Archive for the 'General' Category

Digital Success in Troubling Times

Published
by
Steve Latham
on November 20, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I had the pleasure of speaking at a luncheon hosted by AAF Houston and the Houston Interactive Marketing Association.  The theme was “what you need to know NOW”. These are challenging times for all businesses and now, more than ever, we need to focus our marketing efforts (and dollars) on those initiatives that produce the best results.

My presentation is below for your viewing pleasure.  The main takeaways are as follows:

1. Media consumption and media fragmentation are making digital channels more and more important for all companies.

2. As marketers we have to create content that consumers WANT to consume, and allow them to engage us when and how they choose.

3. There are numerous examples of savvy brands using digital media to reach and engage customers in a cost-effective way.

4. Despite a complex and overwhelming set of digital media options, there are some tried and true tactics that will provide the foundation for online marketing success.

5. Social media is becoming increasingly important, but you should have a plan before you dive in.

View my presentation on slideshare:

Digital Success in Troubling Times - Steve Latham - Spur Interactive

Thanks again to AAF and HiMA for allowing me to share my thoughts. If you have thoughts, comments or questions, I’d love to hear from you! Also feel free to Join me on facebook or Follow me on Twitter.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Making Sense of Online Campaign Results - Part 2

Published
by
Steve Latham
on October 3, 2008
in Analytics and General
. 0 Comments

Earlier this week I posted the first of two articles on the challenges of making sense of online campaign results.  The first posting addressed the shortcomings of relying on cookie-based tracking to quantify results.  This posting addresses the supporting role of display and email ads, and explains why Google gets more credit than it should for your online marketing success.  I use an analogy we can all relate to… the proverbial Wingman.

The Wingman Effect
Another impediment to measurement is that most analytics platforms (including Google Analytics) were designed to attribute credit for an action to the last medium clicked. As noted above, user engagement typically entails multiple touch-points, both online and offline. Especially true with considered purchases, customers often make multiple visits, by way of multiple paths (e.g. display ad, search, direct nav), before taking action. Even if all of the visits are done on the same computer (and you COULD track using cookies), assigning credit for the lead or sale to the last click provides only part of the picture, and it generally rewards Search at the expense of Display, Email, Social and other media.

Using a crude analogy, consider the proverbial Wingman.  Picture two guys out at dinner and they see an attractive woman. You know the routine - one guy is the leader; the other is his Wingman.  The job of the Wingman is to support his pal.  He is often the one who initiates conversation and breaks the ice so his friend can move in for the kill. If the lead guy gets a phone number or email address, he knows he has the Wingman to thank for the assist.

In online marketing, Display is often the Wingman, the one who starts the conversation, while Search is the guy who gets most of the dates. But unlike the example above, Search gets all the credit and the Wingman’s contribution goes unnoticed. Moreover, because his contribution is not noticed, he may not be invited the next time they go out. Media planners often cut ad buys because they can’t see the supporting role they play in the engagement cycle. If they don’t drive directly actions, based on last-click analysis, conventional wisdom dictates you stop buying them. This ultimately works against you and will result in fewer conversations that lead to your desired results.

The takeaway for marketers is that you need to track interaction through the engagement cycle. Recently coined “Engagement Mapping” by Atlas (now part of Microsoft), savvy marketers are now tracking the first, middle and last clicks to determine how each media unit impacts results.

As we’ve seen firsthand on numerous campaigns, for every lead or sale you can directly attribute to an ad unit, there are 0.5 to 2.0 actions that are not traceable due to the reasons cited above.

While these are formidable challenges, do not despair – there are affordable, proven methods for overcoming both of them. Since this is how we make a living, I can’t share all the secrets with you. But I can provide some general recommendations.

First, you need to take a strategic approach to engagement mapping that will shed light on the various contributions (lead, supporting, etc.) your various online media units play in the engagement cycle. Once you understand which units create awareness, and which ones close the deal, you can produce smarter media plans.

Second, you should treat every campaign as a learning experience and make systematic media testing an ongoing program. By varying flight dates of various media, you can will gain better insights into the performance and contribution of your online media mix.

