Asking these companies what they wanted to achieve most from their digital marketing activities, those in the B2B space wanted to generate leads on which their sales efforts could close the deal.  For those in the B2C space it was all about generating sales.  In response to the question about how they measure their digital marketing success, all companies said overall website traffic was their main benchmark, followed by lead generation and sales.

For all companies, search engine marketing (SEO and Paid Search) was their most effective lead generation and sales tactic, with 75% of companies indicating so.  This was followed by social media marketing, which was reported 25% of the time as having the biggest positive impact.  As the social media world evolves, it appears companies are learning that social media may be a more of a branding and awareness tool than a lead generation and sales tool.

Furthermore, the survey asked for responses relative to social media marketing – specifically with which social networks the participating firms were most active – and separated it between those in the B2B and B2C space.  Not surprisingly, Facebook was by far the dominant network for B2B.  For B2B companies there was a more even distribution of activity.   When asked if they had ever generated leads from their social media marketing activities, LinkedIn was found to be the most effective lead generation source for B2B, while Facebook clearly was the leader on the B2C side.

Finally, responding firms were asked about their marketing budget allocations and how they will change going into 2012.  Historically, search engine marketing has dominated marketing budgets with 60%+ going to this medium, and 10-15% going to social media depending in what space they operate.

This is a great, revealing survey but what does this mean to you and your business, and what should you do?  The following two graphs show what has been and what will be marketing investment allocations going forward into the new year.  Here are some suggestions:

1. Who are your main competitors and how are they positioned in the search engines compared to you?  Search engines being the most positive online lead and sales generation tactic, it is important to assess your positioning here and decide how to allocate marketing budget and what search engine strategy makes the most sense for you.
2. Depending on what space you operate in (B2B or B2C) you should evaluate your positioning in Facebook and LinkedIn.  Are your competitors active in these mediums?  How good is their content and is this an opportunity for you to develop a specific “personality” in FB or LI and carve out a niche for yourself?
3. Ask someone knowledgable in this space for what he/she sees working for other companies.  Search engine marketing may be the best lead and sales generation tactic, but it may not be best for your type of company.  Same with social media.  It is attractive because it is essentially free, but it can also be time consuming.  Do your customers want to interact with you on the social networks?  Are your customers even using social networks for their business dealings?  These are all questions you can ask yourself and someone else to determine where your marketing budgets should be allocated.

The challenge becomes identifying the RIGHT web analytics data to use when measuring and optimizing marketing campaigns.  Following are 5 steps to making sure you are looking at the right web analytics information:

1. Make a list of the various ways you are marketing or advertising your business.  Then go into your Google Analytics and segment your traffic to match those advertising methods.  If you can’t identify the sources in your data, then you should consider setting up some advanced segments and/or separate profiles.  This will enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing/advertising tactic.
2. Have you decided what you want your website to accomplish?  If you have, then make sure you have tagged those items and configured your web analytics data for Event Tracking and Goals.  Combined with #1 above, you’ll be able to see how many goals you are achieving for each of your marketing/advertising tactics.  If you haven’t set goals for your website, then navigate through it and identify (or create) calls-to-action.  These could be downloading of information, signing up for newlsetter, scheduling an appointment, etc. 
3. Look at your top Landing Pages and evaluate how well they are performing for you.  When reviewing landing page performance, look at bounce rate and time-on-page.  These are “engagement metrics”.  If you find a landing page that gets a lot of views and has poor “engagement metrics”, take a look at the page to determine how you can improve it for better engagement.
4. Look at your top Keywords, those search phrases (keywords) that people are using to come to your site.  Evaluate keyword performance using some of the same “engagement metrics” as described in #3 above.  If you see keywords that are very relevant to your business but the “engagement metrics” are weak, then you need to evaluate landing page performance and content.   
5. If you are doing much offline advertising, obtain some unique domain names (website addresses) that resemble your brand or what you do.  For example, let’s say you provide plumbing services and your web address is WatkinsPlumbing.com.  Get an alternative web address like WatkinsPlumbers.com or FlowingFreely.com.  Then, assign a unique web address to your print advertising and tag that in your Google Analytics account.  Now you can see how many people are coming to your website from print advertising.

