We are excited to be attending the 2008 Online Marketing Summit in Atlanta on August 12th, which is an educational event for marketing professionals. This year, the topics include:
- Website Strategy
- Customer Life-Cycle and Loyalty Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing
- Demand Generation
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Strategies
A colleague and I are attending this event in hopes of honing our strategic thinking initiatives. The importance of knowledge-based decision making is critical in today’s economic environment. I think that the sessions offered in this summit will help us greatly with our goals and initiatives when we return.
I’m excited to get involved in the Complete Website Strategy session for a chance to understand user experience and how to improve it. I am conflicted about whether to attend the Social Media Strategies session or the one one Behavioral Targeting and Technology. The first is geared towards learning how leading companies build online communities and leverage the latest Web 2.0 technologies to proactively engage customers. The latter focuses on how experience-driven web initiatives can succeed with a combination of online marketing strategies and a technology infrastructure. Please leave comments to suggest which you think would be most beneficial.
This busy day will end with a much needed Happy Hour, with drinks on OMS! Hopefully I’ll be able to remember the day’s lessons so I can reflect back after we return!
YouTube is proving to be a challenging advertising platform for Google. Google acquired YouTube in 2006, signaling big ambitions for online video advertising. However, they are running into a series of problems with copyright infringement issues and the fact that many online agencies and advertisers are still weary of this relatively new medium.
Some of the snags Google is running into include:
- Advertisers are reluctant to put their ads on YouTube due to fear of questionable content of amateur videos. For example, can you imagine a Folgers video ad prior to watching “Coffee causes heart attacks”? Or a Disney family friendly ads displayed before some provocative video of a celebrity?
- Copyright litigation. Viacom Inc. sued Google last year because unauthorized television and movie clips were posted by YouTube users.
- Inefficient sales process. The rapid growth of Google has hindered the sales systems.
Google has launched “Operation Spaghetti” to unclutter the mess that YouTube has been for them. Even if these problems are solved, will advertisers see a benefit to attaching ads to online videos on YouTube? This would be an extremely cumbersome process if we had to evaluate each ad prior to placing a video ad for our clients.
- Will YouTube filter videos for suitable advertisers? Maybe
- Will it rely on the YouTube community? Doubtful!
- Perhaps a combination. We’ll see…
In the meantime, agencies and advertisers running video ads have other options. And knowing Google, they have a plan already in the works to further monetize YouTube. Stay tuned.
For the second consecutive year, I was given the opportunity to participate at the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Global Leadership Conference in San Francisco. It’s one of my favorite places to visit and it’s close to my mom so I get to visit with her. It’s gravy that it happens to be adjacent to mother’s day- and of course I tell her I came 3,000 miles just to visit her. 
In case you were wondering, The Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) is a global community of business owners, all of whom run companies that exceed $1 Million in revenue. This year, the Global Leadership Conference brought together 600 chapter leaders from around the globe.
The conference emphasized the idea that as long as there are innovative ideas, there will be entrepreneurial opportunities. New technology is what spurs new business.
One of the “hot” areas we at WebsiteBiz believe will continue to grow is around:
- Marketing analytics
- One-to-one marketing, and
- The idea of utilizing the Web as a central hub for measuring integrated tactics
With continued advances in testing capabilities like multivariate testing platforms, there is more focus on website analytics and extraction of the business intelligence that mazimizes performance and return on investment. Afterall, what marketer wouldn’t want that…?
Unfortunately, I still see marketers struggle to communicate the value of online marketing and how it drives bottom-line results. Much of this is caused by a lack of standard metrics by which to measure and report impact…especially when a direct response conversion is not clearly evident.
Most CEO’s and CFO’s are focused on driving efficiency and scale to acheive revenue growth. But when it comes to marketing, they need to be able to make a connection between the work ($) that is being done and the revenue that will be produce as a result.
Bottom line.
With studies suggesting that merely 2/3 of all marketers include metrics in their marketing plans…a need for more standard measurement is very necessary. So, what do you track? The ultimate answer is Everything…but realistically, try focusing on things that will move the needle and provide leading indicators of revenue. (Stuff that C-Levels discuss).
Here are a 10 tactical examples that you might not be considering when establishing metrics for your online marketing campaigns:
- Brand impact (i.e., increased brand awareness, intent or favorability)
- Number of impressions
- Position of paid listing
- Number of clicks
- Ratio of new to returning visitors
- Amount of increased website traffic
- Duration of website visits
- Amount of increased traffic to physical store
- Amount of increased volume to call center
- Number of leads generated for products sold online
- Number of leads generated for products sold offline
- Number of immediate sales generated for products sold online
Collecting this data will create trends and insight that will translate across most organizations.
The Internet is the second most effective media for capturing the attention of adult audience, this according to Busrt Media research just released. Furthermore, when respondents were asked about purchasing influence the Internet was revealed to be even more significant.
Is this surprising? Read on…
Continue reading ‘Internet is the #2 Media, only to TV’