Lastly, you have to look at the overall lift in site traffic and activity, not just the visits that are directly attributable to specific ads. Don’t underestimate the tendency for people to take action on their 2nd, 3rd or 4th visits. Take a holistic view and you’ll see a much clearer picture.

As always, your comments are welcome, so make your voice heard.  And if you think this is great - please share with your colleagues!

Making sense of results from online campaigns - Part 1

Published
by
Steve Latham
on September 29, 2008
in Analytics and General
. 0 Comments

When I talk to marketers these days, one of the most frequently cited needs I hear about is the ability to measure (and make sense of) results from online campaigns. More specifically, the gap in most organizations is their ability to trace results (e.g. engagement, leads or sales) back to individual ads, email blasts or search phrases that drove the desired results. They have data but it often doesn’t make sense. While many have figured out how to use tools such as Google Analytics for measuring conversions and attributing those to the ad unit (e.g. display ad or search phrase) that preceded the conversion, the results often do not make sense, or are contradictory to what their media plan said should happen.

If you are in this category, don’t despair – you are in good company. My personal research indicates that 94.59% of marketers are struggling with the same issues. I believe the challenge of measuring results that make sense is two-fold: 1) shortcomings of cookie-based tracking, and 2) the fallacy of last-click analysis, which I refer to as the “Wingman effect”.

Crumbling Cookies

As consumers become smarter, savvier online users, they are becoming more deliberate and less impulsive in their decision process. With so many more options at their fingertips they can easily do research and comparison shopping before buying that new camera or requesting information on your services. For big purchases, they often confer with others, e.g. sending a link to that new road bike to their friend or spouse to get their input). Another issue is the growing trend of “surf at work, buy at home”, where they do research on one computer and take action on another. Since we rely on cookies to track actions for each individual, these issues impact our ability to measure results. Here’s an example:

Let’s say you are at work, and just as you are thinking about how much you need a vacation, you see a VacationsToGo ad for a Caribbean cruise on your MyYahoo home page.You click through and like what you see but you have a lot to do and cubicles don’t offer much privacy for vacation shopping. Later that day you tell your spouse about the trip and tell him to go to VacationsToGo.com to learn more. He Googles it and finds it through a paid search listing. Later that evening, in the safety and comfort of your home, you jump on your personal computer and navigate directly to VacationsToGo.com to book the trip. Five minutes later, you are thinking about where you’ll eat in Cozumel.

Since the site sees that your home computer does not have its cookie, it assumes you have not visited before. Consequently, it views you as a 1st visit buyer, and does not know that you responded to the MyYahoo ad (or that your spouse found the site through a paid search ad). Both of the prior visits will appear to be a waste of ad spend. The poor analyst who has to measure performance of ad buys has no clue that the Yahoo ad started the engagement and that the paid listing contributed to the process. He will only see that at 7pm a 1st time visitor booked a cruise.

The example above illustrates how multiple visits and machines reduce the effectiveness of cookie-based tracking. The increasing use of cookie-cleaning tools adds to the dilemma. If, as widely reported, 40% of 3rd party cookies are either not accepted or deleted within 30 days, we’re blind to what impacts a significant portion of our results. Consequently, it’s difficult to take an accurate measure of which media buys are performing, and which are not.

So with that we conclude the first part of this subject. In my next post I will introduce the Wingman and give new hope to display media salespeople. But for the mean time, please tell me what you think! If you found this to be of value, please comment below.

Later!

Search vs. Yellow Pages - The Sequel

Published
by
Steve Latham
on August 29, 2008
in General
. 4 Comments

Earlier this month I wrote about the migration of consumer habits and media dollars from the Yellow Pages to Search.  I posted a Question on LinkedIn Q&A and even though it took a while, some great answers were provided.  Here are some useful bytes that came in after my last post:

  • From Mike Freedman at Local Directive:

    • Over 60 percent of consumers search for a local business on the internet, and only 33 percent use the yellow pages. [Source TMP Directional, 2007]
    • Almost 40% of local shoppers say that a presence on the internet – or lack of presence – will affect their decision about who they do business with. [Source: Web.com, 2007]
    • In June, 2007, comScore Networks reported that 60% of local consumers now go online to search for local businesses, as opposed to 33% that go first to the printed yellow pages. That same comScore study indicated that 80% of the consumers that search online for a business, a product or a service make an offline purchase at a local store.

