Web Measurement Strategies for Small Businesses

By Neil Mason, The ClickZ Network, Nov 27, 2007
Columns | Contact Neil

I've just returned from presenting at an Internet marketing seminar targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. Preparing for the presentation made me think about how to coordinate an effective digital marketing measurement program when you don't have much of a budget. I'm a great believer Arthur C. Nielsen's quote: "The price of light is less than the cost of darkness." Still, companies must live within their means and small businesses often don't have huge amounts of money to spend on data collection and analysis.

So what's an effective Web measurement strategy for a small company doing business online? It actually doesn't look much different from a large organization's strategy. Just the scale and some tools might be different. A small business still needs a holistic approach to measuring its online channel and the right tools in its toolbox. It must have clearly defined online goals and objectives, which can be translated into a set of KPIs (define). A small business still needs the right processes in place to ensure its data's integrity.

In some cases, it might be easier for small businesses to measure online performance. Defining business goals and KPIs may be easier because fewer people are involved in the process. Managing its processes may be easier to ensure pages are correctly tagged and campaigns are properly tracked, for example. Measurement may be easier because one person might do everything.

Small businesses might find it harder to take a holistic view of measuring their online channel by having multiple tools in their toolbox. An effective strategy for measuring and optimizing site performance has four key components:

• Good market intelligence
  
  
• Sophisticated visitor behavior analysis
  
  
• Excellent user profiling
  
  
• Effective site-performance tracking

Market intelligence provides the context for the business's own performance. While the majority of a digital marketer's time can be focused on the brand and its site, it's important to remember that the neither the brand nor the site operate in a vacuum. External factors and forces are also at play. Larger businesses might buy into third-party data providers, such as comScore, Nielsen//NetRatings, and Hitwise. These services are often out of small businesses' reach and may mot even be suitable for sites with lower traffic levels. However, a small business can still uses online resources, such as government statistics and sites like ClickZ, to keep a breast of trends in the industry.

Visitor behavior analysis comes from Web analytics tools. Some sophisticated reporting packages are available for free or at low cost. Google Analytics is free and will suit many businesses' needs for a long time to come. (Microsoft is launching its own service soon.) For those willing to invest a little bit, other tools are suitable for small businesses. I like ClickTracks for its ease of use and some of its powerful analysis features.

User profiling is the process of getting to know who's using your site and why. The basic principles of marketing are about understanding your customers and meeting their needs. In our online environment, a business must know the following:

• Who is visiting my site?
  
  
• What are they trying to achieve? What are their goals?
  
  
• Were they able to do what they wanted to do? If not, why not?

This data can be collected from surveys, and there are plenty of cost-effective Web survey services around (SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang, etc.) that allow you to create online surveys at a reasonably low cost. Just because a survey is cheap to run, it doesn't mean it's low quality. Pay attention to the type of information you're asking for and the way you ask for it.

Finally, site-performance tracking looks at a site's effectiveness from a technical perspective. It encompasses speed of page delivery, site availability, and responsiveness of transactional processes. A Forrester report on this subject shows that users find slow Web sites are less interesting, less believable, and less trustworthy. If you're a small business trying to cut through the Internet's noise, don't burden your site with these perceptions. Tracking and measuring your site's speed are an important component of the mix. If you can't afford to buy into continuous services such as Keynote Systems or Gomez, find sites to test your site speed for free or on an ad-hoc basis.

For small businesses, the price of light may not be the actual price you need to pay for data services but rather the time you need to spend managing, interpreting, and understanding the data you can get. In this competitive environment, doesn't it make sense to work smarter?

Apps Us Marketers Can't Live Without

Here at VerticalResponse we have roughly 70% of all employees using Apple computers. Our engineering department refuses to use anything else, and our latest convert was our Vice President of Product Management, Josh, who is on the latest Macbook Pro - where if he really needs to, he can run Windows.

As a side note, check out one of our customers, Due Maternity, talking about us on the Apple website.

We love our Macs and we love web-based software (after all, our product is web-based). I figured I'd share some Apple-specific software that works for us and web-based software that anyone can use. I've asked Alf, our Director of Marcom, and Ivan, our Web Producer, to weigh in on what they like too.

Janine's Picks

	Typepad - Online tool for blogging. I use it to publish this blog - it's about $5/month and totally easy to use.
	Salesforce.com - Online CRM tool for managing contacts and marketing to them. You can use VR from within this application. It has a few limitations with a Mac but still worth it! Just $95/month or $65/month depending on your flavor. The best part? You can use VerticalResponse right from within you salesforce account, then when someone clicks or opens your email, it is reported right back into the lead record. Booyah!
	FileMaker - Software to customize and store your database if you aren't into the online thing like Salesforce.com. $299 for the product, and you can totally customize your database.
	NewsGator - This is a great online tool for tracking keywords that appear on blogs and in the online world. We use it to see who is talking about us, and better yet, who is talking about our competition. You can really track where your press releases are being picked up more or less, real-time. I think we pay about $15/month.

Alf's Picks

	Firefox Extensions - Alone, Firefox is a great browser, but add the treasure trove of extentions available, and it becomes an invaluable tool for marketers and developers alike. On the marketing side, one of my favorites is SearchStatus, it shows me the Google PageRank & Alexa Rank for any page I browse right in my status bar and lets me instantly check a page's keyword density, backlinks & indexed pages in a variety of search engines (among a few other goodies). On the development side Web Developer is da bomb, I know there's been a lot of buzz about FireBug (I have that one installed too) with all its Web 2oh AJAXy Goodness, but my loyalty is still with Web Developer ... it's just too useful.
	Apple Keynote (Mac Only) - Them special effects is fantastic. Mac only (you can save to ppt for pc but why?) presentations & slide shows, this app kicks PowerPoint's *#$%. We use it to create the big-screen product presentaions for our trade show booth, and it's as easy as pie to use. Sync it up to a playlist in your iTunes library...click... and you have yourself an instant soundtrack, Rock On! Don't beleve me? Visit us at a tradeshow and see for yourself.
	OmniOutliner (Mac Only) - When I need to structure my thoughts on various marketing projects, I find OmniOutliner from the Omni Group to be the simplest hierarchical outlining app around. You can organize almost anything with this app, complex road maps, or simple to-do list. Its super flexibility and scriptability make it an irreplaceable tool. Can't wait to get my hands on Omni's sister app OmniPlan once its out of beta.

Ivan's Picks

	QuickSilver (Mac Only) - Remember the LiveStrong bracelet at the apex of its popularity? Being marginally tech-savvy and not having this installed on your Apple is like forgetting to wear your LiveStrong bracelet in 2004. If you are fond of keyboard shortcuts, this is the app for you. Despite its overbearing trendiness, it turns out there is reason it fosters zealotry among its users - if you take the time to learn it, it really speeds up your workflow while simultaneously impressing your haughty, hipster friends.
	NetNewsWire (Mac Only) - Just about every site these days has a news feed you can subscribe to, and this gem for OS X is the best way to manage those news feed subscriptions. Subscribe to all your competitor's feeds, industry blogs and publications. Become one with your business' marketplace. There is a free version (NetNewsWire Lite) and one you can purchase ($29.95). The paid version integrates into your NewsGator account, allowing you to synchronize your feed subscriptions across multiple computers, and even access them through a web browser if you are jonesing for an information fix.
	Basecamp - This web-based application is a great tool to manage your ongoing projects, streamline communication and enhance collaboration within a team. It came quite in handy when we were re-designing our website and needed to keep track of the seemingly-endless task list. If you're an Apple user, you can also integrate Basecamp into your dashboard with either the Telescope or the Basecamp widget.

Got any applications your marketing can't live without? Comment and tell everyone!

Brand equity

Brand equity can be defined in many different ways. I have developed a simple, yet powerful, definition of brand equity. For a brand to be strong it must accomplish two things over time: retain current customers and attract new ones. To the extent a brand does these things well, it grows stronger versus competition, and delivers more profits to its owners.

Breaking down the definition of "brand equity" into its two components, we can more easily determine a reliable way to measure brand equity, and to track changes in brand equity over time. The components of brand equity, retention and attraction of customers, stem from people's experiences with and perceptions of a brand.

