Feb
19th

Oneupweb : Word Of Mouth ROI And Brand Equity

Posted by Vern on February 19, 2010 at 9:58 am

Today’s Analytic Packages Are Creating False Hope That All Online Interactions Are Attributable.

Blame it on Google Analytics, Omniture or even WebTrends for that matter. The perceived ease in which we track online marketing data has created unrealistic expectations in the minds of online marketers. Don’t get me wrong, many online marketing activities have a measurable spend and corresponding sales value. You spend $0.55 for a click on your Google PPC ad that results in a sale of $12.00. At its very basic level your ROI is $12.00/$0.55=2,181%. That sale can be attributed to that particular ad and keyword.

When the only game in town was PPC on Google and Yahoo, attribution was pretty cut and dry. We became programmed to the certainty that sales/spend=measure of success. It was so easy to assume that we could apply the same model to other online marketing. This is where the digital marketing analysis picture begins to get cloudy. If you’re running PPC along with an ongoing SEO effort, you may argue that attribution is precise. Well, what about ad impressions (not clicks)? Maybe the searcher you’re tracking post-click viewed multiple SERPs, saw many variations of PPC ads along with your organic listings and finally clicked on the 10th variation. Since you can’t attribute that sale to impressions, how do you really know what induced the sale?

Add social digital marketing and attribution becomes almost impossible. Social digital marketing is essentially 21st century “word of mouth.” Oneupweb does a wonderful job of tracking interactions across all digital channels. Heck—PodTractor, Oneupweb’s podcast tracking system, was ground-breaking in 2006 and to this day, remains unmatched in its functionality. Our Twitter and Facebook reporting documents interactions in these two venues like no other analytics available. But how do you track/document the conversation between two friends who “saw it on Facebook” or “looked it up on Google” that resulted in direct navigation to your website for a purchase? You can’t.

Every dollar a CMO spends online can generate word of mouth marketing and is an investment in building brand equity. This concept is very often lost in the buzz of attribution. We’ve become slaves to micro-managing ROI at the keyword level, never giving credit to that SEO project or Twitter effort in adding to brand equity and building market share.

I encourage you to take a step back and look at your marketing budget as a vehicle to drive word of mouth, increase brand equity and improve total sales. Take off the blinders. Stop concentrating on ROI by keyword and know that whatever advertising and marketing you’re doing online can’t be totally compartmentalized. Get back to the simple ROI calculation: $25,000,000 in sales/ $1,000,000 in online spend = kick ass results, no matter where that money was spent.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Nov
10th

The Perfect New Year’s Resolution for 2010—No Scale Involved.

Posted by Carly Wujcik on November 10, 2009 at 3:12 pm

I’m a planner. It’s a known fact that I sometimes border on obsessive about crunching numbers and being prepared. Just ask my team. With 2010 right around the corner, I have the perfect New Year’s resolution that I thought I’d share with everyone this sunny November day (with plenty of advance notice, of course, so you have time to commit to it before the big day comes).

And fret not—there are no awkward mornings in the bathroom shivering on the scale, no “I give up pints of ice cream on January 10th” involved. You can stick with this one and see it pay off. Quickly.

Reevaluate the way you measure success.

Simple. It is. But in the sales and marketing world, particularly the digital marketing world—the implications are huge. And the change, well, like most change, can be hard to adjust to at first.

Walk with me for a minute. Digital marketing, back when it was shiny and new and the world was wealthy, offered one very tangible benefit (among many of course). You could measure it. Track it. Nail offline sales down to the last click customers executed online. You could pin point exactly where your consumers weren’t clicking, converting or engaging and slice those initiatives out of your budget, with laser precision. And you did that. We all did at some point.

The result? You had a 2009 marketing budget so lean it would make Amy Winehouse jealous and so efficient it put the ShamWow to shame. All you kept was the one tactic that “worked” in months previous. Your plan was destined for the marketing hall of fame.

