An Easy Way To Solve A Problem.
I sat in a great session at SXSW 2011 where Intuit talked about how they define the user experience in their software by starting broad and working narrow. They use a very simple question to define user experience decisions, it’s so simple I am ashamed that it took me this long to see it.
Ask yourself this:
An Introduction to Google Analytics and So Much More.
I have to admit that I have often taken pride in my ability to be “self taught” when it comes to a lot of modern day marketing tools and tactics. I am not a big reader and unlike most of my technical friends, I learn most of my skills on the side and then apply them to clients only after I have the confidence to back up what I am pitching. So when I decided to come to ROI Revolution’s Google Analytics conference I felt I could fill in the gaps in my home-grown education in the introductory Day One, but would really get the meat from Day Two’s advanced session. Needless to say I was humbled.
Is your website a brochure in the trash, a book on a shelf, or a magazine on the coffee table?
It is inevitable that I end up explaining the evolution of the web several times a week. Whether with clients, prospects, peers, family or friends, the web and social media have hit a point of intersection where advertisers and consumers are now in the same dialog. Even Googling and facebooking are terms my seven year old uses regularly.
In times past, the “mother-in-law test” as I called it (no offense, Grandma C.), was a litmus test to determine how simple an idea was. I would just ask, “Would your mother-in-law get that idea?” If the answer was “No.”, then the concept was either bad or overcomplicated. Well, here is my “mother-in-law test” for the state of marketing on the web today, so tell me if I have passed my own test.
6.5 Tools to Track the Performance of Every Marketing Budget.
Marketing reporting and performance tracking seems like it would be the foundation for any marketing program. But as we talked with clients, prospects, and attendees at many conferences this fall, we find that with all of the marketing options today, many people stand there like a deer in the headlights when asked how they are tracking results.
Not tracking marketing performance is like being on the PGA Tour and not keeping score. You just can’t compete and win without doing it.
Here is a list of six tools for your consideration. Let me preface by saying we define what tools we will use at the beginning of each campaign and these only represent a few that we leverage most often. Also, not everything is easily tracked in one solution, so we often take reports from various formats and pull up our old-school friend, Microsoft Excel, to build custom dashboards based on the client’s specific data views.
Great Stats on Social Media as the New Norm.
I am not sure where the sources are for this but it is a great social media video I found posted on Facebook by Amy Wood (http://www.carolinascw.com/theribbit) that really begins to quantify the power of social media. We still talk to too many clients, friends, and even peers that question the longevity of the social media platform but I think this should make everyone realize it is here to stay. If you have any other great stats please share those as well, and their sources.
5 Reasons Our Web Dev Process is a Hit with Clients.
After 13 years of involvement with all aspects of marketing and web development, it seems the three-legged stool of Web development is getting a lot less wobbly and consumer habits, client needs and agency services seem to be far more in sync. Until the last 12-18 months, it always seemed that getting all three of these constituents aligned was difficult because everyone had competing agendas. Agencies wanted portfolio work, consumer habits were still segmented by demographics, and clients were confused. Enter social media.
Not that social media has fundamentally changed everything but it is a pink elephant in the room that got all three parties staring at the same thing. And if you look at what it has done, it has created two expectations from consumers that have forced the hands of clients and their agencies: transparency and real-time content.
So with the tighter budgets that most marketing managers are facing today, it seems that every call we get leads to a discussion on improving the user functionality, management capability, and ROI of their online efforts.
Here are 5 things that we are doing that clients seem to be responding great to these days.
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