The ability to retain customers is largely experiential. High equity brands exhibit stronger levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty. History has shown that consumers will continue to buy a brand that offers them "their money's worth."

The ability to attract new customers is largely perceptual. Because customers do not have actual brand experience, they must go by what they hear, see and believe about a brand. The two primary ways the market receives this information is through messages controlled by marketing, such as advertising and PR efforts, as well as uncontrolled messages such as press stories and "word of mouth."

Scott White is President of Brand Identity Guru a leading Corporate Branding and Branding Research firm in Boston, MA.

Brand Identity Guru specializes in creating corporate and product brands that increase sales, market share, customer loyalty, and brand valuation.

This Article may be freely copied as long as it is not modified and this resource box accompanies the article, together with working hyperlinks.

Over the course of his 15-year branding career, Scott White has worked in a wide variety of industries: high-tech, manufacturing, computer hardware and software, telecommunications, banking, restaurants, fashion, healthcare, Internet, retail, and service businesses, as well as numerous non-profit organizations.

Brand Identity Guru clients include: Sun Life Financial, Coca Cola, HP, Sun, Nordstrom, American Federal Mortgage, Franklin Sports and many others, including numerous emerging growth companies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_D._White

Mini tutorial on SpamAssassin

Here’s a selected list of just a few of the hundreds of terms blocked by SpamAssassin, the most widely used network-level filter.

(Note: SpamAssassin uses open-source technology aimed at UNIX systems. My non-techie interpretation of this is that network administrators can configure SpamAssassin however they want.)

Some common trigger words or phrases:

- subject line starts with “free”

- subject contains FREE in all caps

- the word “free” in certain phrases (free offer, free leads, free access, free preview)

- certain words like “guarantee” in all caps

- words like “unsubscribe,” “leave,” and other list removal phrases

- using font sizes that are 2 + or bigger

- background in an HTML email that isn’t white

- HTML font color is gray, red, yellow, green, blue, magenta or “unknown to us”

- claims compliance with spam regulations or with US Senate Bill 1618 or House Bill 4176

- urges you to call now or claims you can be removed from the list

- the phrases: what are you waiting for, while supplies last, while you sleep

- asks you to click below

- uses a Nigerian scam key phrase such as “million dollars”

- money back guarantee

Eegads...

How can you avoid all of these? The answer is you don’t have to. SpamAssassin uses a rules-based system to filter mail headers and body text.

Basically, it’s a point system that assigns positive (it’s spam) or negative (it’s not spam) scores to a long list of trigger words, phrases and message headers. You have to reach a certain total before your email message is classified as spam and diverted.

If you’re accumulating negative as well as positive points, you may be under the threshold. For example, using the phrase “if only it were that easy” assigns you +2.0 points. “Free preview” gives you +1.7 points while “free trial” gives you only +0.1.

KFI’s: Key Forecast Indicators

As I said in my presentation at the eMetrics / Marketing Optimization Summit, if you want to get C-Level people to start paying attention to web analytics, you have to get into the business of predicting / forecasting. Let’s face it, KPI’s are about the past, right? You don’t know “Performance” until it has already happened.

But C-folks don’t really care much about what has already happened, because they can’t do anything about it. What they really want to know is what you think will happen. For example, ideas like “sales pipeline” - a forecast. If you start forecasting - and you are right - you will get attention from the C-folks pronto. The web is a great forecasting tool because it’s so frictionless; it tends to provide tangible signals before many other parts of the business.

So: Do you have any KFI’s - Key Forecast Indicators?

I have one for the Lab Store, and it tripped about 2 months ago. It’s the Unwanted Exotic Index (UEI).

As part of the Lab Store, we run a moderated board where people who want to give up exotic pets can post the availability, and people looking for exotic pets can post requests. Typically, the ratio of people giving them up to wanting them is about .25 - for every post looking to give an exotic up, there are 4 posts looking to adopt.

A couple of months ago, this ratio starts popping higher. A couple of weeks ago it hit 1.25 - for every 5 posts looking to give up an exotic there were 4 posts looking to adopt. The last time something like this happened was prior to the mini-recession of 2004, when the Unwanted Exotic Index tagged 1.0 for a short time. After this happened, our sales got soft about 2 - 3 months later.

Why is the UEI predictive? Let’s go through the logic - my logic, anyway!

Keeping certain types of exotic animals can be a strain on a family, both from a time and money perspective. They can be high maintenance. On the margin, as the economy gets tougher and people look to manage household budgets, these pets can get some scrutiny - particularly if kids have lost interest or gone off to college. So more go up for adoption. At the same time, requests to adopt fall, as families who might have considered an exotic pet put the “owning decision” on hold. Taken together, these decisions cause the UEI to spike higher. Both giving up and deciding not to own exotic pets affects Lab Store revenues “expected” in the future. So the UEI ends up being predictive of future demand.

Makes sense to me.

Now, I’m a pretty good student of macroeconomics and pay attention to many economic indicators, especially predictive ones like the ECRI’s US Weekly Leading Index. If you’re an analyst, you should too; economic indicators provide context for any analysis you might have to do, and clients often want to understand the impact of these external issues on their business.

As far as the Lab Store specifically, I don’t usually pay much attention to the macroeconomic cycles. The pet business tends to be insensitive to the economic cycle; people don’t stop caring for pets as the economy wobbles up and down. That’s why it’s such a good business - if you can find a niche. So I don’t get too concerned when I see these predictive macroeconomic indexes forecasting a slowing economy.

However, what we have here with our Unwanted Exotic Index is a confirmation of the broader economic forecasting tools that is specific to our exotic pet business. That makes me sit up and take notice! Looks like our business is setting up for a repeat of the 2004 slowdown - the last time the UEI spiked like this. Why is this important? Because I can do something with this knowledge. I can re-allocate and re-prioritize based on this knowledge. For example, I can move from a “grow bigger” to a “grow smarter” mode.

And please note: this KFI has nothing to do with traffic or sales on the web site; traffic and sales are “rear view”. By the time you see the sales slow down it will be too late to do anything about it. And that’s why the C-folks don’t care much about web analytics reports.

You could track an index like the UEI with a web analytics tool, but you’d have to come up with the idea first. My point is you will probably have to look outside the usual “rear view” metrics to find one with forecasting ability. I caution you not to substitute a “survey” for a predictive model; people’s opinions are a notoriously lagging indicator. You’ll be up to your ears in the slowdown before people start turning bearish.

So: Do you have any KFI’s - Key Forecast Indicators? Tell us about them.

If you don’t have any KFI’s, now is the time to start looking for them. What can you see now that predicts what will happen in the future? Think about the business, think about the data sources, and put together a bunch of different ideas. Track them back a couple of years and post them monthly going forward. You’re bound to find something predictive. Perhaps something about posting, like the UEI. Recommendations / comments as a percent of visitors or something like that.

If you’re stuck, start with a simple “engagement” idea - percent visitors / members / customers who visited / logged in / bought in the past 90 days. If this percentage is falling, so will your business in the next 3 - 6 months. If your business has a lot of seasonality in it, look to year-over-year comps of the same metric.

If you’ve never played this game before, you won’t have proof your KFI’s work until after the business is in the soup, but you’ll be ready with accurate and actionable KFI’s the next time around!

Stand and Deliver

If the Brady Bunch taught us anything about public speaking, it's that you should always imagine your audience in their underwear. Okay. So there you are, up at the podium, nothing but bras and boxers as far as the eye can see. Now what?

Social media expert Chris Brogan has some ideas about what to do next:

• Lead with humor. You have two minutes to make your audience love you. Skip boring preambles and corny jokes. Win them over with a funny story highlighting your keen sense of self-deprecation.
• Follow up with a question. But not because you want an answer—no, your goal is to get everyone thinking about themselves. "I want you to be connected and engaged to what I'm saying," writes Brogan. "If I'm getting you to stir up internal memories, I've snuck in." Clever, huh?
• Go for a walk. Unless you're saddled with a fixed microphone, interact with the audience by moving around. No fidgeting.
• Speak like a broadcaster. Vary your volume, stick to short statements and pause once in a while. Banish um and uh from your vocabulary unless you want to put your audience to sleep.
• End with an "idea handle." Give your audience an idea they can implement as soon as they leave. They've given you their time—make it worth their while.

