When gathering data about recent visitors to your site, it's often helpful to ask about how they came to your site. But as we're finding more and more, folks are growing tired of answering these sorts of qualifying questions. So do keep them to an absolute minimum. But that doesn't mean you can't learn something about how they came to you. Here's what you do: Create customized landing pages for your site visitors.
By creating a page upon which your visitors land that relates to the link they used to find you, you can accomplish a number of different things. First, of course, you can know where they came from. An advert on espn.com? A link from a blog posting? All can be tailored, tweeked, and otherwise crafted to allow you to gain some insight into which entry points drive the best/most traffic.
Second, you can tailor the arrival message to better match the expectations created by the link that the prospect followed. That is, if you created an ad talking up a special deal on your product, then the first thing the prospect should see is information related to that offer. This will do wonders to improve your conversion rate and reduce your bounce rate since the prospect is immediately provided with the information they came in search of. Don't think for a minute that people will spend much time searching for the information you promised them. Adding even one more click will have a double digit negative impact on conversion and bounce rate.
Third, by minimizing the number of questions that don't directly lead to benefit for the prospect, they'll be more likely to provide reasonably good data for the questions that remain. I don't know about you, but I've seen more than a few email addresses that belong to asdf@abc.com. Make life easier and more value-laden for your visitors and you'll be more likely to find out that asdf is actually Tom D. You're more likely to close the deal with Tom than with asdf.
Keep it short, keep it critical, and think how you can gather the information you really need from the prospect's behavior and you'll have taken an important step on the road to optimizing your site's performance.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
How is Triathlon Like Marketing? Part III - the Transition
As part of an ongoing series of posts likening marketing to triathlon, I've been reviewing some key similarities and how this analogy can help your marketing team perform like an Ironman.
In triathlon, transitions are those parts of the race where the athlete moves from one discipline to another - from swim to bike or bike to run (or the all-important from run to ambulance to beer truck!). Races can be won or lost during these changeovers, with precious seconds ticking by as helmets get donned or swim goggles doffed. In marketing, transitions are those phases where we implement significant changes to a key element of the marketing mix - perhaps a product introduction/deletion, a new distribution channel added, or an old sponsorship dropped in favor of a new one. As with the sport, transitions are where you're most likely to see costly bobbles that change the leader board in significant ways.
The key to a successful transition is focus. As we look forward to the next activity, it's easy to shift our attention to what comes next. After all, if we've done well so far, we want to press home our advantage. If we're behind, we want to make up ground and show that we can win. But this desire to "get on with it" leaves us vulnerable to failing to close loops that are critical for moving ahead. This could be a simple failure to talk with an existing customer about how their future purchases might be impacted by the launch of a new product designed to replace the item they currently use. Where a proactive call or visit might smooth the way for adoption of the new, playing catch up just means lots of unnecessary angst and an opportunity to competitors to move in.
How do you ensure that the transition goes smoothly, then? First, take the time to plan in in/out phases. Practice the plan (set up your bike and stuff on the ground and pretend to transition from swim to bike, for example) or virtually (get the critical staff together and have a walk through on who does what, when, who communicates updates, etc.). Second, look for opportunities to reduce the complexity of the changeover. That is, remove unnecessary steps. Avoid scheduling other priority activities at the same time, and be sure everyone with a role to play will be available. And lastly, design the change to take as little time as possible. A condensed timeline means less opportunity for distraction. Don't accelerate faster than the market allows, of course, just don't dilly-dally around.
A well-executed transition means you can add significant competitive pressure and increase the duration and effectiveness of your advantage. As with all things, go in with a well-considered plan, execute according to your rehearsal, and keep your attention firmly focused on the here and now, even as you look around to make sure no one is getting away while you put on your socks.
Transitions - not glamorous or sexy, but absolutely important in maintaining and building competitive advantage.
In triathlon, transitions are those parts of the race where the athlete moves from one discipline to another - from swim to bike or bike to run (or the all-important from run to ambulance to beer truck!). Races can be won or lost during these changeovers, with precious seconds ticking by as helmets get donned or swim goggles doffed. In marketing, transitions are those phases where we implement significant changes to a key element of the marketing mix - perhaps a product introduction/deletion, a new distribution channel added, or an old sponsorship dropped in favor of a new one. As with the sport, transitions are where you're most likely to see costly bobbles that change the leader board in significant ways.
