05/11/2010

Strategy of a Circle Campaign

Often times we tend to run single focus campaigns. It could be just an email blast or a blog or a facebook post or just a print mailing. To me, it’s an incomplete attempt to engage your audience. I am a huge believer of what I call “campaigns in tandem”.

Let’s say you are thinking about a campaign where either you are promoting an event or sending out an offer or just talking about your business in general.

The first step is of course getting your messaging nailed. In other words, we start by attempting to answer the who, what, when, & why :

  • Who’s my audience?
  • Why should they be interested in this particular offer/ event/news?
  • What message worked with them in the past?
  • What channels should I be focusing on?
  • What time line am I thinking of?
  • What are my goals?
  • How do I drive the above audience towards these goals?
  • What’s my call to action?

Next we turn to the “ how”  . With the call to action in place  , we need to drive a multi-channel or as I like to call it, multi-touch-point campaign. Here’s  just a sample of channels we could use.

Now as I mentioned this is definitely not an exhaustive list of channels. You could additionally rope in videos , word of mouth and then there is of course the press. But not all campaigns and events are press worthy. So you might need to pitch selectively.

Whatever you do, how small or big your campaign is , always think about multi-touch-points and the impact of the collective reach of these channels.

Also, always.. always.. intertwine them !

Post your blog on your facebook and tweet your facebook link. That way you take care of 3 touch points at the same time. Do the same with any LinkedIn group you are part of .

Specific campaign email blasts should include your social media links, be tagged correctly for conversion attribution and be directed to a special landing page on your web site. The web site absolutely must have a full or a partial page dedicated for the campaign.

The print piece of the campaign should tie in seamlessly with your online marketing in terms of messaging and having the social media sites listed. However, due to the higher cost involvement with print, target it to your best performing list and leave the rest of the audience in the hands of web. Trust me, they’ll be well taken care of .

If you are running a paid campaign, make sure to include an adgroup with ads reflecting the campaign message. Have it land on the campaign page of your website. I wouldn’t worry too much about SEO at this point. All the cross links coming in from different channels and the rich quality of your content is taking care of your organic ranking in the background.

Running multi-touch campaigns of course has its own challenges. The  biggest one is the amount of logistics involved. It’s critical & imperative to tie them in a timely fashion. The other big one is the conversion attribution by channel for ROI purposes. But that’s a different discussion altogether.

At the end of the day , the ROI justifies all labor.

Now it’s your turn.. How much of this are you doing? What are the challenges? Are you going beyond? Tell us all about it.

We’ll also be talking about all of this and more at the 1st Annual Vermont Web Marketing Summit , right here in beautiful Burlington, amidst the dazzling fall colors in September.

Hope to see you all there.

Best,

Bibi



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03/06/2010

Building and Tracking Emails with Link Tagging

I recently launched Curve Trends Marketing website. One of the channels I am considering for announcing the launch is an email campaign. Almost all of the businesses I work with or know of, continue to adopt this time tested channel, be it for newsletters, new offers or even for  product launch/event announcement.

A big challenge we face as analysts while analyzing email performance for clients is the lack of proper link tagging. So, while drafting the email newsletter, I thought, why not address this as I build the link tags.

What is email link tagging & why do them

Tracking email campaign performance in Web Analytics is done using a process called link tagging.  A typical email contains between five to unlimited number of links. The primary goal of these  links is pretty much the same. They are all directed to a landing page, which more often than not is a page on your website. The tagging also enables you to associate all visitor actions (like conversions and transactions) with the email.

Let’s look at this sample link..

http://www.curvetrends.com/

If someone clicks on it and lands on the home page, I would never know who they are, where they came from, and more importantly, why are they on this page .

So, here’s I how am going to tag it :

http://www.curvetrends.com/?utm_source=02-25-2010-curvetrends-launch-announcement-list1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02-25-2010-curvetrends-launch-announcement

Once the email is deployed and someone clicks on this link, the resulting url will be not just  http://www.curvetrends.com/ but the whole phrase above. This is also a good way to test your links to see if they are tagged before you send out your email.

How to do what I just did

As you can see, I added a bunch of additional info to the URL. They’re called link tagging parameters. The name of the parameter is on the left side of the equal sign and the value of the parameter is on the right side.

utm_medium=email
utm_source=02-25-2010-curvetrends-launch-announcement-list1
utm_campaign=02-25-2010-curvetrends-launch-announcement

Now let’s try and explain the logic and the process behind building each of these parameters.

utm_medium

The medium tells us what platform the visitor selected to come to the website. I always prefer using “email”. It’s easy and simple and does it’s job. I never recommend adding any extra value or description to this. As you’ll see later, using a single value “email” simplifies the process of consolidating all emails into one line item for reporting purposes.

utm_source

Let me try and simplify the best way to define a source so as not to complicate things during reporting. Always and I insist on this.. always start with the date of the email , followed by the name of the list.Think about it in terms of who you are sending this email to and the date. For example, some of you might choose to send a certain newsletter to just your customers. In that case you can name it as

utm_source=02-25-2010-xxxnewsletter-customer-list.