Chris Brogan's savvy approach to public speaking gets your audience thinking about how your ideas impact their lives—that's Marketing Inspiration.

See the full article at Chris Brogan's site.

MP 'Classic Truths': If You Don't Measure, You Can't Manage: The Best Metrics for Managing Marketing Performance

by Laura Patterson

Without metrics to track performance, marketing and business plans are ineffective.

Businesses need to know which success factors require measuring, and they must understand the differences between measurements (the raw outcomes of quantification), metrics (ideal standards for measurement), and benchmarks (the standards by which all others are measured).

For marketers, three primary metrics constitute a starting point for tracking their performance. Once companies are aware of their competitive position, their desired outcomes, and what it will take to achieve those outcomes, companies will be better able to identify the success factors, benchmarks, and appropriate metrics to meet their target.

Why Measure?

Metrics are a part of our everyday lives: from our heart rate, to our bank balances; from our weight, to the gas mileage on our cars. If we don't pay attention to these numbers, we create a risk for getting a heart attack, being overdrawn, or running out of gas.

The same is true in the business environment. If a company doesn't identify and track important performance measures, it increases its risks.

Metrics provide a means to assess progress; they provide valuable data points against which the marketing organization can track its progress. Metrics demonstrate accountability and allow marketers to better know, act upon, align efforts, and reduce market exposure. Metrics enable the marketing organization to truly serve as the eyes and ears of the company.

And, more importantly, establishing and tracking metrics will have a positive influence on the leadership's satisfaction with Marketing and the marketer's ability to secure funds. Only 38% of US executives say their companies are now measuring the results of their marketing efforts, according to a study of senior business executives conducted in the second quarter of 2004 by Blackfriar.

Will measurement actually change investment in Marketing? Blackfriar compared planned marketing spending for companies that measure marketing with those that don't. The result? Firms that measure marketing planned to spend an average of 41% of their annual marketing budgets during the second quarter. Those that don't measure planned to spend only 33%; apparently, they felt more comfortable planning to spend their marketing dollars than those that don't measure.

Measuring marketing also has an impact on the satisfaction of senior executives regarding their investment in Marketing. Some 16% of executives at companies that measure marketing said they were dissatisfied with their marketing efforts. But at firms that don't measure marketing, 28% said they were dissatisfied.

The simple act of measuring marketing results reduced the dissatisfaction of senior executives significantly. In other words, measurement allowed Marketing to prove its worth.

Defining Metrics

The world of metrics can be confusing for people new to these concepts. To better understand metrics and how they work, several terms must be defined:

• Measurements are the raw outcome of a quantification process, such as a company's numbers, ratios, and percentages.
• Metrics are the standards for measurement, providing target values that a company must achieve to reach a certain level of success.
• Benchmarks are the best measurements to aspire to, the standard by which all others are measured. Companies that set benchmarks in their industries are the ones often lauded in "Top Ten" and "Most Admired" lists and articles.

A good example of a marketing benchmark can be traced back to the early 1990s. Over a decade ago, market research firm IntelliQuest (now Millward Brown IntelliQuest) conducted a customer satisfaction research study for the personal computing industry.

The firm spoke to customers who rated the companies in the industry, which resulted in a measurement on a one-to-nine scale. It then learned that 84% of users who rated their satisfaction as a seven, an eight, or a nine would consider the same brand for their next purchase. Seven, eight, or nine became the metrics that companies aspired to attain. The benchmark was nine.

Three Metrics Gauges

To determine which success factors to measure and the appropriate metrics for each, marketers must have a clear understanding of the company's goals. A young company looking to gain traction in the market is focused on factors different from those of a more established company wanting to improve its customer relationships.

For those beginning to use metrics, listed below are four key performance indicators that support three metrics gauges: market share, lifetime value, and brand equity.

These gauges are directly linked to the three specific performance areas that Marketing can impact: acquisition, penetration, and monetization.

The first responsibility of Marketing is to identify and enable the organization to acquire customers, without whom there is no revenue, without which there is no business. Acquisition enables the company to increase its market share.

Although Marketing may not close the deal, marketing strategies move the customer through the buying process, from awareness to consideration. Four key performance indicators enable you to address market share:

1. Customer growth rate
2. Share of preference
3. Share of voice
4. Share of distribution

The second responsibility of Marketing is to keep the customers that the company acquires and increase the value of those customers. It is expensive and ultimately disastrous to have customers coming in one door only to go out another. High customer churn signals a variety of problems and hinders your ability to create leverage.

The following performance indicators will help your drive these penetration-related metrics:

1. Frequency and recency of purchase
2. Share of wallet
3. Purchase value growth rate
4. Customer tenure
5. Customer loyalty and advocacy

The third responsibility of Marketing is monetization. Up until the 1970s, a company's value was determined by its book value. Over time, intangible assets, such as a company's intellectual property, customer value, franchises, goodwill, and so on have had an increasing effect on a company's market value.

Marketing professionals can improve the market value of their company by improving their performance in four key areas:

1. Price premium
2. Customer franchise value
3. Rate of new product acceptance
4. Net advocate score

A recently published report, "Measures + Metrics: Assessing Marketing Value + Impact," by Glazier, Nelson and O'Sullivan, corroborates these gauges and performance metrics. In their report for the CMO Council, the authors specified four performance metrics:

1. Business acquisition/demand generation, which can include such metrics as market share gains, lead acquisition and deal flow
2. Product innovation/acceptance, which can include market adoption rates, user attachment and affinity, loyalty and word-of-mouth
3. Corporate image and brand identity, which can include growth in brand value and financial equity, awareness and retention of employees
4. Corporate vision and leadership, which can include share of voice and discussion, retention and relevance of messaging, and tonality of coverage

Regardless of which model companies choose to deploy, to fully capitalize on the benefits of metrics they should consider establishing a continuous process in which metrics are collected, analyzed, and reported on a regular basis.

Over time, metrics can reveal valuable information about which marketing tactics are most effective, what types of prospects are most likely to buy, which customers are most profitable, and how the market in general develops over time.

Also important to remember is that metrics themselves can change over time. As the market and the company evolve, marketers must diligently review and adjust their metrics.

Innovative competitors will continue to set higher benchmarks, ratcheting up the acceptable range of metrics. The airline industry's 45-minute airplane turnaround time was considered standard until Southwest Airlines decided to do it in 15 minutes. Some metrics may become outdated, and newer metrics and methods of measurement will require attention.

To work without metrics is to work blindly. A lack of metrics makes it extremely difficult to assess whether a course of action is working or needs adjustment. The proper use of metrics can provide guidance to help a company expand market position, lower costs, and retain the best customers so that the company can ultimately set the benchmarks in its industry.

Note: This MarketingProfs "Classic Truths" article was first published on November 23, 2004.

Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.

Published on October 23, 2007

Breaking News: Advertising Is Dead!

by Barry A. Densa

Don't agree?

Please ask your wife, husband, or significant other—in other words, the nearest typical consumer—to answer the following seven questions:

1. Does viewing pop-up ads on your computer curl your toes in orgasmic delight? Yes or No?
2. Does a mailbox filled with junk mail cause your palms to itch and sweat with nervous anticipation? Yes or No?
3. Do you suffer from outbursts of violent anger when a TV commercial is interrupted by a TV movie? Yes or No?
4. Do you prance around the parking lot with ecstatic abandon whenever you find a flyer on your car's windshield? Yes or No?
5. Does keeping a phone next to your soup spoon on your dinner table (for fear of missing the next telemarketer's call) help your digestion? Yes or No?
6. Do you drink pots of black coffee at 10 pm so you can stay awake to watch 30-minute infomercials at 4 am? Yes or No?
7. Do you drool at the thought of spending $300 on an iPhone just so you can see interactive ads on its big, cool screen? Yes or No?

Have I made my point? Yes or No?

Advertising is dead. If you're a marketer... save your money.

