Digital

Customer Insights and the Qualitative and Quantitative Mix

Word of mouth is likely the oldest form of advertising and traditionally one that has been nearly impossible to target and measure. But that is changing, and changing quickly. In addition to web analytics and third party audience measurement data, there is an increasing wealth of information available for organizations to measure and mine. Consumer feedback sites, social networks, blogs as well as on-site tools all provide a wealth of information that companies can use for product and service improvement. With these opportunities come new challenges, as success is a measure of more than just numbers and percentages.

The eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (April 6 – 9) is a good place to go to really understand how far eMetrics has come. One of the panel presentations, that includes Lisa Lloyd of Microsoft (who will also be wearing her CMA hat) will address this very issue.

On a related panel, named Predictive Analytics and Digital Marketing - Paul Tyndall of RBC (also wearing his CMA hat), will be discussing how RBC and other marketers are utilizing predictive modeling in the online space.

Full disclosure – CMA is one of the association sponsors of the Summit.

.... if you are a member of CMA, you can save an additional 15% off the regular attendee rate by using discount code CMAPARTNER15 when registering for the conference.

Elizabeth Harvey, Manager of Councils and Self Regulatory Programs, CMA

Search Engine Marketing for Beginners

In my current role at a home and auto insurance company, we sell our products exclusively through independent brokers. That said, we are keenly interested in providing value add services to our broker partners to ensure they are both growing and retaining the right customers.

Like many businesses today, brokerages know they need to have an online presence but often lack the technical know-how. As a result, our marketing department has put together a series of marketing best practices for our brokerages to help them get started. To compliment Jim Estill’s blog post here late last month, SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics , I thought I would share one such piece that attempts to demystify Search Engine Marketing. In our Introduction to Search Engine Marketing we tried to simplify SEM and provide some tangible tips for businesses trying to get started in the SEM space.

What SEM strategies and tactics have worked for your business, and which have not?

Martha Turner, AVP Marketing Services and Campaign Management, Aviva Canada Inc.
& member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council

Digital Wild West

I’ve had the fortune of blogging here since the inception of this blog and deliberately never wrote anything marketing-related with regards to my current employer. Today is one exception I hope you will grant me.

So I’m not accused of 'ambush shilling' or taking 5 minutes of your time that you will never get back - I’m warning you now. You can close this browser and get out of Dodge. I won’t take offense. I promise.

Still here? Thank you. So let’s saddle up ‘pardner’ and we’ll mosey on out for a little ride!

Some may know I have the fortune of working at Harlequin Enterprises. Yes, that Harlequin. The Harlequin that is one of the leading publishers of women's romance and fiction around the globe.

Recently we launched a new campaign promoting our HQN imprint series ‘The McKettricks’ by author Linda Lael Miller. So what's so special about this online marketing campaign?

Last fall our Creative Director Margie Miller teamed up with our Director of Digital Content & Social Media Malle Vallik to create a unique behind-the-scenes video that shows the making of a Harlequin cover. We had never done anything like this before. Take a look.

Now I’ll admit I’m not a big cowboy fan but I appreciate good content. And although I’m biased, I think this documentary is terrific. As Malle points out in her blog, it gives you a greater appreciation of the work that creative directors and photographers do on a regular basis.

How has the campaign done? We’re very pleased with the response so far. We took some excellent content and promoted it via various online marketing and social media channels by directing people to Take A Cowboy Home which features the video content, sample editorial, cool contest and (most importantly) where to buy the books.

We also got some great support from the fine folks over at MSN who created a unique section promoting this campaign. Not to mention many friends/fans/authors/bloggers who spread the word via various social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

So everything is perfect and we ride off into the sunset, right? Not so fast. There were a few things I learned from this campaign. Call them the '3 Cowboys' like the McKettrick brothers:

1. Many companies work in silos. Often campaigns are created and other teams such as Social Media, PR, IT and/or Legal are left out until the end and then added like a check-box. Do not make that mistake. Involve key groups from cradle (so they become stakeholders) to the grave (so they share in the successes and learnings).

2. It will not always be utopia. There will be hiccups. The issue is not ‘if’ they happen but ‘when’ they happen. And how your team reacts to quickly address them and ensure they don’t happen in future. We started creating a ‘list of oops’ so we include them in our campaign post-mortem report.

