Covid-19 Digital Playbook

With shelter-in-place (SIP) and a likely recession due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, now is the time to double down on digital marketing and sales!

With store closures, many retailers, such as Nike, are reporting Black Friday sales levels and conversion rates! And I've been seeing similar results for my clients.

In fact, in its recent quarterly report, Nike's CEO said it was able to engage its fans via its app and other digital channels while they were quarantined at home, and their free exercise services translated into strong digital sales that helped offset store closures.

Some brands or OEMs who previously had channel conflicts from wholesale/retail partners or their own brick-and-mortar stores suddenly see their direct-to-consumer channel as the only game in town during SIP.

That makes this a critical time to dig into your website and mobile app analytics!

See what part of the site is getting the most traffic, what's selling now that wasn't before, what is the makeup of the customers who are shopping now vs. before, where are users dropping off or hitting UX roadblocks?

For many of my clients, I've seen a spike in mobile web and mobile app traffic especially throughout the day and not just during commute hours. No surprise as people are home due to SIP. Also, historically, lots of office workers shop on their work desktops during the weekdays. It's not uncommon to see high conversions on Mon mornings before lunch as workers tackle their "to do" list after a relaxing weekend. But suddenly they don't have access to those work computers and must go online on their phones. So make sure your site is optimized for mobile, now more than ever!

Re-evaluate all your advertising

Online ad prices, especially banner, native, and video ads, that run on publisher sites are dropping as supply outstrips demand because advertisers have pulled back on spend because of SIP (e.g., travel industry can't really promote bookings), recession fears, and brand safety concerns (i.e., brands don't want their ads to show next to coronavirus content, especially on news sites). However, if you are less brand sensitive or develop a more targeted blacklisting strategy, you can make out like a bandit for your media buys. For example, Facebook CPMs have fallen to their lowest levels in 2 years.

Facebook CPM Falling (Source: Gupta Media)

It's also a good idea to assess the competitive media landscape. You may discover some competitors have pulled back on their paid advertising in search, display, social, video, or mobile apps. Time for you to grab market or mindshare, likely at lower ad prices as mentioned above. For some of my retail clients where Amazon used to compete with them on search, there's been less competition. Not that Amazon doesn't have the money to bid against them, but more likely because Amazon has more than its hands full now from organic traffic with everyone turning to the online retailer during SIP. (More on that below.) So check your Google Auction Insights reports. On the flip side, depending on your industry, you might see quite the opposite competitive pressure and everyone is getting more aggressive to capture as much demand as possible right now. Think about the fiercely competitive online video conferencing space right now where you have Zoom, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Teams, and Webex duking it out.

I expect performance media campaigns to see less budget cuts than branding campaigns.

Also, make sure your ad messaging is on target and appropriate for these times. For example, yesterday morning I heard a local radio ad that asked "Taking your kids to school? Listen to us in the car." Really? Schools have been closed for a month during SIP! Someone at the station clearly sleeping behind the wheel.

Take stock of and promote your most relevant product and service features during these times.

By now, as a consumer, every company has probably sent you an email and driving you to their Covid-19 landing pages to explain how they are reacting to the pandemic and SIP. And most importantly, what special services they are offering during these uncertain times.

So, as a brand, what are you going to promote?

If you have interest-free payment plans or "layaway" plans like Afterpay, it's time to promote that. Amazon features it prominently on higher ticket price items (see below). Some auto companies have rolled out 0% interest, 72-month auto loans even!

Amazon's interest-free payment plan

Right now consumers are very concerned about supporting small businesses who risk going under. For smaller businesses who are reaching out to their community for help, now's a good time to setup and promote online gift cards. Square, which is quite popular with small businesses, has even created a Give & Get Local site to make it easy for local merchants to promote their e-gift cards to consumers. I've seen when merchants promote this in email campaigns, consumers are buying them to keep their favorite businesses afloat, hoping to patronize them later when we get through this. Facebook is also offering small businesses grants.

Offer curbside pickup following social distancing best practices? Promote that. Are your shipping and delivery times still unaffected? If you compete with Amazon, you may have an advantage now against the Prime shipping program as Amazon is swamped with traffic and orders, forcing them to prioritize some items over others. I don't blame them. I was about to buy an item that was eligible for Prime shipping. But at checkout, it said it won't ship for 1-2 months! That's crazy. #abandoncart

Amazon delayed shipping warning

Sports retailer Sports Basement has been sending out emails that promote online events to help customers stay fit, such as live workouts with a trainer via video conference and healthy recipes to try at home (side note: there has been a spike in baking and home cooking with SIP). And of course, discounts for shopping online! Similarly, REI has 6 Ways to Mix Up Your At-Home Workday. Both are great examples of brands staying true to their brand positioning while producing relevant, engaging content for their customers.

Sports Basement workout tip

Also, make sure you are monitoring online chatter using social media tools. How are consumers reacting to your company's response? For many brands, they are dealing with significant customer service complains on social media, online chats on their sites, and of course their call centers. But also use this data to see what's trending? How do you weave your brand into the conversation? The key is to be authentic, empathetic, and not too salesy.

Get the word out!

When you've identified relevant content to share with the community, it's time to put the CRM team and tools to work! Leverage that email database you got! For small businesses using Square, Square is offering Square Marketing, its basic CRM program I previously reviewed, for free right now. Yelp is also offering some of its premium marketing services for free for small businesses. Take advantage of these tools! Most are very easy to use without a huge learning curve.

