Deadliest Online Warrior: Marketing Tactics Battle for Budget
September 21, 2011
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been pulling together data and screen shots for a presentation to CMA Ottawa (the Canadian Marketing Association – Ottawa Chapter) on Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 at the Hampton Inn and Conference Centre.
I’m presenting “Deadliest Online Warrior: “Marketing Tactics in a Battle for Budget” to fellow marketers in the national capital region. My plan is to present online marketing campaign results in a case study format so that the audience can get a feel for how different tactics performed. Until then:
“Instead of a TV show that pits historic and modern warriors to battle to the death, how about a conversation that pits historic and modern online marketing tactics in a battle for budget?
As customers spend more time in social networks and less in their email boxes and traditional websites, how should organizations adjust their online acquisition strategies? Join Kelly Kubrick of Online Authority for insight into the effects of combining paid search and social advertising with the power of social media marketing. Kelly will take you through a head-to-head result comparison between tactical legends of the online battlefield:
• Paid Keyword Search vs. Social Network Advertising’s Demographic / Psychographic Targeting?
• Banners: Behavioural Targeting vs. Search Term Targeting?
• Email Buy vs. Social Media Content Marketing?”
I’m very pleased to report that CMA Ottawa now has online registration available. Event details are:
When: Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 from 11:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Where: Hampton Inn and Conference Centre, 100 Coventry Road, Ottawa, K1K 4S3
Cost: $ 40.00 for CMA members, $ 55.00 for non-members
As always, there’s plenty of free parking and the cost includes lunch, coffee, dessert, and a great opportunity to network with many other local marketing professionals.
For those of you who may not be familiar with CMA Ottawa, they “host monthly networking and educational luncheons and seminars throughout the year. CMA Ottawa is a place of dynamic exchange among direct, interactive and customer contact marketing users, creators, managers and suppliers.”
I hope to see you there!
Ottawa Web and Social Media Events May 2011
May 13, 2011
Ottawa’s marketing community continues to impress me with its increasingly rich offering of web and social media related events. I’m sure I’ve missed several, but the month is flying by me and I wanted to get these one published:
- “Better Leads. Richer Insights. Bridging the web analytics and CRM divide“, presented by Zone5ive, OCRI‘s Tech Marketing Forum on May 12th, 2011 at the Marshes Golf Course. Kudos to Alex Langhshur and Tyler Gibbs of PublicInsite who presented a valuable case study on exactly how they’ve helped Ottawa’s own Dragonwave Inc to convince their sales team of the worth of the web channel by integrating web analytics data into Dragonwave’s CRM
- “Content Strategy from A Global Perspective“, presented by Content Strategy Ottawa Meetup. Billed as an informal night of networking, the group meets at Blue Cactus Bar & Grill in the Market on May 13, 2011 at 6pm
- Now SOLD OUT – “People Before Pixels“, a one-day user experience workshop offered by Follow the UX Leader, on May 16, 2011 at the Courtyard Restaurant
- “Between the Lines of Privacy“, a breakfast with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, presented by WXN. the Women’s Executive Network on May 17, 2011 at the Rideau Club
- “Results, not more Reports“, a free web analytics seminar offered by Unilytics also on May 17th, 2011 at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel
- “Designing for Humans“, a presentation by Martin Gomez of Sparkart from SMBOttawa (Social Media Breakfast Ottawa) at 7:30am on May 18, 2011 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company
- “Stop Searching. Start Finding.” a full day of information architecture training provided by Follow the UX Leader at the Courtyard Restaurant on May18, 2011
- “Creating Web Content that Clicks“, a one-day web writing course also from Follow the UX Leader on May 19, 2011, also at the Courtyard Restaurant
- Ryan Short from Teknision will be the speaker at the next Web Analytics Wednesday at the Heart & Crown ByWard Market, hosted by PublicInsite on May 25, 2011 at 6pm
- FUN for Tech Women event to be held at DiVino’s at 225 Preston Street on May 30th, 2011 from 6pm-8pm. To register, call DiVino’s at (613) 221-9760
- Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, or SEMPO Canada, is holding its first SEMPO Ottawa Members Only Meetup on May 30th, 2011 at 6pm at Johnny Farina on Elgin Street
- “New Era Marketing Mosaika: A Spectacular Multimedia Creation” with Guy Laflamme from the National Capital Commission, presented by CMA Ottawa on May 31st, 2011 at 11:15am at the Hampton Inn and Conference Room
If I’ve missed any, comment away, and I’ll be sure to add it to the information.
