Last week, I attended the eMetrics conference in Alexandria, VA. Yes, for once a local conference…meaning no flying time. This one was a little bit different for me, as it was totally focused on Analytics and Metrics, rather than search, but was still very worthwhile.

Unfortunately, due to a busy schedule here, I was only able to attend a few sessions, but those that I did attend were enjoyable and informative. If you’d like to read my write-ups on these sessions that I did over on Li Evans of Key Relevance’s blog, here are the links:

• eMetrics – Navigating a University Website
• eMetrics – The View from the CMOs office

…and, if you were interested in the answer to the question of how many adult conference attendees you can fit in the back of a standard taxi…

Jim Sterne, Mike Grehan, Simon Heseltine & Andrea

Part II – Marketers – Where is Your Bailout Plan?

In working with many companies over the years, it seems that marketers fall in to one of three categories:

Marketing Guru – You know your KPIs, your ROI and manage your campaigns to maximize ROI.  Your boss loves you.  Your budget is not in jeopardy.  In fact, by proving a positive ROI even in this economy your budget may have been increased.

Marketer – You feel that you are doing okay, but sense things could be going better.  You are currently sort of paying attention to analytics, but aren’t sure how to understand the data to make better decisions.  Beware, your budget may be on the chopping block.

Old School Marketer – You’ve ignored all of the hype about online marketing, choosing to continue to focus on tradtional channels since that has what has worked (you guess) until now.  Maybe you’ve even tried some banner ads or other ‘experimental marketing.’  You’ve seen some reports, but you’re not really sure what to make of them.  Danger, danger – say good-bye to that marketing budget.

Marketing gurus are the exception to the rule.  Don’t feel bad if you are not there yet.  It takes a bit of a mind-shift and some discipline, but you can get there.

Most marketers fall into one of the other two categories – somewhere between knowing that you could be doing a better job to feeling completely helpless, worrying that your budget, or even worse, your job is on the line.

The first step is to take action – embrace analytics.  There are tons of great resources; books, blogs or even companies you can hire.  Once you understand how to use analytics to take the pulse of your marketing efforts, you can benchmark how they are doing and improve them.

By accepting and understanding analytics, the move from ‘Old School Marketer’ with an evaporating budget to a ‘Marketing Guru’ with a growing budget is only a matter of discipline.  And by being able to prove that by spending some money, you are making more money (positive ROI), you will see your marketing budgets grow rather than disappear, even in a bad economy.

Last week for Toastmasters, I gave an interpretive reading of a section of Neil Gaiman’s “The Graveyard Book.”  As I was preparing for this, I started thinking about how this applies to the work that we do at Serengeti Communications.  I came to the realization that this is exactly what our Analytics team does on a daily basis.

Let me explain further: With interpretive reading, you have to get inside the author’s head, understand the motivations of the various characters, and how external factors have affected them and continue to affect them throughout the reading.  You work to understand the flow of the plot, and identify those parts of the reading that you need to highlight through your messaging (tone, pauses, speech pattern, etc.) - in order to really sell the plot.

With analytics, it’s exactly the same.  Our team gets inside your site (you can imagine a matrix-like scene at this point if you’d like), and through the data…understands how your users get to your site, what they do once they get there, and what motivates them to place an order? What part of the process has a leakage issue?  Where should the selling point be?  How are the users responding to the current messaging?

As you can see, quite a lot of similarities.  So, if you’d like an interpretive reading on your site, you know where to go.

Part I of II – The Problem with the ‘Numbers Game’

Coming Next Tuesday – Part II – Your Found Money

In case you’ve somehow missed the news, on October 3 the ‘bailout bill’ was signed into law, creating a $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program to purchase failing bank assets.  Essentially, what the plan provided was ‘found money’ for investment banks who made bad choices that eventually resulted in massive ‘distressed assets, especially mortgage-backed securities.’

All other opinions aside, my big beef with this whole situation is that anyone is surprised that the situation came to this.  Things like interest-only-mortgages and high-risk credit approvals have been around for years.

How scary is this (some highlights from):
Beware Interest-Only; Liz Moyer, 12.07.05

“For years, it was a perk for the rich, but 2005 saw an explosion of sales to ordinary folks of a product known as interest-only mortgage loans. And now, the lenders themselves are starting to get worried while mortgage brokers continue to push these products for all they’re worth…Lenders piled into interest-only product, eager to keep underwriting volume alive.”