Consumers have been over-advertised to and over-sold.

Unless you're conducting a white sale, fire sale, or going-out-of-business sale—and halving or quartering your prices—advertising won't get you a bang, a whimper- or a nickel for your buck. Not anymore.

The only ads that still earn their keep are those in newspapers and on supermarket windows:

Big SALE
Buy 1 Can of Campbell Soup for 89 Cents
and Get a 2nd Can—FREE!
Supplies limited!

Or something like that.

Beyond that, the first reaction that most consumers have when viewing any other type ad is to not believe anything it says.

And if they have no need, desire, or knowledge of you, your product ,or your service, their second reaction is to play basketball: Their arm and hand muscles reflexively contract, causing them to roll up your ad (even if figuratively) into a tight little ball and shoot for the nearest basket.

Beware the Consumer's Anti-Ad Third Eye

Because the consumer has become so desensitized to advertisements in general, if you don't shove your ad, sales letter, or flyer directly and firmly into their hands—they won't even notice it.

It's as if they've developed an anti-ad third eye that instinctively alerts them to an ad's presence and then immediately shoots a signal to the brain, instructing the other two eyes not to see it.

For example: How often, when surfing the Web, have you run across a Web page with a bright red, 40-word, one-sentence headline, ending with an exclamation mark or two or three?

Unless searching for that particular Web page, the average information-seeking web-surfer will immediately recognize the site as an ad and click away—without even reading two words of it.

The same thing happens when reading the newspaper, or driving past a billboard on the highway. Consumers simply refuse to look at the ads.

So What's a Marketer to Do?

Advertorialize!

I'll explain...

The success of the Internet has proven one thing above all else: Human beings, who include consumers, are addicted to information.

Google—the Internet version of a library card catalog—exists, thrives, dominates, and will eventually own the world because consumers are in a constant, never-ending search for more and more information.

And why do consumers want ever more information that will convince, compel, and persuade them to a certain point of view?

So they can make the most efficient, prudent, and intelligent choice about whatever it is they want to own, possess, consume, or buy.

Yes, buy.

Though consumers hate to be sold to, they nevertheless love to buy.

And their decision to buy is most effectively influenced when they are provided with information that supports, confirms. and increases their already resident desire to buy!

Enter the Advertorial

The advertorial is an ad disguised as an editorial. A cunning wolf in sheep's clothing. It's roughly 80% useful, compelling, and persuasive information—and 20% sales pitch.

It will never mention the name of the product, its features, or benefits in the headline. Because that would be too obvious—it would scream "ad" and immediately activate the consumer's anti-ad third eye.

Instead, in a newspaper, in a direct mail promotion, or on the Internet the advertorial will attract attention and readership by merely dangling the tantalizing promise of free actionable and profitable information... if only the reader would continue to read on.

An advertorial headline won't scream "LOSE 10LBS OF FAT IN 10 DAYS OR YOUR MONEY BACK!!"

Instead, the advertorial headline will read "John Hopkins Research PhD discovers active ingredient in ice cream that causes rapid weight loss."

Then the advertorial will proceed to show and prove, in pseudo-journalistic fashion, the What, Why, Who, Where, and When of how the product or service does precisely what the consumer wants and needs.

The advertorial delivers valuable, documented information that relentlessly leads readers to the inevitable conclusion that the solution to their problem or need is... whatever it is you're selling.

It doesn't look, taste, or smell like an ad, and the consumer's anti-ad third eye will never see it coming.

Try it... you'll like it.

Barry A. Densa is a freelance marketing and sales copywriter. Visit WritingWithPersonality.com to see samples of "salesmanship in print."

Published on October 9, 2007

18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make a Difference

by Jerry Bader

If you've been looking high and low for the secret to Web success, today is your lucky day. These "18 Web-Marketing Concepts That Make a Difference" may just give you an edge on your competition—or an edge, period.

So if the same old left-brain thinking that everybody else is using just doesn't get you where you want to be, try these creative concepts on for size.

1. Think audiences not markets

What's your market? Hire a consultant to help you with your Web-business problems, and one of the first questions he or she will ask is, What's your market? How about 18-34-year-old, single male college graduates with a dog named Spot; or maybe 45-59-year-old married women who hate their husbands and can't get their adult children to move out of the house. Maybe, just maybe, they're asking the wrong question.

The Web isn't about markets, it's about audiences. Audiences need to be entertained, enlightened, and engaged; and if your Web site doesn't, you're never going to achieve what you want.

Time to rethink how you're delivering your marketing message. Start treating Web visitors like an audience, not a market, and you might just find what it takes to be successful on the Web.

2. Think people not customers

You know all those visitors you attract to your Web site with your brilliant search engine optimization schemes? How many actually purchase anything? Stop treating visitors as if they are already customers and start treating them like what they are—people. That's right, people. You know, the two-legged funny creatures with wants, needs, desires, and maybe even a few bucks to spend.

Customers are always looking for a deal and they're leery of Web sites that only want to take their hard-earned cash. Treat your Web visitors like people who can satisfy their wants, needs, and desires with your assistance... and guess what? Maybe it will make a difference: one small step for Web credibility, one giant leap for Web success.

3. Think experiences not features

Bought any good features lately? Didn't think so. You would think the way business pushes them that features are exactly what people are looking for; but nobody buys features, they don't even buy solutions (doesn't that whole solution provider nonsense really get to you after a while?).

What people really buy are experiences: hopefully, positives ones. Whether it's soft ice cream or a new accounting program, what people are paying for is the experience your product or service provides.

Does your Web site offer an experience? Does it explain the experience your product or service delivers? If it doesn't, then you really haven't got anything anybody wants.

4. Think emotion not logic

Think you're a logical person, always making rational decisions based on practical criteria, and bottom-line results? So tell me what was the functional thinking that went into the purchase of those leather pants you bought last year, or that 60-inch plasma television you bought just to watch the big game?

Let's get real. You make purchasing decisions based on what you want, and then justify them with seemingly sensible rationalizations, just like everybody else. So stop trying to appeal only to the practical, logical aspects of bean-counter sales, and start pushing the feel-good aspects of emotional marketing.

If you're trying to appeal to an audience that gets its only satisfaction out of acquiring the most features for the least cost, then you're marketing to the wrong audience.

5. Think memories not promotions

Most animals live in the moment, whereas human beings live in the past. Our here and now and our plans for the future are based on our experiences, our histories, and our memories.

We take pictures of our kids, holidays, and special events; we commemorate birthdays, anniversaries, promotions, and milestones of all kinds. Even the significance of our prized possessions is centered on the fact that those mere objects represent memories of the people, places, and events that shaped our lives.

Real marketing, the kind that creates long-term clients and customer relationships, is not about coupons, sale promotions, or deep discounts; it's about delivering memories.

6. Think marketing not SEO

Okay, here's one you've heard from us before: Think marketing—not search engine optimization.

Sure you've got to drive as many people to your Web site as possible, but if your marketing message is so confused, unfocused, and hard to comprehend because of all the keyword density and SEO tricks, then what have you really accomplished other than wasting people's time? And people get really upset when you waste their time.

7. Think stickiness not hits

It's not about how many hits you get on your Web site, it's about how long people stay. If visitors remain on your site long enough to get your marketing message, then you must have said something worth listening to; and if visitors get the message, your site has done its job.

If your Web site delivers the message, then you can expect the email inquiries and phone calls to start flowing, but it's still up to you and your sales staff to close the sale: People close sales, not Web sites.

8. Think stories not pitches

Did you hear the one about the farmer's daughter and the search engine optimizer? Stories, everyone loves stories. In fact, before the invention of the Gutenberg press, oral storytelling was the way knowledge got passed down from one generation to the next, and how news was sent from one region to another.

Now that we have this multimedia Web environment, we can continue the tradition of real people who deliver creative audio and video presentations that capture the imagination and drive home the marketing message so your audience won't forget who you are.

Nothing informs, engages, and entertains like a good story: Sounds to me like one heck of a way to sell to an audience desperate for meaningful communication.

9. Think focus not confusion

There you go again, telling everyone who will listen all the wonderful things you and your company can do. Trouble is, telling them all those things just confuses them.