Hope to see all of you at one or more of these events!
Content Measurement: Looking Beyond Webtrends & Google Analytics
April 19, 2011
Kristina Mausser of Content Strategy Ottawa (Meetup) / ContentStrategyYOW (Twitter) very kindly invited me to meet Ottawa’s content strategists on April 18th, 2011, to chat about “Content Measurement: Looking Beyond Webtrends & Google Analytics.” For a quick introduction to the whys and wherefores of the topic, view this brief video (1 minute, 10 seconds).
Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Exchange Pub; it was a pleasure meeting you all (I’m happy to report that my BlackBerry Torch survived it’s inadvertent Corona bath!) and I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions.
POST UPDATE: Kristina has now posted photos – have fun tagging!
As promised, below, please find my list of the resources I mentioned last night. Here goes:
1. Learn to love Excel’s “AutoFilter” feature (look under Data > Filter) for all of your analysis, regardless of data source. Ideally, export whatever web analytics report you’re interested in and then import it into Excel. Enable AutoFilter, roll up sleeves and begin analysis! To do that, insert a new column(s) and begin categorizing, or segmenting, the rows of data so that you start to look for patterns and anomalies. Once you’ve got things rolling on the categorization side, you can easily begin to group the segments in a way that allows you to dig around in the details per category and reach some conclusions (see – look at you doing analysis!). How?
2. Use your Excel “Pivot Table” feature. Instead of giving a tutorial here, the best way to get introduced is to search for videos that can help you learn how to use these. Examples include:
My examples about how a content strategist might use Pivot Tables included:
a) Export your Google Analytics Keywords report (under Traffic Sources) to categorize your entry phrases in any number of ways e.g. brand, service, geography, etc. in order to identify the phrases you are getting traffic from. Now, turn that idea on its head – which phrases would you have expected to get traffic on, but are not? Use that list to begin brainstorming potential content improvements, and keep track of them in your editorial calendar;
b) Export the results of your on site search engine e.g. Google Analytics Site Search or Webtrends On-Site Search Terms (Found and Not Found). As above, categorize them so that you can begin to analyze how your website’s search engine is being used – which phrases are looked for most often? How does that compare to your navigation labels? Are they comparable or is there a gap? If so, how could you address it in the content? Ideally, you can use the results of this analysis to accomplish two different things – identify the content you need to ‘merchandise’ (and yes, government folks, I expect you to merchandise content too!) by better surfacing it across your website – and identify the content you’re missing – e.g. what are people searching for for which you offer No Results?
c) Export the results of your keyword research tools e.g. Google AdWords Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, and exactly as above, categorize the phrases so that you can begin to identify topics that for which there is demand that you might consider writing content for (or encouraging your client to write content for).
3. Combine your exported Google Analytics Content reports or your Webtrends Pages (Site Design > Pages) reports with the chart function in Excel and create long neck / long tail graphics to explain the concentration of content demand to your client. Help them understand which content is getting consumed more / less across all of the content they offer. However, first understand the core differences between the two theories:
- Chris Anderson‘s “The (Longer) Long Tail” (decreased distribution costs encourages niche markets) versus
- Gerry McGovern‘s “The Stranger’s Long Neck” (cluttered websites created dead and useless content that decreases and potentially destroys value)
and how each applies to your analysis. Are you trying to understand if there’s value in keeping long tail content or in eliminating excess content from your website?