“Some consultants say aggressive sales tactics by mortgage brokers eager to get commissions by encouraging people to switch from their 30-year loans to interest-only products could be the next great focus for aggressive regulators.”

“Ruth Hayden, a financial planner in St. Paul, Minn., calls the phenomenon “Yuppie Money,” and warns against the temptation. “It’s pretending you have more than you have,” she says. “It’s over-leveraging.”

The bottom line is that it is no surprise.  Many mortgage brokers were driven by numbers, the wrong numbers.  They were told to write ‘x’ number of interest-only mortgages regardless of whether the borrower would be able to pay when the term changes and the full monthly payment is due.  No one did the the long-term math to see what would happen.

On a less dramatic, but somewhat as dangerous scale, many marketers still operate in that same type of non-sensible unrealistic bubble – by focusing on numbers that are less meaningful, but easily achievable, like focusing on visitors and not paying attention to ROI.

Companies operating with these types of marketing departments are creating the same scenario as the mortgage brokers who pushed interest only loans to those who ultimately could not afford them.  They are painting a rosy picture with no substance.  Without metrics for success for every dollar that is being spent in the marketing budget, metrics that factor in sales, lifetime value, and return on ad spend; many companies are setting themselves up to need their own bailout plan.

Coming next week – how to fix this; before it is too late, where to find your ‘found money.’

Over the past few years working with many clients to understand how effective their pay-per-click campaigns are (and often figure out how to get them to perform better), I have compiled my top 10 list of ways that many marketers blow their budgets on PPC.

1. Ignoring Match Type Options – When you just purchase key phrases, without applying any match type, you inherit the ‘broad match’ settings which means that your ad shows up on the results page when any of the words in the phrase are searched on.

This has the two-pronged negative effect of either driving unqualified clicks or driving down your CTR which in turn drives up your CPC.

2. Ignoring Landing Pages – Many marketers feel that creating custom landing pages is just too much work.  Instead they send all pay-per-click traffic to their home page.  This is tremendously frustrating to those visitors who arrive at your site after just searching on specific words on the search engine.  They now have to begin their search again to find what they are looking for on your site.  You will see that many leave your site immediately, unwilling to search again.

3. Not Implementing Conversion Tracking Code – I am still amazed at the amount of companies who just won’t add conversion tracking code to their thank you page (the code provided by the search engines or provided by your analytics package).  Without this information, you can pretty much guarantee that you are throwing away a large percentage of your pay-per-click budget.

4. Bidding Too Little for Keywords – This may sound strange, but if you don’t pay enough for a keyword you will find yourself at best ‘beneath the fold’ (which is disappointing because many people don’t ever scroll down) or worse, on page 2 or 20 of the results.  This is just one more way of driving up your cost per click by driving down your CTR.

5. Using the ‘Set it and Forget it’ Mentality – This may be my biggest pet peeve.  Managing successful pay-per-click campaigns is not a one-time task.
Effective marketers pay attention (analyze, modify and improve) campaigns often.  Campaigns that are dormant, throw money away uselessly by continuing to spend money on keywords or ads that don’t work and don’t optimize spending on what works best.

6. Ignoring Negative Keywords – Unless your offering is free, thinking about applying negative keywords to your campaign is probably a good idea.

I could be wrong, but the last time I checked Omniture was not a free analytic solution.

7. Ignoring Ad Scheduling – Although it takes a little more work to analyze your campaigns and determine when the conversions are happening, it is well worth it.  Armed with the knowledge that your conversions take place Monday – Wednesday between 9 am – 4pm, allows you to modify your campaign so you spend more of your budget when the traffic that you want to attract is online (and pay less for traffic that does not convert).

8. Not Breaking Out Content Targeted Traffic – Okay, I was wrong earlier, this is actually my biggest pet peeve.  Unless you create a separate campaign with separate, unique destination URLs for the Content Targeted traffic, it is very difficult (even impossible depending on what analytics package you are using)
to differentiate the search/search network traffic from the content targeted traffic.  And, even though you can pay less for the content targeted traffic without breaking it out into its own campaign, you still should take the time to break it out into its own campaign.  Because, what you may find is that the traffic may not be as qualified in terms of conversions (sales), but it may generate good leads that just need additional remarketing to eventually convert.  (And, you may find data that leads you to create specific Site Targeted campaigns that really perform great).

