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!
Google recently announced the availability of a benchmarking service that gives users the ability to compare their properties to other sites within an industry. Brett Crosby from the Google Analytics blog writes, “Of course, benchmarking only works if people can opt to share their data into the system, so we’re also introducing a new data-sharing settings page. On this page, customers can choose whether to opt in or opt out of sharing their Analytics data. To be clear, we are not sharing individual data with competitors; we bucket data into industry verticals and then anonymize and aggregate the data.”
Wikipedia defines benchmarking as follows, “…a process used in management and particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice, usually within their own sector. This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to adopt such best practice, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to challenge their practices.”
As we are continually faced with more competitive online marketing environments, this information becomes critical in your strategic planning. When future direction is determined by a hunch or a perception the outcome can be negative. The solution lies in the continual use of this information over the long haul. The advantages of using this information enable organizations to see new methods, ideas and tools to improve their effectiveness. The savings over the long haul are significant in reference to both time and money.
So the question becomes…Am I using this information in my strategic planning initiatives?
- Identify your problem areas
- Identify other industries that have similar processes
- Data Collection (Now Available)
- Determine current performance gap
- Implement new and improved business practices
Remember: “Benchmarking isn’t just about data-culture and circumstances must be taken into account when you view the results.”
It is no surpise to me that more TV, Print, and Radio dollars are being reallocted to online.
Why?
Advertisers care more about what works; online advertising is quantifiable, and reduces risk.
The Pay-per-click models continue to attract advertisers as the cost is only in the click, not the impression. And with the new forms of user driven content centric advertising online, a sustaining and profitable platform will evolve.
The facts speak for themselves; this new study from Outsell reinforces the trend…
Google has opened up bidding for print ads via AdWords, and advertisers can now, during a test phase, bid for full-page, half-page and quarter-page ads in various lifestyle and technology magazines, reports ClickZ. Google provides circulation and readership data, including proportion of males and females, percentage of those who are college educated, average age and average household income. Publications include “Car and Driver,” “Women’s Health and Fitness,” and “Martha Stewart Kids.”
Here is an early look at one of the test ads that ran in the Chicago Sun Times
The concept of Behavioral Targeting is certainly nothing new to online marketers…in fact, its “buzzworthiness” dates back to 2004 .
Most experts agree that it has unlimited potential because it works to make advertising even more relevant by dynamically matching an interest or offer to a reader.
But as this ClickZ article notes, there is still room for development when it comes to execution and measurable results.
Could 2006 be the year it finds a place in your online marketing strategy?
