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5 Lessons for Successful Internet Marketing

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Recently, I was reading an article in Advertising Age that highlighted the lessons from their CMO Strategy Summit. I would have to agree with the eight things that the article mentions, but I’ve created a modified list of 5 lessons that applied to internet marketing or digital advertising. Below are my 5 lessons that should be applied to internet marketing:

Challenging Internal Think

We need to challenge the “internal think” within our organization and marketing departments. In the world of internet marketing, the old ways of thinking need to be modified and must include collaboration. In order to be successful, many departments can no longer work in solos; otherwise campaigns are destined to fail. We must work together to identify the best solutions that help to achieve strategic goals & objectives. This shouldn’t just apply to agency clients but advertising agencies as well. Be sure to limit risk and identify opportunities to control them with challenging internal think.

Building Relations with PR, Finance and IT (be inclusive)

Don’t just get to know your CIO but also the heads of Public Relations, Communications, and Finance. Understand what they think about your approach challenge, and obtain feedback from them. Include your department heads into strategic discussions because everyone has a role to play with the marketing campaign. Be prepared to justify cost, forecast, and predict outcomes with Finance, and reinforce the role of IT within the scope of every campaign.

Experiment with Failure (Wisely) – A/B & MV Testing

Experiment with failures through A/B & Multivariate testing of all things digital. Create controlled experiments, develop hypotheses, identify sample sizes for statistical significance, run the test, and don’t stop testing. It’s not as expensive as it was in the past with the functionality of Content Management Systems (CMS), Google AdWords, Google Analytics, KISSmetrics, and other usability testing sites. Start gathering information and spend less time talking about it in meetings that don’t generate outcomes to reduce cost and improve marketing.

Local, Regional, and then National

It seem like every business thinks they’re a national brand, but they have challenges spending the national budgets. Grow locally, regionally, and then nationally to save money, measure your effectiveness, and apply your finds to new markets. If done effectively, you just might identify competitive advantages and target national markets that grow your business.

Measure & Value

Measure the effectiveness of your marketing tactics and provide a value for leads or sales. This should lead to better marketing, reductions in cost, and the ability to forecast and predict. Now, you’re speaking the language of the finance department and gaining credibility. It should also help to reinforce the value of the IT department.

These lessons should help to position your organization and team for successful internet marketing campaigns. I would highly recommend that marketing professionals take a look the CMO Strategic Summit’s 8 lessons.

Let us know if you have any lessons that you’d like to share. Good Luck!

5 Tips For Making Your Data a Top Priority

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Whether you’re a marketing manager for a private organization or a web analyst for a digital agency, you surely understand the great importance of data and the powerful insights it can yield. You’ve also probably encountered one (often frustrating) roadblock: The people around you just don’t get it. The business analysts haven’t gotten the historical data you requested. IT has adopted a “we’ll get to it when we get to it” approach to installing tags on the website. Upper management doesn’t share the enthusiasm that your department does.

These factors almost always lead to marketing inefficiencies for the long term, with your organization’s proverbial marketing rear-ends hanging in the wind. Without quality insights, marketing campaigns cannot improve and are ultimately doomed to fail.

Tips for Success

So how do you go about creating a data-driven culture in your organization? Check out these tips to help convey the importance of data and insights:

  1. Get Everybody On Board! – This is perhaps the most important item in this list! Measurement simply cannot happen without the complete support of the required parties in the organization. Make sure everyone, from IT to the decision-makers, knows what you are measuring, why you are measuring it, and how it affects them.

  2. Establish Data-Gathering Policies & Procedures – You’ll be measuring with the goal of gathering insights to drive business, so you will want to ensure that the data you’re basing it all upon is of good quality. Establishing policies and procedures related to data and documenting them will take some time, but it will definitely pay off in the long run.

  3. Identify KPIs Relevant to Your Audience – At this point you’ve caught the eyes of the necessary people in your organization. This is where you reel them in completely. Identify the Key Performance Indicators that matter most to each of them. This will differ according to their respective roles. You want to ensure they see the benefits of their work!

