This post is part of a series entitled The Four Pillars of Social Media. For this post we will be focusing on the first pillar: Research. Our other research topics, as part of this series, included:  

• Human Analysis in Social Media Monitoring: 5 Simple Steps to Navigate a Sea of Records
• Buzz Monitoring Tools Can’t Tell You Everything

How Audience Research Can Help You with Your Traditional Marketing Efforts

As traditional marketers, we have years of experience understanding our markets, what products and services they need/want, how to communicate best with them, and how they regard our brands, right? 

Well, maybe not… 

We have often relied on marketing research (primary or secondary), sales team feedback, customer satisfaction surveys, etc. to provide insights into those areas. The issue with most of those forms of feedback is that they tend to provide the answers we want to hear or find necessary to meet our internal business goals (either as an organization or a professional). 

Audience research, on the other hand, uncovers specifically how markets use products and services, speak about them, form communities, etc. It’s like watching a pride of lions in their natural habitat. Regardless if it’s a B2B or B2C market, when we take the time to watch people in their natural – or comfortable – habitat, we will see their true behavior and opinions surface. If you haven’t done audience research, it can be quite eye-opening. But more importantly, it can’t be fabricated. As an organization it’s your choice to ignore it (at your peril, potentially) or to embrace what’s really going on in the market. 

So how can audience research help traditional marketing efforts? 

Products/Services: If we build it, they will come… Not always. And more often “not” is the outcome (unless, of course, you are Apple). Many times startup companies fail or new products or services fail because they are built from the internal premise that people actually want to buy your product or service. And throwing your marketing communications budget at it isn’t going to help move the buying needle. Why not start with your customers and prospects and identify what their needs/wants actually are? If you aren’t a ‘social’ company, audience research is one way to tap into what’s being said online while standing on the sidelines. If you are a social company, why not just simply ask and then collect the data that the audience shares? 

Communication: There is large misperception in marketing that people respond specifically to tactics (i.e.  ads, direct mail, messaging, emails, etc.). That is not the case. People respond only when they have a brand relationship (see below). When there is a brand relationship, people are open and receptive to receiving your message. Your task is to make sure you send the right message, at the right time, in the right format. Audience research can help you to determine receptivity levels. 

Branding: While organizations do control their brand identity and messaging, what they don’t control are the relationships that people form with brands. Are you aware of how people (customers, prospects, clients, employees, stakeholders, shareholders, etc.) see and talk about your brand? Do you know what the sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) levels are for your brand? You might just be surprised! The  goal of using audience research is to understand how people perceive your brand(s), to take that feedback internally and to adjust your branding efforts accordingly.

What would you add to the list? How have you used audience research in your marketing efforts?

[Image: BG-Hotel International]

If you are in marketing, you might be a little stressed right now.  The pressure is on to show ROI.  You are constantly trying to accomplish more with less.  Technology and digital channels are evolving at a rapid fire pace and you had better keep up if you’re going to survive.  And job security?  Not much of a concept anymore, no matter what your line of work.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn down the noise and focus on one or two things that would have the biggest impact?

You can. 

See if you can answer the following questions:
• Can you measure the actual revenue generated by specific marketing campaigns?
• Do you know which digital marketing channel currently converts the most leads or sales and costs the least?
• Does your marketing department or agency make changes to a campaign based on results while the campaign is active (as opposed to waiting until the campaign is over)?

If you answered “no”, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.  A 2007 Conference Board study found that one third of the companies surveyed were making no attempts to measure marketing ROI.  In a more recent study (Alterian, 2009), less than half of marketers surveyed said they plan to use analytics to measure campaigns.

Digital marketing has, in many ways, developed faster than the tools to measure it.  Add in resistance to change, lack of skilled staff trained in measurement best practices, and pressure to score a home run YESTERDAY – it’s enough to drive the sanest marketer to choose finger crossing and a Hail Mary or two over facing the measurement monster. 

And yet, if you make even small improvements in your measurement infrastructure and capabilities, you can achieve big improvements in ROI.

Where should you start? 

Ask yourself what it would take to answer “yes” to the questions above.  How much would it cost?  How would you make the ROI case to the C Suite?

Or, stop asking yourself questions (before someone notices that you are talking to yourself) and call us.  We love a good measurement hairball.

