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9/30/2005 12:50
While scanning yesterday's American Marketing Association newsletter, I noticed an article titled "Neglecting A/B Split Testing Costly for Marketers." Now, I am a big proponent of testing (as you may have noticed from my earlier posts on wire services, e-mail campaigns, etc.) so I had to give the article a read. Turns out there is a company that actually specializes in marketing-oriented lab experiments: MarketingExperiments.Com. While poking around the site, I came across the following description:
MarketingExperiments.Com is a member of the MEC Labs Group and a division of Digital Trust Inc. MEC is an online laboratory with a simple (but not easy) five-word mission statement: To discover what really works. The Lab tests every conceivable marketing method on the Internet. Our experiments range from three to eighteen months, and they involve budgets ranging from $4500 to $100,000+. We are often surprised, and sometimes embarrassed to discover just how much we DON'T know about marketing.This DEFINITELY caught my attention since I love any company that at least occasionally strays from standard corporate speak and admits they don't know everything. Further investigation of the site yielded research on everything from "the effectiveness of ezine advertising" to "how press releases impact website traffic and inbound links." They even seem to be using real numbers (budget, clicks, interviews, etc.). The best part? The information is available for free. They make you provide some basic contact info, but that seems like a small price to pay.
9/28/2005 15:38
Not yet, but soon -- in fact, Marqui is participating in more than a dozen events over the next couple of months. Here's a quick snapshot of October, in case anyone would like to stop by and say hello. • First, we'll be exhibiting at the RightNow conference next week in Big Sky, MT. David Balazsy, our VP of Sales, and Michele Merdink will both be at the show. • Also next week, Janet will be attending the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. • On October 11, Janet is speaking at IPN's SearchFest conference. She will discuss how blogs can be used to boost search engine rankings. • On October 18, we'll be exhibiting at the Software Association of Oregon's Software Innovation Showcase. This is being held right down the street from our Portland office, so there will be quite a few of us in attendance. • On October 27, Janet and I will head up to Seattle for the eMarketing Excellence Summit hosted by Exact Target. Should be an exciting month! We'll provide recaps of these events whenever possible.
9/27/2005 13:24
Tara and I had a conversation with a very smart advisor this morning, Elke Heiss, Vice President at Sterling Communications. We asked her to look at our marketing materials and positioning document, compare it to our competitors' positioning and provide feedback to us. I love it when we're able to run an exercise like this, because it gives us an objective perspective on our 'positioning landscape.' If you don't have a positioning document, build one! In it, you need to clearly define your mission, vision and business statements. Then pick two to three top line messages that you'd like to build your communications around. It is from the positioning document that all communications flow. For example, your 'elevator pitch' - that simple, 60-second statement that describes what your company does - should be there:
"Marqui helps marketers automate and simplify their marketing activities."Be sure to circulate the positioning document through your leadership team for approval and buy-in. It's a process that will take time, but will - and I personally have seen this time after time - yield excellent results. Then send it your sales and customer support folks – send it to the entire company. Anyone in your organization should be able to quickly and easily tell their family, friends and acquaintances what your company does. The positioning document is a great tool that will help you to infuse your brand in those who've got the most power over upholding or degrading it – your employees.
9/22/2005 10:24
I thought I'd share a little discovery courtesy of our friend Meryl. She was poking through our web site recently and found our favicon still had the original coloring from our initial web properties. She sent me an e-mail letting me know our favicon needed updating. Ummm. I had to ask her -
"What's a favicon?"She politely explained about the little icons that show up in your browser address bar, and sent a screen shot as well. Click here to see the screen shot. So there you have it. Mystery solved. You'll sound smart (or terribly geeky) when you tell your friends that you can name the little icons that appear in your browser address bar. (Meryl seemed smart to me when she told me about them - not geeky - just to be clear.) We've got other definitions to technical terms in our marketer's glossary of terms here.
9/21/2005 10:35
Janet's post about the PRSA event on blogging reminded me that it is Global PR Blog Week time. Don't know what this is? Let me elaborate... Global PR Blog Week 2.0 is designed to engage public relations, marketing and business professionals in a discussion about how new communications technologies are changing public relations/business communications. It's an online event that runs from September 19 to September 23, and includes participants from Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States. Participants will publish 70 case studies, articles and podcast interviews on new communications technologies. This morning's discussion started off with the oh-so-inflammatory topic of blogs vs. press releases. Shel Holtz elaborates on why the growing popularity of blogs doesn't necessarily herald the death of press releases. Global PR Blog Week is free and open to everybody, so check it out.