  4. Create a Measurement Plan – Once you’ve identified all of the necessary KPIs, you must map out how you’ll go about obtaining the data. Identifying opportunities for measurement and creating documentation for deployment are included in this step.

  5. Get Hyped! – You’ve put all this effort into winning the right people over. Now it’s time to get excited about it! Show them why they should be excited about the insights they’ll be receiving. The more anticipation you build, the more likely you’ll have advocates for the long haul.

Conclusion

So there you have it; 5 great tips for creating a data-driven culture. Some of them will be easier to accomplish than others, but all are possible with enough planning and communication with the right people. The benefits that can be reaped from them greatly outweigh the challenges. The insights that can be gained from complete buy-in and support can help drive business and improve campaigns well into the future.
Have additional tips? Share them in the comments!

3 Common Pitfalls in Content Marketing

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By now, you’ve probably heard about the benefits that come with incorporating a Content Marketing strategy. The ways content can enhance your business’s marketing mix, how it builds a sense of community with customers, the ways it shows off your expertise—the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, many businesses aren’t utilizing their content to its full potential. Below are the most common of these mistakes and tips on how you can avoid them.

1) It’s All About Me

Sometimes when a business decides it wants to jump on the content bandwagon, there is the mindset that the bulk of their content should be directly tied to their products / services, or that they should always try to sell something when they communicate with their audience. Unfortunately, this strategy often turns users away from your content rather than sharing it and coming back for more. The problem is that businesses often fail to step into their target audience’s shoes and think about what they like, care about, and expect from web content. People want to be informed, entertained, and assisted in solving a problem, not bogged down by constant self-promotion.

The Tip: Do your research & be customer-centric—think about who your audience is, use their feedback, and create content based on what’s important to them.

2) Nothing But The Facts

You may have heard the phrase “facts tell, but stories sell” before when it comes to Content Marketing. This point builds off the pitfall above in that users don’t want dry, isolated, or negative content; rather, they want stories. Stories have themes, compelling elements, room for engagement and interaction, and connections between them. The success of other marketing tactics, such as SEO and Social Media Marketing, rely on building content that users can relate to, find what they need, and pass on to others. This not only affects the way content is made, but also the way it is distributed.

The Tip: Have a theme & make connections—use stories to entertain, persuade, and engage with your audience.

3) Publish & Pray

In any new marketing endeavor, having a plan is essential. Not only can your business keep its efforts (and budget) organized, but it also projects a sense of reliability to customers. With your content, this step is even more important. Many businesses take a heavy-handed approach to their content, letting regular communications fall by the wayside. Customers don’t want to keep checking your site for new content only to find the same thing they saw the week before. In most cases like this, they’ll eventually stop returning. Applying an optimization plan (set a goal, plan, implement, measure, refine, & repeat) is a great way to look at the content creation process.

The Tip: Make a plan & stick to it—create a calendar for content to show that your business can maintain a high standard while enhancing your reputation to your audience.

What do you think of the pitfalls above? If you have any suggestions or questions about this list, leave us a comment below!

A/B Testing (Split Testing) to Convert More Online Customers

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What is A/B testing (split testing)?

A/B testing, or split testing, is a marketing testing method by which one baseline control sample is compared to a variety of single-variable test samples in order to improve response or conversion rates. An example would be to test two different subject lines of an email campaign. A/B testing has been implemented for direct mail and within the interactive space to test tactics such as banner ads, emails, landing pages, or even entire websites to improve performance. You can also extend A/B testing to PPC advertising copy, alternative keywords, or PPC keyword match types.

How can my business or marketing department apply A/B testing?

You should always be testing ways to improve the sales process to reduce your cost per acquisition and to improve your customers’ experiences. I would recommend that you start with the “low hanging fruit” that could have the greatest impact on revenue or the customer experience. For example, an A/B test could be a simple as testing the color of the calls-to-action to improve the click-through-rate.

A/B testing can be applied to marketing tactics to improve sales or lead generation at a lower cost. In general, it’s easier to implement A/B testing with digital advertising because of the ability to make changes quickly and optimize the process. The findings from digital advertising can also be carried over to traditional advertising.