And here we are now, winding down the year and at a point where we have to explain to our bosses and neighbors alike why the plan didn’t work. And I’ll give you a hint—it had nothing to do with the size of your budget.

Think about this long and hard before you walk into your 2010 budget meeting with the board next week demanding that you need double the marketing spend for 2010 in order to see anything work. What were you measuring when you hacked the initiatives that “weren’t working”? Did it extend beyond the bottom line or the last point of conversion?

For example, did you or your agency stop to consider the impact that your display campaign might have had on the success of your paid search campaign before you decided that the only one to survive was the more “successful” paid campaign? And this year, when your one time efficiency super star—the paid search campaign—fell flat on it’s face while it was expected to perform on it’s own, what did you credit as the reason for its failure? The economy? The creative? The size of your budget?

Reevaluate the way you measure success. And failure. The results you see might surprise you. And of course, if you need a hand, Oneupweb is happy to lend one. Make 2010 a phenomenal year. For your marketing plan and yourself.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Sep
2nd

Twitter: Preparing for Mobile Success

Posted by Adam on September 2, 2009 at 2:14 pm

Online marketing is shifting dramatically in 2009. Everyone continues to discuss the powerful and engaging reach of sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, but I’m afraid that too many marketers might be implementing social media plans before their website experience is completely ready. Furthermore, many of those forerunners may also have an incomplete picture of these campaigns’ effectiveness.

Today’s blog will focus on Twitter. I’ll present a sudo checklist that you should consider in the early planning and development stages of your first Twitter campaign.

First, consider how Twitter users access and update their profile. Depending whether or not you’ve kept up with recent trends, you may be surprised to hear that 80 percent of Twitter updates are made via a desktop or mobile application, whereas 20 percent come from direct interaction using an internet browser. This stat was released by Evan Weaver, Twitter’s head engineer at QCon 2009. You may wonder why this matters. Well, the medium in which your Twitter followers use to receive your updates will have an effect on both visit tracking as well as how those users interact with your site.

The two main types of analytics tracking rely on referral data or URL tagging. If you’re familiar with reporting used in Google Analytics, by default Google organizes traffic sources by the referral data passed when the user clicks through a link to your site. When one of your Twitter followers clicks through a Twitter link to your site via a mobile or desktop application no referral data is passed, meaning Google Analytics will not report that visitor.

This isn’t just Google’s problem. Omniture and all the other top analytics packages will have the same results because that data is missing. And since 80 percent of Twitter activity comes from these types of applications, this poses a problem. The remaining 20 percent will be tracked just fine.

The second tracking tactic relies on URL tagging. This method is much more effective when the advertiser has control over the link URL that is used, especially with Twitter. URL tracking is the preferred way to make sure you are getting a clear picture of traffic/sales/leads gained as a result of Twitter marketing campaigns.

Once you have a strategy for tracking Twitter visitors you should consider what goal you want those visitors to reach. Do you want them to purchase something? Or do you want them to fill out a form or download some information? In either case, those using a mobile phone on your site will desire a different experience than someone using their PC.

A perfect execution of this (maybe I’m biased) was our recent promotion of our One for the Road tour. Our goal was to raise awareness of the event and engage users via our social profiles. When mobile users clicked through to the One for the Road site from a mobile device they were redirected to the One for the Road Mobile site. If you can browse the internet on your phone I encourage you to look at both URLs and see the differences. You’ll immediately see why it’s important to treat mobile browsers differently than desktop users.

The site layout is one of the most important differences to consider, but if your goal is form fills or checkouts you also need to consider the following:

Form Fills

How much information do you require?
Is the required information easily accessible in a mobile scenario?
Does your form use data validation on every field?

Checkouts

Is account creation required?
If so, does the user have to validate account/email address used?
How many steps does it take to complete the checkout? Can this number be reduced?