What is the product or service that is most important to your company, the one you are determined to sell to your audience? That's the one you want to talk about. That's the one you want to devote your marketing effort to promoting. That's the one you want people to think about when they hear your name or see your logo.

Focus your communication ,else your message will just be a forgettable, incomprehensible blur.

10. Think campaigns not ads

Isolated one-time advertisements are like one-night-stands: exciting for a while, but ultimately unfulfilling and devoid of meaning. Your audience is looking for marriage, not a short-term fling.

Your marketing has to woo your visitors with long-term campaigns that tell your story and deliver your focused message; audiences expect to be courted and counseled with meaningful communication. And that takes time and commitment.

If you're spending money on just ads, you might as well be throwing that money down the drain. There is a better way. So if you're looking for a long-term relationship with your audience, think campaigns—not ads.

11. Think message not hype

What message are you delivering to your online visitors? Are you telling them you've got the best product, at the best price, with the best staff, and world-class customer service? Is that what you saying? Guess what? Nobody cares, because nobody believes you.

There is only one way to show people you're the best and that is to prove it; but here's the catch, you can't prove it until they become customers. Whoops.

OK, so what's the solution? How about a real marketing message that speaks to what your audience really wants. It's not about you, it's about them.

12. Think personality not banality

Does your Web site just lie there like a lox: you know, that cold, dead fish that often comes with a bagel? No personality, just more of the same tedious, dull, dreary, mind-numbing, tiresome, lackluster, monotonous stuff everybody else has. Boring!

This is the new Web, so if you can't get with it you'd better get out, because you're wasting your time and everybody else's.

You're so worried about downloading times that you forgot to put anything on your site worth seeing or hearing. Check your logs. If people are jumping ship faster than rats on a burning ship, it's time to try something new—like some compelling content.

13. Think branding not copyrights

Hey, I love the Beatles. I grew up with them, and I have all their records—yea, records, like vinyl, not CDs. And guess what, I've also got a Mac, in fact I've got a bunch of them, not to mention iPods and other assorted Apple gizmos and gadgets. And you know something? I've never once got John, Paul, George, or Ringo confused with Steve Jobs. Amazing!

Worry just a little less about all that small-print stuff and more on building a memorable brand that people will remember, and that nobody will mistake for some johnny-come-lately imposter.

14. Think positioning not slogan

It's funny how people have a position on almost everything: You name the issue and people will have a definite opinion on what they think, except when it comes to their businesses. Just because you have a cute slogan that you print under your logo doesn't mean you own a position in your audience's minds.

It seems businesses can't stand to make a definitive statement about who they are and what they do. Why is that? Afraid they'll lose a customer, I guess; but if people don't understand exactly what you do, and why they should be doing business with you, then they're never going to be customers anyway.

No company can be all things to all people, and companies that try... never go anywhere. Tell people who you are and what you do, and forget about all the other stuff; it just gets in the way.

15. Think sensory appeal not cents appeal

Do you want people to sit up and take notice of what you have to say? Do you want people to actually remember what you're telling them? If so, you'd better appeal to their senses, and we're talking about sights and sounds.

Deliver all your juicy, got-to-have content in an audio and video presentation that will stick in people's heads.

If all you're doing is appealing to their desire to spend less, then maybe they aren't the customers you're looking for anyway. Nobody can afford to sell for less all the time, every time.

16. Think identity not logos

Is your company the equivalent of the invisible man? You're on the Web, but nobody cares because you're not saying anything worth listening to; and if they do see you, you are instantly forgettable.

You've got to have an identity, a personality, an image—and there is no better way to create that identity than with a video of a real person delivering your marketing message in an entertaining, memorable manner.

17. Think entertainment not biz-speak

Speaking of entertaining... you cannot engage, enlighten, or entertain if everything you present sounds and looks like it came from some b-school textbook or one of those self-help courses on direct marketing guaranteed to make you a millionaire in only three weeks.

Every business has a story to tell, and it can be presented in a compelling way with a little imagination and creativity. And yes, even B2B businesses can rise above the mundane and deadly boring if they take the time and make the effort.

18. Think communication not copy

Last but not least, let's all remember that Web sites are about communication. If you've got nothing to say, nothing to offer, or are afraid to say what you can do for your audience, then how do you expect to be successful?

Filling your Web pages with keyword-dense prose and instantly forgettable sales copy is not going to win the day.

Whether you are presenting your case in text, audio, or video, it had better be interesting and enlightening—even text can be entertaining if written with style and attitude.

When Web sites fail, they fail because they do not communicate a realistic, believable, convincing marketing message.

A note to Web site adventurers

If you missed the discovery of the "Lost Brad Tapes," follow the adventures of fellow Web site entrepreneur Brad and how he tried to find the secret to Web site success. It's time well wasted.

Jerry Bader is senior partner in MRPwebmedia (www.mrpwebmedia.com), a Web site design firm that specializes in Web audio and video.

Published on September 25, 2007

Beyond the 4Ps: The 5Ts of Marketing Operations

by Adrian Carol Ott

CMOs of global companies are now confronted with unparalleled challenges—and opportunities:

Marketing accountability: It is no secret that CEOs are demanding greater ROI on their marketing investments. Consequently, many CMOs are driving initiatives to make the marketing function more accountable and measurable.

Globalization: Serving global markets necessitates that marketing coordinate campaigns across continents to leverage cost and synchronize messaging; however, campaigns must also meet local needs and norms.

Complex consumer expectations: Consumers have become increasingly vigilant about spam and privacy. Compliance with the regulations of each country and state is mandatory.

Mergers and acquisition (M&A) integration: Frequent M&A places constant demands to rapidly integrate messaging, Web, and collateral of newly acquired companies into the corporate brand. Inadequate marketing budgets frequently associated with acquisitions place additional stress on existing budget priorities.

New marketing technology: The advent of new internet technology has enabled unprecedented interactive dialog with customers. This presents a huge opportunity for forward-thinking companies to target and reach customers in personalized ways. However, new technologies must be implemented and integrated across the world with regional marketing teams that execute campaigns locally.

Stakeholder agreement: Coordination with regional marketing groups, product business units, and sales is a major task. Processes are needed to prioritize and support new product introductions and demand generation within marketing budget constraints. Terms such as "What constitutes a qualified lead?" need to be standardized worldwide. Otherwise, roll-up, visibility, and accountability via actionable CMO and campaign dashboards become nearly impossible.

Marketing Operations Emerges as a Discipline

Faced by these demands, many CMOs have commissioned a marketing operations organization to tackle these challenges. Originally designated to create metrics and dashboards for accountability, marketing operations is increasingly being treated by leading companies as a foundation to the marketing function.¹

Marketing operations is the only function (other than the busy CMO) that manages marketing from an end-to-end perspective. Marketing functions such as PR, product marketing and regional marketing only see a portion of the big picture.

"Marketing operations ensures marketing is run as a business," states a VP of Marketing Operations at a major Silicon Valley firm, "We strive to enable the marketing organization to be streamlined in day-to-day processes so they have time to think, focus on the customer and to innovate."²

The 5Ts of Marketing Operations

What constitutes marketing operations? Based on our work with clients, and in our research, we have found that marketing operations is an emerging dimension to the marketing mix. Enabled by new processes and technology, it goes beyond the 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and 3Cs (Customers, Competitors, Corporation³), to fully round out the marketing mix.

The 5Ts of Marketing Operations:

Total Strategy

Techniques & Processes

Tracking & Predictive Modeling

Technology

Talent

By approaching marketing operations across these dimensions, CMOs have an integrated approach to enable marketing worldwide.

Let's describe the 5Ts in more detail.

Total Strategy

This area involves strategy development in the product portfolio. It is not uncommon for large companies to have dozens of products in their portfolios—some have hundreds. Managing investments and priorities across the portfolio is paramount.

• What constitutes effective strategy development for each product?
• What are the key elements needed in each plan to win in the marketplace and to roll this out worldwide?
• Where do we "double-down" our investment? How do we gain market share with our resources? Where do we reduce investment?
• Does the organization reflect how our business should optimally interact with customers? Are there new ways we can improve our dialog and reach?