A/B Testing Best Practices

If you’re new to A/B/ split testing, here are a few best practices:

  • Define your goals. Clearly state what you hope to accomplish.

  • Determine how you plan to accomplish your goals. Keep it Simple!

  • What are you testing & why?

  • What is the variation you are testing (color, position, ad copy, etc.)?

  • Define the control and your variation for testing.

  • What are your expected results & reasoning?

  • Measure & Analyze the results through the sales or conversion process.

How do you apply A/B Testing to Internet Marketing Strategy?

You can leverage A/B testing based on geography, psychographics, customer lifecycles, etc. You want to develop realistic goals based on your target audiences. At first, I would recommend being targeted with your approach and limiting the test to a single market. It’s important to identify the greatest impact on the conversion process or sales process by modifying the internet marketing strategy slightly. Be sure to focus on all the results from the beginning of the process to completion and to communicate the results. Think about the effect the testing will have on saving time, money, and creating efficiencies.

Conclusion

If you haven’t started A/B testing, you’re wasting time, money, and missing opportunities. As marketers, we should always be testing to maximize performance and to reduce costs. Testing goes beyond just a subject line or ad copy. It requires focus, consistency, and planning. In addition, you must think about usability, branding, layouts, the purchase process, etc. There are numerous tools such as Web Optimizer, Visual Website Optimizer, or Test &Target to get started.

The Need for Digital Marketing Education

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In the recent blog “8 Predictions for SEO in 2012”, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz predicted the rise of a serious certification program. I believe that there is a real need for our industry to identify and support a serious certification program; however, I have not seen any organization dedicated enough to establish themselves as an industry leader. Institutions of higher education need to start preparing their students for the “real world”. In my opinion, colleges and universities are doing a poor job of identifying opportunities to integrate traditional marketing knowledge and skills with today’s internet marketing environment.

There are several organizations that offer certification programs, but I am not sure that they can keep up with the changes or obtain a consensus between fact and fiction. Case in point: Several members of our team at DaBrian Marketing Group have taken courses provided by SEMPO Institute, but we have not been notified of what the latest updates were to the course information. As of February 21, the SEMPO Institute closed up shop for their certification program.

The colleges and universities need to introduce their students to internet marketing as a whole. Within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, you will have a difficult time identifying colleges or universities that offer an internet marketing course as part of the undergraduate marketing curriculum. This extends to web design and development area of study, as graduates often lack basic SEO knowledge.

There is a serious need for education within our industry from the university level as well as alternative methods. Even as an adjunct professor, I don’t expect a student to be an SEO expert, but I would expect them to know the marketing fundamentals for an online marketing campaign. At the same time, internet marketing is not just SEO, PPC, and Social Media. We need to align the traditional concepts to internet marketing beyond business or marketing. These concepts should be accessible to IT graduates as well. Internet Marketing is not just for marketing people anymore, but it’s now IT, Public Relations and Math. We need to start demonstrating the crossover of these disciplines within our industry. It starts with us and we need to reinforce the need for education in internet marketing and encourage the progress of certification programs.

Let us know what you think!

6 Tips to Consider Before Implementing Your Email Marketing Strategy

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Most businesses utilize email marketing as a marketing tactic to cross sell new business or for retention purposes.It is pretty rare for an organization to develop a comprehensive email marketing strategy to increase subscription, cross sell, etc that goes beyond email marketing and the basic email metrics.Some email marketing solutions even provide industry averages for those metrics.

The email marketing strategy should go well beyond simple open rates, click through rates, and industry averages.The content of the emails and promotional materials should have a consistent look and feel as well as being customer centric.By customizing the message to the different types of customers or service offerings, it should improve the overall effectiveness of email marketing campaign.

6 Tips to Consider Before Implementing Your Email Marketing Strategy:

  1. Segment Your Opt-in List by customer type or services offering
  2. Test Your Message & Layout by segments
  3. Integrate Email Solutions with Analytical Solutions
  4. Implement Social Media functionality
  5. Implement Triggers for Follow-ups and Tailored Materials
  6. Create Effective Landing Pages to Reinforce the Marketing Message