Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

We live in an age of instant gratification, and I think it is safe to say that there is no shortage of tools available to connect us to the information we are seeking. My personal favorite – Google – is something I sometimes wonder how I ever functioned without.

Somehow, despite all the information available to the masses, there seem to be some people who have yet to get the memo. How is it that my mother-in-law has time to compose an email to my husband inquiring what a specific company does, but couldn't bother to check their Web site for the answer? He decided to respond to her query with an answer from a site called "Let me Google that for you". This crafty little Web site allows the user (obviously someone annoyed with being asked a question that could have clearly been Googled to begin with) to type in their search terms just as they would on Google itself. However, instead of being given a list of links, a URL is generated for you to share with the offender.

For example, entering "what is Capstrat?" gave me the following link: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=what+is+Capstrat%3F. Upon clicking on the link, the info-seeker will be shown exactly how she can find the answer for herself. Passive-aggressive? Most definitely. Genius? I think so!

Take a look around and you see that the Apple iPad isn't the only tablet/ultraportable game in town. There is Jolicloud, the JooJoo, and the 500 pound gorilla, the forthcoming Google tablet using Chromium OS.

But when you see these all lined up side by side, you begin to see the forest for the trees. This is NOT just a change in form factor. In fact, size is the least radical change.

The new paradigm: the Web as a platform. Ultra-portable, constant connection to the Web, little or no local file storage, third party control over your installable apps, and the cloud as your storage.

Imagine having NO local files. No music, Word, Excel or photos on your machine. All of that is in the cloud. Heck, in Google's paradigm, you don't even install software. No apps. Nothing. You connect to the Web because the Web it is all you need.

Are we comfortable with this? Are we ready to give up control?

Over the weekend I was somewhat surprised that no one brought up mobile analytics at the AnalyticsCamp. As mobile users keep expanding and the functionality of mobile devices continually improves, measurement will come to the forefront.

This post takes a quick look at some easy ways to measure mobile users that come to your web site. Future posts in this series will look at success criteria, tracking mobile apps, and some of the interesting location-services like Foursquare. For now, let's just focus on mobile users coming to your existing website. 

First, some business questions we are trying to answer:

• • Do we need to build a mobile version of our site?
• • Are there certain activities that mobile users do?
• • What kind of devices are accessing our website? 
• • How are mobile visitors getting to your site?

 

I love the flood on information that is sent my way on a regular bases.  I'm always checking Google Reader to see what new headlines or blog articles pop up.  I'm still getting subscriptions that come to my email - though I should just take 10 minutes and finally unsubscribe to these.  And of course there is the constant sharing of information on Facebook and other social sites from peers and friends. It's a wonderful thing really, but is it sometimes too much?

I'm a list person. I have to finish my time sheets every day. And because of this personality trait, I have to scroll through and read EVERY headline in my news feed. I feel guilty if I don’t.

Anyone else on information overload?

OK, so I waited a loooooooong time before writing about my thoughts on Adobe's $1.8B acquisition of web analytics vendor, Omniture. I've probably missed the boat on saying anything groundbreaking, but I've wanted to espouse my beliefs ever since it was announced.

I've worked a ton with Omniture over the last 3 plus years and even interviewed with them for some positions recently, so when this showed up over the wire, people were peppering me with questions on what this means. So...I'll try to explore what I think it means and hopefully somewhere in here I have something that somebody else hasn't mentioned before.

Adobe?

This was the hardest piece to figure out at first. It seemed like it came out of left field. I always thought that it might make more sense for a company like SAP, Interwoven/Autonomy, or IBM to be the one to buy Omniture and integrate with their web platforms to create a seamless web ecosystem, where the content and the presentation of that content is based on the data being collected. Think of the Amazon model, where you come to the site and it 'knows' about you and suggests things based on behavior. That isn't done through magic. It's all web analytics and algorithms. Ok, and a little magic thrown in. So for an IBM, you'd throw Omniture on top of Websphere and all of a sudden you have a decision engine integrated with a web platform. Web personalization and delivery become a little easier.

