Samsung.* Go ahead. Google "Samsung Twitter." Here you see a massive array of twitter accounts. Maybe too many, but right away you see that things are infinitely more complex. Reviews of different products. Customer support. Tech support. Warranties. PR. Marketing.
So. Now. Here we get to truth one. Social media is not just about marketing and customer service. It's not just another facet of marketing and customer service. Every conceivable part of your company has social media implications. Manufacturing. Supply chain. Tech support. PR. Warranties. Advertising. Promotions. PR. Shareholder relations**. HR.
The most obvious example is the most frequent stumbling block with social media: the out-of-nowhere-PR-disaster. The Jet Blue debacle. The Amazonfail. That one happened over a weekend while everyone was off. In just 48 hours. This is social media lightning in a bottle. To avoid these, a company must monitor social media 24 hours a day - a business process neither marketing departments nor customer service departments are traditionally organized to do. They must have lightning fast response times, and a direct line to the CEO: ditto. And you must build these processes into your company. THAT is social media too, and it is totally different from marketing and customer service.
Where you put it in the org chart, of course, is up to you. And maybe you arbitrarily put it in with the marketing. That would be semi-logical. You might also put it with customer service. Ditto. Both of those places, however, are going to cause complications if, say, Gizmodo is hounding you for the latest Intel about your new device. Did you just put that in marketing? Does your PR firm mind? I'll bet they do, and I'll bet your head of PR minds very much as well. Never mind the actual marketing manager for that new Tablet, or the actual PRODUCT manager. Or HR, who is busy trying to use the account to recruit talent.
And here we get to the second argument: you can do it yourself, more or less. Yes, you can, at a small organization. Our company is now 100+ and I can still handle most of it (though I do have 2 people helping part time)***. But you know what? You absolutely cannot handle it yourself if you are 500,000 workers with 5 major divisions, pushing out over 10,000 SKUs into 4 industries across 50 countries every year, managed by some 4,000 marketing managers on 6 continents, with PR, customer service, marketing, tech support, crisis management, blogger outreach, community support, security, payment and developer relations needs in each of those 50 countries, needing to be monitored 24 hours a day. Can you do that yourself? What do you call all of those people who DO do that work? They are social media experts. You can title them what you want, but that's what they are. If you hired anything less than an expert, you are not one yourself. Also, where do you house them? Are they in your organization? Your ad agency? In one country? In 3 or 4? In every market? How many languages? And one tiny little screw-up and you have some irate blogger with 10,000 followers bitching and moaning saying, "how hard can it be? Don't they get it?"
So, who figures all of this out for you? You're the CEO of a giant multinational corporation. You're smart and you're busy. Hopefully you've realized this stuff matters, but you can hardly do it yourself. You want to delegate the whole setup to an underling to figure out these questions. Who is she? Boom. A Social Media Expert. I mean, I guess you could just hand it to Bob, over there in the marketing department. That might work.
Now, I don't know where Mr. Shankman works. I assume he's a small businessman like myself, and, like me, he could probably handle it himself. But you know what? If I were magically promoted to the CEO of a major company, I would totally freakin' hire a Social Media Expert. Immediately. And if I didn't, I shouldn't be CEO.
Not every Social Media Expert is out there going from small business to small business, huckstering people who don't know better. Some are out there actually figuring out some really complicated shit for massive corporations who need to radically transform their ways to deal with a new world of constant two-way communication, and are smart enough to realize it.
* Full disclosure, we handle a small part of their social media. but so do lots of other people. Read on.
** Oh god. Just THINK of that one. Any shareholder would love it, but imagine the challenges of identifying whether a Twitterer is also a shareholder, and then DMing them the relevant info. Any company that pulls that off, I will salute you, and I guarantee you're not gonna pull it off in your marketing or customer service dept.
*** And this is without actually having warranties, and only a handful of customers and a limited number of journalists for us to engage with.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-some-social-media-experts-are-good-2011-5#ixzz1Nzywqk7b
Media Logic Offers Free Social Marketing Webinar for Retailers: Why Are You Still Using Safelists?
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Friday, May 20, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
10 ways to measure social media for business
10 ways to measure social media for business
See our accompanying article on Socialbrite.org: How to measure your nonprofit's social media success.
Is your business a social business? Companies that are making good use of social media should take the next step and measure the progress of their social media programs and campaigns. How do you know if you're succeeding if you don't have the numbers?
Today we'll look at 10 ways that metrics can offer visibility into your business's performance. You won't want to chart all of these, but tracking a few well-chosen metrics -- and incorporating the learnings into your business processes -- can contribute to the bottom line.
Customer engagement
1Engagement can take place offline and online, on your site, on your social networks and in real-world face-to-face events. By letting customers participate in conversations about your brand, you can improve your business, your products and your levels of service. Ultimately, customer engagement is key to improving satisfaction and loyalty rates and revenue.
