What!?! Less Than Half of Marketers Use Analytics?

So I was perusing through marketingcharts.com and came across a stat that just astounds me. Alterian released a survey in January that reported less than half (47%) of marketers use analytics to measure their campaigns. Less than half of marketers surveyed know how their campaigns are performing! I’m still baffled. In fact, I would love to learn more from those who do not measure their campaigns and why. If they’re not measuring the effectiveness of their campaigns or their website then I wonder how they decide what works and what doesn’t. The survey also revealed that 25% of the marketers stated that analyzing the results of the campaigns were the hardest part. If this is the case and you find that analyzing your campaign results to be difficult, here are a few steps that may help:

·         Define your goal. What are you trying to accomplish other than increasing traffic to your website? Once you have defined this goal, make sure that you are able to attribute your goal or conversion to your campaigns.

·         Be sure to tag your URLs with the proper campaign parameters that are available with your web analytics solution. Refer to your vendor’s manual for a detailed description of what this may entail. (Vendor’s URL parameters may differ)

·         Drive traffic to specific landing pages. Preferably landing pages that have content that is pertinent to your campaign and target audience.

·         Metrics that you will want to evaluate for performance include click through rate (CTR), conversion rate (CVR), cost per acquisition (CPA), return on investment (ROI), and landing page bounce rates

·         If you want to gather more insight about your campaigns, segment visitors based on the campaign that they respond to and analyze their behavior with your website. You may learn something new about your visitors or you may not, but until you analyze your site visitors, you will never know

Analyzing your campaigns does not have to be hard if you have the available resources. If you don’t, then the problem should not be that it is hard, but that you need to hire someone who can make sense of the data for you.

AdWords Trademark Policy Update

Overview

Google recently announced that starting June 15^th, advertisers will be allowed to use trademark terms in their ads even if they do not own that trademark nor are an approved reseller/partner.  Currently, advertisers have complete control over who can place their brand name in the headline and/or description line in order to ensure competitors are not using such brand name as leverage.  Advertisers who own their brand name manually grant companies permission to use these terms in the ad copy on a case by case basis.  Google will be rolling out an automated tool to properly scan landing pages and allow use of brand terms in ad copy based off of the following advertiser criteria:

1.       Resellers or partners:  Tool will scan the landing pages to ensure branded product is sold.  An example is Best Buy selling Belkin routers on the landing page.  The tool would allow ‘Belkin’ to be displayed in the ad copy

2.       Informational sites: Sites that compare and or review products, but do not sell such products.  For example, CNET as an advertiser may have a page dedicated to comparing routers.  They will be able to run ads saying “Looking for a new router? Compare Belkin to D-Link and….”

This change has no affect on keywords: anyone can currently bid on any term in AdWords.  Google’s Quality Score will bring the most relevant ads and landing pages to the top rank.

Why?

It appears that Google is making the marketplace more accessible to all advertisers by automating this feature.  However, the technology rolled out will ensure that competitors will not be allowed to fall under the 2 categories above.  Google’s goal (and that of the search landscape) is to connect the audience with qualified ads and, in effect, connect the user to the right page as quickly as possible.

Impact

The trademark update will obviously give companies less control over who can use their brand terms in ad copy.  However, the direct effect of this change will depend on the brand.

Clients with Resellers/Partners

Companies with a large manufacturing base (i.e. several resellers) may see an increase in cost per clicks as the paid search marketplace increases on both brand and general terms.

Clients’ Products on Informational Sites

On the other hand, informational sites, in time, could be quite beneficial to all advertisers.  Although ad dollars are moving towards the lead gen aspect of search, there are still a large percentage of users researching before they buy.  These sites may take away clicks initially, but these users are becoming more educated about your product and, if it is a good fit, will be more likely to convert – and convert faster.  This means a potential increase in conversion rates and return on investment.

What to do?

Clients with Resellers/Partners

Keep track of your clients’ resellers–which keywords they are bidding on with your brand in copy.  There won’t be much you can do to change their copy, but it is best to avoid click cannibalization and increasing CPCs.  In some situations, you may be able to work with your resellers or partners to keep this from happening.

Clients’ Products on Informational Sites

See which informational sites are displaying your client’s brand in their ad copy.  This could be an upsell opportunity for some premiere display placement, especially if the information is positive for your client.

So mark June 15^th in your calendar as Duplicity Day.  You may start to see your brand more than expected!