But once I thought about it for a while, Adobe started to make more sense. Adobe wants Omniture so tracking of Flash and rich media becomes common place and tightly integrated. Tracking Flash applications today is not exactly the easiest thing in the world. Once you get the hang of it is not terribly difficult, but imagine if it was already in there out of the box with a few checkboxes to click to turn on. All of a sudden you have can track all the wonderful interactions inside of Flash. Here is something I learned a long time ago, if you can see how things work from a measurement perspective you end up doing more of it and do it smarter/better. The easier it is to track interactive media, the better the end products of marketers and web designers.

I'll give you a simplified view...one of the reasons Google Analytics exists is to drive more Paid Search and Banner ads. Why? Because if you can measure the effectiveness of these tactics you'll end up spending more to drive it. Google gives it away with hopes that it gives you a view into your online campaigns so you do more of them. I am thinking some of the same characteristics exist with this deal. If you can see what is happening with Flash or other Adobe applications, you'll use them more.

Optimization is key

A lot of folks might only use Omniture's SiteCatalyst and not realize that Omniture has bought a ton of technology over the years in the realm of optimization. In fact, over the last year they viewed themselves as an optimization platform, not a web analytics vendor. The notion is that you can leverage the huge amounts of data collected to determine what gets presented to visitors of a site. Behavioral targeting and personalization are possible using some of these tools as they utilize the reams of data to dictate the content, images, messaging, color, whatever you want. A/B and multivariate testing are part of the solution to designing better web sites as well as recommending content or products to visitors who have exhibited certain behaviors either on this visit or on previous encounters. Its pretty awesome stuff and a marketers dream. This is where the web is heading in a big way.

So...take it again into Flash or other rich media applications. All of a sudden you can have Omniture's Test & Target/TouchClarity platform underneath the application to generate different versions of content based on behaviors. This could be used on site as well as in off-site rich media banners for demand generation, especially around retargeting or different messaging based on what site you are on. Imagine if that was all integrated into the tools so you didn't have to think about it, you just come up with the content (no small task mind you). And you track it.

All of a sudden the applications become somewhat self-learning and the content more revelant for the visitors. I am oversimplifying, but I think you get the idea. The Omniture piece creates the feedback mechanism that drives the content through Flash.

Different Businesses

Unlike a lot of mergers where there is often cross-over with businesses and the deal is just to grow market-share, this is a deal that really broadens Adobe's business. Not much overlap with what Omniture does and what Adobe typically does. Theoretically, Omniture will benefit from Adobe's funding and software expertise.

Concerns

My biggest fear is that being owned by a particular web platform will mess up Omniture's agnostic view of web applications. For example, will Omniture devote as much time to figuring out how to track Silverlight applications now that its owned by the guys that create Flash? 

Will all the guys that have built up Omniture over the last decade jump ship and Adobe runs it into the ground? I've seen it all too often where a company buys another and all the talent eventually flees or the integration doesn't really fit because of cultural differences. Time will tell.

Implications

As I mentioned before, in theory this might help bring web analytics more into the mainstream as I would imagine this might get embedded inside of all of Adobe's software so that tracking is common place and not an IT exercise. I got to thinking though, if that happens doesn't that open up the door for some level of free web analytics? If it's in the tools, would you have to pay for an Omniture license or is it out of the box? And in that case, does it create different versions of Omniture SiteCatalyst where you have the free bare-bones one that comes with Flash, Dreamweaver, etc, or a pimped-out enterprise version that does everything and costs you something. Is that the way to compete with Google on this? And by being free with the tools, does that grow the usage of Adobe products? 

It's possible that Adobe isn't going to integrate it with their products so maybe the above never becomes an issue, but I sort of think integration makes the most logical sense. 

So...there you have my thoughts on the situation. What are your thoughts? Did I overlook something? Am I crazy/delusional?

 

 

My first post on the Capstrat blog!

