The document discusses the evolution of marketing in the digital age, emphasizing the shift towards data-driven analytics and the importance of understanding customer behavior. It highlights how changes in web technologies and social media have transformed traditional marketing practices and the need for businesses to adapt to new customer expectations around interaction, responsiveness, and relevance. The document also underscores the significance of balancing qualitative insights with quantitative data to drive successful marketing strategies.

1. Analytics, Search, Social Media, Optimization: Why Has Marketing Gotten So Geeky? presented by : Kate O’Neill CEO & Founding Partner, [meta]marketer

2. Paging Dr. Drucker: “ The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” “ Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two— basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. ”

3. Traditional Marketing Path Awareness Preference Purchase Loyalty

4. What’s changed? Search Social Analytics Technologies not to mention… customer expectations of relevance, usability, portability, etc. Let’s look at the landscape >

5. How do you plan for all this?

7. Let’s Talk About Search .

8. What’s changing in the Web landscape?

9. Remember the Pre-Search Web?

11. And then ...

13. Google changed everything .

14. The Consequences of Google Emphasis on ranking high in the ‘One True Search’ led to Emphasis on inbound links at any cost which led to Creation of web litter, spam sites, bogus articles, spam blog comments, questionable endorsements, an industry of “experts”, etc

15. The Audacity of Google Facebook

16. Facebook Moving In On Google’s Turf

17. It’s (Almost) a Post-Search World, Baby But we’re a changed user base Bringing the mindset of shady SEO to social media (unfortunately) - manipulate results, rank high, add junk We’ve got hundreds of “experts” early in the game. Really?

18. How Many ‘Experts’ Are There Really? 13,000? 36,000 ?

19. It All Comes Around Eventually Twitter lists take us right back to the manual link-building, curation model Emphasis on “friendsourcing” vs “crowdsourcing”

20. So: what’s changing in the Web landscape? Google > Facebook Search > Spontaneity Findability > Trustability

21. And let’s not forget “the Cloud” Data portability Mobile apps & mobile web Location-based apps & games Augmented reality Context relevance takes on geography and proximity

22. The “Burden of Proof” In a digital world, everything is potentially measurable Business insights need data and validation Marketing has the opportunity to move from the hot seat to the driver’s seat with the tools to inform the business

23. Analytics : With Great Power Comes Great Accountability.

24. Analytics Process at a Glance Determine KPIs What factors will determine success? What’s actionable? Establish a baseline Where are the pain points? What’s the range? Prioritize What’s most critical? What’s easiest? Validate Form a hypothesis Test Analyze Compare with baseline Extrapolate to ROI source: Omniture SiteCatalyst Basic User Training Workbook

25. What’s measurable? Traffic Sources (finding methods) Composition (visitor profile) Engagement Navigation Content Conversion "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein

26. What’s meaningful? “ Where in the site are visitors most often deciding to leave?” “ Where do visitors most often go after using the internal search?” “ Do visitors who come in on blog posts actually visit the rest of the site?” “ What search terms are used by the people who are most likely to purchase?” In other words: start with a good question .

27. Planning is Key to Analysis Anticipate Implement Modify Data collection begins! Incremental data only

28. Conversion Metrics Conversion Rate (Orders or Leads per Visit) Orders Revenue Leads Generated Offline Sales Completed

29. Model the Site identify actions / events, content hierarchies, products (e-commerce), and potentially interesting characteristics

30. Types of Reports Metrics Trending Pathing Next Page / Previous Page Fall-out Dashboards

31. Trending helpful in spotting anomalies in patterns

32. Funnels helpful with path fall-out visualization

33. Page Flow helpful in spotting content & navigation problems

34. Dashboards helpful in reviewing KPIs at a glance

35. Traffic: Who’s coming to the site?

36. Examples of Traffic Metrics Visits Page Views Traffic Sources Unique Visitors Wait... what’s the difference between ‘absolute unique’ and ‘daily/weekly unique’?