9. Ignoring Click-Fraud or Invalid Clicks – I know that researching to determine click fraud can be time consuming, and arguing with the search engines can be frustrating and potentially even a dead-end.  I am not saying that you should spend all of your time or focus on this, but I do think it is worth paying a
little attention.  ClicKTracks has a great Click Fraud report.  But, you must know when it is potentially click fraud versus just a poorly performing ad.

10. Ignoring the Quality Score – The quality score is definitely a moving target and it recently has changed again.  But, if you understand your quality scores by simply improving your ad or your landing page (or weeding out non-performing keywords), you can dramatically lower your cost per click.  And, if you do this across the board for all of your OK or Poor quality keywords, the savings can make a huge difference.

Recently, I moved into a second story condo after living the past 5 years in a house.  I am astounded at how loud my upstairs neighbors are.  Not ‘partying, playing loud music all the time’ loud, but more like ‘clompy, loud-walking’ loud.  Because of this, I’ve been very aware of how much noise I make.  I thought I was being a pretty considerate neighbor until I found out otherwise.

Apparently, my dogs have a favorite rumbunctious playtime every weekday morning – unbeknownst to me – when I blow-dry my hair.

Now, this has probably been going on for a few weeks and I just never realized it until the other day……until the day my hair dryer stopped working.

I’ve had this hair-dryer forever.  And it has always just worked.  But recently, there was just a split second delay when I turned it on.  And, every day since the delay has been getting little bit longer.  But it still works, it is just a matter of waiting (now) quite a few seconds for it to eventually turn on.  I am pretty sure that I am going to wait to replace the hair-dryer until it completely dies.

For some reason, I drew the strange parallel between my replacing the hair dryer, with how many companies view their analytics.  Sure…they, like me, may use their analytics everyday and they may be more than aware that there is something not quite right with the analytics tool they are using.  But, since it does the basic job, they feel no need to replace it with something that will do a better job.

Analytics to some companies are seen as boring and mundane as an everyday appliance like a hair-dryer.  Replacing an analytics package is not all that appealing.  At best, it involves some research -moving away from a tool that they are used to.  And at worst, it involves paying money for something that used to be free, learning a new system, and often creating a new culture (a data driven/data accepting culture) against some resistance.

Of course, I realize that using an electrical appliance that is not quite working is not only unwise but can be potentially unsafe (okay, I didn’t actually realize that until my husband mentioned it) just as using an outdated Web analytics tool can be unwise and unsafe (since you are probably making important spending decisions using bad data).  So, this weekend, I am off to get a new hair-dryer.  And if you decide that it is time to replace your broken analytics, please feel free to contact us.

There are few places where I feel more stupid than in an auto parts store.  Because…when I am in an auto parts store that means that there is something that is VERY basic in my car that needs fixing.

I hate knowing that everyone in the store knows more about everything in the store than me.  And I hate not having any idea of how much things should cost.

As I stood at the counter of the NAPA auto parts store this morning, trying to figure out how to purchase a gas cap to replace the one I lost, it occurred to me that many people feel the same way about finding a digital agency as I do about buying auto parts.

SEO, PPC, Social Media, and Analytics are topics that are rich with jargon and self-proclaimed experts who want you to think that there is no way that ordinary people could be successful and that the only way to be successful is to hire someone to do all the work (e.g. outsource it to them).

After many years in the working in the industry, from traditional agencies, to consultancies, to an analytics provider, I know this is not the case.  So, just like a good auto part store will help you find the tools you need, take the intimidation out of a foreign situation, and explain what you need in plain English – so should a good digital agency.

So, if you need a gas cap, I can’t recommend NAPA auto parts highly enough.  Not only did the gas cap cost less than $7 (which I assume is a good price), but the salesperson did not even make fun of me when I asked the difference between the locking and the regular gas cap.  He kindly explained to me that, ‘Well, the locking gas cap….locks.’

If you need a good digital agency, contact us – we can explain to you how your current campaigns are doing and train you on how to do better.

I had a great day at work today.  Not something many folks can say on a Monday.  But, I did.  I had a great conversation with a client about this topic today. A smart conversation with smart people.  And, at the end of the conversation, we were much happier about setting realistic goals.