Chief of staff for the CMO: Based on our work with clients and research, the head of marketing operations in a number of companies takes on this role—driving the organizational agenda, identifying "white spaces," and ensuring measurement results are discussed at review meetings.

Techniques and Processes

How should information flow most effectively across the marketing organization worldwide? How do we make decisions? What are our governance processes? What is our roadmap for marketing processes next year? in three years?

• Fiscal planning processes and reviews
• How should budgets be allocated?
• How should we optimally interact with our customers? What are the touch points?
• How should information flow within marketing and with other stakeholders such as sales and business units?
• Standards and criteria for evaluating new initiatives and campaigns.
• What are product launch categories (e.g., criteria for "A," "B," or "C" launches)
• Can we apply Six-Sigma to our processes?
• Tracking and Predictive Modeling
• How do we make marketing more accountable? How do we measure campaigns and ensure better predictability of outcomes?
• How are we doing today? Metrics and dashboards.
• Forecasting—What are leading indicators of the future? How can we better target and predict? e.g., data-mining customer databases.

Technology

How do we implement technology across the globe to enable effective customer dialog, demand generation and measurement? What are the business requirements for IT? How does technology support the marketing and sales process road map for the next three years? How do we integrate with sales technology?

• Internet/Web/e-commerce
• Consolidating/rationalizing customer databases
• Online customer forums
• Marketing resource management software Analytics/decision-making software
• Marketing research databases, etc.

Talent

How do we ensure our marketing personnel are trained and able to work with new marketing technologies and processes? How can we enable them to make the right decisions based on analytics and campaign scorecards?

• What are the roles and responsibilities of each talent community?
• How do these communities interact? Where are the hand-offs?
• Training strategy with a marketing skills curriculum across the marketing function
• Ensuring balancing between the art and science of marketing

The 5Ts Transform the Future of Marketing

Although foundational, the 5Ts have a deep and significant impact on customer relationships. For example, by implementing integrated technology for demand generation and customer database access, regional marketing personnel can build innovative campaigns on top of a marketing operations infrastructure. By tracking the success of a campaign, companies will realize better customer targeting and ROI; they learn from prior successes and failures.

Although it can be a multiyear process for large organizations to implement all of the 5Ts, a holistic, integrated approach to marketing operations gains CMOs greater accountability and ROI for their organizations worldwide. It enables them to "run marketing as a business."

The 5Ts add a critical foundation to the marketing function, enabling marketing operations to support CMOs in tackling contemporary challenges and opportunities. The 5Ts are dramatically transforming the marketing function and changing how marketing will be conducted in the future.

Endnotes:

¹ In a number of business-to-business-focused firms, marketing operations is combined with the sales operation function to promote integration of the two groups. Although organizationally integrated, the purpose of marketing operations remains the same.

² HBS N. CA Marketing & Sales Roundtable, "Marketing Operations: How It Will Transform Marketing Forever," Panel Discussion with VPs of Marketing Operations from Symantec, Cisco, BEA, and a consumer packaged goods expert, June 20, 2006.

³ The 3Cs have been used in other forms and described in different ways. For example, we have heard "Communication" used as a "C." Our description is what appears to be most consistent in the literature. Other forms could be substituted for the 3Cs and have the same effect. The intent here is to avoid debate on this element, as it would diminish the central topic.

Adrian Carol Ott is CEO of Exponential Edge Inc. (www.exponentialedge.com).

Published on September 25, 2007

Quality Metrics Enable Marketing's Ability to Influence Strategic Direction

by Laura Patterson

Various studies for the past several years from the Association of National Advertisers, Frost & Sullivan, IDC, and the CMO Council, among others, have found that CEOs are demanding more accountability from marketing. While most marketers are measuring something, survey results indicate there is room for improvement regarding metrics and the quality of these metrics.

In fact, results from VisionEdge Marketing's 6th annual Marketing Performance Survey found that only 17% of the 136 executives and marketing professional indicated that their CEO would give marketing an A. In addition, this study and others continue to suggest that a gap remains between a company's business goals and the metrics marketing uses to measure their impact on these goals. Companies continue to struggle with the contradiction between priorities and action.

The need and opportunity remains for marketing to improve the linkage between marketing expenditures and delivered results.

"Marketing must improve its value to justify its existence as a centralized function," according to Elana Anderson, a principal analyst at Forrester Research. If we don't make our case and develop and communicate quality metrics, we may find the days of marketing as a standalone department numbered and instead find ourselves absorbed into sales, finance, or some other function.

It's not like this is a new phenomenon. The concept of measuring marketing has been around for a long time. The question is what should we measure and what metrics are best?

In 2001, James Gregory's article in the Journal of Brand Management shared a proprietary model that linked various financial factors and corporate images to stock prices, sales, and market share. Research at VisionEdge Marketing has found that most companies fail to measure such things as cost to acquire, order value, share of wallet, churn rate, brand equity, and other key business variables that marketing impacts. Rather, marketers have a tendency to measure such things as response rate, demo participation, event traffic, number of new contacts or leads, number of press hits, cost per lead, and lead aging.

While these metrics offer some insight into the results of specific programs, they do not link marketing to the business objectives. In fact, our studies indicate that only about one in four marketers measure marketing's impact on the business and nearly two-thirds of marketing plans do not even include metrics.

A Five-Point Continuum

Forrester Research, Marketing Management Analytics, and the Association of National Advertisers conducted an online survey to find out how marketing professionals leverage marketing analytics. Some 50% of the respondents indicated that measurement remains the hardest part of marketing and 51% are dissatisfied with how they measure marketing ROI. Yet nearly all of the respondents realize that measuring marketing is important and influences senior management's confidence in Marketing personnel and programs.

To make progress on the marketing-measurement front, marketing professionals must shift from tactically based metrics to metrics that are more linked to business outcomes. The measures must include both financial and non-financial goals.

This figure illustrates the continuum of marketing metrics and how marketing metrics are evolving:

Starting at the bottom left and working up and to the right, we can use this illustration as a framework to explore how marketing metrics are evolving from tactical to strategic. Activity-based metrics refer to those things we can count. This was marketing's first foray into the world of measuring—looking for things we could count, such as press hits, click-through rates, CPMs (cost per thousand), and so on.

Most marketing plans today consist of activity lists, such as the number of ads to run, the number of tradeshows to attend, the number of new product brochures to produce, the number of research studies to conduct, and so on. Marketing then reports on the status of these activities—ads ran and responses per ad, Web site visits and downloads, contacts per tradeshow, etc. These are then turned into charts in an attempt to present the marketing dashboard.

Yet with activity-based metrics all we have is a colorful status report and no information on the impact of these activities on the business. The company cannot make any key business decisions or determine whether strategies are working.

Operational metrics, the next level, is a step forward. These metrics focus on improving the efficiency of the organization. Typical metrics in this stage include cost per lead, lead aging, leads per sales rep, and campaign payback. The goal is to squeeze out any inefficiency. While this is a noble pursuit and an important one, marketing efficiency alone will not make a company successful. What really "moves the needle" in terms of business performance is how well its marketing identifies product opportunities, positions these products, builds market traction against the competition, and fosters customer loyalty. Performance outweighs efficiency.

Both activity-based and operational metrics are a good place to start, but neither serves as an accurate indicator of strategic effectiveness. Neither enables the organization to determine which efforts are having the greatest impact; neither provides a quality control process, focuses on marketing's contribution to the company's overall valuation, or serves as a good way to demonstrate marketing's accountability.

To address those issues, marketing executives and professionals need to evolve to outcome-based metrics to develop quality measures. Outcome-based metrics focus on three specific and common business outcomes: market share, customer lifetime value, and brand equity.

Once we accomplish a systematic approach to outcome-based metrics, we will have the basis for advancing to leading indicator metrics—those that help us determine the likelihood of a particular outcome and eventually creative models to use metrics to predict outcomes.

And once we've mastered leading indicator metrics, we're only a few financial models away from predictive models—those that allow us to predict a business outcome.