Well, maybe not a day, maybe 8 years.

When I was home for Thanksgiving this past week, I had a chance to enjoy one of my guilty pleasures.

Be Warned: The next few lines may contain the nerdiest thing you have read in a long while.

I’ve saved most all of my old issues of Fast Company and Business 2.0 and when I have spare time, I like to peruse the old issues. I know, I know, N-E-R-D-Y.

But, in my defense…marketing, like much of business, tends to be cyclical. So, I think it is interesting to look at the business trends and emerging business trends from the past, sort of a print version of the Wayback Machine. And, it’s not only the articles and ideas that I find interesting, but also the advertising.

In fact, here’s one of the best ads that I came across was in the October 24, 2000 issue of Business 2.0.

How great is this ad?
“Do you think a hunch about data relationships will improve browser-to-buyer conversion?”

But, here is the best part:
“Your disjointed and incomplete eMarketing data has had you playing the guessing game for too long.”

Back in 2000, way before the great analytics growth explosion, when (WebTrends) Executive
Summaries consisted of nothing more than a few (some meaningless) metrics…

…Coremetrics had the guts to call attention to the fact that eMarketing is trackable and that marketing decisions should not be made based on hunches or worse, bad data.

The fact is that analytics have improved by leaps and bounds in the past 8 years. But, the sad fact is that despite that, many marketers are still making important spending decisions based on their gut-feelings and bad data.

And maybe, some of that is caused by the overwhelming amount of analytic data that is available now. There is a big difference between data and information. Because data whether meaningful or meaningless, without context is really no help. But in this economy, in this recession, very few companies have the luxury of experimental marketing or, in words of Coremetrics, a ‘VP of Guesstimation.”

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.

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.

Click Fraud has been a serious concern for careful marketers for a long time now. But, Click Fraud also has become a scape-goat for some poorly performing campaign symptoms caused by laziness or lack of knowledge:

1 – High bounce rate/low average time on site
Most often, you will find this is the case when you have a descriptive ad that takes the visitor to a generic or a content-mismatch page (for example an online jewelry store with an ad about a silver bracelet that links to their home page describing gold jewelry).

2 – Low conversion rate
There are many causes for a low conversion rate – ranging from a user un-friendly checkout process to a bug on your site. Or, your ad may produce traffic that is just not interested in your product (if your ads imply that you are the lowest price online shoe site and you are clearly not).

3 – Traffic from same IP address (with a caveat)
If you find that you are getting a lot traffic to your site from your PPC from the same IP address, go to www.dnsstuff.com and use the WHOIS lookup. Many IP addresses resolve back to the ISP (like Earthlink or AOL).

4 – Expensive CTR (Your initial Max CPC gets you no traffic even though there is a lot of inventory)
This is a common occurrence when you initially get started in PPC. Your CPC is based on not just what you are willing to spend in relation to what your competitors are, but also your quality score, and importantly your CTR history. So, if you are launching your first campaign, expect to bid high until you can get a history of good CTR

5 – Traffic from non-Google sites, even though you have opted out of the Content Network
Opting out of the Content Network does not guarantee that all of your traffic will be a result of Google searches. Not only might your ad still show up in Gmail, Google Maps, or other Google sites - and unless you have manually opted out of the Search Partner option – you will still see results from sites like Ask.com, AOL, and many, many, many other smaller search sites that are Google’s search partners

More common symptoms of Click Fraud generally result around a big change in campaign performance. Some examples below are:

Spike in traffic from a campaign with no spike in spend or logic/seasonality-cause

Drop in traffic from a campaign with no spike in spend or logic/seasonality-cause

Change in ad performance – if your campaign has been running for a time with a high CTR and a high conversion rate, and all of a sudden the performance drops. First check to make sure there is not a problem with your site. If nothing has broken on your site, start the deeper dive.

Traffic from same IP – when the results of the WHOIS lookup shows that the IP resolves to competitor or other non-ISP traffic

No one wants to waste their PPC budget on bad clicks, but before you go to the search engines with the accusation of Click Fraud, make sure that you’ve done your due diligence to eliminate the symptoms caused by a poorly performing or expensive ad.

As more marketers are being held accountable for their budgets, proving ROI on campaigns becomes essential.  In order to track ROI, you must be able to track revenue on your Web site.  This is not nearly as complicated or technically difficult (in most cases) than you may think (or have been told).  