Not sure what life this will take on but I hope to write a lot more often than I do with my current blog Diary of a Madman, which is as often as Halley's comet passes the earth. It's possible that I keep this blog more closely aligned with what I do professionally and the Diary will end up being a hodge-podge of randomness such as what I had for lunch. We'll see. On the Diary I tend to write on the wonderful world of web analytics and will probably transition those sort of posts here as well as occasionally veer into web marketing. Adjust bookmarks accordingly!

My first entry here focuses on my impressions of the Internet Summit that took place in Raleigh last week. Keep in mind these are my impressions and not those of Capstrat (unless we share a collective brain). I don't tend to go to many of these kinds of events other than the annual Omniture rock concert/Summit in Utah, so I don't have a lot to compare this to but I think overall I was a little underwhelmed by the Internet Summit.

From my perspective it was a little too high level for my liking. That doesn't mean it didn't have some value as there are definitely attendees with varying levels of experience and knowledge in this space. If you've never heard of Twitter then this might have been a very educational experience. If you are looking for pointers on strategy, examples of tactics that companies have deployed, or deep knowledge in areas than you probably came away slightly disappointed. I found most of the topics to be a broad overview of what people are doing on the Internet, but nothing tangible that I can use for myself. 

Because of the limitations of time and place I didn't get to see all the speakers, but here are the sessions I saw and my take on them:

Keynotes:

I found John Kosner from ESPN to be fairly entertaining and knowledgable and the fact that he's Bill Simmons boss didn't hurt him, as I am a huge Simmons fan. Especially interesting is ESPN's decision to be pipe-agnostic which is a key take-away from his speech. Being pipe-agnostic means that you as a company don't care how people get your content whether its on the web, print, tv, mobile, etc. As long as you check out ESPN's content, they don't really concern themselves with how you do it. That is a escpecially important as it allows your company to be everywhere and mass-consumed. Companies that ultimately wall themselves off and limit how you get content or products are going to stifle their growth because customers want freedom to choose how they receive it. Think of Netflix. By having multiple approaches for how you watch movies they are able to touch more people. Same concept here, let the customers pick. Something the record industry probably should have thought of.

The next keynote I saw was from the CEO of Technorati and it was sort of pedestrian with a lot of data thrown in. A lot of folks I chatted with were not terribly impressed. The one sort of surprising thing was the rising amount of professional bloggers of which I guess I am sort of one now.

Onto the sessions....

Blogging: New Media and Personal Branding:

This session was probably the highlight for me as the speakers were pretty good with Andy Beal (Marketing Pilgrim) and Rick Klau (Blogger/Google) being the standouts. I thought they had good ideas for how to generate more traffic, followers, etc., such as writing a lot and getting linkages. I wish they would have spent more time on measuring social media. It's one of the dirtiest things to measure, success on social media, but I would have liked to hear tangible things they've done to measure ROI or change perception based on companies actively participating in this space. I know a lot of people would cringe about trying to tie social media to objectives but I think at the end of the day you need to have some sort of measure as to whether or not you are doing this well. A lot of folks have mentioning tracking # of comments, followers, subscribers, and rankings as a way to measure but wondered if there is something more.

I suppose that if you have a measure of success such as moving from 10 followers to 100 followers then that is success. But I'd rather measure it against changes in perception (via surveys) or cost avoidance (such as reducing customer attrition or reducing customer support calls). Like the panelists said, it all depends on your goal. So the key take-away...if your company is getting into social media, have a purpose. Don't do it just because it's the 'in' thing to do or just to say you're doing social media. Have a reason and measure against that goal. 

As a side-note to social media measurement, I know Avinash Kaushik has a chapter on it in his new book, Web Analytics 2.0. I just haven't gotten to that chapter to absorb his teachings, but you should definitely go buy it here. I need to become an affiliate for Avinash as I tell everyone I know to go get his book. I should at least try to profit it from it.