Others might want to segment their list differently. But you get the point. Assign the date & whom you are sending to as your source value.

utm_campaign

Think of the marketing campaign that the email is a part of.In this instance, it’s my website’s launch.

utm_campaign=02-25-2010-curvetrends-launch-announcement

Keep in mind that a campaign has several different medium. Email is just one of them. Paid ad , a banner on your website or a press release could be several other parts of that campaign. One thing I would make sure is that all of these have the same campaign name, so that you can club them together while reporting for performance evaluation.

utm_content

There is another parameter that I have not used here is the utm_content.You can choose to use utm_content when there are more than one versions of the email. For example, if I choose to offer two different discounts for the same audience and try to test which works better, I’ll use utm_content. These would be then my two versions of the content:

utm_content= 02-25-2010-one_month_free_analytics_report.

utm_content =02-25-2010-300_off_first_month_invoice

But unless you really have a lot of content variations to test, this could be an overkill in terms of data capture.

utm_term

This is another parameter that I have not added as it is relevant for those of you who are spending on paid advertising. Take the top paid keywords ( unbranded) from your web analytics report and plug them here. If the email is on a product, focus on the top paid keywords on that particular product.

What is a good resource to actually help build these tags

I would recommend using Google’s free URL builder as a very good starting point.

Just use the above logic to fill in the values. For example, in the campaign source, I am going to fill in the value : 02-25-2010-xxxnewsletter-customer-list. Same with others.

The Fun Part- Reporting

Why fun? Because all the above values you added , will now get pulled into your analytics report .You would actually be seeing them and analyzing the performance of your campaign based on those values.

I always start with the campaign. After all, email is almost always part of the bigger campaign.

This report lists all the values of your utm_campaign parameters. Now select the name of the campaign that your email was part of and then select medium. You will see a list of medium that was part of this particular campaign including email.

In this case we only used one medium (email) for the campaign.

You can then click on the email to get the source and content details for this particular campaign.

Speaking of details, you want to understand not only visits, pages/visit and/or average time on site but also conversion metrics. They are available in the goal tab. The above account is an instance of a non-ecommerce site. For sites with ecommerce, you can also find out the amount of sales, net revenue and finally the ROI of this campaign in a third tab named Ecommerce. Sweet!

Make sure to combine the above with the metrics provided by your email provider. Metrics like open, unsubscribe, click through, and bounce rates.

Now, enjoy your new found power and utilize it to its potential. Let us know if you are able to leverage the benefits. Have you done anything different in the past? If so, how? For those of you who are already tagging links, please share your experience with us.

Best,

-Bibi

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02/14/2010

Google’s Advertising Grant for Non-Profits

Today I am writing for a different reason. My goal is to draw the attention of all non-profit organizations out there, regarding available advertising grants from Google. Google defines it as “unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations which can be used it in a variety of ways, including general outreach, fundraising activities, and recruitment of volunteers.” It goes a long way for non-profits by helping them promote their websites via advertising on Google. About 70% of web searches happen on Google. So it is one of the most powerful online medium to advertise your organization’s goals & objectives.

Google explains the program very clearly here. But in case you feel lost going through all pages of information, here are some questions that came up during my brief discussions with a few non-profits so far and I’ve attempted to break them down and simplify it for the more general audience.

What is advertising with Google ?

For  those of you not aware of how to advertise with Google, there is a platform called Google Adwords that utilizes any search done on keywords related to your organization and serves your ad next to relevant Google search results under the Sponsored Links section. A click on your ad takes users directly to your website.

So, instead of looking for an audience, you pretty much have audience looking for because you’ve created a relevant ad and chosen relevant keywords to describe your efforts!

The ads on the top & the sides are all paid ads. You can see how in the above instance Expedia ads have been served against a search term “travel”. The organic search results are on the left hand side. But since Expedia also spends on Google Advertising through Google Adwords, the ads are served as sponsored links. Once someone clicks on the sponsored links, Expedia will have to pay for that click. Hence the name Pay-Per-Click (PPC). In this example Expedia was bidding on the keyword “travel”. All such bid managements, ad copy creation, keyword selection & insertions, as well as any campaign management for online advertising on Google is done through Adwords.  There are several ways to optimally manage spend and attract conversions from Adwords bid management. One of them is local targeting. Local targeting could be ideal for local non-profits to narrow down on their audience.

Why would Google give away money?

Here it is in Google’s own words-  “Google Grants is a unique in-kind donation program awarding free AdWords advertising to select charitable organizations. We support organizations sharing our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts.”

How much is the grant ?

  • Once selected, your organization can receive up to $329 per day fund allocation for spending on Adwords, thus receiving up to $10000 per month in free advertising, without having to pay any amount to Google.
  • If your account consistently reaches the $10,000 per month cap, you may be eligible to apply for a $40,000 per month cap with additional services.

How long does it take for Google to approve or reject the application?

Once your application has been submitted, Google will confirm if you are eligible and start to review your application. As per Google’s website, they inform the applicants within “four months or less” whether or not you will receive a Google Grant award.

How long will the funds be available?

Google requires organizations to be actively engaged in their Google Grants AdWords account. As long as your organization is actively managing the account, adhering to the program guidelines, and making the most of the award, you shall continue to remain in the Google Grants program. There is no set end date for your grant and no need to re-apply at any time.

Who is eligible?

Organizations must have current 501(c)(3) status, as assigned by the Internal Revenue Service, to be considered for a Google Grant.

Eligible non-profits include, but are not limited to, organizations that serve communities in art, education, health, science & technology, and volunteerism.

Ineligible non-profits include, but are not limited to, those whose websites or missions are identified in the “Restrictions” below.

Restrictions

  • Commercial / Goods and Services
    • Car, boat and real estate donation websites
    • Websites with a primary focus on selling goods, products or services
    • Organizations generating more than 50% earned, commercial revenue
    • Consumer credit counseling
  • Communities and Groups
    • Programs requiring membership and/or providing benefit solely to members, such as clubs, sports teams, alumni, networking and other membership organizations
    • Religious content or proselytizing on website as well as organizations that use religion or sexual orientation as factor in hiring or populations served
    • Groups serving a primarily political function such as lobbying, think tanks and special interests
  • Other
    • Promotion of illegal or disruptive tactics
    • Websites serving solely as a portal or directory
    • Websites participating in Google AdSense program

Our non-profit is very small compared to the size of some other non-profits in the Country or even the State we are in. So why would Google even consider us?