The key to a successful transition is focus. As we look forward to the next activity, it's easy to shift our attention to what comes next. After all, if we've done well so far, we want to press home our advantage. If we're behind, we want to make up ground and show that we can win. But this desire to "get on with it" leaves us vulnerable to failing to close loops that are critical for moving ahead. This could be a simple failure to talk with an existing customer about how their future purchases might be impacted by the launch of a new product designed to replace the item they currently use. Where a proactive call or visit might smooth the way for adoption of the new, playing catch up just means lots of unnecessary angst and an opportunity to competitors to move in.
How do you ensure that the transition goes smoothly, then? First, take the time to plan in in/out phases. Practice the plan (set up your bike and stuff on the ground and pretend to transition from swim to bike, for example) or virtually (get the critical staff together and have a walk through on who does what, when, who communicates updates, etc.). Second, look for opportunities to reduce the complexity of the changeover. That is, remove unnecessary steps. Avoid scheduling other priority activities at the same time, and be sure everyone with a role to play will be available. And lastly, design the change to take as little time as possible. A condensed timeline means less opportunity for distraction. Don't accelerate faster than the market allows, of course, just don't dilly-dally around.
A well-executed transition means you can add significant competitive pressure and increase the duration and effectiveness of your advantage. As with all things, go in with a well-considered plan, execute according to your rehearsal, and keep your attention firmly focused on the here and now, even as you look around to make sure no one is getting away while you put on your socks.
Transitions - not glamorous or sexy, but absolutely important in maintaining and building competitive advantage.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
How is Triathlon like Marketing? Part II
With all the prep and planning that underlie success in both marketing or triathlon, the rubber really meets the road once the gun goes off. The first portion of a triathlon is a swim. The frenzy of arms and legs thrashing about is not too dissimilar to those first moments of a new product hitting the market. There's confusion, relief at getting started, some blows to the head, and an understanding the critical mistakes made at this point will have a lasting impact, but may not be ultimately fatal - if you keep your wits about you.
Practically, there are some other similarities. For instance, many times the swim takes place in a river or lake and involves a couple of changes in direction. This requires that the athlete actually break form and look up once in a while to make sure they're on course. In marketing, sometimes we're so busy executing our plans that we fail to look around and see what's happening - and by this I mean check the data that can provide real-time feedback so that we can, like the swimmer, alter our course if needed. I've noticed that many companies have "swum" themselves into a giant pickle by not planning to look around and check the data periodically. They are simply committed to executing the plan, one step at a time, so they can check action items off the to-do list. Bad idea.
For the triathlete, the data is simple - look up and see if the big orange buoy is directly ahead of you. For marketers, it isn't usually quite so easy. Examples might include sales (duh), the number and quality of prospects at certain gateway points, conversion rates, press/review mentions, etc. All in all, a combination of several data elements is typically the best idea. The best part is that, unlike the swimmer, who when she checks her position she'll become less mechanically efficient for a short moment, marketers shouldn't see a measurable loss of momentum if they lift their heads up to look around - at least not if they've begun the process of execution with the thought of periodic position checks in mind.
The triathlon swim also presents another interesting similarity. The muscles used in swimming are not, by and large, the same as those required for the bike and run. Driving especially hard during the swim will require some amount of our energy reserves, sure, but tired arms and shoulders shouldn't keep you from running or biking fast. Different muscles, different disciplines. Marketing, especially for new product introductions, is similar in that the critical early efforts to build buzz, engage the thought leaders within the community, etc. require a different emphasis early than they will later on, once the product is fully established.
The best marketers, then, are those that know a transition is coming as well as what the upcoming key activities will be and will prepare for them. Transitions - the topic for next time. Till then, keep the pedals turning and attack every hill like it wants to hurt your mama!