  • From Paul Denhup at SearchRevenues.com:
    It will get uglier for YP.  Please find some useful links attached.  YellowBook is trying to capture some of the Search Marketing momentum buy attempting to set up “New Media Specialists” nationally for selling search marketing ads on Google and Yahoo! to their existing clients. For more info read Local Ad Staffs Retool     (Fox News).

  • From Amelia Kasse at MarketingBase:
    Simba publishes several independent studies, including Yellow Pages Market Forecast 2008. Plunkett offers stats in its Advertising & Branding Industry Almanac 2008

It’s pretty clear that YP has some tough times ahead.  While bad for them, it bodes well for search engines (maybe MSN Live still has a chance!), online marketers and tree huggers around the country.

Thanks for all for their input!  Question and comments are welcome!!!

Local Search: Yellow Pages vs. Google?

Published
by
Steve Latham
on August 7, 2008
in General
. 5 Comments

This week I was asked by one of our (prospective) clients for assistance in building a business case to shift ad dollars from the Yellow Pages to Google and the also rans (aka Yahoo and MSN).  After putting the word out that a $10 Starbucks gift card awaited the first Spur employee to find some good data, I put the question out on LinkedIn Answers (often a great venue for connecting with gurus who can answer tough questions).

I realize I’m a bit spoiled by the immediate gratification I often find online; so after 15 minutes passed without a single no LinkedIn answer, I decided to do some research myself.  What I found should be of interest to all marketers who rely on Yellow Pages for local advertising.

According to Search Engine Watch: This year, local advertisers are expected to shift $13.1 billion of their budgeted funds to the Internet, according to Borrell Associates. The number is up 50% over last year. In 2009, local online ad spending is projected to grow another 40% to $18.2 billion in 2009″… “Online advertising is cheaper than traditional methods of marketing and is thought to be the reason for the change. According to Borrell, internet CPMs average $3.65, the lowest of any media, while an offline Yellow Pages ad carries an average CPM of $9.29.”

My take: In addition to lower CPMs, search is much more targeted, actionable and measurable.   And it’s increasingly becoming a preferred way to find local vendors quickly and easily by people of all ages.

I also found some interesting info at RBR.com that compared the fate of Yellow Pages to that of newspapers in recent years: “…the recession is forcing small-business advertisers to be more careful with their ad budgets. Over the next five years, Borrell is predicting 39% of the ad spending on print yellow pages revenues will vanish as small businesses shift marketing budgets online… The key drivers of these changes are broadband penetration and the growing sophistication of search engines and interactive directories. Between 2005 and 2007, 10.4 million adults stopped using the yellow pages “during the past month.” Assuming Borrell knows what they are talking about, those are some compelling stats!

Since I started writing this blog, I have received a good response from LinkedIn!  Chris Reyes from Chicago cited an article that are worth a look.  According to Merchant Circle those that don’t find YP effective allocate 45% of their ad budget to online.  While this isn’t surprising, I thought the next finding was: even the most satisfied YP customers allocate 30% of their budget to online.
So it’s clear that dollars are shifting away from YP to the Web.  What I’d REALLY like to know is how they compare in terms of ROI.  If you have info on the comparative performance of each channel, the same Starbucks gift card offer holds - if you have good data please share it!
If you’ve read this far, I’d like to pose the question to you: where do you spend your dollars for local advertising?   And what would you need to know in order to convince your CEO it was time to adjust your media mix to meet the needs of today’s consumers?

“Blogging for Business” Recap and Slides

Published
by
Steve Latham
on July 26, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating on a social media panel at the Houston Technology Center along with Katie Laird and Kelsey Ruger. I didn’t see any glowsticks, cell phones or lighters swaying in the audience, but I heard good things and thought you might be interested in learning more.

