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
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...
96ofpeoplewhodothisarenolongen: 96% of people who do THIS are no longer tired...: "There's a new program out called End Tiredness. If you suffer from being tired, you're not alone. MOST people are tired at least some of..."
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