For personal blogging I think there are more interesting goals. Quite honestly, the more you write and the more passionate you are about particular subjects, significant doors can be opened. Personally, I know my meager blog doesn't get a ton of traffic, but it gets the right kind of traffic, especially in the web analytics space. I've had companies contact me about job opportunities and I've had closer communication with Omniture because of my blog. If I was actually serious about it I could probably get speaking engagements and book/movie deals (I mean wouldn't you want to see a movie about this?). Klau mentioned he blogged so people would perceive him differently and not pigeonhole him. Additionally, someone on the panel mentioned that quantity is not as important as the quality of the people reading your content. Are the right people reading? So the take-away....blogging and blogging well with a purpose can help build your personal brand and get you places such as being viewed as a thought-leader or even a job.

Analytics:

Next on the agenda was the Analytics panel. Obviously, that was of keen interest to me. What was awesome to see is that it was one of the most heavily attended sessions, standing room only.  This is important for a couple of reasons...1) the continued interest keeps me employed which is of paramount value 2) shows that companies are starting to grasp the importance of measuring their online presence. Unfortunately, I think we are still in the infancy of web analytics, where a very few companies are actively measuring and, more importantly, reacting to it. Intuition and HIPPOs (Highest-Paid Person's Opinions) still run a vast majority of decision making, but that is going to change rapidly as smart companies view analytics as a competitive advantage. 

As for the panel itself, I didn't get the sense that the participants were that knowledgable in this space. That's not to say they aren't, I just didn't hear much that led me to believe it besides Ron Garmon at VueLogic (he was good). As I mentioned before, it seemed like the theme was that you need to measure stuff and test. Basic stuff, but surprisingly few companies are doing it. Why is that? 

My take is multi-pronged:

1) Companies think web analytics is hard or you need a PhD in stats to do this which is completely incorrect. The tools are getting easier to use, all you need is curiosity and a will to learn. 

2) The implementation of tools is complex and difficult. It definitely can be, as tools like Omniture aren't for the faint of heart, but that is starting to erode or at least has the potential to, see Adobe buying Omniture (more on that in my next post).

3) As mentioned, intuition still reigns supreme despite evidence to the contrary. People want to believe they are right or don't want to hear their baby is ugly. Often companies view their content or website as if it was their child and don't want anyone to tell them it's not the greatest site ever. As a side story, I heard a VP at Ford mention one time they used to internally bet on which banner would get the best results. They were wrong every single time. Lesson is that we look at things with our own inherent bias, instead of how customers view us.

4) Lack of staff with experience or expertise. It really is difficult to find anyone that has any sort of long-term experience in this space and even more surprising is the lack of higher-education programs in web analytics. North Carolina State has the Advanced Analytics program and the Univesity of British Columbia has the Award of Achievement in Analytics, but other than that I can't think of a program that exists. There aren't any teachers to teach essentially. As a side-note, this would be a great opportunity to embed these kinds of courses in an undergrad marketing degree or an MBA. 

As for the panel, things tended to stay on the generic side and maybe that was fine for everyone in the room but I wanted someone to get into strategies to solve some of the big problems with web analytics such as campaign attribution, how to pick revelant KPI, or how to measure offline world influencing the online world (and vice-versa). It's possible that the panel setting wasn't the best way to do this and maybe case studies or someone talking about the new developments in the analytics space would have been what I was looking for.

Social Media: Engage:

Quite honestly I missed most of this session because I decided to take a walk down Fayetteville St and get a bite to eat because I am crazy about what I eat and couldn't dine on the food provided. I wish I would have seen more of it because I do think its fascinating about the phenomena around people sharing things with each other. Of course, I love to measure the effect of that behavior as well. Smart companies are making it easier for people to share stories, content, links, etc in a multitude of ways such as Digg, Facebook, Del.icio.us, Google reader, etc. The key to that is not just enabling the ability to do so, but actually creating something that someone would want to share. I really believe companies (and people) lose sight of the fact that, in order for things to be shared, there actually has to be something interesting/important to share. Sounds simple, but it's often overlooked. 