Of course, take it to social media channels. Remember when just a few weeks ago, the government and consumer privacy advocates wanted to take down Facebook and Big Tech? Now, consumers are spending more time than ever on Facebook and almost every single social network has seen engagement shoot through the roof! When you do post, do some #hashtag research to maximize visibility.

And this goes without saying, but make sure your website can handle increased traffic, especially if you're a retailer and your stores are closed. You might also consider a code freeze like most online retailers normally do Nov-Dec. Don't risk rocking the boat when it's the only sales channel you got right now!

Lock-in long-term behavior changes

Lastly, all this time at home and SIP has forced consumers and businesses to change their behavior, largely favoring online activity, and you should take advantage of making these behaviors long term habits. Just to name a few benefactors -- online video conferencing, online banking/mobile app banking, online grocery delivery, esports, virtual medical professional services like SteadyMD or Talkspace, not to mention multi-channel retailers who have struggled to get in-store shoppers to go online or use their mobile app. Post-SIP, all these industries will benefit from an injection of new users; the key will be to keep as many as they can as paying customers for years to come.

My Covid-19 Digital Playbook:

1. Dig into your web + app analytics data for insights
2. Re-evaluate your media buys and messaging
3. Develop relevant content for Covid-19 behaviors due to SIP and be useful to consumers
4. Be active on social media and email channels
5. Be prepared for how to exploit long-term behavior changes after we get through this to capitalize on your short-term wins

Now I only wish there was a digital solution for haircuts because I need one badly! =( And I don't just mean an AR filter for my video calls or socialpost!

Stay safe and sane out there...

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6 Questions to Determine if You're a Data-Driven Marketing Company

Competitive companies know they must be more data-driven today. That in turn requires a combination of technology and talent.

Data management is not easy. In a recent survey, 47% of marketers said it was difficult.

Data Management is Difficult

Here are 6 questions to ask yourself to see if your company is a data-driven marketing company:

1. Is your data centralized?

I often find data scattered across an organization with any one group only having visibility into part of the customer journey. Centralizing data would also help break down data silos across systems and departments. Sometimes I find different answers from different sources, presumably answering the same question. For example, why is online sales from our CRM system different from the web analytics? There's bound to be some discrepancies due to tracking methodology. But you do need to agree on one source of truth for reporting purposes.

2. How's your data hygiene?

It's hard enough centralizing all your data and stringing it together with primary keys and join functions. But you also need to spend time on data hygiene as an ongoing maintenance plan. Data integrity is key to combatting what I call "garbage in, garbage out."  You should be routinely looking for things, such as missing data, weird outliers, and duplicate records. Ultimately, you need to trust your data before you can rely on it.

3. Are you democratizing your data?

Are you empowering the right people with the right data in a timely manner so they can make informed decisions? For example, are social media campaign results accessible by not just the marketing team, but also the PR team? Are the marketing folks who are responsible for lead gen able to access sales data from the sales team to know the quality and close rates of their leads? And vice versa.

Often times this leads to the development of a shared online dashboard, such as Tableau, that let's users drill down to the data and analysis they need. But make no mistake about gathering business requirements first to know what internal stakeholders really need in order to design the right dashboards for specific users so they are not all swimming in a sea of data! 

4. Can you tell stories with your data?

Since we were babies, we have loved bedtime stories. Guess what? Executives and managers still love stories! Can you translate data into actionable insights? In my experience, I see lots of reports that's just numbers in Excel or on slides. In a recent study, many marketers find this to be one of their biggest challenges actually.

Importance of Storytelling with Data

Here's an example of translating data into insights. Let's say you ran an A/B subject line test for an email campaign. A good analyst will report out the open rate for both versions, calculate the lift % and significance level, and determine the winner. A better analyst will have a hypothesis on why the one subject line might have won and propose the next A/B test to run and why. Give something for the copywriter/marketer to work with.

5. Do you have top down support from senior management?

This is critical to know if the culture at the company truly supports data-driven decision making. Are executives willing to invest in the tools, resources, and personnel to enable data to flow freely across the organization? Are executive ready to rely on data to make big business decisions vs. their gut/experience? Or is it lip service?

6. Do you have strong partnerships between Marketing, IT, and Analytics/BI teams?

If you don't have top down support, this one will be even harder! At the minimum, this triumvirate is required to connect the disparate data sources...or what I refer to as data plumbing. To be successful, communication and trust across these teams is critical.


If you answered yes to all of the above, CONGRATULATIONS! You're a data-driven company well positioned for the 21st century.

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How Fortnite and Roblox Lead New In-app Purchase Trends

Not long ago, in-app purchases in games, usually "freemium" games, helped players advance in a game, such as accessing new levels or getting special weapons or abilities. For example, in Madden NFL, you can buy packs that include highly ranked football players to enhance your team. In Asphalt Nitro, you can buy a new or upgrade your existing race car. In Pixel Gun, you buy coins to buy weapons. You get the picture.

Madden NFL Store

We are now witnessing a massive shift in the marketplace from paying for something that offers functional, rationale benefits that give the player an advantage to more self-expressive, emotional benefits, such as how your player looks that offer no competitive advantage really.

It is taking personalization or customizing one's avatar to a whole new level and developers are making $$$!

Fremium games Roblox and Fortnite are 2 great case studies of this gaming trend.