9/20/2005 12:06
Apparently, people are becoming more like machines. Or we're relying on them much more than we should. Case in point: I just received an e-mail from MediaPost (whom I trust and respect - which is why I enjoy subscribing to their newsletters) with the following opening paragraph - the emphasis is mine:
"While users of Really Simple Syndication are frequently considered early adapters, new data issued by Nielsen//NetRatings suggests that many who use RSS technology do so inadvertently."Now, I'm not someone who considers herself a great writer (I shudder to think of eager readers combing through my posts now and finding all sorts of faux pas - because they will). But I know the difference between adapters and adopters - pretty much right off the bat. Maybe because I'm kind of a geek. I found the title of the news note to be ironic, in light of their adapter/adopter faux pas:
"RSS Users Newshounds, Not Tech Fiends"Now I know my sense of what's funny is warped, but I really got a chuckle at this obvious error. Bottom line: there is really something to be said about having a person edit your work - especially when it is meant to be broadcast.
9/20/2005 12:06
Apparently, people are becoming more like machines. Or we're relying on them much more than we should. Case in point: I just received an e-mail from Media Post (whom I trust and respect - which is why I enjoy subscribing to their newsletters) with the following opening paragraph:
While users of Really Simple Syndication are frequently considered early adapters, new data issued by Nielsen//NetRatings suggests that many who use RSS technology do so inadvertently.Now, I'm not someone who considers herself a great writer. But I know the difference between adapters and adopters - pretty much right off the bat. I found the title of the news note to be ironic, in light of their adapter/adopter faux pas:
RSS Users Newshounds, Not Tech FiendsNow I know my sense of what's funny is warped, but I really got a chuckle at this obvious oversight. There is really something to be said about having someone edit your work - especially when it is meant to be broadcast to a bunch of marketers.
9/20/2005 11:19
I was lucky enough to present this morning at Portland's PRSA chapter event with Aliza Earnshaw of the Portland Business Journal and Jeff Hardison of McClenahan Bruer. Our subject was blogging, and we were told we scratched the surface of the subject pretty well. I was especially intrigued by Aliza's thoughtful review of the blogosphere from a professional journalist's perspective. She clearly articulated her point of view in such a way that – even as she was reading her presentation – I was thinking “What a great blog post!†Of course, when she finished, I immediately blurted that out. She agreed to send the text over to me so I could post it in our blog. So here it is. (Please note, what follows is Aliza's point of view expressed at an event, and is not intended to be considered an article, nor does it reflect the opinion of the Business Journal.)
There's a lot of talk, and a lot of writing, about blogging as a new form of journalism, a way that anyone can be a journalist. This belief is both a fallacy and not. Journalism has very definite rules, and while they do get ignored or broken, blogging has none, at least so far. In some blogs, I've seen reporting that could have been done by journalists, or that is so close, it wouldn't take much more reporting to create something worthy of the highest journalistic standards. On the other hand, I've seen plenty of blogs that appear to me to twist, distort, and simply misrepresent events. The danger, of course, is that people will take whatever is published online as fact, without appreciating that there is no filtering going on at all. Unfortunately, you can say the same thing about traditional reporting, whether in print or broadcast on television or radio. Even aside from the problematic area of news re-enactment, and the problem of unsuspected plagiarism, there is simply the problem of an ever-faster news cycle. Overworked reporters are tempted to cut corners, or may not have been trained adequately in the first place; overloaded editors may let pieces backed by insufficient reporting slide. The tyranny of quarterly results, the drive to ever-increasing profits, also haunts newsrooms. It's harder to slow down, take time, free up a reporter to investigate something deeply, because papers don't have as much staff as they used to, and they don't have the freelance budgets they used to. Fact-checking, too, can suffer in the climate of profits-first. Given that traditional reporting has difficulties of its own, what can we say about how blogging influences those of us who report the news? We can be informed by bloggers about what concerns people, what they are interested in reading about and discussing. Especially in politics, I think blogs can tell you a lot about the churn of current ideas. And blogs can be quite valuable if you want to read about personal experiences. One blog I have found very useful, just as a citizen who wants to be informed, is Hackworth.com. David Hackworth, who died earlier this year, was a career soldier and author. He encouraged soldiers to write to him, and he posted their correspondance while protecting their anonymity. Hackworth called attention early on to inadequate arming of soldiers in Iraq, and to the epidemic of pregnancies among female soldiers. He was an informed, educated person who intimately understood the world he wrote about. He provided a forum for those afraid to speak up elsewhere, and it seems to me that he was careful about his reporting. One thing I'd say is often missing from blogs is what I'd call real reporting. People often write from their own experiences, they invite discussion, but they seldom go out and report the way we do. They seldom seek out the