3. This is my biggest takeaway. Regardless if you sell books, lotion, laptops or luggage - it's my view you must have a good combination of strong content and promotion for your digital campaigns. They are not mutually exclusive and together make them all the more stronger. Especially in the digital wild west.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization Basics

Do you want to get first page on Google? If you have a web page or blog, you likely already are first page for some searches. With a bit of SEO, you can gain first page on more searches. And its simple.

The first and most obvious step is think about what words or phrases you want to be first page on.

Once you have that list, determine how many people are searching for those terms. To check how popular a search is you will need a tool. I use Wordtracker (there is a free online version). The higher the number, the more popular the search.

No point in trying to optimize for a word or phrase that is rarely searched. There is also no point in trying to optimize for a word that is too popular because getting a high ranking there will be almost impossible. So this is a "just right thing". You want to optimize for words that you have a good chance of ranking for. I suggest choosing 10-20 words and phrases.

Think about "long tail"

Think about how people will search. People often search with a question. EG where do I find X? Or where do I find Y in Canada. The longer the string, the less competition you will have for it so the easier you will get ranked.

So make the list of phrases you want to "own" and ones that are realistic to "own".

Now it is simple. Just put these words and phrases in your titles, picture descriptions, videos and in your text. The titles are the most important. That is why a blog called "Vegetable Lentil Soup Recipes" will get good Google juice on all 4 words. So searching "vegetable soup" will get first page. Or "lentil soup recipes" or "vegetable lentil recipes" etc.

Yes you want to repeat your words and phrases often in the text. This said - write naturally. Never let SEO be a substitute for good content.

So you do this and you still are not first page. That is because you do not have enough credibility with Google. You need another free tool to check this. I use a free Firefox plugin called searchstatus. It gives me both the PageRank and the Alexa rating of any web page. Higher PageRank numbers are better. High credibility is your ultimate goal as that is what gets you ranked first and Alexa tells you traffic (a lower number is better)

My blog (www.jimestill.com) has a pagerank of 5 and Alexa of 493,052 (meaning it is the 493,052th most popular site in the Internet). CMA blog has a pagerank of 4 and an Alexa of 587,900. This means if I SEO on the same phrase as CMA blog, google will list me before CMA Blog.

How do you increase your PageRank?

It is all about quality inbound links. You want people with a high credibility (PageRank 4+) to link to you - eg Globe and Mail would be great. More is better and link rank is almost logarithmic so a PageRank of 6 is worth 10 times one of 5 etc.

The best inbound links are contextual. So someone blogging and saying I heard time management guru Jim Estill speak and hot linking from "Time management guru" is great for me. Second best, hot link to "Jim Estill". Third is just having a link on a blogroll without any context or a link to click here.

You get a higher rank if you update your content regularly. That is why having a blog on your site is a good way to increase your ranking.

Moderate cross linking within your own material will also increase your rank and clarify for google what it is that you do.

3 ways to get links to your site:

1 - Ask politely. You might not always get a link but it never hurts to ask.

2 - Comment on other relevant blogs (and have your PageRank on so you ignore low PageRank and high alexa). Note that most comments in themselves do not constitute a link. But being out there gets people to look at you. You need people to look at your stuff for them to be inspired to link to it.

3 - Have good material. People link to quality. But of course they have to see it so promote your content

4 - Have your URL on all your print material, cards, letterhead, email sig file etc.

5 - Write guest articles and blogs in the right (high traffic) places (check the pagerank and Alexa).

6 - Contribute to other sites. EG write reviews on Amazon, join the conversations.

And a word of warning. Never play games (like buying links).

In the end it is about having good quality material. And being out there so people look at your material. People link to quality without you asking as long as they know about it.

Jim Estill

The iPad has arrived. Now what?!

Today, as I was riding in on the subway, reading the New York Times on my new iTouch, I stumbled upon an article about Apple's launch today (Wednesday Jan. 27) of its tablet product, or iPad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_zI21XEo0Q

Being an Apple fan from way back I couldn't help but feel a sense of real excitement. It got me reflecting on how much the Apple brand has meant to me over the years. And I'm not alone. The excitement that's building up in the media and among the Apple Faithful is almost palpable and very real.