To learn more, here’s the link to Jeff Parks‘ podcast with Gerry McGovern. Enjoy!
4. I’m a big fan of the All in One SEO Pack plugin for the WordPress content management system (CMS) installations because it allows me to see my or my client’s <TITLE>, description and meta tags on one screen across multiple pages. In one quick glance I can see if I’m missing the opportunity to improve my content’s findability with clearer, more specific <TITLE> tags or improve usability with a more useful <description> tag. The plug-in allows me fix content problems on the fly.
5. If you or your client don’t use WordPress, fear not. The alternate way to improve your findability is with the Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP) – It’s a Firefox Add-In, and although this sounds like a tool that only a web analyst could love, it’s actually a brilliant tool for content strategists. It automatically scans a website for you, extracting, among other things, your <TITLE>, Description and Keyword meta tags. Once the scan is complete, save this file as an Excel spreadsheet, turn on your beloved auto filters, add a new column for “Status” and populate each row as Current. Then, add new rows per URL and rewrite those tags to your heart’s content. Your client can now see the “before and after” and your tech folks have an easy way to either script / upload the new versions, or at least cut and paste cleanly per URL.
6. Qualitative “voice of customer” data from online surveys tools such as FluidSurveys, 4Q, and SurveyMonkey offer excellent insight into what visitors think of the content you’re providing on your website. However, like web analytics reports, the volume of data can appear overwhelming – especially if you’ve just been told that thousands of free form text comments have been captured this month. If no one knows what to do with it, follow along with me:
Again, your best approach is to analyze through segmentation, using your fabulous AutoFilter and Pivot Tables (I’m such a geek) features in Excel. To provide a specific, step-by-step approach – export all those comments from your survey tool and re-import them into Excel. Add your categories column and assume three choices – positive, neutral or negative. Turn on your auto filters and assign one category per comment; now filter those comments so that you are able to isolate only the negative ones. Begin your analysis: Do those categories need to be broken down into subcategories – e.g. topic, or product, or feature or time frame? If yes: Add a new column and get classifying! Rinse and repeat for your positive and neutral comments. Create a few Pivot Tables and see what patterns begin to emerge. Ask what actions could you take for the different subcategories and how you might group those action items. Perhaps by implementation complexity? By audience? By responsible party? By urgency?
Before you know it, you’ve analyzed the data and you have a plan that captures what you or your client will be doing about it.
7. I realize this last one might not be at the top of everyone’s list, but as a fan of cost per click (CPC) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising not only as an acquisition tactic but also as a form of market research, I hope some of you will consider this option. By default, Google AdWords shows you the performance of your “bid” phrases. However, you need to dig a little deeper for reports relating to the actual “search” term used which triggered your ad (look under your Keywords tab > See Search Terms > All) which might be very different from than what you assumed your audience was looking for. Perhaps they combined your keyword phrase with some other concept – a question or task, a local geographic reference, an adjective – in a way that you hadn’t thought of. Each combination might give you ideas for new landing pages that you could offer.
Finally, the third variation requires you to create a custom filter in your web analytics reports. Essentially, you’re asking your report system to show you even more detail relating to actual phrases used by searchers that triggered one of your ads (but that had no clicks in the last 30 days, which is the cut-off for the report mentioned above). For instructions on how your web analyst can create the filters for you, my thanks to all the great bloggers who’ve posted detailed instructions. Where would we all be without you? I’ve tried those listed below, and the data that does result certainly offers intriguing information:
- Update to an Old Favorite – Detailed PPC Keyword Data in Google Analytics (November 2008)
- Exact Keyword Tracking with ga.js (February 2008)
- How to Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics (November 2006)
So – there you have it; one web analyst’s recommendations for her fellow content strategists. As continued proof that I think we can indeed combine Shakespeare and analytics, see “To Measure or Not Measure, That Is the Question“. Now – tell me what you think. Did I miss any of your favourites? Comment away!