Practically, there are some other similarities. For instance, many times the swim takes place in a river or lake and involves a couple of changes in direction. This requires that the athlete actually break form and look up once in a while to make sure they're on course. In marketing, sometimes we're so busy executing our plans that we fail to look around and see what's happening - and by this I mean check the data that can provide real-time feedback so that we can, like the swimmer, alter our course if needed. I've noticed that many companies have "swum" themselves into a giant pickle by not planning to look around and check the data periodically. They are simply committed to executing the plan, one step at a time, so they can check action items off the to-do list. Bad idea.
For the triathlete, the data is simple - look up and see if the big orange buoy is directly ahead of you. For marketers, it isn't usually quite so easy. Examples might include sales (duh), the number and quality of prospects at certain gateway points, conversion rates, press/review mentions, etc. All in all, a combination of several data elements is typically the best idea. The best part is that, unlike the swimmer, who when she checks her position she'll become less mechanically efficient for a short moment, marketers shouldn't see a measurable loss of momentum if they lift their heads up to look around - at least not if they've begun the process of execution with the thought of periodic position checks in mind.
The triathlon swim also presents another interesting similarity. The muscles used in swimming are not, by and large, the same as those required for the bike and run. Driving especially hard during the swim will require some amount of our energy reserves, sure, but tired arms and shoulders shouldn't keep you from running or biking fast. Different muscles, different disciplines. Marketing, especially for new product introductions, is similar in that the critical early efforts to build buzz, engage the thought leaders within the community, etc. require a different emphasis early than they will later on, once the product is fully established.
The best marketers, then, are those that know a transition is coming as well as what the upcoming key activities will be and will prepare for them. Transitions - the topic for next time. Till then, keep the pedals turning and attack every hill like it wants to hurt your mama!
Monday, July 26, 2010
How Marketing is Like a Triathlon, Part 1
Perhaps more than any other discipline in business, marketing requires a multidisciplinary world view and tool-kit. I think this accounts for my observation, admittedly unscientifically founded, that marketers represent a disproportionately high percentage of triathletes. This may be due more to a form of brain damage, though I think that it may instead lie in the similarities between marketing and triathlon.
First, success in both requires a commitment to the long term. Both require a multiyear planning horizon, each broken into shorter mesocycles, each with a different emphasis. Building strength, endurance, technique take as long as building brand recognition, customer loyalty, and market share. Each also requires a number of tools and disciplines to achieve, so comfort with complexity are the norm for marketer and triathletes. This complexity can diffuse effort and focus on end results, so a strong sense of the goal and where we are in the training/business cycle are critical.
Marketers and triathletes are also subject to a continuing, almost overwhelming barrage of new tools and technologies that purport to help them reach their goals faster/easier/cheaper than ever before. So the ability to separate value from hype are critical for saving the time, money, and energy that might otherwise be spent on shiny new, useless, junk. Between the two, I'm not sure who's subjected to more unsubstantiated new product introductions, but it's pretty close to a dead heat. There's quite a lot of hype about social networking now that promises to radically change marketing (true) and make every other tool obsolete (not very likely). Much of that hype sounds like the promises of equipment manufacturers extolling the virtues of aerodynamic triathlon stuff - from bikes to helmets to water bottles. The ability to avoid getting swept away by the promise of an easier life is critical, just as important as recognizing a new tool/technique that can in fact act as a game changer. In either case, marketers and triathletes (the successful ones, anyway) are especially good at discerning the difference.
Next time: Part II - Marketing is like swimming in a muddy, debris-filled river
First, success in both requires a commitment to the long term. Both require a multiyear planning horizon, each broken into shorter mesocycles, each with a different emphasis. Building strength, endurance, technique take as long as building brand recognition, customer loyalty, and market share. Each also requires a number of tools and disciplines to achieve, so comfort with complexity are the norm for marketer and triathletes. This complexity can diffuse effort and focus on end results, so a strong sense of the goal and where we are in the training/business cycle are critical.