Creating Your Marketing Executive Dashboard

Marketing performance management and metrics tracking would be incomplete without a way to capture and report the metrics—that is, a dashboard. Ideally, metrics indicate the business health of your organization. A dashboard is the visual representation of a firm's health and provides a snapshot between actual performance and the goals. A good dashboard facilitates action. It not only reports on the metrics being monitored but also serves as a vehicle to help decide on what actions are required and their priorities. Yet, according to a 2005 study conducted by CMO Magazine, three-fourths of marketers have no formal scorecard.

Creating a dashboard is more than just producing a few charts and graphs. A good marketing dashboard serves as a visual and diagnostic vehicle that communicates marketing's effectiveness and impact on business goals. Every metric provides a specific perspective on the firm's business. Some metrics indicate whether there is a problem today, and others help alert marketing to a potential problem down the road. The status of the marketing organization on the metrics continuum will impact what kind of dashboard it can create. As the business goals change, it will be important to revisit the dashboard to make sure the dashboard metrics are still in alignment with the business needs and goals.

As companies progress along the metrics continuum from activity-based to outcome-based, the dashboard will also evolve. Outcome-based metrics involve a dashboard that hones in on the primary business outcomes: market share, customer value and shareholder value. Because these metrics tend to be more market centric, the dashboard begins to provide more strategic insight and direction.

The greatest challenge for the marketing organization is how to capture the metrics. Manual aggregation of data across multiple spreadsheets comes with potential issues, ranging from error-prone reporting to poor utilization of internal resources. Moving from a spreadsheet-based system to an automated system provides greater benefits to the organization as a whole.

A mapping process helps with defining the metrics and ultimately the dashboard. As a result, most companies select metrics and a dashboard that reflects the following six categories:

1. Market growth
2. Customer value and net advocacy
3. Profitable deal flow
4. Opportunity pipeline
5. Competitive health and market value index
6. Product innovation pipeline

Regardless of the metrics you ultimately choose or the categories represented on your dashboard, a good dashboard provides insight into performance, fosters decision-making, and aligns strategy with implementation.

Measure What Matters

We began this discussion about the need for marketing to be more accountable and to develop quality metrics. Hopefully, you have some new ideas on how to focus marketing metrics around business outcomes and how to develop quality metrics that will help you provide insight into how marketing is making a contribution to the company and how to demonstrate that contribution to senior management.

As you continue on your marketing performance journey we hope these ideas lead you to...

• Focus marketing metrics around business outcomes.
• Develop quality metrics that will help you provide insight into how marketing is making a contribution to the company.
• Demonstrate that contribution to senior management.

And we hope your journey will include the following three actions:

1. Start making active progress on improving marketing performance and accountability.
2. Even if you don't have all the data, start with what you have, define your data gaps, and develop a plan to close these gaps.
3. Stop reporting on activities and tactical data around campaigns and Web traffic, and focus on climbing up the metrics continuum. It may still be important to track campaign results for an internal functional dashboard. The more you can link marketing to business outcomes, the more you can influence your company's strategic direction.

If in doubt about what to measure, select those measures that help your company make decisions and take action. When used this way, marketing metrics enable a firm to seize a competitive advantage, and they position Marketing as a strategic member of the team.

Laura Patterson (laurap@visionedgemarketing.com) is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc. (www.visionedgemarketing.com) and author of Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals and Gone Fishin': A Guide to Finding, Keeping, and Growing Profitable customers.

Published on September 18, 2007

New Interactive Tools and Tactics for the B2B Marketer

by Joe Rizzo

Because interactive marketing is inherently more addressable and measurable, B2B shouldn't wait for further proof that online channels pay off. Marketers who fail to adopt these tactics will fall behind with the online buyer acquisition as competitors move ahead with more engaged prospects.

—Forrester Research

In an online sales environment that is both increasingly competitive and cluttered, business-to-business (B2B) marketers must be able to perform two critically important tasks:

1. They must communicate a unique brand identity.
2. They must be agile enough to quickly customize lead generation and communication programs to meet their measurable objectives.

These tasks can be especially challenging for small-to-medium-sized B2B firms, as well as for divisions of very large firms. Their sales and marketing organizations often have limited budgets, and their IT departments often are not attuned to marketing.

To meet these challenges, a growing number of firms are turning to sophisticated but low-cost and high-performance interactive technologies. The new solutions allow them to create effective yet affordable landing pages and microsites that can be customized, and they avoid the need to involve IT professionals who may be too busy with other corporate requirements.

Introduction: A Challenging Online Sales Environment

B2B marketers in the United States spent $972.4 billion on on-line outreach in 2006, a 4.1% increase from the year before.¹ As a result, the online sales environment is not only intensely competitive but extremely cluttered. For example, with the email marketing industry spending $950 million on email campaigns in 2006, a 7.5% increase from the previous year, inboxes are more crowded than ever before.² Recent research by Akamai Technologies found 75% of customers surveyed would not return to Web sites that took longer than four seconds to load.³

To succeed, therefore, B2B marketers must set themselves apart from competitors in two related ways: They must establish a unique brand identity, and they must also be able to use interactive technology effectively. That is, they must be able to use the technology to attract prospects, convert prospects into qualified leads, and assist in making the sale.

In addition, one of the elements that sets B2B apart from business-to-consumer (B2C) or other marketing is time. It often requires more time for a B2B marketer to move a prospect along the sales funnel from searching for a vendor to agreeing on a contract. To succeed, B2B marketers have to be able to devote extended periods to nurturing a relationship with a prospective customer. Moreover, they must be able to provide tailored information and services to the customer throughout the lengthy lead management process.

Unfortunately, these requirements for success in the online sales environment can prove daunting for many B2B marketers.

Laura Ramos, a senior analyst who covers lead generation at Forrester Research, describes one of the challenges:

Often marketers work hard to fill the sales funnels with as many prospects as possible. In turn the sales department cherry-picks prospects it thinks are likely to close in the shortest possible time. The net result? Respondents who have longer purchasing horizons [and who often have the largest budgets] or need further information or education leak out of the funnel.⁴

Until recently, sustaining contact with prospects and providing them customized treatment throughout the lead management process required expensive technology and expertise. Many marketers have tended to rely on quick-sale customers because they lack the resources to meet the needs of those who demand more time.

Moreover, when the sales and marketing departments of smaller B2B marketers (and even some large ones) turned to their IT departments for help, they were often disappointed. They found that IT departments have sometimes been spread so thin that they could not provide sales and marketing departments the resources needed to respond quickly to customer needs. The IT departments are also unfamiliar with or uninterested in lead-management technology

As a result, large B2B marketers—armed with sizable budgets for lead-management technology, staff, and technical support—enjoyed significant advantages over their rivals.

The Emergence of New Tools

In recent years, the balance has shifted. Sophisticated new interactive technologies have emerged that are helping small-to-medium-sized B2B firms and divisions of very large firms meet the challenges of the current online sales environment. In particular, new solutions are allowing B2B marketers to use two powerful interactive tactics—landing pages and microsites—to generate leads and convert them into sales.

Microsites are page groups of personalized content that marketers can add to Web sites. As a recent report by Forrester Research notes, they allow "B2B marketers [to] target specific product features or offers to unique buyer segments."⁵

Landing pages and microsites can play a pivotal role in reaching prospects, promoting a B2B marketer's brand awareness, and managing leads in the following ways:

• Promoting brand identity. The most successful landing pages and microsites are an extension of the company's unique brand identity. They resemble the company's main Web site in layout and design.
• Gathering information. Effective landing pages and microsites make it very easy for prospects to supply qualifying information. At the same time, landing pages and microsites can convey the message that any information the marketer asks for is needed solely to better understand and meet the needs of the prospect.
• Providing crucial information. The best landing pages and microsites provide leads with information that is directly relevant to their specific needs. In addition, the data gathered by landing pages and microsites can be used to create personalized marketing collateral, such as personalized URLs (PURLs). That personalized collateral can be used in direct mail, email, and other marketing tools.

Using landing pages and microsites does not, of course, guarantee success. Success depends on speed, customization, and sustainability. The most effective B2B marketers are able to change their landing pages and microsites quickly to respond to the changing needs of individual customers and the changing contours of marketplace.