There are currently no trends in terms of types or sizes of non-profits availing the grants and is dependent on a number of variables. Size or extent of reach or money power of a non-profit doesn’t seem to be included in that list.

Is there any value with advertising online since we cater to a demography where web is not a popular medium?

Any advertisement is most effective when targeted to the decision makers. It does not necessarily have to be the same audience that you serve as a non-profit. Think about who takes the decision on their behalf. Majority of the time it’s somebody else other than the exact demography you are serving. It makes a lot more sense to target your ads to the decision makers, who are, in all probability, looking for constant information to make the right decision and will click on your ads if they are relevant to their needs.

How to apply?

  • Here is the application form .
  • You will know that your application was received when you see a “Thank you” page and receive an automated verification email from Google.
  • Your application is more likely to be successful if you have a basic understanding of Google Grants and Google AdWords. Ask for outside consultant help if you feel the need. It’s completely worth it. ( Full disclosure – We manage Adwords accounts on behalf of several organizations through Curve Trends Marketing)
  • In your application, you’ll be asked to provide sample keywords, ad copy, and a brief statement about how your organization will benefit from participating in the Google Grants program.

My earnest hope is that all non-profits who are forced to cut back on their reach and hence the good work they deliver , due to shrinking or non-available marketing budget, will avail this grant and make the most of it to deliver the best possible results to those who need it the most.

With hope,

Bibi

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01/18/2010

SEO For Non-Experts

There is an overflow of “to dos” and “how tos” on SEO these days. Somehow, I always feel that these posts from the experts or the gurus are primarily addressed to either a web designer or  a search marketing expert. They are great posts – no doubts about it, but somehow doesn’t address the common folks- the business owner or that custom jewelry designer or even the painter/artist/ financial expert or even the lawyer who  has a great website or so they think but just don’t know how to best get themselves found by their target audience without spending tons of dollars.

Here’s something I always share with my clients prior to kicking off a discussion on SEO. Think of Search Engines as non-intelligent ( read stupid) middle men . You have to keep them happy and at the same time provide a very simple version of your products & services to have them take it to your users. Any false move or complicated offerings and you fall out of favor.

Also, the sole purpose of your website’s SEO is to have your target audience find you and once they do, to provide them with relevant information. Please never tie in SEO with attaining the no. 1 rank in Google. That is one big wrong assumption you’ll ever make. During the process of SEO, if you manage to get to the top, that’ll be sweet . But if you follow the basic SEO principles, there is no reason for you to not get into the first page for any relevant search.

So here’s a few simple ways to serve your offering to your middlemen ( read Search Engines) in order to have them take your website to your target audience.

1. PAGE TITLES- A page title tells the user but more importantly the Search Engine, in a few words what the website is all about. Here’s an example of how a title is served for a website ( www.pinkribbon.com) for a search against “pink ribbon”. Ideally, one should always create a unique title for each page on their site. Also titles should be brief & very relevant to the business.

Here’s how  your designer will build your title code:

<title>Pink Ribbon (Official Website) International Breast Cancer Awareness and Funding</title>

Now, notice how the page title is served. Very long page titles tend to get cropped off. It’s always optimal to use between 7-9 words for page titles.

How a page title is served

2.URLs –  An URL is your web address. www.mycompany.com is your home page url  and then for different pages you have an extension of your home page url . For example www.mycompany.com/product1.htm is the url for your first product and www.mycompany.com/aboutus.htm is the url for the about us page.

  • My golden rule – keep your url simple & logical, something which the users can memorize after looking at it once.
  • Use words in your url instead of number or in other words instead of www.mycompany.com/ page1.htm , use www. mycompany.com/seo-basics.htm and make it relevant to the information provided on the page.
  • Use one version of an url to reach any page. If you find users are using different urls to reach the same page on your website, have your web designer set up a what is called 301 redirect to your preferred url. That way all urls pointing to the same content get redirected to just 1 master url that you think is the most relevant to that page.

3. WRITE UNIQUE DESCRIPTIONS FOR EACH PAGE ON YOUR WEBSITE

Let’s first look at how page descriptions appear to your audience when they search for you. The text under the title , known in the  technical world as “snippet” is basically the description of the page of your website that is served against a query. In this case the query was “ Spain Vacation”.

And here’s the code for it that you’ll have your web designer build. Note, how too long a description tends to get cropped off. Once more, keep your descriptions simple, short & relevant to the page.

<meta name="description" content="Spain holiday rentals.
Villas, apartments and country homes for rent in Spain
.Spain holiday lettings in Spanish holiday homes in
Spanish villas in Spain holiday Accommodation
for rent in Malaga,Alicante,Barcelona,Costa del
Sol,Costa Blanca,Costa Brava and mallorca" />

4. EASY NAVIGATION –

  • Have a text based navigation for your users. Avoid creating complex navigation links like linking every page to every other page on the website.
  • It’ s a good idea to control navigation from page to page using text links instead of images. Avoid website navigation through images, animations or drop down menus. Sometimes search engines do not handle flash or javascript very well. A simple sitemap page with links to all of the pages on your site is very useful.
  • Have your website designers create “an XML Sitemap File” for your site. The XML sitemap file will help to ensure that search engines discover the pages on your site. Please make sure there are no broken links on your sitemap. Create a breadcrumb navigation.
  • A breadcrumb navigation is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to see the path of navigation and quickly navigate back to a previous section or the home page. Here’s how a bread crumb navigation looks like

  • Customized error page – Users will occasionally come to a page that doesn’t exist on your site, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong URL. It’s called a “ 404 error “.Having a custom 404 page that directs users back to a working page on your site can greatly improve a user’s experience. Try & use humor for the 404 error page. Somehow humor helps to heal any bruised feelings. Here are 100 ideas on funny & unusual 404 error pages.

5. PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE

  • Paid search is the SEO marketing option over which you have the most control. Though by no means it’s a requirement for good SEO , it’s an attractive option to have available to you. The vast majority of businesses do best when they use a holistic approach to SEO, combining elements of organic and paid search with a healthy dose of good writing & usability.
  • Do not forget your offline promotions – your print collaterals, business cards , any other printed mailings should always have your web URL printed.
  • Social media – utilize the social media engagement opportunities. Get into twitter, facebook and blogs. A few words of caution though :

i.      Do not publicize everything & anything that’s happening at your end. Feed quality updates on these forums. It’s easy to get lost.
ii.      Do not do it for the sake of  doing it. Jump in only if you can sustain the inertia. It’s nothing worse than a twitter page with no updates in 6 months or a blog with no entries in the last year maybe. I see that happening with a lot of companies and it makes me very nervous.

6. CONTENT IS KING – The entire process of web search is text based. The search engines care for how much text you have on your site, how it’s formatted & of course how relevant it is to your business goals and the product on that page. Your site’s text needs to be compelling, clear, focused and directed to your users. It also needs to be formatted so that the search engines can read it. Designing your site around your visitors’ needs while making sure your site is easily accessible to search engines usually produces positive results.

7. KEYWORD SELECTION & PLACEMENT IS CRITICAL. It works when used for usability purpose over the entire site rather than stuffing it in your title or page description. There are multitude of free keyword tools available to help you select the relevant keywords for your target audience. Keep them in mind when creating or revising your content. I am a huge fan of Google’s Search Based Keyword Tool.

8. LINKS PLAY A CRUCIAL ROLE – Search Engines are hugely fond of links. Links that exist on your website can be broken down as Internal links –are how you connect different sections of your web site. External links – where you connect to contents in other websites.For both cases, use quality anchor text to link the content. An anchor text should provide some information on what the link is all about. Avoid using texts like “ click here” , “click this page” or “click this article”.
Here’s how anchor text is built by your designers . Please note, how a good anchor text has a phrase related to the content it’s linking to.
<a href=”http://mycompany.com/seo-basics.htm”> Here are the SEO basics </a>

9. OPTIMIZE THE IMAGES ON YOUR WEB SITE :

Images like text needs to be optimized for Search Engines & better user experience. Here’s a check list for the right image usage in your website:

    • Make sure all images on your website have not only a distinct name but an alt tag . The “alt” tag allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. If a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn’t support images, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture.
  • Make sure your web designer use brief, but descriptive filenames and alt text. Avoid using file names like pic1.jpg or image1.gif. Describe them wherever possible. Same with alt tags. Use short & descriptive tags. Do not stuff keywords in your tags or image file names.

10. MEASURE YOUR EFFORTS- I am a big fan of measurement. Try to get insights into how users reach and behave on your site. Use a free tool like Google Analytics to
• Discover the most popular content on your site
• Measure the impact of optimizations you make to your site
Here’s a post I wrote on my blog on how your business goals should be aligned with insights drawn from your web analytics.

Search engines deal with every page individually. So each landing page will need to be optimized for overall optimization of your site. However, just make sure you don’t go too crazy with this strategy, or it will have the reverse effect and get flagged as spam.  Keep in mind that moderation is always good when it comes to SEO!
Does this help you to get started? Do you monitor your results? How has your optimization affected your business goals? Please share it with us.
Till then,
Happy Optimizing!
-Bibi

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01/03/2010

Are Your Business Goals Aligned with Insights drawn from Your Web Analytics?

The world of online marketing is evolving fast and 2010 promises to be explosive in terms of social media engagement. The extent of accurate measurement of these efforts is going to play a major deciding role in differentiating all business successes. Measuring your web engagements , be it the website or the social media efforts, isn’t about the volume; it’s about identifying the critical few performance indicators that aligns with your goals, assists with insights and eventually drives the business forward.

Web Analytics is the biggest weapon available to businesses of all size in their battle for insights. Yet, while currently about 70% of consumers are shopping online at least once, researches have revealed that nearly 60% of the businesses still under utilize this critical power house of online customer information. The biggest data management revolution in recent years has happened in the form of free Analytics tools from Google & Yahoo. A lot more followed, but Google Analytics still commands the major market share due to the simplicity of its installation and constantly expanding robust reporting features.

I have always been a huge fan of simple & holistic approach to solutions.

Here’s a basic 4 step analysis model I’ve been following for quite some time and currently implement at Curve Trends Marketing. This has more than enabled me to gain business insights and action on :

  • Prospect Acquisition, Retention & Conversion
  • Nurture Existing Customers

while deriving outcomes in terms of

  • Lower Costs
  • Increased Revenue
  • Improved Customer Experience
Step 1 – Assess the Current State of your Business

Gain  Insights and Action on

a) Prospect Acquisition, Retention & Conversion
b) Nurture Existing Customers
Step 2- Identify  goals, establish benchmarks & report on basic key metrics that drives visitor behavior
Step 4 – Answer the “Why” in Customer Behavior – Qualitative Analysis , Usability Testing & Competitive Analysis
Derive Outcomes
a) Lower Costs
b) Increased Revenue
c) Improved Customer Experience
Step 3- Customize  the “Critical Few” actionable “Key Performance Indicators” Dashboard  that is Unique to Your Goals & Your Customers

If you are currently new to the concept of Web Analytics tools or just getting acquainted with customer behavior through click stream analysis, you might want to start taking those tiny incremental steps of establishing your basic metrics first.