37. Visitors: aren’t we all unique? Mon: Joe, Jane, Jeff Tues: John, Jack Weds: James, Jill Thurs: Jeff , Jason, Jack Fri: Jay, Joel, John How many visits? at least 13 How many visitors? 13 How many unique daily visitors? 13 How many unique weekly visitors? 10

38. Engagement: What’s happening once people get there?

39. Examples of Engagement Metrics Return Visits Time on Site / Time Spent per Visit Bounce Rate

40. Are You Ready for the Social Web?

41. Defining Social Media publishing power to the masses participation conversation accountability, transparency, measurability

42. What do we mean by social media? Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, blogs but also YouTube, Ning, Flickr, Vimeo, Bebo, Last.fm, imeem, Plaxo, Tumblr, etc.

45. Social Media Measurements

47. Traditional Marketing Path Awareness Preference Purchase Loyalty

48. Social Marketing Path Reach / Exposure / Awareness Engagement Influence Goal Action

49. Social Marketing Path Select Measures # of Visits # of Visitors Comments Click-throughs Duration Repeat visits Registration Retweets Purchase Consideration Likelihood to Recommend Purchase Attend event Tell a friend Contact Reach / Exposure / Awareness Engagement Influence Performance of Goal Action

50. What are Ideal Measures? Reach Clickthroughs Purchases Awareness

52. Unprecedented Technologies: A Look at Optimization

53. How are most design decisions made?

54. HPPO H ighest P aid P erson’s O pinion Not irrelevant, but not comprehensive.

55. By Committee “I need my department to be featured on the home page!” “Can we use something other than red for the Buy buttons? I hate red.”

56. Designer’s Aesthetic Flash! Prettiness over performance

57. Finger in the Wind What seems to be trendy What someone mentioned at a party What’s reported in the news

58. In other words... in a vacuum.

59. How should design decisions be made?

60. You need user input. You are not your audience. Even if you are.

61. You need data. Users lie. Aggregate data doesn’t.

62. HPPO Data trumps opinions. Even highly paid ones. Use conversion-related metrics to determine executive-relevant strengths and weaknesses of the site.

63. Committee If it isn’t interesting to the user, ditch it. Use engagement metrics to determine what keeps users on the site.

64. Design for Design’s Sake Think users like your design? Prove it. If your creative success can’t be measured, it may not be valued.

65. Finger in the Wind “ Great idea! I’ll add it to the testing roadmap.” Trendy ideas are worth knowing about. But they may not work in your situation.

66. Balance objective and subjective input what people think or feel versus what people do

67. Balance qualitative and quantitative input what you can intuit versus what you can measure

68. Gathering Balanced Input focus groups A/B or MVT results usability studies / interviews surveys analytics data

69. What to do? Balance subjective & objective testing (And know that you may get it wrong) Find the story behind the story (But know that you may get it wrong) Look for a narrative in onsite testing (But know that you may get it wrong) Look for the unobvious AND the obvious (And know that you may get it wrong)

70. If you’re still going to get it wrong, why test? Because you can not only measure lift when you’re right... (Woo hoo!) you can also contain risk when you’re wrong. (And it just might save your job.) In short, test your way to greatness.

71. Customer Expectations Are Changing

72. What Customers Have Come to Expect: Interaction : Through social channels, click to chat support, etc. Responsiveness : Replies to complaints on Twitter and elsewhere, fast fast FAST turnaround Customization : Ability to set up custom levels of interactions, or even better, learn without them telling you Relevance : Specific, targeted messaging and experiences Respect : Nothing foisted on them, no invasions of privacy or security

73. Q&A

74. Follow me? Twitter: @kateo @metamarketer @corpidealist Facebook: facebook.com/kateoneill LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kateoneill Blogs: metamarketer.com corporateidealist.com Email: [email_address] [email_address] [email_address]