Marketers and triathletes are also subject to a continuing, almost overwhelming barrage of new tools and technologies that purport to help them reach their goals faster/easier/cheaper than ever before. So the ability to separate value from hype are critical for saving the time, money, and energy that might otherwise be spent on shiny new, useless, junk. Between the two, I'm not sure who's subjected to more unsubstantiated new product introductions, but it's pretty close to a dead heat. There's quite a lot of hype about social networking now that promises to radically change marketing (true) and make every other tool obsolete (not very likely). Much of that hype sounds like the promises of equipment manufacturers extolling the virtues of aerodynamic triathlon stuff - from bikes to helmets to water bottles. The ability to avoid getting swept away by the promise of an easier life is critical, just as important as recognizing a new tool/technique that can in fact act as a game changer. In either case, marketers and triathletes (the successful ones, anyway) are especially good at discerning the difference.
Next time: Part II - Marketing is like swimming in a muddy, debris-filled river
Monday, March 1, 2010
Most Marketing Chiefs Managing to Wrong Site Metric
The folks at eMarketing recently released survey data showing that the majority of marketing heads say that time-on-site is the Most Important performance metric they're watching. (Thanks, nice work, and Yikes!) The chart below shows that, terrifyingly, Time-on-Site (TOS) was more important than unique page views, click through rates, page views, CPM or other, which included CPC, conversion, and ROI.
This, in many ways, indicates that marketing leadership is still confused about what they want their web assets to do. They are still captivated by the shiny lights and chrome-plated doo-dads that allow them to show the market that they have "it" and that the competition is nothing but tech dullards.
But at the core of it, and to put a very fine point on it, our job in marketing is to make the cash register ring, to make it ring more often for more profitable stuff, and to position the company to do this again and again and again. And that activity is reflected in our sites' conversion rate - one of the last things with which marketing leaders concerned themselves.
Conversions can take many forms, it doesn't have to be all about online commerce and selling some bauble. Perhaps a conversion is downloading a useful PDF or requesting a presentation. But Time-on-Site and it's twin Pageviews tell me relatively little, by themselves. For instance, TOS provides no insight into whether or not visitors find their visit experience to be rewarding, frustrating, or just inconvenient. Perhaps they're on site for sixteen minutes because the marketing team has done a poor job of providing key information. Or maybe the visitor went to lunch while visiting the site and just left the browser open to this page. Who knows? But because we know nothing about the user's experience or their future intentions, we have no data with which to improve our chances of making a sale.
I tell my clients to think of their site as another channel through which they can reach out to the customer, much like a brick and mortar channel partner might have been twenty years ago - but with far more control and responsiveness. Now, would we want to spend money supporting a distributor-funded event that did nothing to bring us closer to converting prospects into customers? Or even keeping customers as customers for as long as possible? We'd be hard pressed to justify large expenditures for that sort of nebulous activity. So why would we be so cavalier with our site?
So keep your eye on the prize and don't get conned into looking at metrics that might be easier to manipulate but don't necessarily relate to making more money. After all, increasing TOS is easy, increasing revenue, not so much.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Intuit's Small Business Product Failure
Perhaps you've seen the recent spate of commercials from Intuit touting its new website template and hosting offering on television. Designed to appeal to small business owners, the service is affordable, flexible, and provides a wide selection of prefab templates from which to choose. Sounds terrific and very appealing, indeed.
Because many of my customers are start ups and they might not be very web savvy, I thought I'd check out the offering myself. With a spare URL or two and an interest in kicking the tires of this sort of offering as a testbed, I went to intuit.com to sign up. Great looking site. A nice piece of video demonstrating many of the main features of the service. Sold. I selected a user name and password, hit continue and "Server Error, Try again later" hit me right back. "Huh", I said to no one in particular. Not the kind of message you want from someone who'll be hosting your site. "I'll try again", I said. After all, the web is still pretty fickle sometimes, I reasoned. Same drill, same answer.
Couple of hours later I did indeed try yet again. I input the fields for user name and password and hit enter with great anticipation. This was going to be cool. "User name already in use". "Huh", said I. I guess I must have managed to get the account set up in spite of the earlier error message. So I tried to log on as a regular account holder. Things took a turn for the especially odd when Intuit said it didn't recognize me. On the one hand it knew me because it recognized my user name but on the other it wouldn't let me in.