I bought my first Mac (Mac Classic II) back in 1993ish. I was working at an agency and wanted a way to be able to work on those weekends when I was going back home to Kingston to visit the folks. The idea of a portable computer was exciting. Imagine, being free to take your computer anywhere. It was only 14 or 15 lbs. Oh, you PC people chained to your desks. How quaint.

Then when the first Apple notebooks came out, I was fortunate to be working on the Apple account and helped develop a launch campaign for them. (Best. Account. Ever.) The objective, as outlined in the brief, was to get the public over the mental hump of being able to work anywhere. Imagine sitting in a park or in a coffee shop clicking away on your laptop computer. Why, you could even work from home!

Then of course, the iPod changed everything. The recording industry, advertising, interaction (or lack thereof) between people in public places...everything. The iPhone then revolutionized how we think of what a phone is and what it can do. People could earn money and express their creative by developing Apps. We were now all working for Apple.

Walk into any mall where an Apple store exists and you'd think they were giving stuff away for free in there.

And now the anticipation for the iPad is reaching a fever pitch. People can taste it. The article in the NYT suggests that it's going to do for newspaper publishing what the iPod did for music. They're counting on it because we all know where the newspaper industry is headed. But will our collective love for all things Apple mean that we'll be willing to pay for things like the Star or the NYTs online through the Slate, when so much of the same information can be found on free sites elsewhere.

That's just one fascinating question we as marketers should be watching and reading about -- probably on our iPads.

Bryan Tenenhouse

Once Upon a Time

Every story begins with one word; and with this, I begin to tell mine. This is my first of what I expect to be many more entries as a contributor to the CMA blog. It will be a place where I will seek to share and gain knowledge from the marketing community at large.

As a member of the Digital Marketing Council I am tasked with supporting the association’s efforts in closing the knowledge gap that exists in the marketplace as it relates to the digital realm. The space is changing so rapidly that it becomes difficult for marketers to keep focused on all of the moving parts while translating it back to how it impacts their business. Understanding these inherent challenges, I will attempt to address some of the pressing issues and look to shed light on how to tackle others.

Traditionally blogs are based on the views of one, the contributor, yet I will seek to incorporate industry guests when relevant and possible. Their inputs and perspectives will provide valuable insights within the context of true case scenarios aimed to provoke thought and spur dialogue. I will be leveraging social media where appropriate to gain insights, feedback and contributions from other industry professionals and will serve as the content facilitator and filter to ensure that readers are able to gain value from the content being delivered.

The first topic of discussion will be how to develop successful online communities. With the explosion of social media and technologies enabling consumers to evangelize and share their views with their peers, marketers are looking for ways to nurture and build off this type of consumer behaviour which has resulted in an increased demand for the development of consumer based communities online.

As much value as they may provide the challenge of understanding and developing one raises a series of questions such as:

1. What is a community?
2. Why does my brand need one?
3. What type of community should we create?
4. What resources are required (financial, human, technology, etc.) and who will be responsible for managing it?
5. How do we create one?

I will be providing different perspectives into the answers to these questions over the next several posts with input provided from conversations with industry leading brands. I encourage you to participate in the discussion and to become engaged.

I look forward to creating a great story with you!

Jeff Pontes, Director Digital Strategy, FUSE Marketing Group

The Year Of Online Branding

With all the buzz of social media last year, its sure to be part of marketers plans for 2010, if not already. But social media might just be a piece of the pie to a much larger picture. Online branding hasn't received all that much acknowledgement just yet, but I suspect that's about to change.

If offline branding is about creating top of mind and becoming synonymous for a product, service, or category, then marketers will want to pay particular attention to what the web holds for them. The conventional branding process is about building a consumer relationship and can often take a decade to build that kind of rapport. But online branding provides the potential to shave years off your strategy.

Using social media, search marketing, and social media, marketers now have the ability to reach larger more targeted markets, often for less money, and be able to track and measure their success in a fraction of the time of offline marketing and branding strategies. Appearing within the top 10 for your preferred phrases, coupled with engaging in online conversations, sharing, using social media tools, and of course advertising, can have a powerful effect. When using a triple threat such as this approach, the repetition begins to build the brand online and creates perceived value. And much like its offline counterpart, Internet branding is a process that isn't turned on like and advertising campaign. But once you've invested 6-8 months in social media or search engine optimization, the value begins to be self-evident.