Mobile Marketing: Ten Ways to Make an Impact
November 5, 2010
Zone5ive, OCRI‘s technology speaker series, has announced session details for the upcoming Wednesday November 10, 2010, event entitled:
10 Ways to Make an Impact with Mobile Marketing
Rob Woodbridge from Untether.tv will be speaking about using mobile marketing to help businesses grow. Right now.
Session details from the folks at Zone5ive:
“Whether your business is high tech, low tech, consulting or selling ice cream, your marketing plan should include mobile. Never has it been easier or cheaper to extend your brand and measure its impact through the most personal of all impersonal items, the thing we both covet and hate but won’t leave at home: the cell phone.
Do you want to know what is beyond Foursquare? Interested in learning about context-driven commerce? What about predictive analytics or the latest location-based marketing services? Come and discover tactical ways in which you can begin to embed mobile into your marketing execution.
What do you want to know about how to leverage mobile marketing in your industry? Submit your questions now to rwoodbridge@gmail.com or via Twitter using hashtag #zone5ive.”
Date: Wednesday November 10, 2010
Time: 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for Registration/Networking/Light Lunch, 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. – Presentation
Location: Brookstreet Hotel, 2nd Level, 525 Legget Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K2K 2W2
Complimentary underground parking (3 hour limit)
Costs:
Early Registration (received by OCRI no later than 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday November 9, 2010)
$40.00 – OCRI members (plus 13% HST)
$65.00 – Non-members (plus 13% HST)
$15.00 – Students (plus 13% HST)
Students must register via fax or via email
Late / On-Site Registration
$50.00 – OCRI members (plus 13% HST)
$75.00 – Non-members (plus 13% HST)
$25.00 – Students (plus 13% HST)
Students must register via fax or via email
Call for Speakers – eMetrics Toronto April 2011
November 4, 2010
Calling all Ottawa companies, organizations and associations – we need you! Toronto’s eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit is on the hunt for speakers for the April 26-29, 2011 summit to be held at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel.
The speaker submission deadline is December 12th, 2010.
In particular, eMetrics is looking for stories that tell the ” how-to and how-much, about the challenges you overcame, the experiments that failed, how you won a budget increase for online marketing because your ROI rocks! And, how you are evangelizing online marketing analytics and experimentation in your organization.”
In other words, open your measurement kimono! Consider sharing the good, the bad and the ugly from your recent analytics learnings. Why would we ask such a thing? Simply because it works – eMetrics is about receiving golden nuggets of learning from fellows and friends in our burgeoning analytics industry. Having attended three eMetrics summits myself, I can tell you the best presentations were those where practitioners described the particular digital measurement problem they tried to solve and explained the results. No holds barred.
Memorable speakers for myself include Breanna Wigle, who proposed an “RFF Score” (Recency+Frequency+Number of Facebook Friends) as a methodology for social network analysis for Military.com. Then there was Alain Tremblay from Bell Interactive who walked us through identified points of failure in a shopping cart, and explained how qualitative data analysis pointed them towards solutions. Wonderfully concrete. Or the always charming Vicky Brock who delivered a great case study on understanding visitor behaviour when you don’t sell online. She described specific content improvement actions that could be taken based on her analysis of a university’s onsite search engine data. Great stuff.
I’m hoping that Ottawa folks will consider submitting a speaker proposal – whether it be for an analytics or a social marketing outreach campaign within a federal government department, or a search marketing program at a private sector company, or a social media membership recruitment effort from an association. I know you’re out there, fellow Ottawans – let’s make sure we let the rest of Canada know it!
Please contact me if you have any questions about the event or to discuss ideas or topics you are considering. To help you brainstorm, the 2011 eMetrics content focus includes the following topics:
- Digital Management
- Media Analytics: Cross Media, Cross Platform
- Site Optimization and Usability
- Campaigns and Acquisition Optimization
- Social Mobile Marketing Metrics
Good luck!