BASIC METRICS
  • Visitors & Unique Visits
  • Bounce Rates
  • Exit Rate
  • Sources Of Traffic
  • Popular Content & Landing pages

But once you are ready to dive deeper into your customer world, it becomes imperative that you start pursuing the advanced segmentation & analysis.

No advanced analysis can be complete without understanding the “why” in customer behavior. Why did they come to your web site? Why did they react the way they did? Why did they leave? Did they get confused with the layout? What were they crazy about? Customer surveys, benchmarking, A/B testing (where you test 2 different versions of the web page) are some common channels for answering these questions. Capturing the voice of customer (VOC), will enhance your user experience & improve customer satisfaction.

ADVANCED ANALYSIS
  • Segmentation
  • Understanding Intent of Visit
  • Customized Traffic Source Analysis
  • Multichannel Measurement Including Offline Efforts & Social Media Campaigns

They say “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer”. Unless you understand the modus operandi of your competition, you will not be able to set yourself apart. Competitive Intelligence helps to understand industry trends that integrates with the insights derived from Web Analytics and enhances your outcomes. There are several free tools including Google’s Insights for Search available to help you accomplish your competitive analysis.

Whatever you do, always remember the key to your success lies with identifying your unique Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), for objectives you have set for your online actions, before starting to monitor and measure them.

Still unsure? Or are you already an Analytics Ninja? Let us know your role and how you are leveraging this powerful tool to drive your business.

Wishing you a safe ,successful & measurable 2010!

-Bibi

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12/18/2009

Local Businesses – Cut Your Marketing Costs Through Location Targeting

Recently, I was at a breakfast session with a bunch of fellow Vermonters. During the course of  small group discussions, a question from a local business owner hit me hard. He was wondering if online marketing can help him to pitch his ads to a target audience within a specific periphery of his business. Currently, he does it with direct mail to a targeted list select. This, of course is costly , time consuming and unless one has the right tracking code and a circulation analyst on board, it’s hard to  match back conversions to the specific mailing, or measure  the efforts. As a result, the ROI tends to look miserable…and of course, now this business has pretty much lost the motivation to send out another piece of that print mail.

In several of my recent communications, I have been talking about online location targeting.  According to a report from BIA/Kensley ,the locally bought portion of the market, which primarily comprises small and medium-sized businesses, will grow from $45 million in 2008 to $565 million by 2013. The market share of these small & medium businesses for localized ad targeting is expected to swell from 5% to 30% of the overall ad spend  during the same period.

This might be a good time to speak to it a little bit more in detail since that’s one of my core interest areas and a special focus for Curve Trends Marketing.

WHAT IS LOCATION TARGETING AND WHO SHOULD DO IT?

Location targeting allows businesses who cater to regional customers  to reach out to their audience through an online campaign using a combination of locations, including countries, territories, regions, cities and custom areas. Additionally, Google also allows advertisers to further expand their reach. Advertisers can now bundle ( group countries or territories) , specify a radius around a point on the map , or simply define out a custom shape on the map  for their ads to appear.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

These targeted ads appear alongside Google search results pages to users in the specified locations. As a small Vermont business owner, I might choose to show my ads in & around 30 miles of Burlington, Vermont and  45 Miles of Sunnyvale California , since my business capabilities are limited to these 2 cities and their specified surrounding areas. I could even choose a custom area if I know that’s where my customer base lies.The image below is an example of custom area selected by an advertiser. His ads will be shown against searches for related  keywords exactly within this defined area.


Here’s how it works : Mr. JS owns  a locally made shoe business in Vermont. He’s giving a 25% discount till the middle of January to clear out some of his inventory and opts for location targeting of “Vermont”.  He also wants to target prospects searching with the keyword “shoe” or “ holiday discount”. When prospective customer in Vermont searches for “ shoes “, JS’s ads are served. His ads are also shown when someone in New Jersey wants to send a pair of  “Vermont made shoes” for the “holidays” to his parents in California.

You may ask how Google does it. In the first case, Google uses the person’s Internet Protocol ( IP) address to determine the location and serves the local ad. For the next one, Google uses the location information “Vermont”  in the search query to serve the relevant ad.

HOW DOES LOCAL BUSINESSES SAVE MONEY?

Having served locally as opposed to being targeted across the entire nation or demography, they tend to be cheaper and cost per click works out lower than similar ads without specified location.

Unlike print ads,

a) You can set your budget for online campaigns and never be able to exceed it ( Google won’t let you)

b) Tweak your ad copies as frequently as you choose to improve  click through rates as well as conversions.. and..

c) Set your specific goals and measure it more accurately with Adwords reporting.

Simple, Targeted, Measurable – Key to any Marketing Campaign Success!

That’s what makes this tool one of my favorites.

Now it’s your turn. Have you tried this tool? What are your experiences? Do you have any concerns?

Let  us know.

Here’s wishing you & your family a wonderful & a relaxing holiday!

-Bibi

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12/10/2009

Capture the Power of Women!

The shopping season is on us and I just realized that there is nothing out there in terms of brand marketing that appeals to our lady shoppers. No attractive messages, no right directions in pitch , nothing in terms of specialized products.