I’ve mentioned before that Unique Visitors are not ‘everything’ after reading Jakob Nielsen’s article Reduce Bounce Rates: Fight for the Second Click (where he argues that the focus on the metric of ‘Unique Visitors must die’).

The reasons that Unique Visitors is not a metric to base goals on are:

Tendency to be inaccurate
Some log file analyzers use IP address or IP address teamed with user agent to count a unique visitor. This over-counts when visitors return from a dial-up connection (new IP address) and under-counts when accessing a site from the same network (same IP address for many people).

Cookie Issues

We’ve all heard the debate of how often people do or don’t delete their cookies.  This definitely impacts the validity of the unique visitor count.  Worse than this, however, is when a site uses a persistent cookie to define a unique visitor, yet only sets a cookie on the homepage (believe me, this happens a lot).

The fire hose issue
Unless you have a fire hose filled with money to continually pour into pay-per-click and other online advertising – the odds of month over month significantly growing the number of unique visitors is extraordinarily slim.

But here’s the kicker…
Increasing your unique visitor count is actually counterproductive.  By wanting to only grow the number of unique visitors, you are attracting useless traffic to your site.  If these unique visitors don’t return, you essentially are paying – one way or another (pay-per-click, time spent optimizing your site, time spent creating content for your site) – for visitors who will never engage with your Web site nor start a conversation with your company, never encourage their friends to see your site, or purchase your products.

With Barack Obama and John McCain now in full battle mode, I thought it would appropriate to take a look at some online metrics and make some comparisons to how each is using the internet to help their campaign. In the lead up to the election, I will post my findings and observations.

Some topic areas that I will likely include are:

• Search volume relating to each candidate in key “battle ground” states
• How they are using search
• Analysis of their Websites
• Analysis of their involvement with social media
• Other areas that seem appropriate as we move close to the election

One quick observation is how they have each reacted to hurricane Gustav. The republican convention scaled back the schedule of events and speakers on the day the hurricane hit. Instead, they focused on its potential impact and the states that could be affected. McCain’s team also made sure to give it prominent placement on their homepage and highlight speeches that were given by Cindy McCain and Laura Bush.

Not to be outdone, the Obama team has put up a splash page that has temporarily replaced their homepage. It calls for individuals to make a donation to those affected by Gustav.

So, even in times of tragedy the candidates are jockeying to show American citizens that they are in tune with the needs of those that have been affected and are working to help provide relief. And, this is just the beginning of what is sure to be a nasty battle in the coming months.

We all know how important metrics like average time on site, number of visitors, visitors by
segments and of course, conversions are. But, there are some other less known metrics that
really can provide some great insight.

Internal Search
The best way to find this information is to set up your analytics to report on what visitors
search on when they get to your site.

The first thing to do is make sure that your search is set up to be trackable. To do this,
just do a search on your Web site. Look at the URL that displays when the results display.

You should see something like (if you have searched for dvd):
www.mydomain.com/searchresults.asp?keyword=dvd

If your results simply show:
www.mydomain.com/searchresults.asp
ask your programmer to switch the form submit method from a POST to a GET (this should be a
quick, simple change).

Once your search results are trackable, then just configure the report.
WebTrends – Paramater Analysis Report
ClickTracks – Internal Search Report
Google Analytics – Site Search

You may be suprised at the big disconnect by what you think visitors call your product or
service, or what you want them to compared to what they actually do.

Robot Traffic
You will need to analyze your log files to get this information. ClickTracks has a good
Robot Report that breaks down your site by individual pages and tells you the:
Number of Visits (Best metric to see how well your site is being spidered overall)
Frequency of Visits (Best metric to see how your SEO results are improving)
Date of Last Visit
Days since Last Visit (Can be confusing because 0 is actually the best result)

Here is a site in dire need of some SEO

Geography
Most analytics packages have some report that tells you where visitors are coming from
broken down by country, state and even further (DMA). Obviously, you must take this

information with a grain of salt due to the limitations of how this information is gathered
(by IP address which can resolve back to an ISP). But, as local search gains more
popularity, it is worthing spending a little time to drill down to a more local level.
Information gleaned from these reports can be used to improve your local pay-per-click
campaigns.

For more information on local search, if you are in the Philadelphia area, you may want
to sign up for Simon’s Local Search session at SearchCampPhilly