Online marketing budgets continue to receive greater attention, primarily in Internet advertising. And as more marketers adopt social media within their plans, there still seems to be the matter of utilizing natural search results. This is one of the larger slices of the proverbial pie mentioned earlier. With Internet advertising, you have more control over tracking and creative. You can even split test and measure results the same day in many cases. The verdict is still out on social media, although there are numerous arguments made regarding its effectiveness. But it seems still early to measure. Not things like followers or how many joined your fan page, but real metrics that show value. In a recent study by Gartner, it said that over 75% of the Fortune 1000 companies are using social media, and over 50% of them will be classified as failures. This probably goes back to how successes are measured, but its likely that the one size fits all approach doesn’t work for everyone when developing a social media campaign.

For the year ahead, consider the value your online marketing offers. Social media is still debatable. Internet advertising is more measureable, but still a challenge to work with as the web is so fragmented that a big campaign can eat profits with a media buyer coordinating the entire buy.

Did you know that typical click rates on banners are under 2% and contextual ads in search results are less than 20%? That leaves the large slice of pie, to appear in natural search results when searching for a given topic or phrase. The bad name seo has received with its infiltration of snake oil salesmen has left a bad taste in the mouths of many, but passing it over is like leaving money on the table. In fact, it’s the most likely source of traffic and stands to be one of the biggest contributors to your online branding efforts. Borrowing from the old adage of using a three-pronged attack, the big 3 described above are your path to diversifying and capitalizing online.

Engage!

By Mark Nicholson, president, reactorr online branding

Watch This...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Are you in?

Surprise

Not many things surprise me after so many years in this business, but I have to admit, this did:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Since starting my own creative consultancy two years ago, I've written many websites for clients who think that key words actually matter. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking. Obviously this isn't as earth-shattering as learning that cigarettes are bad for you or that Balloon Boy was a hoax, but it does raise an eyebrow given that Google hasn't exactly advertised this news. Thoughts?

Traditional Marketing is Dead

In the early nineties there was a notion that the internet would alter the face of Direct Marketing. Unless you live in a cave, it has! But it is not just the Internet that has changed the way we market products or services, technology has also had a dramatic impact on how we conduct and market our businesses.

In fact, it is my position that technology has surpassed the marketer. There is a new breed of marketer that is emerging from our schools and universities. They understand the power of the web and know how to use it well. But in the world of clicks, unique clicks, soft bounces, downloads, hard bounces, followers, blogs and viewers, two basic fundamentals of marketing are slowly disappearing: accountability and measurability.

Unless the goal of an online marketing campaign is to raise awareness, business owners are solely interested in ROMI. Unfortunately, tracking mechanisms are often excluded from the Call to Action (sometimes there is no CTA) on many new initiatives and metrics such as those listed above do not demonstrate success (at least in a monetary fashion).

So what do we do?

Vish Ramkissoon, Partner FSA Datalytic, is a member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council.

Grabbing the PDA Market

I can’t count the number of times I have opened an email on my blackberry only to find that it’s not easily readable. Sure, I could download the images and wait for them to load, but I don’t know if it’s worth the time. And once I sit back down at my computer, that email is already marked as opened and I never go back to check out what it said. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

This problem is a huge lost opportunity for e-marketers to grab consumer attention. You only get one chance with each email to make an impression, and if that email message is not easily readable your recipient will quickly tune out. People are busy and sometimes do not have the time to investigate the messages in their inbox. Combine that with the limitations of some data plans and your window of opportunity shrinks even more.

As PDA devices are extremely prevalent, you have more people receiving and opening emails away from their computers and away from the big screen graphic capabilities that come with it. The popularity of PDAs stems from their ability for turning your downtime, like waiting in line, into something productive, like checking your emails. This audience is often a captive audience because they always have access to their email and check it frequently. I don’t mind opening product or company emails if I’m bored waiting for something and I will sometimes read emails just to kill time.