There are three ways to track revenue on your Web site:

1.  Using Analytics
2.  Using Search Engine tools
3.  Using Both – Comparing analytics to search engine reporting

Using Analytics
Regardless of whether you are using a java script based analytics programs or analyzing your Web server logs, tracking revenue is completely possible if you have two things:

1.  A unique ‘thank you’ page that displays only when a purchase is successful 
2.  Access to make modifications to your Web site

Without a unique page that only displays when a purchase is successful, you will always ‘over-count’ revenue.  Often times, shopping carts are built using one form that posts back to itself.  You can tell if this is the case because the URL does not change from one step of the checkout process to the next. 

The problem with this is that you never get an accurate count of successful purchases or cart abandonment since the URL is the same.  If your shopping cart is built this way, it is worth it to ask your developer to either add parameters for each step or implement a unique ‘thank you’ page.

If you don’t have access to make modifications to your Web site, you can still track revenue but it will not be as accurate as you will simply be assigning a dollar value to a goal page.  Here is how it is done in Google Analytics and in ClickTracks

Log File Analytics
To track revenue using log files, you will simply have to pass the order total parameter and the dollar value of the sale into the query string of the URL.  As long as your developer knows .ASP (or .ASPX) or .PHP, this should be a relatively straight-forward, quick change.

Or, you can use what is called a beacon which is an invisible image that is used to capture data that is normally not found in log files.  Here is an explanation for doing this with Google Checkout.

Java Script Analytics
The beauty of java script-based analytics is that you can track anything that you want on your Web site.  You just need to plan for it ahead of time, and have the ability to place custom java script on the ‘thank you’ page.  Each analytics package will have a slightly different method (code) for tracking revenue.  But, it should be well documented in the instruction manual.  (A quick search on ‘tracking revenue in webtrends java script’ resulted in this pdf with instructions on page 15).

Using Search Engine Tools
Both Google and Yahoo generate ‘conversion tracking’ code that you can simply copy and paste onto your ‘thank you’ page.  This article also has good instructions for generating the Google Conversion code.  You just have to scroll down to the section ‘Using AdWords Conversion Tracking.’

Also, Nate had written a good article about the improvements that were made to the conversion tracking earlier this year. 

For Yahoo conversion code, click here.

Using Both – Comparing analytics to search engine reporting
I am always an advocate of this method, using both.  Without a ‘gut-check’ in place, it is way too easy to make decisions with bad data  (which we mention over and over).

Understand first that the data from your analytics will likely never match the search engine data 100%.  In fact, depending on the time frame that you are analyzing and several other factors, the discrepancy may be as much as 15%. 

But, by tying your analytic data in with what the search engines report, you will be able to get a very comprehensive picture of what is working and what is not.  And it will be clear what changes need to be made to make your PPC (and other campaign) efforts as effective as possible.

If you are new to PPC or Analytics, feel free to join us on Wednesdays this month for ‘Webinar Wednesdays.

Are you just beginning to get your feet wet in the world of Web analytics and have decided to try out Google Analytics or another analytics packages on your site?  Well, I would imagine you’re probably feeling a bit overwhelmed. You are not alone as the vast amount of data you now have can be a daunting task to fully understand. There are a number of resources that are available for you to help you get up to speed. One of which is a series of videos that Google has uploaded to YouTube under the Google Conversion University Playlist.

That should help give you some of the basics on Web analytics.  There are, however, many issues that you may not even be aware of such as an incorrect implementation of your analytics package that is preventing you from collecting accurate data.  This is the case with virtually every new client that I’ve gone in and looked at how their Web analytics package was implemented.  An analytics audit is a great way to find out if your Web analytics package has been implemented properly and correct the issues that are discovered.

Once you have accurate data, then what do you do with it?  If you watch some of the Google Conversion University videos you’ll have a basic knowledge, but if you want to learn more check out our customized Web analytics training programs that we offer.  And if you don’t have the time to really dig into your analytics data – then, our Web analytics consulting services may be of interest to you.   

The worst you can do is “implement” a Web analytics package and then pretend to understand the data.  That will not get you anywhere.  If you’re not prepared or don’t have the time to fully understand Web analytics, then make sure you at least you have someone on your side that can guide you through the vast amount of data.