Roblox

Roblox is a massive, multi-player online gaming platform where anyone can develop 3D games on it. The company has been around for about 10 years, but has picked up steam in recent years and supposedly has over 50 million active monthly players.

The Roblox Catalog is the main e-store that sells all kinds of things to "dress up" your character. You can mix and match different clothes, faces, heads, accessories, animations, and even shoulder pets. There are millions of items in the Catalog (237 million at the time of this post), so it's extremely rare for 2 customized players to look the same, which is cool. Roblox and 3rd-party players can offer items for sale in the Catalog.

Roblox Catalog

Roblox currency is known as Robux (R$) and conversion is about US$10 = R$800. Lots of Roblox-created items are priced fairly and affordably, including lots of free items. But when 3rd-party players sell items, the price variance can be quite huge. For example, a pair of jeans that look similar can be over-priced. But I guess that's the economics of an open marketplace.

Roblox: R$1 jeans

Roblox: R$999,999,999 jeans

For about US$5-$15, you can actually do a pretty good job customizing your avatar.

Roblox customized avatars

But nothing you buy in the Roblox Catalog actually improves your game play in the games. Within the games, developers can also sell items unique to their game, such as Jail Break, that does enhance game play.


Fortnite

Unless you've been living under a rock without Internet connection for the past 9 months, you've probably heard of Fortnite. Within Fortnite's Item Shop, one can purchase emotes (a.k.a., dance moves) and skins (a.k.a., outfits) with real money where $1 = 100 V-Bucks. Skins usually cost $8-$20, but most users get the $12-15 skins. Emotes normally cost $2-$8. Battle Passes, which are bundles of skins, emotes, and other stuff, usually cost $10. Fortnite also sells different gliders and pick axes, which one might think enhance your skills, but in fact they don't. They all function exactly the same, but look cooler -- like this Dragon Glider for 20 bucks!!! The 3D graphics and animation on Fortnite are significantly better than Roblox, but there is less uniqueness (due to less combinations of mixing and matching different parts) of your avatar than Roblox.

Fortnite Dragon Glider for $20

Fortnite has also perfectly tapped into the vanity of players. No one wants to look like a Noob (what gamers call a Newbie). Fortnite intentionally gives you a basic character that has a default skin to start that everyone recognizes, further motivating players to upgrade.

Fortnite Noob: Don't be this guy!

And then there are the emotes. Kids across the country are doing these immensely popular dances every where. Have you heard of Orange Justice? Check out YouTube for "Fortnite emotes".

Also, we're not talking about 99 cent purchases anymore. Kids (i.e., parents) are spending a month's allowance or gifts from grandma on what I consider very high ticket items. Moreover, from the parents and players I've spoken to, many are repeat purchasers. It's quite easy to spend $100 on Fortnite in a very short amount of time, compared to Roblox. And good luck spending less than $10 a pop on Fortnite! Players (and parents) are emptying their wallets faster than ever. Fortnite supposedly generates $300 million per month now in revenue. With over 40 million monthly active users, that's an average of $7.50 per active player per month. Quite impressive!

Fortnite has also employed a great psychological tactic to drive more sales: scarcity. All items in Fortnite's Item Shop are on sale for 24 to 48 hours, adding to the hype and frenzy. While some items may return later in the future, there is no guarantee.


So as you can see, Roblox and Fortnite are leading the trend towards selling purely superficial, cosmetic items to personalize your avatar, which merely gives you bragging rights among your friends and squad, but, not actually offering any real advantage in game play. And it will cost you a pretty penny to do so!

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How I Became a Data Plumber

The other day I realized that big data, business intelligence, and dashboards may sound sexy in my strategy and analytics world. But all that and the insights they promise is not really possible without the less glamorous work of what I call "data plumbing." Yes, mom, all my years of schooling and work experience has led me to a career as a plumber =) Having a modern plumbing system in place is not only critical for your home, it's also essential for marketing.

Let me share a real life example of one of the many things I do as a Data Plumber. In this example, the role of the Data Plumber is to make sure all the pipes are connected end-to-end for more precise data to flow to improve tracking and optimization.

Here's a common use case: To optimize paid search campaigns, we need keyword level data for offline conversions. This happens a lot for lead gen campaigns where sales are closed offline, especially for B2B clients and B2C clients whose products or services require more hand holding than ordering a book from Amazon to close the deal.

First, I work with the media team to generate and pass a unique click ID to the landing page when a user clicks on an ad. The click ID will provide granular keyword level tracking. That's the first upstream plumbing connection from the search engine to the client's site. This is like getting water from the main line in the street to your house.

Then we need a way to pass the click ID to the client's lead management or CRM system. This is where years of experience talking "tech" with developers and "data fields" with database administrators pays off as I make the business case on why the Marketing Department needs these changes.

I visit the client's CRM team to see if they can create a field for me to house my new incoming click ID from the client's site. In plumbing speak, I need to make sure there is a faucet in the house that can receive the water from the street once I hook up the pipes under the house.

Once that is taken care of, I am off to work with the web development team to pass my click ID at the point of lead generation, usually when a user submits a lead gen or order form on the site. Normally this involves altering the API to the lead management/CRM system to capture the click ID upon form submission. Now we got pipes to allow water to go from the street to the kitchen sink!