Just like in Moneyball, use the data to make good decisions.  Someone might say you should pay to advertise on another site because this other site gets a lot of traffic.  You might be enamored by you getting millions of eyeballs looking at your link but if no one clicks or those that do click and come to your site don’t do anything meaningful when they get there, then that “traditional approach” may not be the best approach for you.

Then imo.im came out a while ago and seemed a little limited, at least compared to meebo.com. It has since blossomed into a very useful tool however and now thankfully I can manage all my instant message accounts in one place – AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber, MySpace and more including the ability to group chat and make calls in Skype! More and more I find I’m using Skype as a chat tool and so being able to integrate ALL messenger applications AND Skype makes Life a lot easier .

I even ran into a little bug that somehow caused my AIM friends to appear offline when they were online – I dropped the support team a quick note and BOOM! they fixed it (I’m guessing specifically for my username as they requested I let them know what it was). They have a very cool iphone app now too allowing me to have separate messenger applications running on phone and desktop – useful if for example I use one primarily for work and the other for fun.

Kudos to imo.im – Multiple IM problems solved!

That’s a lot.

Access to this much data often times leads to inaction instead of action. Or worse, action taken based on metrics that are given more importance than they deserve. So given this rather glim scenario faced by many companies and organizations, we needed to reestablish not just the importance but the criticality of utilizing web analytics. To do this, I asked everyone in the room a series of questions. The first two were:

1) have you ever used data from your website to make a strategic decision?

2) do you use data from your website to make strategic decisions on a regular basis?

A little less than half raised their hand to the first question. Fewer raised their hand for the second.

I then proposed the hypothetical situation of the internet going away completely and for everyone in the room to determine where their business would be in that scenario. They either:

1) wouldn’t be affected because the internet has a negligible affect on their business

2) would be affected to a degree but the business could survive without it

3) would be forced to close up shop.

The point of this exercise was to reveal that any business that relies in part or completely on the internet should have some sort of measurement process to understand the return on their investment. After all, a business that relies on the internet to generate revenue in likely making an investment into it – be it a website, search engine marketing, social media etc.

So where to start? Remember from above there are nearly 300 different metrics and dimensions to use when analyzing your website. To make sense of the myriad of data, it’s important to understand the question you’re trying to answer. In this case, we’re trying to answer the question of ROI.

The one report we can use to answer this question is a Source/Outcomes report. This report serves to answer two questions: “where did my visitors come from” and “how well did they do at completing my site objectives?”

This is the 10,000 foot view that can quickly tell us which investments are paying off and which ones ares not. It can tell us more about our site than almost any other single report. If you aren’t looking at any reports about your website or you haven’t made a decision from one, this is the report to get started with. It will very quickly tell you what is paying off and what is not in terms of investment.

Beware: making use of this report is a little like opening Pandora’s box. Once you get the taste for blood you’ll be thirsty for more. Inevitably you’ll have more questions about why certain channels aren’t working as well as others or what it is about certain channels that make them work so well. That’s where the other couple hundred metrics start coming into play.

Quick note:
Before signing into your Google Analytics, realize that this report doesn’t come automatically (what good things in life do, right? ). No matter what web analytics platform you use, it can’t automatically decipher what your site’s objectives are. That up for you and your team to decide. From there, the proper configuration needs to take place (ecommerce, goals, goal value, event tracking, etc) in order for the platform to show you what you want to see.

In future posts I’ll dive deeper into the content of last week’s talk. It was my hope that with the points made above I could set the stage for the importance of using data and where to start if you were at the ground level (similar to what I tried to do in this post). Although seemingly rudimentary, it is so vital to break through this first wall before trying to tackle anything else.

The economics of these sites are daunting for most businesses.  First, you have to provide at least of 50% discount off retail, and then you have to give about half of the revenue to the deal site.  So, if you sell something for $100 normally, you must offer it to at no more than $50 and then give about $25 for each item sold – resulting in the business receiving about 25% of normal retail price.  If you sell 500 items from the deal site, you’ve just sold $50,000 worth of your products/services for about $12,000.  Your margins have to be pretty good to make this work, and most of the cases these services are being sold at a loss.  So, how can a business make it work?  Usually the only way is to upsell the customer to a more profitable product/service that provides real value to the customer.