people of the story, perform rigorous interviews, or make an attempt to verify their sources. This is what makes blogs both useful and not-useful to me as a reporter. I might discover from a blog that there are certain issues out there – for example, I found out from a blog that a product made by one of the companies on my beat was selling at an insanely low price, which clued me in to the degree of price erosion they were facing. But information on blogs is no easier to verify than gossip I hear around town, or an anonymous tip I get by email or phone. In fact, it can be less easy, because I can't call around to find out how credible the person sharing the gossip really is. Though I am not using blogs very much at present, I see some trends out there that are quite interesting. The most obvious one is that you can now read a reported article on MSNBC, for example, and there at the bottom will be a list of links to related articles, say on the Washington Post's web site, or at Slate.com. There will also often be a link to a blog. In a way, MSNBC is putting an equal value on the blog to that of the Washington Post or Slate. It's like saying that they trust the blogger as much as they trust the reporting on the site of a respected newspaper like the Post. Blogs provide an immediacy and a completeness of feedback that simply isn't available in newspapers or magazines, even in the letters to the editor. Recently, NY Times reporter Andrew Revkin reported on the resignation of an atmospheric science professor who had been researching a report for the Bush administration on the causes of climate change. The professor took issue with the article and vented his frustration on a blog, starting up a discussion that included scientists, the professor, and reporter Revkin himself. In the end, the reporter made his apologies, explained how he made his error, based in part on the professor's own statements. The professor in turn apologized for his miscommunication, and all was well. This entire exchange took place on a blog, within a very short time. The New York times then published a correction, along with a link to the professor's blog – a valuable piece of information for any reader wanting to learn more about the controversy, and an example that should probably be emulated. We do need to realize that the constant availability of plentiful information online does not absolve those of us in the mainstream media from reporting on issues. In fact, in some ways, the blogosphere forces us to reconsider what is news. For example, Trent Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond at the former senator's birthday party were reported in the mainstream media, but then the media just went on to other stories. However, bloggers took up the story, digging up and publishing things Lott had said over the years that built up a picture of him as a person consistently willing to voice racist sentiments where he thought they would be welcome. It's unlikely that Lott would have been forced resign, were it not that the sheer volume of blogging about Lott finally forced the mainstream media to take notice, investigate and verify the reporting the bloggers had done, and then report Lott's history of racist remarks themselves. It was the blogosphere that essentially wrote the story for the mainstream media, and pushed it until the media simply couldn't ignore it anymore. There are two lessons here: the increasing power of bloggers to set the agenda, and decide what is news; and the fact that the mainstream media are still more powerful than the bloggers. For now, at least, the mainstream media still has more credibility with those who hold power. Another interesting phenomenon is the sheer volume of what's being called “citizen reporting†on Hurricane Katrina, ranging from an interactive map posted by a non-journalist, to which others have contributed, to personal reporting on those suffering in the aftermath of the storm. Here again, however, we have a caveat around the lack of professional control. The accuracy of the interactive map was compromised by some who posted nonsense, and that material had to be removed. It's also important to realize that even personal accounts that seem very sincere may be flawed. When an experienced journalist interviews someone for a story, he or she can often spot the account that is less than truthful, that somehow contains an “off†element, and can filter that account from the final story. People reading personal accounts on the web are simply going to have to be their own filters, and some of these folks lack the experience in filtering out the unlikely, the unreliable or the just plain untruthful. I've recently seen some excellent critique of mainstream media in blogs. One blog pointed out that two pictures published after the New Orleans flooding showed people taking things that did not belong to them. The caption under the picture of black people said they were “looting,†while the caption under the photo of white people said they had “found†the goods. Discussions of this kind seldom make it into the mainstream media, but they are valuable and should be more public. Blogs are changing things in ways we don't fully understand yet, but in terms of journalism, I think most of us still believe in the ideal of professional journalism: that journalists verify their information, vet their sources, and inform their reporting with experience and expertise. Even when we are faced with notable exceptions like Stephen Glass or Jason Blair, those exceptions themselves point to our expectation that professional journalism will tell us the truth. - Aliza Earnshaw
9/16/2005 11:17