As a marketer and a woman , one would think by now I’d have perfected the art of how to stitch the two seamlessly and present it as a package . But Nah.. unfortunately that didn’t happen either. It has actually been a never-ending quest for me to probe & understand how to connect the two.

In this post, I present some of my observations and criticism of my clan ( including me– call it self evaluation) while attempting to retrieve the underlying reasoning for this advertising stalemate.

As per the latest CIA world Factbook , the overall world population of male, is just a single percentage point ahead of female.

At the same time, studies reveal that 85% of purchasing decisions are made by women. Ideally, this should translate to major marketing efforts being geared towards this audience power center.

Well..unfortunately that’s not exactly how it works!

90% of marketer choose to ignore this segment. Some just alienate them, while others throw biased campaigns that simply do not work.

Here’s a basic question: How can seasoned marketers be so naïve as to not capture this potent revenue resource? Is it complacency or failure to foresee ramifications?

A few years back, I had the chance to spend some time in Saudi Arabia – A country not exactly well known for its outlook and integrity towards their female population. Yet, be it at the grocery store, or choosing the right school for the kids or for bigger decisions like buying a house or a car, you could feel the powerful throb of women in control. Targeted brand campaigns to this hub of power? – Almost nonexistent. Agreed, that there are serious social issues that still remain to be addressed in that country ,but we are focused on just the market paradox today.

Take for example, the two Asians giants, China & India . While basking in the glory of their increasing influence on the world economy, they have conveniently chosen to ignore and disregard the fastest growing segment in their own den. Campaigns lending  meaningful insights for the female audience are few & far between. Majority of Indian brand campaigns, apparently targeted towards women, are biased, primarily sexual, and cradles in the arms of mostly reluctant, non-engaged audience.

Here in my own backyard, we have not done a very flattering job either. CNN ran a story the other day, on how singles group made history with the first ‘cougar cruise’. It was a sold out event. Cougars are defined as older women pursuing younger men. What makes them a lucrative marketing audience? Well.. they come with no strings attached and plenty of money power. They also have certain living standards to adhere to and a younger crowd to please . How did the mature cruising industry fail to strategize the potential of this throbbing crowd? Mostly, because travel industry, in general, have been pretty sluggish in reaping the so called “women-centric” marketing benefits.

Maybe, it’s time to pitch right, think simple and scratch beyond the surface for the common traits that make up a woman. Our marketing gurus need to cover a few more basics than what they have done so far:

So.. for the first time I gave myself a hard look( just the woman me and left out the marketer) and tried to answer this question “ How can a brand communicate to me most effectively”. Here are some of the answers I have come up with:

· Cover more than just the basics. Up-sell me. Give me tons of choices

I think non-linear. My brain structure allows me to probe a wide swath of pros & cons before making decisions. While buying a car, I think of instances where my friend’s friend might want a ride and I need to show off that leather seat, or how to fit the little hamster cage so that the junior travelers stay engaged during a long haul.. You get my point.

· Never ever pitch Pink to me

( unless it’s related to the pink ribbon shop.) You categorize me with your bias. I feel ostracized.

· Even if I appear aloof & reluctant, I love attention

Give me your best personalized customer service but never, and I repeat, never, try to pressurize me.

· I love brands

It appeals to my class. Offer me the choice of brands and then step back and let me decide.

· Use the right prop to pitch

Kids & pets when used in wrong pitches can spin things out of control for you. Do your homework.

· Give me the option to “bring a friend along”

I would love my best friend to buy that dress or come along in that vacation or get that same model of mobile device, albeit, different color.. So, give me the right deal to double it up..I help you by doubling your audience , you help me back. It’s called cashing in on behavioral trends. Have you ever seen two male friends shopping together for the same brand? If yes, they are a rare breed ; Kidnap them and pack them off to an island; Invite all brand managers to poke their brain for a year.

· Be genuine

Irrespective of our formal degree, we all have a PhD in spotting fake attempts to impress. Your message should be simple, transparent and original.

Those were my lists.. How about yours’? Did I nail it down or do you think I digressed..?

Write back & let me know..

Till then,

Women rule!

-Bibi Mukherjee

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12/01/2009

Getting ready for Search Marketing? Here’s a check list

Lately, I’ve been busy working on my start- up Curve Trends Marketing – A Search Marketing & Analytics consulting platform geared towards small & medium businesses. By small & medium businesses, I am referring to companies with average monthly website traffic of 20000 visits or less. Those of you just getting to know me – small business growth & development is a subject very close to my heart. My earlier post on benchmarking, touches some aspects of it .Small venture entrepreneurs need to travel that extra mile to extend their reach out to the target audience. Currently, the top deterrents for traditional advertising have been:

1. Lack of target audience
2. Rising cost of paper (for print campaign)
3. Lack of tracking & reporting tools to quantify the return on investment (ROI)

It comes as no surprise that NAA estimates that newspapers’ ad revenue will have plummeted almost 40% in two years by end of this December.

Online ads and search mechanism , on the other hand have revolutionized the overall business trends .Small businesses need to switch gears faster than their larger counterparts; not only stay afloat but also to remain profitable. Recently BusinessWeek reports from consulting firm Parks Associates, indicate that online U.S. advertising share will  hit 10% by 2010. ..Well, I must say that’s a conservative estimate. It assumes web advertising, now a $12 billion market, to be growing at 14% a year, which is about half the current pace. It can safely be assumed that small businesses will contribute to a substantial portion of that spend.

Launching search or online marketing however could be pretty intimidating for small businesses or any business for that matter. The biggest fear is that of the “unknown”. It’s after all, a relatively new world of search marketing with lots of noise & chatter.