Being the helpful company they are, Intuit puts their toll-free number on the page. So I called. To make the long play by play a little less long, we got to the bottom of the issue after just a few minutes. I was flabbergasted to learn that users of Mac computers can't use this service. That's right, some 10% plus of the world's entrepreneurs can't use this web-based service with a web browser interface because we're using the wrong operating system on our computers.
So beyond simply recounting my frustrating afternoon, here's the marketing upshot of all this. First, the days of tying your software product to either a Mac or to a PC are over. People have no patience for this Red State/Blue State bigotry any more. Especially if your product is software as a service (SaaS) funneled to the waiting world via the agnostic web.
Second, if you're going to exclude large numbers of prospects from buying your product, make sure that tidbit is not buried deep within some FAQ somewhere. I'll make you a deal, Intuit - Don't waste my time and I won't blog about how you are likely wasting the time of hundreds of thousands of small business people.
Third, and this applies to everyone, when you're entering a highly fragmented and competitive market, don't come half-armed. Just because it might be hard doesn't mean you can punt on major criteria. When you're operating on the web, be sure that users of different browsers can access your site and have a seamless experience, for example. Or if you're a restaurant serving only vegan dishes, don't name yourself "Pete's House of Every Food" because somebody's gonna get miffed.
The other marketing lesson is that no matter how good a job you do with ads, sites, and the other things that bring prospects in, if your product managers or operations folks can't deliver the goods, you've done nothing good for your company. Intuit will take some significant hits for this sloppy roll out and ironically, the better the marketers are in driving traffic, the worse the impact on the Intuit brand will be.
As for me, I'll be testing another firm's web template/hosting service and reporting on that effort in a future post.
Because many of my customers are start ups and they might not be very web savvy, I thought I'd check out the offering myself. With a spare URL or two and an interest in kicking the tires of this sort of offering as a testbed, I went to intuit.com to sign up. Great looking site. A nice piece of video demonstrating many of the main features of the service. Sold. I selected a user name and password, hit continue and "Server Error, Try again later" hit me right back. "Huh", I said to no one in particular. Not the kind of message you want from someone who'll be hosting your site. "I'll try again", I said. After all, the web is still pretty fickle sometimes, I reasoned. Same drill, same answer.
Couple of hours later I did indeed try yet again. I input the fields for user name and password and hit enter with great anticipation. This was going to be cool. "User name already in use". "Huh", said I. I guess I must have managed to get the account set up in spite of the earlier error message. So I tried to log on as a regular account holder. Things took a turn for the especially odd when Intuit said it didn't recognize me. On the one hand it knew me because it recognized my user name but on the other it wouldn't let me in.
Being the helpful company they are, Intuit puts their toll-free number on the page. So I called. To make the long play by play a little less long, we got to the bottom of the issue after just a few minutes. I was flabbergasted to learn that users of Mac computers can't use this service. That's right, some 10% plus of the world's entrepreneurs can't use this web-based service with a web browser interface because we're using the wrong operating system on our computers.
So beyond simply recounting my frustrating afternoon, here's the marketing upshot of all this. First, the days of tying your software product to either a Mac or to a PC are over. People have no patience for this Red State/Blue State bigotry any more. Especially if your product is software as a service (SaaS) funneled to the waiting world via the agnostic web.
Second, if you're going to exclude large numbers of prospects from buying your product, make sure that tidbit is not buried deep within some FAQ somewhere. I'll make you a deal, Intuit - Don't waste my time and I won't blog about how you are likely wasting the time of hundreds of thousands of small business people.
Third, and this applies to everyone, when you're entering a highly fragmented and competitive market, don't come half-armed. Just because it might be hard doesn't mean you can punt on major criteria. When you're operating on the web, be sure that users of different browsers can access your site and have a seamless experience, for example. Or if you're a restaurant serving only vegan dishes, don't name yourself "Pete's House of Every Food" because somebody's gonna get miffed.
The other marketing lesson is that no matter how good a job you do with ads, sites, and the other things that bring prospects in, if your product managers or operations folks can't deliver the goods, you've done nothing good for your company. Intuit will take some significant hits for this sloppy roll out and ironically, the better the marketers are in driving traffic, the worse the impact on the Intuit brand will be.