Here are some ideas about how to make it work.  First, go into it with your eyes wide open knowing the economic impact of what you are doing – selling your product/service for 25 cents on the dollar.  Next, figure out the easiest way to create more revenue from the customer interaction that truly adds value for your customer.  If you are a restaurant, you probably want to offer something like $50 of food for $25, and then sell appetizers, desserts and drinks to re-capture lost margin dollars.  Plus, give the customer such an awesome experience that he/she wants to come back and perhaps even a coupon for their next visit.  If you are a painter for instance, you may want to offer 50% off painting one room and when you arrange the job with the customer offer a small discount on painting another room.  Use this upsell opportunity to re-capture some of the lost margin on the original deal.  And always, always, always – make the customer experience so great that you create a raving fan and repeat business at regular price.

Selling 25 cents on the dollar results in a lot of lost margin dollars but if you are creative about how you position the deal and turn the customer into a raving fan, you can make those daily deal sites work for your business.

An associate professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who studies well-being, says these findings make perfect sense to him.  He goes on to say…“Think about it as a gateway to getting what you want from life — job interviews, first dates, making those initial impressions, persuading and influencing other people,” he says. “Attractiveness gives that slight edge. They’re getting the benefit of the doubt at first sight, and unattractive people aren’t.”

So what does this concept mean for website design?  There are similarities.  When someone comes to your website he/she gets that first impression.  Is that first impression a good one or one where the visitor asks “what the h— is this place?”  There are two important considerations when it comes to web design.  First, if your product has an emotional element to it then you better make sure your website graphic presentation exudes the emotion you seek.  For example, if you are a spa then your website better communicate relaxation, introspection and beauty primarily directed at women.  On the other hand, if you are a sports bar, then your graphics better communicate fun, activity, sports and the like.  You know what I mean?  The second consideration is more basic – simply what I call the “credibility hurdle”.  That is, when someone comes to your website do you look like a credible, quality operation? 

If you are in a “non-emotional” business, then your graphic presentation primarily needs to meet/exceed the “credibility hurdle” to make sure people coming to your site are impressed by you, you look competitive and present yourself as a quality operation.  Many firms in the commercial construction business fit into this arena.  They are selling capability and not necessarily an emotional experience.  On the other hand, if you are trying to communicate a special message that sets you apart and resonates with your target customer, then you better step it up a notch or two or three and make sure that emotion you want to communicate through your website hits the mark.

In summary, beauty on a website is almost always more than skin-deep.  It is just important to know who your customer is and what turns them on.

There is little question that SMB’s value word-of-mouth as the most effective way to acquire new customers.  Social media certainly can result in greater brand and top-of-mind-awareness and it is pretty cost effective if the personnel involved are highly skilled and productive at it. Interestingly, search engine optimization was considered fourth on the list.  After that, advertising in the more traditional sense is taking a lesser and lesser position on the list of what is important to new customer acquisition.  

On the contrary, a different survey sponsored by MerchantCircle found that local small businesses were more likely to say search engine optimization was a more effective channel than social media, at 40.2% vs. 36.7%.  Because some social media platforms like Facebook have become part of the very fabric of our society, people know how to use them and the learning curve is relatively easy.  On the other hand, the costs, technical challenges and mystique of search engine optimization may be discouraging factors to more SMB’s using this marketing approach.

I wonder if a survey was conducted with SMB’s who are doing both social media marketing and search engine optimization, whether these business owners would say social media or search engine optimization was better at actually generating leads.  Our experience clearly indicates at this point in time that search engine optimization is far more effective at actual lead generation.  After all, what better situation can you have then a qualified customer going to Google, typing in a search phrase to find a product or service provider and virtually asking who out there has what I am looking for?  I mean, think about it. 