Okay, I admit it...I have a serious Google problem. I must Google at least 10-15 times a day. I use it for almost everything. So you can imagine my delight at seeing Janet's post yesterday about Google's new blog search capabilities. She and I have chatted at length about the myriad benefits of Google, and she often shakes her head when I talk about all of the ways I use it. For example, on any given day, I might go to Google for: *Media coverage searches: Google News is still one of the best ways to find out who is writing about Marqui and our competitors. Sure, there may be more comprehensive services out there, but Google is free and it's fast. *Industry research: Need a stat on the size of a market? Just type in a few keywords along with "statistics" or "market size" and you'll find all sorts of relevant information from analyst groups, etc. Of course, it's important to double check any stats you find and adhere to any copyright restrictions to avoid legal issues, but it's a good place to start. *Images: Many people don't seem to know about Google Images but this is a great little tool for finding logos or images for presentations. (Legal disclaimer: Once again, watch out on the copyright front!). To provide an example, during preparations for a recent Marqui Webinar, I needed to gather photos of the speakers. Unfortunately, one of the speakers couldn't locate a digital photo. I popped onto Google Images and within 30 seconds found a photo she had used at a previous speaking engagement. *An online dictionary: Can't remember the exact definition of "paradigm"? No problem. Type "define: paradigm" into Google and you'll get all kinds of definitions and references to the word. *Spell checking: Since Google thoughtfully flags potential misspellings with a polite "Did you mean...?" it is great for sorting out whether a word like "embarrassment" has one "s" or two. Obviously, there are more tricks out there, but I only have so much time to indulge my little addiction this morning. And on that note, I must sheepishly admit that while writing this post, I got curious about who else is using the term "Googleholic"...so I Googled it...and found more than 12,000 results. Guess I'm not alone. Perhaps this is why Google has such a lead over the other search engines. According to Nielsen NetRatings metrics, Google leads the search market with 46 percent share, while Yahoo! had 23 percent, MSN had 13 percent and AOL had 5.4 percent. Googleholics unite!
9/16/2005 9:39
I read an article in DM News today about a study of retailers' e-mail campaigns conducted by SilverPOP - a permission-based e-mail provider. Their research shows:
- 75% of companies studied don't use customers' names in emails responding to requests - 25% failed to offer any reason to sign up to receive emails from the company; of those that did, 45% offered notices of sales and promotions, 14% offered news and 11% offered catalogs - 23% failed to include email registration requests on the home page - 78% offered only one choice of communication such as notices of sales, newsletters or information bulletins - 37% asked customers only for an email address when they registered to receive information; 24% required a more extensive profile that included phone numbers and demographic information - 57% didn't send confirmation emails following registration; 24% of those that did failed to include the company or brand name in the "subject" field of the emailE-mail marketing isn't cheap. Names are very expensive. Why spend the money if you're not going to promote awareness of your brand in every customer touchpoint? I'd suggest printing this little list above, and make sure no one is guilty of missing an opportunity to further extend brand awareness in every marketing effort. It's just not that hard.
9/15/2005 10:05
Google has a new blog search engine available - in beta. I went there, and typed in "Marqui," as I usually do to measure success and reach of our marketing efforts. Today, we had 447 results. As we continue to blog, I expect that number to grow over time. Regardless, it's good to be able to add a new measurement to track the effectiveness of our awareness programs. And Google continues to provide an excellent benchmark measurement system for us. Speaking of growth, we noticed a huge jump in Google results for a regular web search for Marqui this month - it has been tracking in the 200,000 + results range for the past three or four months, but last week it jumped to more than 411,000, and today we show 444,000 results. Of course, that got us wondering what was going on? Tara dug into it, and found that finally, Google seems to be indexing all of our pages - it's only taken about eight months to do so. So from a search engine perspective, it's clear you need to be just a little patient for the results to really be apparent. And we're lucky, because our site is immenently 'index-able' because of the way Marqui works. In fact, we've had customers realize significant gains in web traffic just because they were more 'find-able' in search engines. From a marketer's perspective, that's a dream come true.
9/13/2005 16:07
Okay, first let me apologize for the extremely long time between posts. Janet and I will definitely have to coordinate our vacations a little better in the future. Of course, she booked her trip first, so I suppose the blame should fall squarely on me.... At any rate, the delay was also caused (in part) on the fact we've been hard at work launching the new and improved version of our corporate Web site. Feel free to check it out at www.marqui.com and send any comments our way. Now, before anyone mentions it...yes, we know that the look and feel of our Web site no longer matches the look and feel of our blog. (Talk about a major marketing faux pas!) However, rest assured that this will be fixed in the next day or so -- we are just putting the finishing touches on the new layout for Marqui's World. So, I apologize again for the silence. Janet and I promise to make up for it over the next few weeks.
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