~Daniel Romotsky

Behavioral Targeting: A Web Analytics Approach to Segmentation- Part 2

In my prior post, I discussed using segmentation as a way to better understand key metrics by removing the noise of your non-targeted site audience. For this post I would like to discuss some guidelines for identifying segments and targeting them to help improve key performance indicators.

By using Web Analytics data, you can identify different segments based on specific actions that your site visitors are taking once on your website. Trying to remain broad here as there are many different types of websites; any action a user takes with your website, through a call center, or in-store, defines an opportunity to identify a behavior. That behavior can provide some very valuable information that can benefit marketers with re-targeting strategies.

For example, let’s say that you have a content site with lots of information that is separated into different categories. You could target your returning visitors with ads that are relevant to their interests based on the different sections of the site that they visited.

 Another example would include someone who visits a commerce site repeatedly because they are in the research phase of learning about one of the products that you carry. After the second or third visit to a specific product page, you could serve them a type of incentive to persuade them to purchase at that time. I hope your competitors haven’t thought of that yet.

Here are some guidelines to help with your behavioral targeting strategy:

1.       Clearly define the goals of your website

2.       Identify key segments (Note that additional research aside from web analytics data may be necessary to define)

3.       Understand the goals for each of your segments and the increased value they will provide

4.       Select the appropriate tools that will allow you to target your site visitors

5.       After implementation, analyze your segments and identify improvement opportunities

Behavioral targeting is not a one time initiative; a continuous improvement plan should be performed as segmented behavior may change over time depending on your website goals.

What do customers want? A look at desirable brand traits.

eMarketer reported today a list of the qualities customers respect in a brand. Conducted by MTV, the survey looks at the 18-24 age group to determine if a brand is indeed king. It turns out that a label is not the almighty persuader we might think. The top 3 most important characteristics are “good quality, trustworthy, and works well.”

Here are the results,

• 74% good quality
• 55% trustworthiness
• 51% the product works well
• 46% it has a cool image
• 46% it has a good history
• 46% popularity
• 44% knowing it has been good for a long time
• 40% it has class
• 39% fits with my own image
• 33% its authentic
• 33% uniqueness
• 32% people are talking about it
• 31% its cutting edge
• 29% it fits in with other products
• 25% friends like it

What’s most important to you when making a purchase?

How Can I Drive Performance without a Goal

Something that has been talked about in the Web Analytics industry long before I came along is how to make Web analytics actionable. There have been many articles and books written about remaining goal-driven when developing a new website or creating/implementing a strategic online campaign. As a biased analyst, this is something that seems logical to me. Yet, I often see others struggle with the idea.

Let me see if I can help clarify this type of idea. When it is time to launch a new website or acquisition campaign, what is the goal? What are you trying to accomplish at the end of the day? I think for lead and e-commerce sites this is a self-explanatory goal: to increase leads or increase online orders. What about those sites that do not have a lead form or Commerce store for transactions to take place? Well, that’s when it’s time to get creative and do some research to find some information about the visitors to your website. I think, and please correct me if I am wrong; at the end of the day it’s every business’s goal to increase revenue. If that can not be accomplished online, then find out what visitors do on your website that provides value to them making the transaction. Maybe it’s visiting a page on your website that provides information to that person or visitor.

When the call to action or desired action is unclear, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your website goals. If there is nothing on the site that measures success, then something needs to change so that a success metric can be measured and ideally monetized. Everything on a website can be measured, and it’s time to take advantage of it if you are not doing so. What are some goals you have used to track the success of a web development project?

The Lovecraft angle: Fear in Marketing

I’ve been waiting for the moment in the recession when marketing articles start opening with HP Lovecraft quotes:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Ooops, wrong quote.   But in Anna Papadopoulos’ excellent article this week (Neuromarketing:  Why Fear Sells, Sex Doesn’t ), she begins with one of Lovecraft’s OTHER well-known maxiums:  The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.

It’s an interesting article, especially for those of us who suspect that the practice of marketing is often armchair psychology (perhaps more Jung than Freud) mixed with applied economics.    In personal practice, I’ve observed that leading with the fear (YOU WILL DIE) vs the benefit/aspiration (YOU WILL GET THINGS/BE THINGS YOU WANT) (note: if this wasn’t the Geary blog my language might have been stronger there – we are dealing with primal drivers here, people) can indeed be very powerful – but can also trigger avoidance in your target.  And maybe that’s what horror writers know – fear in general, great.  Anything that makes you scared sticks with you, works on you.  All part of the death drive. Fear applied in a specific way to you – what?  Sorry, I can’t hear you over all the singing I’m doing to not pay attention to you.  Have I been to Perez Hilton yet today?   After all, how the heck did we GET into the economic messes we’re currently witnessing?  Not paying attention to the fear that is our credit card bills is definitely a factor.