Metrics to track could include:
- Number of followers on Twitter, Facebook, et al.
- Number of retweets on Twitter
- Number of comments per blog post
- Number of external widgets embedded
- Invaluable assets as redistributors of content
- Customer reviews and ratings
Note: Such customer interaction can be invaluable in fostering a culture of community and in guiding product development. In addition, endorsements can be used as testimonials in marketing materials (with permission).
Sales & profits
2In the end, you business's social media efforts need to not just generate customer goodwill -- it should contribute to your company's bottom line.
Metrics to keep an eye on include:
- Track sales from Google referrals
- Sales from paid search
- Sales as a result of social network mentions
Dell said it made $3 million selling products to its Twitter followers on the strength of coupons and discounts that other Twitterers gladly passed along virally as tipsters. And Blendtec’s Will It Blend? campaign on YouTube helped to drive a 500 percent increase in sales. Just don’t expect the needle to move right away.
Search marketing & rankings
3The importance of search engine optimization to your brand cannot be overstated: SEO & social media efforts should significantly increase your site’s visibility & performance in search results. It should also help you rank prominently for targeted items and increase your long-tail traffic.
- Identify and incorporate targeted keywords on major landing pages on your site.
- Strategically use keywords on social networks as well, such as Facebook.
- You can use links from Twitter or YouTube to claim valuable search rankings on your brand search terms.
- Tweets that rank for targeted keyword can lead to traffic from keywords that the site does not rank for.
- Whenever someone shares content from your site on a social site, you get a link back and a submission history.
- Try to convert one-time visitors from Digg, StumbleUpon and other social news sites into long-term members of your community.
Traffic & conversation reach
4Your business can produce the most gorgeous, well-manicured press releases in the world. But unless you get customers talking about your product or service and generating traffic to your website, microsite or social networks, you're missing the boat.
- Raw traffic is important, but you'll want to measure traffic from segmented audiences that you're targeting.
- Chart the number of visitors to your social networks.
Brand sentiment
5The nature and purpose of public relations and external communications is changing from an industrial-era paradigm to one of facilitation and curation. Go with it -- help create evangelists for your products or services among your most ardent fans. Word of mouth and the viral nature of sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg can help shift your company’s key brand metrics.
You'll need a more sophisticated set of metrics tools to gauge the following:
- Brand awareness, brand favorability, brand recall, propensity to buy, etc. (TV ads are measured in this way.)
- Positive brand associations via social media efforts can help drive clicks on paid search ads. Use a social media service to measure brand sentiment.
Public outreach
6The worlds of public relations, customer service and marketing are merging. Social media enables customers to interact with all channels within a company.
- Traditional metrics, such as column inches in newspapers and magazines, are becoming less relevant over time. Outreach to blogosphere & Twitterverse is becoming as important as outreach to media organizations. Consider creating a social media newsroom that offers bloggers and news organizations a rich set of multimedia, bulleted takeaways and quotes from key participants. Then track the number of mentions on social sites by using the bit.ly url shortener.
Lead generation
7Social media is becoming a funnel for lead generation. A number of tools now let you track business prospects through sophisticated filtering mechanisms.
- Use LinkedIn to connect with potential business partners and clients, and chart the rate of invitations accepted and follow-up communications acted upon. See which kinds of messaging are resonating.
- Here’s an opportunity for your internal teams to work together to optimize your site for keywords and key phrases. It's always better when potential customers come to you.
Customer retention
8We're moving into an age of optimization and retention. Watch your retention rates as you start participating in social media. Over time, if your team uses social media intelligently, they should rise.
- Zappos, which uses Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube for its social media efforts, has exceeded $1 billion in sales. Some 75 percent of its orders are repeat customers. Make sure you monitor your repeat customers and shower them with love.
Cost savings
9In this age of cost-cutting, companies are looking to apply savings wherever they can. Cisco saved $250,000 by using social media rather than traditional PR and marketing to roll out its Data Center project.
- Crowdsourcing has become an increasingly popular way for businesses to leverage customers and outside parties for savings. Consider how cost reductions can be applied in a way that benefits the bottom line while not infringing on worker rights or jeopardizing health and environmental standards. Then measure how each initiative contributes to cost containment.
Employee recruitment
10The brightest young minds coming into the workplace today live, breathe and understand social media. Show them that you're a genuine social business and not just another company hunkering down in the wake of the social media revolution.
- Measure incoming employees’ sentiment about your company. What are they saying? What attracted them?
- Measure exiting employees’ sentiment. Assign someone from human relations, with no stake in the matter, to conduct exit interviews. Assess their feedback -- and take it to heart.
These are 10 ideas, but it's not a complete list. List your ideas in the comments below.
IMAGE AT TOP BY blmurch ON FLICKR (CC-BY)
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