GTEC, Gerry McGovern deadline & Zone5ive @ Brookstreet
October 6, 2010
What do these have in common you ask? Apart from the usual web-ian theme, they are also three of Ottawa’s events this month (so far!). Have I missed any?
1. GTEC (Canada’s Government Technology Event) is in full swing – if not nearly done – at the Westin Hotel (search for GTEC on Twitter to get a sense of the conversation…). Very healthy exhibitor floor and I caught a couple of sessions, including the G20 case study on Canada’s lead role in “the world’s largest social media project”. Kudos to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada for opening the kimono and sharing details on how the whole project got off the ground, how things went during and what’s likely to happen next.
2. Zone5ive’s next session, “The Bigger Picture: Taking your Product into Today’s Market” is set for Thursday, October 14, 2010. This month’s speaker is Corien Kershey, Director of Strategy at Marketing Magnitude. In case you haven’t attended this year, please note that Zone5ive has moved to the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata (who put on a great lunch in September – thanks Brookstreet!).
3. Although technically not an October event, NeoInsight and OCRI are offering an early-bird discount (until 5pm on October 15th) for their Task Management Masterclass with Gerry McGovern in Ottawa on November 3rd (and Halifax on November 1st). Having attended a previous Gerry McGovern event, I expect this one will be a sell out too!
Ottawa’s jam-packed June
June 23, 2010
I’m not sure if it was intentional or not – trying to beat a pre-summer vacation frenzy? – but this past month, Ottawa has been jam-packed with with web-related events. Which is, of course, excellent news for our fair city. Our web-ian community grows!
A quick round up of those I was able to catch:
- GovCamp Ottawa, our local version of GovCamp Canada: “an open environment for conversation about the role of municipal, provincial and federal governments in cultivating the growth and prosperity of Canada’s vibrant communities…”. My first ‘un-conference’, and an intriguing experience. After hearing from a kick-off panel, the audience created the agenda on the spot. I joined a debate about how valuable (or not) subject matter experts are in an open government model, a discussion about inter-jurisdictional (federal, provincial and municipal) applications and a session about how to measure the impact of open government data using examples and success stories. Overall though, my favourite part was the live Twitter feed during the panel itself; highly amusing to be part of a top-trending topic on Twitter for a day…
- “Winning the War on Google” featuring Rebecca Lieb, presented by the nascent Ottawa Web Marketing Club.ca. Rebecca has an impressive search pedigree and covered a lot of the fundamentals of search. Unfortunately, the most interesting material – the future of search – came at the end with little time left. She touched on implications of universal search e.g. the blending of search results – organic, news, images, video, social, etc. to illustrate why it’s – truly – no longer about rankings. Also, intriguing stats from comScore: “In early 2008, 17 percent of searches contained some type of blended result. In late 2008, it was 31 percent of all search results.” Look out marketers!
- “Social Media Marketing Experts Reveal All” with panelists Scott Lake from SWIX, Erin Blaskie, Lifestreamer (my new favourite word – see BabyCenter’s research segmenting social moms) and Michele Bedford-Thistle from Microsoft, presented by OCRI‘s, Zone5ive technology marketing speaker series. Each panelist had an extremely different take on social and how they’ve incorporated it into their professional selves and businesses. Finally – concrete evidence about why organizations don’t need to panic about the ‘right’ way to ‘do’ social.
There were still other events I was not able to attend, including:
- “Wikibrands – Reinventing Your Business in A Customer Controlled Marketplace”, featuring Sean Moffit and presented by SMB Ottawa (Social Media Breakfast Ottawa). For reasons that I’m unclear about, there’s no reference to the event on the SMB Ottawa web page, but you can find the presentation on slideshare. Perhaps they are pure-Twitterists?
- MARCOM 2010 – “professional development and educational forum for public and not-for-profit marketers and communicators”
- Your Facebook Business Account – Turn “Fans” into Customers Session 3 of Using Social Media to Drive Business featuring Erin Blaskie, presented by the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. Fortunately for me, Erin posted the presentation on slideshare.