But we're not done yet. We need a way to drain the used water back out of the house. I'm back with the DBAs and the CRM team to create a way to send us the data we need via an ETL or dropping a file regularly to a FTP server. We are creating a conversion file that passes every lead and sale with our associated click ID back to the media team's search campaign management system...ideally in real-time (or near real-time) for bid optimization, as well as reporting.

Almost there...so I go back to where I started with the search team. We create a process where they can consume the client's conversion file and match the data back to click ID. What's powerful about all this is you don't just tell the campaign management tool that a keyword led to a sale or not (which is binary), but you can also pass the amount of the sale, product type, and even the customer segment for even more insightful reporting!

Without such plumbing in place, you can optimize at the keyword level on web leads, but not sales. Now, you may find you've been spending a lot of media budget on a keyword that generates a lot of leads, but has either a low sales conversion rate or a higher CPA (cost per acquisition) than you thought because you've been optimizing to CPL (cost per lead). Or perhaps you weren't getting the quality of sales or the right customer or product sold than you thought for some keywords. That's like having hot water enter your house, but only warm, foul-tasting water may be coming out at the tap unbeknownst to you because you just saw water coming out of the tap (assuming everything was working fine), but you never felt the temperature or tasted the water to realize something was wrong.

So, there you have it. Just a day in the life of a Data Plumber. =) Actually, in this case, the above would have taken me weeks, not a day, to setup in partnership with my client, media teams, web dev teams, and CRM/database administrators. But when it's all done, it feels great!

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How to Tie Online Search to Offline Sales

Here's a problem that has challenged me for years. You have a lead generation client with a robust paid search campaign. But sales conversion is offline and may have a long purchase consideration cycle. How do you track the impact of your SEM campaign? 

Sure you can use dynamic phone numbers on your landing page that tie to the SEM campaign. Or a lead gen form with a conversion pixel. But what if the prospect walks into a physical location to close the deal? Or returns from another campaign not tied to SEM and you may attribute to last click?

Wouldn't it be great if a lead walked in to your office, branch, or store and said, "Hi. I was searching last Tuesday at 9:54pm on Google and clicked on a paid search ad that took me to your site. Oh and by the way, I used this keyword and after learning about your company and product offering, I'm here today to buy."...Not going to happen! 

Well, I got close to this with a recent test I did for a large financial services client. Since actual sales conversion happens offline with a sales representative, we wanted to know if the prospect might have actually searched beforehand. 

The key was tying an offline record to an online cookie. We worked with a third-party "data onboarder" that specializes in matching offline customer data, say from a brand's CRM database or prospect list, to online cookies. This is typically done by matching name, physical address, and email address. Such online data can be captured when users make an online purchase on sites since this is always entered as a shipping address. Data onboarders will partner with many sites to build a large audience. 

Usually this technique is used to target banner ads to a brand's customer segments once users are onboarded and matched, as the matched cookies are pushed to an ad serving partner. 

But here is where I got a little creative with their technology. I developed a way to sync the cookies between our SEM campaign and the data onboarder's when a user clicked on our paid search ad. 

We were able to match a sample to our CRM database who indeed searched during our campaign. 

Here is some of the cool things we learned: 

• % of users who searched and clicked to our site that ended up in an offline sale. While you can guesstimate this by taking total sales divided by total SEM clicks in a period, you can't really attribute all those sales to SEM. Also, while you can use dedicated SEM phone numbers or a lead gen form as mentioned above, those are tracking leads. This allows you to track and give credit to SEM higher up in the purchase funnel. 
• Average and frequency distribution of the time from online search to offline sale. This is based on the timestamp of the SEM click and the date of sale in the CRM tool. From a histogram, we found that X% convert in Y days. While we previously knew the time from lead to sale, this again gave us a peek further upstream from search to sale.
• What keywords drove sales, as it may not be the same as the clicks or lead converting keywords that you see in search engine reports that don't track offline sales well or at all. 
• What client segments search and bought. Search is always an anonymous pull tactic. You can't really target search ads at someone like a banner ad. But we were able to learn a little bit more about them. While it is easy to see what segment a lead is after you acquire them, we were able to see what percent of each segment came to the site via SEM. Furthermore, we could see for each segment, what was the likelihood of SEM visitors becoming a sale. 

In the end, while it took a lot of work and ingenuity to set up, this campaign allowed us to see what kind of users SEM drove relative to our segments and what keywords drove more desirable segments to be acquired. 

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Know Thy Customer

Recently I've been meeting with various start-ups, including spending some time mentoring young entrepreneurs at Geek Camp V a few weeks ago.

I happen to be talking to more B2B companies lately. And one thing I've noticed is around customer acquisition. I always stress to young entrepreneurs they have to do everything they can to truly understand their target audience. Unlike B2C products or services, it is sometimes difficult for entrepreneurs to fully understand the customer needs, unless they have specific experience in the business.

But first, in order to do that, one needs to narrow down and identity a target or industry vertical. I always share with start-ups my story of a former client -- a global entertainment company that was starting a new music venture. The client told me its target was "everyone in the world because everyone listens to music." While the latter is probably true, not everyone is going to want your product to do so. I also call that the "Microsoft Zune trap" =)

The reality is as a start-up, one has limited time and resources. So one needs to really focus. You can't be chasing everyone in all markets because then you're not addressing anyone's needs very well. And quite frankly, it's like throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks.