After Kelsey spoke about social media from a sociological perspective, I presented the business case for Social Media and discussed why brands have to embrace it, and how they can measure the impact on their business. To learn more, you can view my presentation below or on slideshare. Katie then spoke about how to implement a social media program. You can view their presentations via the links above.

If you have thoughts, comments or questions regarding social media, I’d love to hear from you! Also feel free to Join me on facebook or Follow me on Twitter.

Business Case For Social Media Steve Latham 20080725nc

Notes from the Road: Your Unmet Needs?

Published
by
Steve Latham
on July 24, 2008
in General
. 0 Comments

Over the past 10 days I’ve had the opportunity to speak with marketers in Milwaukee, Chicago and Boston (via the OMS tour) about interactive.  Regardless of industry, markets or size, there are some common threads that run through most organizations.  The common challenges are:

1) Figuring out what to do and where to start (paid search, natural search, email marketing, display advertising, social media (and its 31 flavors), ecommerce, video, rich media, sms, etc.). In other words they  need a Strategy.

2) Measuring activity and translating web metrics into business results (e.g. leads, sales, revenue, ROI).  This is especially challenging for those who rely on their web presence to seed and support offline transactions (in other words, 99% of U.S. companies).

3) Educating upper management on the benefits, opportunities and threats represented by digital media.

If these happen to be your pain points too, you’re in good company.  Even though we’ve been in the digital arena for a decade, most marketers are still scratching the surface in terms of maximizing value from their web presence and leveraging digital media.  Most admit there is much more to be done before they can say they’re doing a sufficient job.

The good news is that the models have been proven, the documented successes are there and the path to online marketing success is becoming much clearer.  So there is hope, and a lot to be excited about.  Now get back to work!

BTW - for some ideas on how to address the issues above read the article Overcoming Barriers to Online Investment.  You can also check out the OMS blog where I explain how to calculate ROI from online marketing.

Let’s hear from you! If you have thoughts or questions re: these issues, please comment!

And if you like what you read, please feel free to share with your friends.  Click “share this” below for details.

Thanks for your time!

Our Inaugural Blog Posting!

Published
by
Steve Latham
on July 14, 2008
in General and Spur Interactive
. 4 Comments

We at Spur Interactive are very pleased to introduce you to our new brand and our new blog. We’ve been meaning to launch a blog for more than a year, but kept finding reasons to put it off. With our rebranding and launch of our new site (don’t worry – this is just phase 1) we decided it was time to execute on this part of our plan and launch our blog site. So here it is – we hope you’ll enjoy.

I just arrived in Milwaukee (originally pronounced “mill-e-wah-que” which is Algonquin for “the good land.”) and am preparing for tomorrow’s launch of the 2008 Online Marketing Summit tour which will hit 11 cities in July and August. Spur Interactive is a sponsor and I’m speaking about measuring ROI and building a business case for interactive. I’m hoping for a few lighters, a standing O and maybe a “freebird!” request. But in truth I’d settle for knowing my presentation helped a few marketers build the business case they need to get management buy-in to their interactive plans. I also need good marks or I’ll be relegated to moderating panel discussions, so I still have some work to do on my presentation. BTW - if you want a copy of my presentation, send me a note!

On the subject of events, here are a few to put on your calendar:

July 25 - Houston Technology Center presents Blogging for Business
Join local thought leaders, including yours truly, to learn how social media can work for your business. For details visit www.houstontech.org.

July 29 - Online Marketing Summit comes to Houston
Fresh off the heels of stops in Milwaukee and Chicago, OMS is coming to Houston on July 29 with new content and industry leading speakers, brand practitioners, and educators. To learn more visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com.

September 18 - HiMA presents Interactive Strategies ’08
The Houston Interactive Marketing Association presents the 2nd annual Interactive Strategies (IS) conference: Secrets Exposed. Attendees will learn about the secrets to success for digital media, which includes mobile, video, email, websites, and more. For details visit www.is-conference.com.