Online Advertising Strategies:

This to me was one of the more disappointing sessions as there was no strategy to be found. It literally was an overview, and a fairly shallow one at that. I should have taken more notes, but literally it was basic tactics like Paid Search. I would have loved to hear how a company like Expedia looked at how all their tactics work together to generate sales on Expedia. For example, how do they evaluate where to spend money in advertising in a media-mix? Do they understand the effect of banner ads on their paid search? Those are the kinds of strategies I wanted to hear discussed, not that companies need to do Paid Search and then banners and so on down the interactive marketing food-chain. Even with banner ads, what kinds of things are they doing such as multivariate testing with different creative approaches or retargeting? Just needed more depth instead of the basic "here are things to drive traffic to your site".

Online Video Discussion:

Stepped out of my area of experience and ventured over to hear about video. I don't know much about this space but thought the speakers were entertaining, especially Max Haot from Livestream. Again to rehash a point, being able to distribute media across multiple outlets is more important than walling off where people view the content. 

Twitter/Real time:

Its very possible I missed some valuable insights by this point in the day as it was getting late and my caffeine buzz was deminishing. Nothing terribly revolutionary here but somewhat informative to learn of some new business ventures using Twitter as a platform such as Twitpay and Spitter. What I can't figure out is how those ventures are going to make any money. More importantly with Twitter is whether or not the real-time search stuff eventually screws the Google search monopoly. Twitter has a crazy amount of traffic and searches, wait until they start monetizing it. I am not a huge user of Twitter but I do use it for finding out whether or not people have the same problem I have with software vendors or other products. Example, if I create a support ticket for Omniture, it might get answered in a week. Do the same thing in Twitter and I have a response from either Omniture or another user in like an hour. The ability to have problems or issues amplified and searchable is going to completely change the nature of customer support. Companies that are listening and reacting build up trust and credibility as well as learning insights about their customers. 

Coda:

Its very possible that I don't understand the intent of the conference. Maybe it is designed to just give an overview and not get into specifics. Maybe it's just a place for vendors to showcase, job seekers to meet people, or an excuse to hang out at the new convention center all day (which is fine as well), but I was looking for things I can take back to my company or clients and use. I wanted to hear of something I hadn't considered or can easily read about. My suggestion is to potentially have less panels and more demonstration on what companies are actually doing on the web and get underneath the overview and dig into strategy. Sometimes seeing is the best education, I just didn't see much that caused me to write down something to check out later. I know this conference is in its embryonic stages, but I hope to see the topics explored a little deeper next time. I think the Internet Summit can become a really valuable event, it just needs a little fine-tuning. 

If anyone has other insights or take-aways from the session, especially the ones I didn't post about, please feel free to add in the comments. Or call me an idiot for anything I've written above. But if you are going to call me an idiot, please have proof.

Looking forward to posting more soon.........

Get ready. Google is going to change the way that it ranks sites.

Try it

• open a tab, go to Google and search for "raleigh pr agencies".
• open a new tab and go  http://www2.sandbox.google.com and search for the same thing
• now compare.

 

Using the current Google search , Capstrat is 9th. In the new one , we are 5th. While this may not seem like a big deal at first, consider the fact that slipping 11 places can put you on the third page instead of the first. A huge deal for online marketers.

Read more on Google's Webmaster blog.

Most communications professionals - even those who practice their craft online - will tend to shy away from the geeky technical detail stuff. That's a good thing. Even a Web developer like me is well advised not to lose the plot - to stay focused on the communication challenge rather than the technical challenge.

Every so often, though, things happen that we all need to stop and pay attention to, even though it seems like just propeller-head geekiness. Now's one of those times.

Yesterday, I started writing an article in which I intended to proclaim that we're no longer in that period where nerds and tech bloggers were speculating over a possible upcoming browser war. We're now, I intended to announce, smack in the middle of a new full-fledged Browser War.