When opening an email, if there is a PDA version that uploads immediately, I will usually read the whole email. Or if there is a PDA version link directly at the top, I am very likely to click and read. Including a PDA version is incredibly effective and there is no excuse for companies to not create a PDA version. They are simple to generate and the technology is available to detect if an email is being opened by a PDA device, sometimes down to the very version of the phone.

A PDA version makes an email accessible, convenient and quick to download for the growing population of smart phone users. Catering to this trend will make your email campaign appeal to a larger market, and will certainly make this blogger very happy.

CRTC Crashes While Looking Through the Rearview Window

“Hulu.ca”… Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

This particular post started out as a rant. It evolved. In the process I realized that, as a media consumer, I’m a temperamental 2-year old with ADD. I have no patience. I want my content the way I want it, and I want it now.

At Christmas I received some iTunes gift cards. I figured I’d be an honest consumer and go buy some content. After surfing the Canadian Apple Store site, I felt discouraged… Where were the commercial-free “Prison Break” episodes that I’d gone looking for? And why were they readily available on the American Apple Store site, where I couldn’t get them, alongside countless hours of other commercial-free entertainment.

A quick Google search brought up numerous ways to get those same episodes, but I was feeling lazy and wasn’t in the mood to forge my mailing address or buy a fresh US-based gift card on eBay. I simply wanted to redeem my existing Canadian-bought gift cards and be entertained.

Around the same time, I found that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was surprisingly relevant in how it brings new content to market. On the Canadian Apple Store site, I could buy and download “Hockey Night in Canada” games and episodes of “MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives”.

I could also watch streaming episodes of the Canadian “Dragon’s Den” on CBC.ca for the price of watching one or two quick Rogers commercials. Seemed fair.

However, I didn’t want to pay to download any commercial-free CBC content since the publicly funded broadcaster already gets my tax dollars to send me its signal and its programs for ‘free’.

Besides, where were my “Prison Break” episodes? I had money (the gift cards); I wanted to buy. Another quick Google search reveals how to shield your I.P. to watch those same episodes but I wanted to stay away from the grey-market of 21st century media consumption. Why was it so hard?

Everyone in this industry – content producers, distributors, advertisers, and consumers – is searching for a new world order. Canada’s commercial broadcast stations are in crisis (according to recent CRTC hearings), losing money and rapidly losing touch with the consumer. It is a daunting position for them to be in, especially when advertisers go looking for ways to connect with buyers.

Advertisements are heat-seeking missiles – they go where they find audiences. Ultimately, they are channel and media agnostic. Even in a recession. The recent downturn in ad revenue is as much to do with audience fragmentation as with anything else. For many, it simply seems harder to find today’s consumers.

The majority of 21st century audiences, target markets and consumers will pay for either downloads (without ads) or they will watch ads in return for ‘free’ content (streaming online video). Apple pioneered the online subscription-based download model for music although they may have a harder time dominating online video without the benefits of first mover advantage.

The CBC gets all of this, but CTV and GlobalTV seem to only support the online streaming version of things – most akin to the traditional broadcast model. And since Peer-to-Peer sharing isn’t popular with the Canadian ISPs, these are the only aboveboard models.

Even so, the real challenge facing the industry is not whether or not Canadian content makes it out to the world (or at least, to other Canadians) or whether commercial broadcasters and cable companies continue to make buckets of cash… rather, the real challenge is whether consumers will cease to exist.

The world is full of users now, not consumers. We use the media and we create content too. User-Generated-Content splits our attention (already short, as it is) away from consumer-focused content, adverts, and general entertainment alike.

Jeff Zucker, president of NBC Universal and a member of the Hulu.com board recently commented: “Advertisers have made it clear that they want a safe environment, unpolluted by videos of cats on skateboards”. It was a blatant and defensive knock at YouTube and all UGC, neither of which inherently support traditional advertising but both of which steal mind-share from Hulu.com and NBC Universal’s mass-produced content.

Meanwhile the Canadian government, in the form of the CRTC, is still attempting to make mass media serve various mandated, national goals. Mary Vipond noted in her historical research of “The Mass Media in Canada”, that too much foreign content threatens Canadians’ identity, filling our minds with foreign attitudes and images while crowding out our attempts to speak to each other.

That old Can-Con issue seems quite dated now as more and more Canadians are indeed “speaking to each other” through social media and UGC. Doesn’t that count for something?