So do a little homework, even if you have to do some scrappy market research or talk to lots of smart people in various industries to pick their brains over coffee. Then pick a target or no more than a handful of targets. Do everything you can to understand the target customers' use cases and pain points. Really learn the target's current process for doing things. Better yet -- try to observe them in their "natural habitat." You don't need to be an ethnographer! Talk to as many customers as you can 1:1 or in small focus groups. If you can get in front of a bunch of them at once, buy them lunch. A $20 pizza will get you intel worth way more than that!

Going back to my B2B entrepreneurs...

Armed with this insight, ask yourself: How can I improve the situation? I advise them to quantify the cost benefits or savings. Because B2B deals are usually not an emotional sell, but a cost or efficiency sell. So, it's quite black and white if you make a compelling business case. This is when I usually teach these young entrepreneurs some basic economic modeling skills. VC's like to see these analyses as well!

Once one identifies the primary problem that is being addressed, step back to see the entire value chain and customer journey to see how one can use the customer intel to either enhance the user experience or sell services.

It's really about determining the value exchange. This can help one figure out one's pricing model and sometimes help one figure out who the REAL paying customers are in the value chain. It might end up being a middle man or distributor versus the end user. This is often the case in B2B industries.

Think you got a better mouse trap? Most do. Now think about the switching costs to get a new customer to use your product or service instead of the status quo. It is human nature to not want to make changes. After all, it's never easy. How can you lower this barrier? Can you create a way to import their current data into your platform? Or the cost-benefit analysis you did above shows a clear positive ROI in a short time period. Whatever the case, don't underestimate during the sales cycle how difficult it is to acquire customers, despite how awesome one's mouse trap can be. I've seen this firsthand from a start-up with a great school administration tool to an easy-to-use dental office administration tool.

The entrepreneurs I meet are often super smart and passionate about their businesses and technologies. For a few moments I spend with them, I enjoy having them focus on their customers and try to walk in their customers' shoes, which is my passion.

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4 Mistakes to Avoid in Marketing Analytics

Ok, January just passed, so it may be a bit late for a New Year's Resolution. Then again Chinese New Year was on Friday, so maybe I'm still good.

Regardless, I have a New Year's Resolution Challenge for my fellow marketing analytics brethren (and sisters).

I have worked with all sorts of data to extract meaningful insights my whole career. Long before there were infographics! With the proliferation of data today, companies are drowning in data and there is definitely a talent shortage of business-savvy analysts. (Looking back now, being a math major seemed like a brilliant move even though people joked about how I'd only end up being a math teacher...but I digress.)

Measuring marketing effectiveness is hard...really hard. And with the hype of Big Data and tracking issues, many marketers end up in analysis paralysis or throw up their hands in frustration, often settling for "basic" reporting from various disjoint systems that gives a myopic view of performance. Or worse, they or their agencies make up esoteric metrics that are meaningless. The latter is one of my pet peeves because it ends up hurting themselves, giving some of us data-driven marketers a bad name, and is a dis-service to the marketing industry.

DEFINE NEW METRICS CAUTIOUSLY

Sometimes, a new metric needs to be created. Like when TV advertisers created GRP, which is simply defined as Reach X Frequency. While GRP was new, the notion of Reach and Frequency made sense. Today, that's a well understood metric by all marketers, especially the C Suite. When online advertising was starting in the late 90's, folks created impressions and click-through rates. While understandable, digital marketers quickly moved to conversions, like online sales, revenue, or leads -- KPIs that senior management clearly got! But soon, digital marketers wanted credit for non-direct response tactics and that's when things got murkier. Social media marketing made it worse when we went from number of Fans or Likes to "Engagement Rate." Engagement rate is one of the most over-used, buzzwordy KPI's out there today! When online marketers need to prove the value of a video ad or a content marketing piece in social spaces, I often hear people say "we had a great engagement rate." Does that really mean anything to a CMO? Or more importantly, would the CFO get it in order to fund more "engagement" in marketing investments?

AN INDEX IS NOT A MARKETING KPI

Another trend I've noticed, especially in social media marketing, is people making up new composites or indices based on what they can measure or can create with a "black box" algorithm.

Don't get me wrong. Indices are useful, but more for benchmarking to others or establishing trends over time. But it's not a good marketing effectiveness metric.

Marketing KPIs should be well tied to the CMO's marketing goals like sales, leads, or brand awareness. If the CMO asks how our online marketing is doing? You can't say: "Great! Our online advertising effectiveness index is up!"

DON'T USE OUTDATED STATS TO MAKE YOUR ARGUMENT

This is also one of my top pet peeves of all time. We all know there is a statistic out there to support almost any argument you want to make. But try not to cite research that is outdated, especially in fast changing industries like online marketing and mobile. Even my beloved WSJ falls victim to this time to time. In a recent Oct 28, 2013 article called Pediatricians Set Limits on Screen Time, the author makes the case that children are spending way too much time on gadgets. No argument there, but cites a 2010 research study from Kaiser:

Children ages 8 to 18 spent an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes a day consuming media for fun, including TV, music, videogames and other content in 2009, according to a 2010 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report was based on a survey of 2,002 third- through 12th-graders, 702 of whom completed a seven-day media use diary. That was up about an hour and 17 minutes a day from five years earlier. About two-thirds of 8- to 18-year-olds said they had no rules on the amount of time they spent watching TV, playing videogames or using the computer, the Kaiser report found.

That is not only 3 years old, but children's media consumption is probably even higher today! In my experience, outdated sources are used when the author can't easily find a more recent source to support the argument or sometimes too lazy to look for it. I'm not suggesting that with this WSJ reporter, but I've had to educate colleagues about this bad habit many times in my career.