I realize that I can't even say "Web browser" and count on folks knowing what I mean. But newer, stronger Web browsers are out now, the prevalence of Internet Explorer 6 is waning fast, and that is big. It's really expensive, time-consuming and creatively limiting to dial back to the 2001-era lowest common denominator IE6 represents. As we finally start cutting the IE6 boat-anchor loose, you'll be able to offer your clients more, and it will cost less. (Or you'd better be able to, anyway).

Then this morning, I saw this: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Over at TechCrunch, one of the most popular tech blogs, the headline is less subtle: Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft

The idea is that you'd use this Google operating system instead of Microsoft Windows, and you'd do your computing primarily in your Web browser (Google Chrome, naturally). As browsers get better (remember, IE6 is dying out), the trend toward through-the-browser applications like Google's GMail, SalesForce and Google Apps will accelerate. In short, your Web browser is your desktop, and the Web is your computing platform.

I have to admit I'm still processing the implications of an open sourced, Google-built-and-branded computer operating system, but no matter whether this particular effort on Google's part is successful or not, the browser war question is pretty much settled.

It's on, y'all.

 

For those of you struggling with syncing your iPhone Cal, Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar, I've got a solution for you. I call it the "Hard Way" since there's probably a more elegant and less kludgy way to accomplish this. But I haven't found one that I've been satisfied with.

I'll dispense with any more rhetoric and get on with it. Here's a diagram to follow along with.

 

1. Download and install Google Calendar Sync for Outlook. This is a little program that runs on your local machine. It pushes and pulls calendar data between your computer and Google Calendar. The flaw here, of course, is that it's only effective when your computer is running and connected to the web. But if that's not a big issue for you, keep going. 
2. Backup your iPhone.
3. No, really. Go backup your iPhone, cowboy. You stand to obliterate your contacts and old calendar data, as you will see in the next step.
4. Go to Google Mobile Sync for iPhone. You already backed up your iPhone, so go to Step 2 "Set Up your iPhone." There you will configure it to push and pull data from Google. When you're almost complete it will ask you to confirm that you're ok with the possibility of blowing away your data. It will ask you twice. You backed up, right? If so, take a deep breath and proceed.
   
5. Wait a few minutes for everything to get synced up. If you hosed your old data, I take no responsibility for that. Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier?

I attended an AAF-Raleigh Durham event last week featuring Google TV with speaker  Dan Gertsacov, Team Manager with Google TV Ads.  The presentation was on the  insights from Google's introduction into the TV industry via Google TV Ads.  Earlier this year Google introduced a TV buying platform, similar to Google Adwords.  They have created a space that virtually anyone with web access and a credit card can play in. Google has built a ‘self-serve platform’ to allow advertisers to bid on specific cable shows, rather than buy on the basis of time slots and demographics.  This allows for a different kind of targeting at lower costs. They can even outsource creative, should you need it.  

This bidding system may be uncharted territory for traditional buyers, but for online buyers it’s common knowledge.   The idea of this ‘easy as 1-2-3’  technology can be threatening to a traditional media buyer who takes a lot of pride in the process of doing a precise buy from start to finish.  After listening through the presentation however, I realized that this is just another tool to make us do our jobs better.  Yes - a client could log in and create their campaign and have it running the next day, though I  wouldn’t recommend it.  Defined parameters and thorough strategy remain a crucial component to any buy, before you go bidding on spots and dots.

I think it’s funny how this way of buying media is easily adaptable to how online buyers purchase space.   Traditional buying is very archaic, and when you stop to think about it, it’s quite ridiculous.   It’s a routine process of requesting information, hours of data entry, and sending information back and forth via email or fax.  Yes, reps still fax avails to buyers!  In my 5 or 6 years of buying, almost nothing has changed in the overall process in which we buy TV.  How we buy media in general, well that’s a different story.  

So is Google TV going to transform the way in which we buy media?  Time will only tell.  I will remain open to change if it allows me to do my job more efficient, targeted and smarter.   A future of buying with no data entry?  Bring it on!