Google Adwords is a very easy, free & effective tool that enables any business to assess, build, launch & optimize as well as accurately report their search marketing initiatives. With Adwords, an advertiser can serve ads to a targeted audience at the right place & the right time, armed with the right product.  In other words, unlike traditional marketing, a single online campaign can target buyers at every stage of their buying cycle. For small businesses, which cater to a local or specific geographic domain, this tool comes in very handy.

Think about a local Pizza delivery joint, which open from 6 PM to 1 AM at night, in a small town in Montana. Google Adwords customized local targeting option enables this company to serve ads to hungry consumers within a radius of 30 miles from early evening to midnight, at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaign. Similarly, a restaurant owner in South Dakota, or a tools rental agency in Oregon or even a flower delivery company of Vermont, can choose to cater to their own defined perimeter for serving ads to the right audience precisely when they are looking for the product.

A recent study by Yellow Pages Association found that local search – the practice of using online search tools to find local businesses, products, or services – grew 58 % in 2008, reaching an annual total of 15.7 billion searches and outpaced the growth of overall web search. No small or medium businesses thriving primarily on local consumer network, can afford to neglect this powerful emerging channel.

This is even true for online businesses or ones that are targeting a specific demographic segment. They can select any combination of locations to target their campaign, including countries, territories, regions, cities and custom areas. For example, if someone wants to reach English-speaking users in select locations, they could target specific regions within the United States and a few large English-speaking cities in Europe, provided they have the capability to ship to those nations.

Now .. how do you do this ? The best option is to outsource it to a  search marketing agency who’s proficient in local targeting. The other choice would be to employ a Google Adwords Certified professional . But normally that works out more expensive than having an agency or a consulting firm manage the account. Being in this profession for quite some years, I ‘ve seen both best & the worst of the trade.

Here are my big top 10 to-dos before you embark on Search Marketing.

1. Remember - Google Adwords is just a tool to generate leads, sales or conversions and/or create brand awareness through online advertising. It’s your strategic goals & visions along with the consultant’s proficiency in executing it , is what makes it all work.

2. Always( please!) - have an analytics tool ( Google Analytics is a free tool and is very easy to install ) monitor your website’s basic key performance indicators ( KPI) – visits, time spend on site, bounce rates, top landing pages and goal conversions – at least 90 days prior to your online search marketing project. Keep in mind that your ultimate goal is to drive traffic to your website and Google Analytics can prep you for any action that needs to happen on the website in terms of design or goals. That way, when someone clicks on your ads and lands somewhere on your website, their landing page experience is optimized. Your landing page quality (Google has a number of parameters for measuring it) is extremely critical for a high page rank and lowering your spend ( It’s called Quality Score. More on that in my upcoming posts).

3. Set achievable & measurable goals. Look at past trends and ROI data from your traditional advertising campaigns and set your online marketing goals close enough to start off.

4. Research the estimated volume of search for similar products in your target location. You can do it yourself at  Google’s Insight for Search . This free tool from Google let’s you compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. ..

Here’s an estimate of traffic in the last 90 days for the search term “ski pants” in the Denver Metro area in Colorado. The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google, over time. You can always use this as a guiding tool to set your expectations.

5. Determine your monthly budget. Be prepared to move around your initial budget allocation. Remember, it’s hard to fail with search marketing. So a calculated risk is worth it.

6. Communicate your budget & goals to the consultant when you ask for the proposal. Ask them to bring a list of top performing relevant keywords and the average cost per click and projected traffic volume for each of them. AdWords advertisers can control their costs by setting a maximum daily budget and specific amounts they’re willing to pay- per- click or per thousand impressions, which the AdWords will never exceed.

7. Prepare a list of your top competitors that you want to monitor , not because you want to replicate them but to establish your unique offering and set yourself apart.

8. Define your targets and break them down by a) location b) demography c) product spread

9. Understand how your site ranks on organic or natural search. A Google Adwords consultant should have the ability to pull the relevant data for you. Working hand in hand with natural search gives you additional leverage and visibility on the search network. For example, if you already rank high on the natural search, you have established a substantial amount of online credibility over a competitor who does not have any natural search ranking. That way, you spend a lot less for attaining high ranking in paid search.

10. Make sure you get a commitment of weekly reporting from your consultant. Use those meetings to re-look at what’s working & what’s not . Look at it as an opportunity to fine tune your campaigns.

Always keep in mind that AdWords ads can appear virtually anywhere online, worldwide, yet remain targeted and relevant. Unlike traditional marketing, you can view , monitor, measure, and edit AdWords campaigns at any time and enjoy unprecedented levels of control over your advertising spending and reach.

I plan on covering this in more details and a few other basic but critical Adwords features in my upcoming posts .. till then..

Send me your feedback.. What did you like? Did you learn something new? Was it of any help?

Let’s keep talking.

-Bibi Mukherjee

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11/20/2009

In search of benchmarks

Most of the small businesses I talk to or have worked with, have a common concern for lack of available industry trends. We depend on either inside contacts, published competitor collateral or just plain old snooping around, in order to find out the current industry trends and offerings. As a result , small business leadership is plagued by lack of actionable industry benchmarks . ..how to understand where exactly their performance stand in terms of either the brand position or established benchmarks.

Google Analytics does a pretty good job with it’s benchmarking tool. It lets the businesses assess how their website compares against some of the industry verticals. I find this tool to be one of GA’s biggest strength.More so, since, there is so little actionable benchmark data available for small accounts( read business).