Fear is the ultimate activator, no question.  After all, in the survival food chain, survival trumps reproduction (slightly).  But the trick is knowing how and when to inject the activation message in a susceptible moment.  For the ultimate fear card, I’ve sat in research with patients who were candidates for very serious medical therapies – and watched some move quickly into denial and rejection states when advertising suggested that they needed to take (x) action in order to live.  Highly motivating, yes.  But in the presence of true horror – fear made personal – the mind shuts down. Lovecraft understood that well.  After all, isn’t there always the point in his stories where everybody goes crazy with the overwhelming hopelessness of it all?   That’s a total lack of consumer motivation for you.

So how do us marketers use fear effectively (driver) rather than trigger avoidance?

Let’s consider projectability.  Vague horrors (“Is your food safe?  STORY AT 11″) can be considerably more palatable and intriguing than specific terrors (“You will die if you are not driving a Volvo”).  And the solution for the fear must be baked into the fear-inducing message – after all, we’re looking for solutions as consumers, not more things to worry about (with a strong product association).  I’ll argue that Global Warming didn’t ‘catch on’ as a general cause (too big! too scary!  must avoid!) until “An Inconvenient Truth” helped to frame the fear by having America’s favorite high school vice-principal stand-in (you know I’m talking to you, Al) tell us we COULD and WILL solve it.  Scared the hell out of us, sure, but the message of hope gave us the strength to carry on and drive home from the theatre.  And maybe turn off the lights we weren’t using when we got home. Now that’s activation.

So if you’re going to introduce a fear, think about the novel solution you’re proposing for the consumer.  And why they get to be closer to the aspirational self they want by being part of it.  (ah, there’s the sex.  Sort of).    After all, Lovecraft also said:  “I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”

Speaking of which, thoughts?

I totally want to do an article about what marketers can learn from horror writers now.  Thanks Anna. 

Sarah

Sports + Analytics = Higher Returns

Organized sports have moved from being a form of entertainment to becoming a useful marketing tool.  If used well, a sporting event or team can boost the popularity of a product, as well as a company’s revenue.  But you might be asking,”How can analytics mix in this equation?”  Simple, by using the team’s health, analytics will show you the areas where you need to improve your marketing strategies to drive traffic to your site and ultimately convert your visitors into clients.

Take the Tampa Bay Rays or the San Diego Chargers for example.  Both teams have either disappointed or were believed to make it far because of their past or current experiences, but the Rays made it as far as the World Series and the Chargers are putting every sport analyst to shame by making it to the Divisional Series.  What this means to your business is that behind these successes are fans that support the team, and you can use those emotions to drive more traffic to your site. 

One strategy is to promote your product/service on sites that cater to a team’s fan base.  As the season progress, not only monitor the team’s health but also your traffic.  My experience with clients that use this strategy is that their products trend in conjunction with the team’s health.  Look at your referring traffic to see what domains bring the most visitors to your site and focus your marketing strategies on those domains that are popular, while improving your ad placement or using other tactics to drive visitor traffic from those referring sites that bring the least traffic.

Something else to keep in mind is that the use of a team to promote a product /service needs to be done regardless of the team’s health to maintain support from the fans, while avoiding the “bandwagon effect.”  The bandwagon effect is a behavior where people adopt something that others do without consideration, which is closely related to opportunism.  This is clearly seen in sports.  As a team succeeds, it creates a greater fan base.  In order to find success in a team’s downfall is to use the hope of a better season, to drive the core fan base to your product/service.  This not only evokes loyalty from that group of fans, but the word of mouth will spread the popularity of the product/service as the team’s popularity increase.

So, what do think and who do you think will make it big in 2009 (besides the Chargers of course)?  Happy analytics!     

The Horror of Marketing: H.P Lovecraft and the Power of Motivation

I’ve been waiting for the moment in the recession when marketing articles start opening with HP Lovecraft quotes:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Ooops, wrong quote.   But in Anna Papadopoulos’ excellent article this week (Neuromarketing:  Why Fear Sells, Sex Doesn’t ), she begins with one of Lovecraft’s OTHER well-known maxiums:  The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.