If you were able to attend any of these, comment away – I’d be curious to hear what you learned at each.
And finally, although it not exactly an event, there is a deadline worth noting – CMA Ottawa is touting the fact that the entry deadline for the 2010 Canadian Marketing Associations Awards is June 24th, 2010.
Go Ottawa!
Is Your Search Marketing Missing In Action?
April 16, 2010
Many thanks to CMA Ottawa, the Ottawa chapter of the Canadian Marketing Association, for inviting me to speak at their upcoming luncheon on April 27th, 2010.
I’m especially pleased about the about the topic I get to tackle – search engine marketing. Back in December 2008, I was fascinated to read a study describing how business owners find search campaigns more scary than filing taxes. Since then, I’ve concluded that this might indeed be the case – which is not a good thing.
Search marketing may be the great leveler and I don’t like the idea of business owners shying away from it. Instead, I’d be much happier if they at least understood enough about the tactic to decide if it should be included in their marketing mix or not.
My hope is to demystify search marketing and in particular, talk about:
- Measuring visibility instead of worrying about rankings
- Why it’s not really about your home page anymore
- How you can leverage your own subject matter expertise
I’ve just returned from eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Toronto and Canada’s Search Marketing Expo, SMX Toronto, and my head is brimming with search ideas and issues; I’m really going to have to rein myself in…
I hope to see you on April 27th!
Event details:
When: Tuesday April 27th, 2010, from 11:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Where: Hampton Inn and Conference Centre, 100 Coventry Rd, Ottawa
Cost: $40.00 for CMA members, $55.00 for non-members
Ottawa Web Analytics Wednesday: Feb 10th, 2010
February 3, 2010
Join us on Wednesday February 10th, 2010 for Ottawa’s next Web Analytics Wednesday!
As usual, it will be held at the Black Rose Room (downstairs, at the back) of the Heart and Crown Pub at the Byward Market location, 67 Clarence Street, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 5P5.
However, on the “not as usual” front, our presenter will be Jim Sterne, web analytics guru extraordinaire. Among other guru-like accomplishments, Jim is the Founding President and current Chairman of our Web Analytics Association.
Jim is visiting three of our fair Canadian cities and in Ottawa in particular, will also be speaking the next day, February 11th, 2010 at OCRI’s Zone5ive Marketing Forum.
Also – please note that this month’s Web Analytics Wednesday begins at 7PM (as opposed to the usual 6PM).
See you there!
Get the web analytics edge – enter to win $675.00 of learning!
January 26, 2010
Attend OCRI Zone5ive Marketing Forum on Thursday February 11, 2010 in Ottawa, Canada and enter to win $675.00 CAD worth of learning from UBC’s Award of Achievement in Web Analytics!
The Web Analytics Association (WAA) has collaborated with The University of British Columbia (UBC) Continuing Studies to offer the UBC Award of Achievement in Web Analytics. This series of courses is delivered 100% online so that this educational commitment fits into your schedule and is available to working professionals around the world!
Supported by Online Authority, this month’s Zone5ive speaker is Jim Sterne and his topic is “Translating Web Intelligence into Business Value.” Jim Sterne is Chairman of the Web Analytics Association and Founder and Chairman of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit
Contest details:
- Contest open to paid registrants and attendees of the OCRI Zone5ive Marketing Forum, Thursday February 11th, 2010 at the Travelodge Ottawa Hotel and Conference Centre Centennial Ballroom from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
- Course voucher will be awarded via random business card draw to be held following the speaker’s closing remarks. The winner of the draw must be present to receive the course voucher.
- Course voucher is issued by University of British Columbia Continuing Studies and is valued at $675.00 CAD. The course voucher may be used by the bearer towards the tuition fee (before taxes) for one online UBC Continuing Studies Web Analytics Course beginning on or before March 1st, 2011. The course voucher must be surrendered at the time of registration (in person, by mail or phone). No refund will be made should the course tuition be less than $675.00. Course voucher not redeemable for cash.
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