Test and review all of these angles based on your own level of patience and using the available mobile browser testing tools such as DotMobi so that you’re sure about the presentation your site is providing.

This isn’t a comprehensive guide to being successful with social media marketing via Twitter. However, if you have proper tracking and provide an optimized in-sync user experience to your user, you’ll have much of the foundation in place to succeed.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Feb
25th

Tough Economic Times Reflect in Online Searches

Posted by admin on February 25, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Times are tough economically these days. More and more people are pinching pennies, clipping coupons, and staying home (I know I am at least!).

The financial situation in the United States is at the top of political agendas, a major concern in the auto and real estate industries, and a growing worry among many Americans who are trying to make ends meet. The worry is even becoming apparent in what people are searching for online these days.

ComScore, a global internet information provider, published a study yesterday outlining the number of searches for terms related to the current economic struggles and just how much search behavior has changed in the last year.

The study compares various search terms related to the economic downturn from December 2007 to December 2008, and the results, not surprisingly, show significant gains.

As you can see in the chart below, searches on money saving terms like “coupons” have increased by 161% year over year. Another notable change in search behavior relates to the deteriorating job market with searches around “unemployment” and “unemployment benefits” increasing 206% and 247% respectively.

This upward trend shows that online behavior is directly associated and changing with the interests and concerns of the public in regards to financial situations and personal well being.

Another direct correlation between people’s more financially oriented searches and the down economy is the substantial increase in visits to and search queries related to job hunting. According to ComScore, during the 2008 holiday, when job searches typically die down and more and more people start their online holiday shopping, job-related searches became some of the most heavily trafficked search terms; the majority of them coming from people under 35 in households earning less than $50,000 per year. Another ComScore tidbit: these searchers were most likely to use Yahoo!, Live.com, or Ask.com over Google or AOL to find job opportunities.

Unfortunately, this is a dismal reflection of the times and struggles that many people are facing. It is nice to know, however, that many e-commerce companies are trying to help, offering more promotions and discounts, and incentives like free shipping.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.

Sep
5th

All Chromed Out

Posted by Tim on September 5, 2008 at 12:35 pm

Google has finally released a long rumored web browser of its own, Chrome. And thanks to the super-hype machine that follows Google’s every breath, this is almost certainly old news to the tech and online junkies.

Google Chrome logo Lots of folks are digging into the nuts and bolts of the new browser and talking about features, enhancements, speed. I’ll let those pros handle that. Instead, let’s take a look at what this might mean for online marketing.

Fact is, in the short term, Google Chrome itself won’t mean a whole lot. There’s nothing specific being done to monetize this browser. Google hasn’t integrated more AdWords into the browsing experience (yet). I take Google’s explanation at face value for now. They are in the Beta cycle of a fundamentally different browser. The engineers at Mountain View saw an opportunity to tune a better browsing experience. Kudos to them.

Where Chrome may very well present opportunity for marketing is in more subtle places. The launch of this new browser can give you great insight into how your audience ticks.

When you live every day online and are immersed in tech and marketing news, it might seem standard to try a new piece of software like Chrome. Keep in mind though, Chrome hardly registers to the wider world yet. That’s why you can really learn a lot about your audience.

Google Analytics is now tracking Chrome as a specific browser type. Even though it’s Google’s product, they were among the last of the big analytics vendors to recognize Chrome (it was getting lumped in as a Mozilla browser). Now that you can see when a Chrome user is accessing your website, you can find out if you have a strong, early adopter audience. If Chrome has creeped up to even 4-5% in the last few days, it’s a good bet that you have a lot of early adopters visiting your site.

Now you’ve got to ask yourself, are you properly targeting the early adopters? Do you have something unique to offer them? Could you be more effective focusing your marketing efforts there?

After all, knowing more about your online audience is a main reason to use an analytics program. Take this opportunity to get better acquainted with your customers.

GD Star Rating
loading...

Socialize This Post

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you leave a comment.