Now, this is not to say social media marketing should be ignored in favor of search engine optimization.  Considering the social media trends we are seeing, both are critically important and should be considered for serious investment.  The nuances of your target market, their shopping and buying patterns and the strength of your competition are all factors to be considered to determine how much of each is right for you.

Why does Joomla! insert the <p> tag by default?

TinyMCE (the default WYSIWYG Editor) is set by default to “P” (<p>) Elements (paragraphs) for new lines. You can change this to line breaks (br) by going to: Extensions > Plugin Manager > Editor – TinyMCE > Parameters > New Lines > BR Elements.

~ Courtesy of Dizzi, Joomla! virtuoso

Why does Joomla! strip some bits of code/tags like clear:both etc.?

In the Joomla! admin panel go to Plugins >> TinyMCE Editor >> “Never allow code cleanup”.  That should take care of it!

How to use image maps in Joomla!

As far as I know the default editor in Joomla! makes it tricky to simply cut and paste an image map code from your HTML IDE of choice into the Joomla! editor and save without it breaking the image map. It’s asked a lot but really the easiest solution is to do the following:

- Download JCE editor here and install: http://www.joomlacontenteditor.net/downloads/editor/item/jce-installation-package?category_id=14

- Go to Site >> Configuration and set whatever verison of JCE you have as the default.

- Now go into your articles or modules and add image maps via the source!

David McKillen WebStrategies Inc.

eMarketer.com recently wrote about a survey of why people follow a brand on Twitter.  It stated that 44% are seeking exclusive deals and special offers.  An additional 24% said they were a current customer.  After that, most Twitter followers are looking for interesting and/or entertaining content.  See chart on right.

B2C Businesses

For those businesses marketing direct to the consumer, this means you should focus your attention on promoting and educating your marketplace about your products.  Use Twitter to communicate special coupons, sales and other promotions.

B2B Businesses

If your business promotes specials deals and discounts with some frequency, use Twitter to let the marketplace know about them.  If not, become a “thought leader”.  That is, begin producing good, solid content that is helpful and meaningful to your target market.  Begin “tweeting” about the valuable content and if it’s good, the Twitter network will help it go “viral” and get the kind of visibility you didn’t think possible.

EMarketer.com, one of my favorite sources of information about online marketing, has done a great job of capturing and communicating information about a variety of surveys that have been done about social media trends.  In particular, some interested data exists about how social media impacts those in the B2B space.

This data suggests the engagement level of those visiting a B2B website from a popular social media site isn’t very high with the majority of people only viewing one page in the website.  This is great for branding and visibility but not quite what B2B marketers are looking for in terms of lead generation.  Additionally, another EMarketer.com article reported that the most popular pages visited in a B2B website from a social media site were the About Us page, Blog and the Management Team page.  This suggests that social media marketing for B2B SMB’s has an impact on visibility but not necessarily lead generation.  The article went on to say that these social media visitors aren’t looking at products and services.  However, this data does suggest that blogging could be an effective social media strategy for the SMB’s in the B2B space.  We’ll get to that point a little later.  Finally, a third article from EMarketer.com stated that only 35% of US marketers believed their companies had increased revenues and profits by using social media marketing.

These are certainly some staggering and sobering statistics about social media marketing in the SMB B2B space.  But wait – there is some hope.  The aforementioned data suggests that blogs are a popular destination from social media sites.  Clearly blogging is a social media strategy and one in which a SMB can effectively promote themselves.  Think about being a “thought leader” in your industry as a means of gaining credibility and strengthening your brand.  You may even be able to attribute a sale to your blogging efforts if you seek out the information.  Blogging can be a great way to communicate your message to a wide audience.

Have you won any awards, gained any industry certifications, produced a white-paper or created a smart-phone app?  If so, these are tremendous topics to post on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.  Again, you may not be able to attribute a sale to any of these posts, but all of us in the SMB B2B space know that marketing and brand visibility are keys to generating prospects.

In summary, if you are a SMB marketing to other businesses, don’t give up on social media marketing.  Between blogging, content marketing and communicating other important news about your business, there are many ways you can get onto the social media bandwagon and use this emerging media as a way to strengthen your brand, build your credibility and generate some prospects.