DON'T REDEFINE AN ESTABLISHED METRIC

I recently saw a social media monitoring tool that had defined Brand Awareness in its dashboard as a function of reach and conversation strength. What?!? There is already clear, well-established definition for this. When it is changed, it causes confusion. This is a case of analysts "stretching" to make some made-up metrics seem relevant by slapping a more familiar term to it.

SUMMARY

We all know marketing analytics is a constantly evolving beast and measurement is not perfect and never will be. So we do what we can and hope to raise the bar for our industry daily. As a data-driven strategist, after I present my analysis and recommendations, the 3 greatest words to come out of a client's mouth is "That makes sense." There's so much data and noise out there, that the hard part is actually telling the story, not crunching the numbers. It's the difference between a quant jock and a thought buddy.

So as we enter 2014, let's strive to do better with measurement and analytics! And collect as many "That Makes Sense" as we can.

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Why Intel's Internet TV Business Had No Chance

This week, there were rumors that Intel was likely to sell its Internet TV venture to Verizon.

I am not surprised. Even with all of Intel's vast resources and over 300 employees behind it, the TV service is on the auction block. What went wrong? A lot!

I believe the service was doomed from the beginning. It probably looked great on a PowerPoint slide in the board room. A nice white space in the upper right quandrant of a 2x2 matrix that represented a big growth opportunity for the company.

If a proper Market Opportunity Assessment (MOA) was done years ago, by looking at the market/industry dynamics, competitors, customers, and the company's capabilities, Intel should have realized this was not a good idea. Here's my armchair strategic take on things.

Company

Intel is a hardware company no matter how you look at it. It's not a media company or a telecommunications company. Even its previous foray into communications (on the hardware side) didn't work out. It's really hard to be something different and hardware + service or hardware + software is one of the greatest challenges for any tech company. Look no further than Microsoft and its hardware ambitions (Zune, Surface). Samsung is trying now to build out its software capabilities, and just had its first developer conference in San Francisco last week. Few companies, like Apple, have pulled it off. Basically, media is not the company's core competency and its failure to secure any content media partners reflects that.

Competition

Has Intel learned nothing from watching media companies and cable/satellite companies fight and go into blackouts from soured negotiations? Why would you want to get into that space? Not only that, Intel would face additional competition from deep-pocketed tech competitors, such as Apple, Google, and Amazon, who also have their eyes on the same prize! But unlike Intel, these tech giants have experience negotiating and securing deals with music and media companies for their online app stores.

The supplier power from the oligopoly of the major media companies may have been underestimated. These media companies are paranoid and threatened from all sides. (Anyone appreciate the irony of Intel ex-CEO Andy Grove's Only the Paranoid Survive in this case?) Cable TV, satellite TV, Netflix, Aereo, Bit Torrent, and then Intel comes a-knocking. Is anyone going to return Intel's call? Some, like Netflix, have started to show their potential value as a partner to these media companies. But what did Intel bring to the party besides some buzz on the UX of its interactive TV guide?

Customer

I don't believe the Intel brand has brand credibility or license to go into consumer living room. Remember how Viiv failed and quietly went away? Viiv was Intel's attempt to be a home entertainment hub. Intel also has a poor track record in consumer electronics. It used to sell digital cameras, MP3 players, and Intel Play PC toys. That business was eventually shut down. Intel Inside, despite being one of the greatest branding stories of all time, has its limits.

Conclusion

While I am impressed by how Intel continues to innovate in the microprocessor space and I personally prefer Intel Inside my PC, it's a whole different story to want it in my TV.

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CMOs Say Their Marketing Analytics is Sub-Par

A recent CMO Survey conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business shows there is a lot of heavy lifting to be done still to improve marketing analytics and prove the value of marketing. The research included 410 marketing executives, of which 93% were VP and above.

If this isn't a wake up call, I don't know what is:

• Two-thirds of marketing execs say they are pressured by the CEO or Board to prove the value of marketing, and 60% feel this pressure is increasing. (Not to mention the CFO!)
• I'm scared too since about two-thirds also say they can't prove quantitatively the impact of their marketing spend.  
• For example, the report states that many execs feel their company's customer information is not well integrated across purchasing, communication, and social media channels, with an average rating of 3.4 on a 7-point scale (where 1=not at all, 7=very effectively)
• While on average 5.5% of the marketing budget is spent on marketing analytics, its use in company projects is trending downwards and is only 29% today. (*SIGH*)

• In almost every industry, marketing analytics is not being fully leveraged to answer the company's most challenging marketing questions (mean=3.7, where 1=none of the time and 7=all the time)

• Moreover, 67% say they do NOT evaluate the quality of marketing analytics! Then it's no wonder why many believe marketing analytics does not contribute to their company's performance. As I always say, "garbage in, garbage out!"

• And a lot of it boils down to a lack of talent...

This doesn't surprise me because I have found that despite all the hype around Big Data, many companies are still struggling with "Little Data" issues like getting meaningful website analytics or defining proper success metrics/KPIs.  It's not for lack of trying by marketing managers. I find one of the most common issues is not all marketers speak "geek" with techies, DBAs, or business intelligence analysts. The other common scenario I see is companies hiring really smart PhD statisticians and quant jocks and expect them to immediately get all the business and marketing aspects of the job. It has taken me my entire career to learn how to "translate" between business executives, marketing managers, techies, and data analysts in order to make sure we're all running in the same direction.