It’s an interesting article, especially for those of us who suspect that the practice of marketing is often armchair psychology (perhaps more Jung than Freud) mixed with applied economics.    In personal practice, I’ve observed that leading with the fear (YOU WILL DIE) vs the benefit/aspiration (YOU WILL GET THINGS/BE THINGS YOU WANT) (note: if this wasn’t the Geary blog my language might have been stronger there – we are dealing with primal drivers here, people) can indeed be very powerful – but can also trigger avoidance in your target.  And maybe that’s what horror writers know – fear in general, great.  Anything that makes you scared sticks with you, works on you.  All part of the death drive. Fear applied in a specific way to you – what?  Sorry, I can’t hear you over all the singing I’m doing to not pay attention to you.  Have I been to Perez Hilton yet today?   After all, how the heck did we GET into the economic messes we’re currently witnessing?  Not paying attention to the fear that is our credit card bills is definitely a factor.

Fear is the ultimate activator, no question.  After all, in the survival food chain, survival trumps reproduction (slightly).  But the trick is knowing how and when to inject the activation message in a susceptible moment.  For the ultimate fear card, I’ve sat in research with patients who were candidates for very serious medical therapies – and watched some move quickly into denial and rejection states when advertising suggested that they needed to take (x) action in order to live.  Highly motivating, yes.  But in the presence of true horror – fear made personal – the mind shuts down. Lovecraft understood that well.  After all, isn’t there always the point in his stories where everybody goes crazy with the overwhelming hopelessness of it all?   That’s a total lack of consumer motivation for you.

So how do us marketers use fear effectively (driver) rather than trigger avoidance?

Let’s consider projectability.  Vague horrors (“Is your food safe?  STORY AT 11″) can be considerably more palatable and intriguing than specific terrors (“You will die if you are not driving a Volvo”).  And the solution for the fear must be baked into the fear-inducing message – after all, we’re looking for solutions as consumers, not more things to worry about (with a strong product association).  I’ll argue that Global Warming didn’t ‘catch on’ as a general cause (too big! too scary!  must avoid!) until “An Inconvenient Truth” helped to frame the fear by having America’s favorite high school vice-principal stand-in (you know I’m talking to you, Al) tell us we COULD and WILL solve it.  Scared the hell out of us, sure, but the message of hope gave us the strength to carry on and drive home from the theatre.  And maybe turn off the lights we weren’t using when we got home. Now that’s activation.

So if you’re going to introduce a fear, think about the novel solution you’re proposing for the consumer.  And why they get to be closer to the aspirational self they want by being part of it.  (ah, there’s the sex.  Sort of).    After all, Lovecraft also said:  “I never ask a man what his business is, for it never interests me. What I ask him about are his thoughts and dreams.”

Speaking of which, thoughts?

Sarah

Pandora and Mac vs. PC

I will be the first to admit that I am a smidge obsessed with Pandora. It knows me almost too well. There have only been a few times when I had to offer it a ‘thumbs down.’ Outside of tapping into my music-loving soul, I appreciate Pandora Radio for its strides in advertising targeting.

Pandora targets, interacts and persuades me to click links, download videos and generally pay attention to its advertisers–which is not exactly an easy feat. This morning I was confronted with a brilliant advertising ploy by Microsoft. (I know I was shocked myself). Here’s how it went:

When I logged into my account, the first ‘song’ to come up wasn’t a song at all. It was a picture of the iconic PC from the famed Mac v. PC ads that we have all come to know and love. The copy was “watch my ad.” I oftentimes find these TV ads to be hilarious, so I bit–and clicked on the ad. To my surprise, the link was to a Microsoft-sponsored landing page. It was extremely well-designed site that featured 10 second blurbs on PC fans from every walk of life you can imagine.

I spent a good minute or two watching random people tell me who they are and why they use PC computers. This is two minutes more than I have spent on Microsoft’s site ever. When I went back to my Pandora station, I realized the PC guy was in fact not the actor from the commercial (just someone who looks remarkably like him).

Tou Che Microsoft, Tou Che. I applaud your guerilla marketing tactic and excellent casting job.

Geary Interactive wins iMedia Financial Summit Shootout

As we recently mentioned two of Geary Interactive’s very own were sent to New York to compete against Crayon in a hotly contested agency shoot out at the iMedia Financial Summit.

Hot off the presses – Geary Interactive pulls off the win for their fantastic use of strategy and understanding of banking clients.

Check back for a video and write-up from iMedia about the event and congrats to the whole iMedia team for their hardwork.