Successful marketers can customize landing pages and microsites, using the data they gather to tailor that information to the needs of specific prospects. Moreover, they can use landing pages and microsites to sustain the kind of long-term relationship with a prospect that is often needed to complete a sale.

Opportunities for B2B Marketers

Increasing numbers of marketers are exploring landing pages and microsites because new software solutions have made them affordable and agile. A recent survey by Forrester Research found that more than half the respondents "are using or piloting microsites aided by technologies, from companies like iNeoMarketing [now PluraPage] and Relevant Works, which help B2B marketers publish buyer-friendly mini-sites without specialized Web skills or information technology (IT) intervention."⁶

These new solutions provide B2B marketers with the following:

• IT independence. The technologies give marketers the ability to create microsites and landing pages without a database administrator, a Web master, or IT support or resources.
• Better response rates. Experience shows that effective landing pages can increase response rates up to 40%.
• Instantaneous live sites and URLs. The technologies give marketers the ability to create new and updated sites and pages and make them immediately available for use.
• CRM integration. The technologies allow marketers to create personalized microsites driven by the data stored in their customer relationship management solutions.
• Response-to-close insight. Microsites and landing pages can incorporate and track responses with the reporting tools already in a marketer's CRM solution.
• Data entry and duplicate elimination. The technologies allow marketers to add new leads or append preexisting contact records.
• Consistent brand use. Microsites and landing pages enable marketers to maintain domain identity, as well as a consistent campaign and Web site look and feel.
• An affordable solution. The technologies usually have incremental campaign costs, because they are offered under a pay-for-conversion pricing model.

An Example

TFC, Inc. is a northern-California-based provider of specialty marketing services that executes one-to-one marketing and customer communications programs. Its client base ranges from Fortune 1,000 to medium-sized companies, with typical annual client spend of about $750,000. Given the size of TFC clients, the sales cycle for new business is usually long and complex. Sales depend on precise, highly personalized outreach.

TFC's marketing director is responsible for creating a large corporate imprint for the firm. Recently, she planned a campaign to promote a valuable research report through an email outreach program and a postcard direct-mail follow-up. The campaign resulted in an above average response rate of 0.7%.

The marketing director wanted to see whether she could get better results, so she adopted PluraPage Landing Pages solution, combining it with Vertical Response. PluraPage enabled her, working as a team of one, to mass-produce highly personalized landing pages for target customers.

By incorporating PURLs into emails and direct mailings, TFC more than doubled its initial response rate from 0.7% to 1.8%. Moreover, all responses were directly input into Salesforce.

Next Steps

It seems clear that to succeed in an intensely competitive and increasingly cluttered online market small-to-medium-sized B2B firms and divisions of very large firms should explore the new technologies that support landing pages and microsites.

To do so, marketers should ...

• Analyze the market and the competition.
• Define your position in the market and your goals.
• Analyze the relationship between your IT department and your sales/marketing organizations.
• Interview technology solution vendors.
• Test-drive technology solutions.
• Pilot a marketing and lead management program that uses landing pages and microsites.

Endnotes:

¹ EmailLabs, "Email Marketing Statistics and Metrics"

² April 2, 2007, B-to-B Magazine "Increased ad budgets, new media services drive agency growth"

³ Extended Retail Solutions, "What's Hot on the Web"

⁴ October 4, 2006, Forrester Research, "Improving B2B Lead Management "Use Forrester's Maturity Model To Upgrade Lead Management Processes

⁵ July 19, 2007, Forrester Research, "B2B Marketers Dip A Toe Into Emerging Tactics" Further Adoption Hinges On Evidence Of Customer Use And Peer Success

⁶ Ibid.

Joe Rizzo is CEO of PluraPage (www.plurapage.com).

Published on September 11, 2007

How NOT to Launch a New Product

by Joan Schneider

Successfully launching new products gets tougher every year. In the past decade, the number of new consumer products hitting the shelves has skyrocketed by 59%, making it much more difficult for new products to win consumer attention.

If you've built a better mousetrap and plan to introduce it into this tidalwave of new products, it is more critical than ever to carefully plan and execute your launch using a strategic approach.

Here are seven classic mistakes companies make when developing new product launch campaigns. Avoiding these pitfalls will greatly increase your odds of success:

Mistake #1: Don't plan the launch until right before the release date

Nothing is more disheartening to a PR or marketing consultant than to have a client call and say, "We have a great new product ready to launch next month. Can you develop a plan by next week?"

Sadly, this happens all too often. Companies spend months—even years—developing a new product only to think about creating the launch plan as the product is rolling off the assembly line.

In a market where over 33,000 new consumer products goods were launched last year, you need a truly outstanding launch strategy to entice consumers to buy your new product. That's not something you can create overnight, so start your launch campaign planning early. If possible, begin launch planning when the product gets the "go" sign from management. That way, you'll have the same amount of time to plan and execute your launch as your production team has to manufacture the product.

Mistake #2: Carve your launch plan in stone

Few new product introductions go exactly according to plan. Manufacturing snafus occur. Distribution gets delayed. Be sure to build flexibility into your launch plan. Always ask the unpopular question, "What if the launch date gets delayed?"

Keep the launch team in daily communication with the people who are manufacturing and shipping the product so the launch campaign calendar can stay in sync with the shipping date and eventual availability of the product at retail. There is no use implementing a launch campaign touting a product that won't be on the shelves for another month due to production delays.

Mistake #3: Put the head honcho in charge of the launch

Brand managers or product managers are best suited to take primary responsibility for the launch process—not senior personnel whose multiple and competing duties can impair focus and tactical expertise. The involvement and support of the CEO, president and other senior leaders are critical to the success of a launch, but not on a daily basis.

These individuals should be kept in the loop so they can make key decisions when needed and ensure that adequate financial and human resources are being allocated to the effort. But the day-to-day leadership for the launch initiative should come from someone whose sole focus is on making the launch a success.

Mistake #4: Don't educate employees until after the news breaks elsewhere

Your employees are your most important word-of-mouth brand ambassadors. Educate them about the launch plan and prepare them to talk about the product with their family and friends so they can begin to build the buzz.

It's important to enroll these "passionistas" in your launch strategy so they can reinforce what is going to be said when the product is introduced in the trade, business and consumer press.

Mistake #5: Use the same forms of media you've always used

The number of potential media outlets that can talk about your new product grows daily. Don't just dig out the same media list you used for your last launch. There are 6,200 magazines and 240 television stations available today, with hundreds more being introduced each year. There are multiple publications and channels that cover every topic.

Get up-to-the-minute information on each media outlet to make sure its audience is your audience. Don't overlook Internet media outlets that might not have existed when you executed previous launches. And don't forget foreign-language publications and channels, especially if your product appeals to ethnic groups.

Today, the fastest growing demographic in America is the Hispanic population; take advantage of this group's love for news and programming by contacting the publications and stations that cater to this important audience.

Mistake #6: Pour all your resources into "push" strategies

According to findings in the Schneider/Boston University New Product Launch Report, a joint academic research study that examined how marketers launch new products, how you spend your launch budget is as important to success as allocating a healthy budget at the outset. Among the launches studied, those that used a "push" strategy that says "put it on the shelf and they will come" were far less effective than "pull" strategies that drove consumers into stores looking for the new product.

While trade advertising is certainly important, particularly during the sell-in phase, using a significant portion of your overall launch budget on consumer-oriented marketing initiatives will increase your odds of success.

Mistake #7: Skip the crisis plan

The number of things that can go wrong when a new product hits the market is limitless. Brainstorm all potential pitfalls to ensure your plan provides remedies for what might go wrong. Develop a crisis plan that outlines what the team would do in case of a crisis, like a recall or food contamination.

It's always better to have a crisis plan in place rather than trying to create one while facing a major issue that could tarnish your brand.

* * *

Make your next new product launch a success. Plan aggressively, execute with great care, and be flexible and ready for the unexpected!

Joan Schneider is president of Boston-based Schneider Associates and author of New Product Launch: 10 Proven Strategies. For more information, visit www.launchpr.com.

Published on July 5, 2005