There’s one catch though. You have to have your data sharing with Google & other benchmarking tools enabled. Sometimes that can be the deal breaker. However, I’ve always been in favor of data sharing when it comes to Google ,since they do this anonymously . All identifiable data from your website is removed before it’s merged with other sites in comparable industry. There is no way you identify any of yours or your competitor’s data from the aggregated result . There is a bonus factor too. With your data sharing enabled, you also gain access to Google’s Conversion Optimizer that lets you adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price in Adwords .

Benchmaring in Google Analytics

The initial data presented takes into account all businesses of similar size. But you might want to drill down to your specific trade. GA actually lets you do that. This way you can ensure that the data is more pertinent to your particular business. In this example, I wanted to look at not only travel but even further ; Adventure travel players.

6 top level metrics data over the given timeline is displayed against the benchmark. It’s important to note that all figures are time dependent. Daily variations are possible due to parallel marketing campaigns and other promotional efforts. But comparing similar industry rules out any skew from the seasonality of the business since the seasonal trends of these companies are mostly alike.

visitsVisits is the most basic top level measurement for any industry follower. The fact that in this example webpage visits are over 25% down from the industry benchmark, right away tells them to get their acts together and start working on improving the web site, spending more on paid search ,improve the quality of the links , landing pages and keywords , get more affiliate partners and network better on social media. Unless, this is a new brand, in which case, a benchmark has been established for them to work on. More on that in a min.

New visits= prospects= incremental sales. This is therefore such a key metric ,especially for new visitsnew products or brands that just launched. The fact that in this example the new visits are about 5% over benchmark, almost tells me that it’s a new brand working to attract prospects and is generating a lot of interest. Over time, however, they can expect this figure to travel south and as long as it stays around 72% (which is the established benchmark)there should be no concern. Expectations set..Bingo!

Bounce rate – Anyone who has worked with me is aware of my obsession with this metric. I don’t know if I am obsessed or despise it, but for sure I can’t live without it. The fact that I’ve worked so hard to get this visitor to come witness my great offering and that he/she is leaving my site right away , without even giving me a second chance, kills me. If it was possible I would recommend the whole world wide web community to solely work towards bringing all bounce rate down to zero, and ban the word bounce rate. But hey.. that’s the extremist me. Sobering down..the bounce rate should never climb above 30%.. end of discussion. Even the benchmark bounce rate( 60%) in this example is super high. But it is what it is. Let’s accept it & move on.

Average time on site – I would definitely like my visitor to stay on. But there are times when we have them land on a page where all information is provided and they choose to just not look around. I am not sure I like that but that definitely brings down the average time spent on my site. That’s why we need benchmarking. If the visitor is spending around 5 mins on competitor’s site , am I not providing the quality experience for him/her to spend that much time on mine? What else can I do in terms of value proposition or in terms of uniqueness to improve that? On the other hand, if I am above the Industry benchmark.. oh well.. what can I say.. I ‘ve stopped bragging these days.

Pageviews & Pages /Visit – Benchmarking this can be counterproductive. That’s just me. Maybe it’s due to the nature of the business I handle. I am currently establishing a brand whose web site have a lot of information on single pages. Also, the page views depends on your product mix .Similar information can be served in different combination and layouts. But you might have a different perspective on this. Why don’t you share?

There is something else about benchmarking in GA that stands out for me- Able to visualize my brand positioning. Let’s look at these two examples.

The first one exceeds the benchmarking for every possible metric.From a top level, this is a leader to me. The alfha male!

Compared to that.. here’s another brand in the same category tracked over the same period of time. Does it tell you anything?. Look carefully. Compare it’s results to the industry benchmark. To me, it’s either a weak and a struggling brand or a new brand trying to make it’s mark.More likely, the later.. looking at the new visits.

New Branding

What did I miss? How are you guys benchmarking your data? What are your sources? How do you validate? Please share with us.
Till then,
Happy Benchmarking

Bibi

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11/12/2009

“Ittadi”- The etc of life

My VermontThere are 2 reasons I am writing this blog.
1. Avinash Kaushik , the “almighty” of Search Marketing . His simple and clear communication , which exudes not only confidence but the power of knowledge, had a lot to motivate someone like me to start sharing and contributing to the search marketing community in general.

2. The Search Engine Clan ( comprising of the top 3 viz. Google, Yahoo, Bing) – Now you must be thinking ” wow.. that’s pretty lame” . But trust me when I say the scalability of search data fails to deliver as soon as traffic drops below 10000 a month. You’ll hear me talking a lot on how & why the handling ( or the lack thereof) of these data affects the overall strategy for small businesses in this global arena.But it’s never going to be about the negativity. My goal is to work through this forum to bring a better accountability and dependable data structure for players like us, who struggle everyday to look for actionable items  for accounts attracting less than 10,000 visitors a month. It’s going to be all about how we can equip these otherwise critical search functions  to include the “little extras of search” who they sometimes conveniently choose to ignore as the tail end not worthy of inclusion in the trends.

That’s where the name of my blog stems from.

” Ittadi ” means “etc” in Bengali . A language spoken by almost 200 million people in parts of Eastern India & Bangladesh ; The region I hail from. The extra, not so important component that gets cropped off at the end of a sentence, an event or even life and is clubbed into a single phrase ” Ittadi”.

Now , a little about myself. I am a Search Engine marketer, a certified Google Advertising Professional and the web Analyst for VBT Bicycling Vacations. When I am not talking shop, I am a food junkie, a die hard Golden Retriever lover ( I have 2 of them at home) , a traveler, smitten badly by wanderlust and in & out a Vermonter, a tiny state in tucked in North East part of the country , carefully crafted by mother nature.

So what do you think on how ittadi has affected you in life?  Has any of your life’s event been shaped by the etc’s? Please share it with us.

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