Were the CRTC to turn its gaze from the rearview window toward the road ahead, it would be preparing for a future of even more user-generated content and on-demand consumption. The CBC could show them the way.

(NB: My skateboard-riding cat charges ACTRA rates).

Authored by Joy Boyson, Director, New Business for Technical Marketing, The Marketing Store

The Need for Cultivating E-Marketing Talent

There is no question that the Internet is transforming consumer behaviour and buying practices, and companies without access to digital marketing expertise quickly find themselves falling behind. Over the last three years, e-marketing has been growing over 50% per year and in 2009 digital marketing is forecasted to increase a modest 5% (which is decent growth given the -3% decline in traditional media spend forecasted by eMarketer). As a result of the growth and the unique nature of digital, one of the key future issues for employers is the shortage of digital marketing talent.

The big question that many executives have is “how will the current economic downturn affect the digital sector”?

The Impact of Lean Marketing

The landscape for Canadian marketers is changing rapidly, with major media players fearing bankruptcy and marketers constantly trying to prove their worth. The last six months has been a battleground out there and some people have been unfortunately caught in the crossfire. Many companies and agencies have trimmed their staff in order to survive and there are lots of experienced marketers looking for new jobs. Remaining departments are doing the same with less people and resources. In a downturn, businesses need to focus on efficiency and people need to be retrained. But few companies and agencies are stepping forward and investing enough in online marketing (other than a few smart boutique agencies who are picking up talent and enhancing their teams). Talent is waiting on the sidelines.

The Digital Talent Gap will Grow

Digital marketing is one of the largest short-term and long-term potential opportunities that marketers don’t want to miss. It’s efficient, growing and a coveted skill set. Digital marketing is by no means immune to the overall economic climate but there are good job openings. It’s also an exciting area with great future career potential. A CMA research study predicts that the number of online marketing jobs will increase 155% between 2007 and 2011 and there will be a gap of over 4,000 new “advertising jobs” in the internet advertising space (Source: Marketing’s Contribution to the Economy report p22). We will need entry level people but also senior talent with Internet expertise.

Many mid-level marketers are finding their roles now require more in-depth digital marketing understanding to advance and be successful. There’s pressure from senior management to stay ahead and leverage the huge cost-efficiencies and real-time measurability of digital media – in tough economic times, expenditures that can deliver measurable ROI are what the C-level executives want to see – and are pushing their marketing teams hard to meet these new standards.

The need for strong e-marketing talent is growing faster than the talent pool and we as an industry need to start working hard to close the gap.

So Where is the New Digital Marketing Talent?

The easiest source is to tap the current marketers who are out of work. Education is about lifelong learning and there are many willing and skilled candidates who can learn the specialties of online. Companies can grow and cultivate the online expertise but they must invest the training resources. Cultivating managers is a great strategy to enhance your competitive companies’ position.

The next best source of talent is the young new graduates. But there is a problem that many new graduates overlook marketing as a profession and they have the wrong perception of marketing. A few of the key findings from the 2008 CMA Talent Study:

• “Cultivating and competing for top marketing talent is a growing concern. Prospective hires and students considering a career path in marketing do not have a clear understanding of what constitutes a marketing career.”

• “… marketing needs to be presented as a competitively skilful profession, as are finance, consulting, accounting, medicine, or law.”

• “We need to do a better job of showcasing the marketing profession by featuring successful marketers as role models through a variety of media. Our study indicates that role models have a strong impact on a student’s decision making – it’s time to put marketing on the map as a rewarding, skilful, lucrative, creative, and professional occupation.”

Bottom line – Marketers have not been doing a good job of marketing marketing as a profession. Ironic isn’t it? CMA has taken action though, with marketing career resources for students – a place for students to learn more about the marketing profession and find a mentor or two.

Furthermore, as an industry, we also need to encourage recruitment and training for all levels. More on this next time.

Authored by Geoff Linton, VP Inbox Marketer and Taina Suomela, VP The Aber Group

Give Credit where Credit is Due - the Basics of Attribution

As a marketer you’ve tried to be diligent about optimizing the marketing investments of the organization you are working with. You’ve incorporated some level of attribution and a solid targeting strategy. But as I’ve recently done, have you questioned whether or not the attribution model your company is using to measure their online marketing investments really enable marketers to optimize the campaigns they work on.