As for me, I'll be testing another firm's web template/hosting service and reporting on that effort in a future post.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Social Marketing Coming of Age
Social marketing is real, it is effective, and it is here to stay. That's what I tell all of my clients today. Not news to you? Well, the reality is that companies have only just begun to leverage social media networks with any skill at all. Though it seems like we've been hearing about this new fangled thing for a long time, it remains a shiny new and generally misunderstood area of marketing.
In large measure, that's because the people executing social marketing strategies are not very good marketers. They are born-again tech people jumping onto what they rightly perceive to be a profitable bandwagon. But as I've mentioned before in earlier posts, social media "specialists" tend to be intentionally vague about the activities in which they'll engage, hoping to maintain pricing premiums by making the field an art - more magic than science. But as business people are finding, it's not so awfully difficult after all.
So on a practical level, what should you, a business owner, do? First, recognize that social marketing is simply a new set of tools that allow you to reach out to prospects in new ways. You can use these tools to help prospects and customers advocate on your behalf. You can reinforce your brand, you can develop out of this world testimonials, you can empower customers in ways never before possible.
Second, set up a Facebook page for your company and invite customers to join your group. Buy any one of the zillion books on leveraging Facebook, like Facebook for Dummies. Quick read and full of useful little tips for getting started.
Third, set up a Twitter account, and begin "tweeting" regularly. Be brief, be value-focused, and have fun.
Fourth, listen. See what people are saying not just about your company, but your competitors, your industry, and about completely unrelated businesses - that'll give you the chance to learn about what other companies are doing to good or bad effect.
Finally, iterate. Make participation a regular event, much like getting brochures updated and printed every quarter, you can now update your messaging once, twice, three times a week. You can address "big topics" in your business as they arise, not months later. Unlike static literature, the elements of social media are dynamic, timely, and oftentimes unexpected.
Don't let any snake oil salesmen make you think that there is any magic involved with social media marketing. Think instead that these are like sales conversations you can have with lots of customers simultaneously. You're still doing the same key thing here as you've been, hopefully, doing all along: engaging with your customers is meaningful ways to drive behavior and to gather critical information. No magic, just a new set of tools for making it happen.
Start today. Doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Just get the ball rolling and momentum will build.
In large measure, that's because the people executing social marketing strategies are not very good marketers. They are born-again tech people jumping onto what they rightly perceive to be a profitable bandwagon. But as I've mentioned before in earlier posts, social media "specialists" tend to be intentionally vague about the activities in which they'll engage, hoping to maintain pricing premiums by making the field an art - more magic than science. But as business people are finding, it's not so awfully difficult after all.
So on a practical level, what should you, a business owner, do? First, recognize that social marketing is simply a new set of tools that allow you to reach out to prospects in new ways. You can use these tools to help prospects and customers advocate on your behalf. You can reinforce your brand, you can develop out of this world testimonials, you can empower customers in ways never before possible.
Second, set up a Facebook page for your company and invite customers to join your group. Buy any one of the zillion books on leveraging Facebook, like Facebook for Dummies. Quick read and full of useful little tips for getting started.
Third, set up a Twitter account, and begin "tweeting" regularly. Be brief, be value-focused, and have fun.
Fourth, listen. See what people are saying not just about your company, but your competitors, your industry, and about completely unrelated businesses - that'll give you the chance to learn about what other companies are doing to good or bad effect.
Finally, iterate. Make participation a regular event, much like getting brochures updated and printed every quarter, you can now update your messaging once, twice, three times a week. You can address "big topics" in your business as they arise, not months later. Unlike static literature, the elements of social media are dynamic, timely, and oftentimes unexpected.
Don't let any snake oil salesmen make you think that there is any magic involved with social media marketing. Think instead that these are like sales conversations you can have with lots of customers simultaneously. You're still doing the same key thing here as you've been, hopefully, doing all along: engaging with your customers is meaningful ways to drive behavior and to gather critical information. No magic, just a new set of tools for making it happen.
Start today. Doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Just get the ball rolling and momentum will build.
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