Marketing accountability is higher than ever, and marketing analytics is no doubt key to the solution. It's a great time to be in marketing for a data-driven thought buddy like me to help clients make sense of all their data.

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Geek Camp IV: A Day with Start-up Entrepreneurs...Again

Last week, I had the pleasure of joining @Marcelodiazb from IncubaUC and @HiroshiWald of Austral Capital again for Geek Camp IV. I last mentored a set of geeks in Geek Camp 3, primarily listening to their business pitch and providing feedback.

This time, I decided to try something different. I decided to hold "office hours" where I didn't want to be pitched by a PowerPoint deck. I had founders stand with me up at a white board (my favorite canvas, followed by PowerPoint) and describe their business model and to share a challenge or decision they were facing.

Explaining how "office hours" will work to the Geeks

The first guinea pig was Daniel from Cloud Intelligence, which developed a business intelligence reporting software for retail and manufacturing industry. We had a great discussion about where he could best create and extract value from the industry: retailers, distributors, or manufacturers. This in turn led us to develop the GTM strategy once we figured out where to fit in within the value chain.

Whiteboarding Go To Market Strategy with Daniel of Cloud Intelligence

I also met with Javier from BeCycling. His company had developed a bicycling app that let people complete challenges to receive rewards for their community. For example, if I completed a bike race, it might go towards a new bike rack at the local library. What was interesting is he had some altruistic and socially responsible ambitions. He wanted to focus on corporations' employee wellness programs and non-profits who would want to sponsor and promote biking challenges to improve the world. But then I had him imagine what if we targeted advertisers instead. For one, marketers spend a lot more money than corporate and non-profit do-gooders. So, we talked about various ad products that could be integrated into the app for brand advertisers or direct marketers. For example, creating a CPL-based lead gen form for a bicycle insurance company he was starting to talk to.

Whiteboarding Business Model with Javier of BeCycling

A few more entrepreneurs went to the front of the class, and by the end of the day, I had a blast! I was fired up to see all these young entrepreneurs with such passion and drive, making me feel more alive as well. So, thank you, Geeks!

In the end, I realized what I was to these young entrepreneurs. I wasn't a marketing guy or digital strategist. I was their THOUGHT BUDDY, someone to bounce ideas off of and build on each other's comments in conversation.

And big thanks to @HannaIsBack for this lovely drawing sketched from her iPad! (If you're wondering who or what's behind me, that's supposedly an entrepreneurial geek she says.)

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Why Don't Commuter Ferries Run Billboard Ads?

The other day I was riding on a Blue & Gold ferry boat across the bay in San Francisco. And I realized something - Why don't the ferry companies sell advertising on billboards in the boats? Sure, there are lots of windows that look out on the beautiful bay. But there's also wall space for ads.

It seems like a perfect vehicle to market to commuters who ride it back and forth. That's a captive audience stuck on a boat for 30-45 minutes until the next stop. 

It's no different than the ads one finds on buses (e.g., SF Muni) and the subway (e.g., BART). It would certainly generate revenue for them. Maybe the answer is they don't need it? On their website, they seem proud of this fact:

Operates the Tiburon ferry, the only unsubsidized commuter ferry service on the Bay.

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11 Lessons Learned from Building a Non-Profit Site

I recently worked with a non-profit to re-design and re-launch its website from the ground up. Because it was a pro bono gig, I ended up leading the project and working closely with a developer and a designer (both volunteers too) and doing a lot of the legwork myself. In other words, I got my hands dirty...really dirty. But it was fun and a great learning experience on how to operate with no budget and no staff.

Here are some tips and learnings from this project.

1. Plan the Site: If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Before hopping on a computer, we considered the layout, page structure and how users would navigate across the site. We sketched this out on paper. While we didn't develop full-blown wireframes, my IA friends would be proud.

2. Audit the Site: We audited the existing site content to determine what to keep and what needed rewrite. I built in Google Docs a spreadsheet that allowed us to catalog what was on every page, how often it needed to be updated, and if we should keep it for the new site. Because it was a Google Doc, we could all collaborate on this task. One of the problems with the old site was the previous team had a "let's publish the kitchen sink because we have the content" philosophy. That proved problematic because the old site did not have site search. But our new mantra was less is more.

3. Talk to your Target Audience: Knowing your audience's needs will help set the content strategy and layout. No primary research had ever been done on the target audience for site development. So I deployed a very simple online survey with a Google Doc form (Google Docs is free and was awesome for this project!) that was emailed out to the user community. It had only 3 simple questions in order to increase the response rate from participants. It asked when they visited the site last, how frequently, and then a list of about 20 content/feature items they were asked to check all that they wanted to see on the new site. This was invaluable for us to prioritize the new site's features and content areas.

4. Study Site Behaviors: Actions speak louder than words. In addition to the self-reported survey, the web analytics from the old site was a treasure trove of insights. Looking at the Google Analytics data, I identified the most popular content on the old site. Unfortunately, links to external tools and downloadable PDFs did not have event tags on them so we had no idea how popular they were. One of these was the online donation link so it was a bummer that we couldn't see how many clicks it got. But we were able to see how many donations came in from the 3rd-party online payment system. Also, if your site has site search, it's worth exploring the search logs to see what people are trying to find on the site and informs content development and navigation design.