An overwhelming majority of online marketers use a 'most recent' attribution model for determining which media placements are the most effective. This may oversimplify and provide an inaccurate picture of how customers are exposed to promotional marketing messages during the buying cycle and which combination of media placements are performing better than others.

For example:
-A consumer clicks through on a display ad for an electronics retailer (Retailer A ) - no purchase occurs
-Two weeks later, the consumer's laptop breaks down, the consumer searches for "cheap laptops" in a search engine. A paid search ad for the same retailer shows up and the consumer conducts some research - no purchase occurs
-After researching prices with other retailers, the consumer decides to purchase the laptop from Retailer A by subsequently locating Retailer A through an organic search result.

The traditional, "most recent" attribution model, will give full credit of the sales conversion to the paid search ad. However, this is not an accurate representation of the other media channels that played a role in the sales conversion. In the example above, the initial display ad receives no credit for the sales conversion suggesting it did not influence the conversion at all. Secondly, organic search traffic will not be identified as 'campaign traffic' by the various web analytics tools (unless programmatic changes are implemented) and would likely be missed in the campaign reporting. An added complication might be, that the conversion also gets credited to the organic search listing in the analytics tool's organic search report resulting in two channels that claim to have succeeded in driving the sale.

In addition to the pre-dominant “most recent” attribution model, some others are:
-Initial - the marketing placement that drives the first click gets the full credit of a conversion
-Even - all placements that drive traffic to the site before a conversion get equal credit
-Weighted – this is the most complex model which gives more credit to some placements than others depending on their influence. It is difficult in the case of a weighted model to determine accurate weightings.

As a marketer, familiarize yourself with how your media channels are getting credit for the conversion. That way, you can, at a minimum understand and take into account when conductingyour campaign analysis. Question whether the ‘attribution period’ is similar to the buy cycle of the organization’s product or service offering vs the default value set in the web analytics tool. If it makes sense, adjust the ‘attribution period’ to better reflect your organization’s buy cycles. And last but not least, work to standardize on the attribution model that best aligns with the organizations overall business objectives. I believe, by giving credit where credit is due, marketers will be able to help get the most out of the online marketing investments they make.

Twitter IDs are the New Domain Names

It's 2009, so I would hope by now that any marketer reading this article online understands the importance of securing your company's brands as domain names. In other words, Acme Furniture should own and control the domain name acmefurniture.com (and, if it's a Canadian company, acmefurniture.ca as well) even if you don't yet have a Web site.

My question for you today is, "Have you done the same for Twitter?"

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is growing in popularity at an astonishing rate. The purpose of this article is not to explain or promote the benefits of Twitter; that topic has been covered by others: you can read all of the various articles about Twitter on the CMA blog here.

What I want you to understand today is that Twitter IDs (or "user names" or "handles") are the equivalent of domain names.

For instance, the Twitter ID for my personal brand, Bill Sweetman, is @billsweetman (which corresponds with the URL http://www.twitter.com/billsweetman) and for my corporate brand, YummyNames, it is @yummynames.

Even if you don't understand Twitter or don't think it has a role to play in your company's marketing efforts today, I strongly urge you to still secure your Twitter ID now.

In my case, I do all my Tweeting (as its called) as @billsweetman but I made sure that I registered all my other professional brands as Twitter IDs so that when and if I want to use Twitter for those other brands I already have the most intuitive Twitter ID.

I predict that over the next few years, millions of dollars will be spent by companies buying, selling, and fighting over Twitter IDs. I have already seen a number of nasty legal spats develop, and I have personally brokered the sale of several Twitter IDs already. And this is only the very beginning...

If you are Acme Furniture, you should make sure you get your hands on @acmefurniture right away. Since there is no fee to register a Twitter ID, you have no excuse not to do this. Simply head on over to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account.

Don't be the person who in a year or two is having to explain to their company President why you didn't secure the company name as a Twitter ID. Take two minutes and do it today.

One final tip: Twitter will eventually suspend an account if it has not been used for six months, so make sure you post something once a month just to keep your account active and not risk losing your valuable Twitter ID.