5. Learn from Others: We conducted a competitive assessment on similar sites. Because they didn't really have direct competitors, it was more of a "comparative" analysis of what others had on their site, nomenclature used, and navigation menus.

6. Make Navigation Easy: Navigation menus should be intuitive and easy to understand. Don't forget people read left to right and top to bottom. The nomenclature analysis from the comparative assessment is also helpful here. It's not always good to come up with a snazzy name for something if no one understands it, so it's worth accounting for social norms and making sure you use target audience's words, not internal team's.

7. Know the Key Stakeholders: Most of the content was going to remain static or updated infrequently upon site re-launch. However, a couple of pages had content that would require periodic update from a group of key stakeholders in the organization. It was critical to get buy-in from them for their areas of expertise. Past attempts for their active participation failed. I suspect it was because no one ever addressed the following:

• What's in it for them? "Website management" was never part of their job description.
• Have we done all we can to make their involvement easy, but sufficient?

So we setup a special meeting to give this group a preview of the site. We also figured out how to motivate and encourage participation from these key content creators. We re-designed key parts of the site to minimize the need for lots of fresh content frequently, while still making the site useful and appealing for site visitors. There were too many "ghost towns" and "coming soon" signs in the old site. So, we created simpler templates for this group and also had people on the tech team who would help them take their raw content and upload it to the site for them. Also, providing period reports on site activity in their respective areas of the site made it tangible for them and excited them. ("Wow, 60 people visited my article in first 24 hours?")

8. Make Design Visually Attractive:  Non-profit does not equal non-design. The designer I worked with redid the color palette and also introduced more high-quality photos for the entire site. Buttons were standardized. A consistent CSS was applied and followed by content managers. All of this gave the site a more professional look and feel.

9. Don't Forget about Search: Sure the site looks nice, but what do search bots see? Even without the aid of a search agency, one can employ basic SEO best practices for free on your own. The web is full of basic tips for tags, meta data, page titles, etc. In terms of content development and copywriting, Google's free keyword tool is helpful for identifying high search volume terms. Related to #6, use words that are intuitive and user-centric, but also SEO-friendly. Lastly, be sure to do a Google search for your site and check what is on the search results page to ensure there are no unexpected surprises.

10. Get Analytic: It is critical to make sure the site is configured properly with a web analytics tool. The free version of Google Analytics is great. Our new site was built in WordPress, so it was easy to install the plug-in for Google Analytics. But that is not enough. As I mentioned above, we lacked any data on external links and downloads. So, I did some custom onClick event tagging on all of these in Google Analytics. We also installed a site search box, so I also enabled site search in Google Analytics. Both were easy to setup and well worth the insights we will get to inform content needs and navigation issues for future releases!

11. Market the Site: If you build it, they will come...only if you promote the site. Launching the site required heavy lifting, but don't stop there. Email blast the customer base or at least the same folks who were asked to participate in the survey so they know their feedback wasn't wasted. Put flyers in the hallways and cubicles around the office to get the staff pumped up. If there's a newsletter, mention it in that. When workers are talking to customers on the phone, mention the new site. And most importantly, work on getting all internal stakeholders to think about the website when they announce, email or snail mail something out to the community by also putting it online and directing users to the site for more info. This will start changing people's behaviors to visit the site more often.

What have you learned working with non-profits?

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How to save the USPS: what USPS can learn from online marketers

Well, the US Postal Service reported another huge financial loss this quarter ($3.5 billion!!!), as reported by CNN Money. It's been hemorrhaging money for the past 4 years due to declining mail volume, union obligations, and an outdated business model.


Source: CNNMoney.com
Sure, one can argue the Internet and email is killing the USPS. But, with e-commerce continuously rising, more packages need to be shipped to consumers. UPS and FedEx are riding this trend all the way to the bank! I know USPS has been coming up with various shipping deals for packages and partnering with major etailers.

But here's another idea. One of the annoyances and concerns of shopping online is having your package delivered securely to your home when you're away at work. For most people, this means you hope that no one steals your package if it's left by your doorstep. I had friends who had Christmas presents that were shipped stolen at their doorsteps!

What if the USPS provided a way for merchants to ship products to you and if you weren't home, you could pick it up at your nearest post office in the evening or weekends? You know, at times when you're NOT at work. Or offer delivery times when you are at home like what Safeway.com offers. Yes, this may have labor union implications but the USPS could charge merchants and consumers for this convenience, opening up a new revenue stream. USPS already has the infrastructure, trucks, and warehouses for this.

Want to hear an even crazier idea?

Take a page from us, online marketers. USPS has the ultimate ad network going into every home...via mail and packages. What if the USPS allowed advertisers to stamp or stick on an ad on delivered mail or packages?

They could also geo-target, but probably not much more due to privacy concerns. Can you imagine if they allowed advertisers to do behavioral targeting based on the types of mail you received? Can you imagine the ads you might get if you were already receiving Victoria Secret catalogs? =)

Offer some weekparting targeting perhaps. For example, if Macy's is having a sale this weekend, it could pay to be on Friday's mailings targeted to consumers within a certain distance from a Macy's store.

This has potential to compete with Valpak.

Why would consumers even put up with such advertising on their personal mail? Because it would be better than raising rates again or reduced delivery times. We give up a little bit of privacy and put up with advertising each day online for free or subsidized services. Why not with this?

Perhaps this is too far fetched, but that's what happens when I blog late at night.

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