Friday, September 26, 2008
Susannah Gardner of Hop Studios is currently showing the attendees at EE Roadshow how to customize an ExpressionEngine template. I just learned a cool trick. Ok, not a trick really, I just learned something that should have been painfully obvious.
As Susie was demonstrating that you can use a weblog to populate a header, meaning that you can create a custom weblog for your headers, pre-load the information and then set the order to randomly display one of the images, she happily clicked away on the Upload File button and this is what lead to my revelation ...
In EE when you want to reference an image that you’ve already loaded to your system, you click Upload File. And in the second half of the pop-up window, you click View. This will show you all the images in your directory and you can click link to auto-insert the link into any field.
I did not know this. It’s totally obvious! But in the past I have gone to my FTP client, found the filename and typed in the link.
Step 1: Click the Upload File Button to get the pop-up window.
Step 2: Click View
Step 3: Select Your Image. Decide what field it’s going to and select Link.
Ta-da! There’s the code.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Based on Guerrilla Consulting’s 7 Sentence Marketing Plan, I have been thinking about how the 7 Sentences can be modified for online marketing plans.
Free download Sample Marketing Plan & Roadmap from includes the 7-Sentence Marketing Plan.
At the BookNet Canada session “Defining Success: Accountable Online Marketing for Book Publishing”, I was asked about how I start creating an online marketing plan and if I think about the tools first.
I always have the tools in mind (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious), but I start with the 7 Sentence Plan, which really is about the business goals.
1. The purpose of the marketing plan is [specific, measurable goal here].
2. The target audience is [Who does this campaign need to reach? Where are they online?].
3. The niche in the marketplace is [What’s special about this book, how is it different, what are its benefits, competitive advantages?].
4. My identity is [Who and how are we representing ourselves online? Is the author blogging and commenting and the publicist doing the research? Is the publicist representing the author and the house? Are we using our Facebook profile, website, blog?].
5. Our tactics and strategies are [list here the tools, based on what’s going to work best for the target audience].
6. We will devote [percentage or amount of time, people, money] to this project.
7. We are measuring [specific, measurable goals here] and we understand the value of our goal conversions to be [enter values here].
Couple of competitive tools I mentioned:
* MarketLeap.com
* Compete.com
* Google Insights Search
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
3 Steps to Measuring the Success of Online Marketing Campaigns
Presented Sept. 18 as part of BookNet Canada and ABPBC’s Defining Success: Accountable Online Marketing for Book Publishing
If you’re not measuring the results of your marketing efforts, then you are wasting money. Here are 3 steps to planning, measuring and improving online campaigns.
Step 1. Establish measurable indicators (or KPIs, key performance indicators) for every marketing effort.
Make sure they are measurable! For example, saying “we want to increase sales” is not something you can measure. Many factors influence a person’s decision to buy. Sales are an indicator of success but the exact marketing effort that led to a sale is not measurable. Sending out a postcard and driving people to a specific URL is something we can measure. How many people came to this page. Further to that, if the page has an online form, how many people completed the form. These 2 things are specific and measurable.
A specific, measurable goal might be:
* visiting a certain webpage
* signing up for a newsletter
* completing an online form
By using free tools like Google Analytics you can precisely track how many people complete your goal and where they came from.
Step 2: Determine your cost per conversion.
A conversion is any time that someone completes a desired action. It doesn’t have to be a sale. A conversion is the completion of a measurable, specific goal.
Your cost per conversion is the amount of money you spend divided by the number of conversions you achieve.
If your campaign involves mailing out postcards that direct people to a specific URL with an online form, your goal is getting people to fill out the form. The campaign costs $500. You track the number of online form submissions and receive 50 submissions.
Cost per conversion = $500 / 50 submissions
$10 per conversion.
If your campaign involves sending out an email newsletter that directs people to a specific URL with an online form, your goal is still getting people to fill out the form. The campaign costs $200. You track the number of online submissions and receive 16 submissions.
Cost per conversion = $200 / 16 submissions
$12.50 per conversion
Now that you have this information you can make some better judgements about how to spend your marketing dollars. With the cost per conversion, you can see that the postcard generated a better (cheaper) cost per conversion than the email newsletter, even though the total cost of the postcard was more.
Cost per conversion helps you determine the actual cost instead of just looking at price. (It is like the cost per pound when buying meat.)
Step 3: Determine the Value
To determine if your marketing effort is worth the money or a waste, you need to determine the value of your activities.
Is it worth it to spend $12.50 to get one person to fill out an online form? Maybe yes, maybe no. It depends on the context. If the form is an order form for a product costing $100, maybe yes.
The value per conversion is $100. The cost per conversion is $12.50.
With both sets of numbers in hand, you can look at all your marketing efforts and decide where to allocate your resources: people, time and money. Don’t stop just at the online marketing activities, look at the offline marketing activities.
It drives me mad when online is asked to justify a spend but offline is not. In these scenarios, you’re wasting money. You are making decisions based on gut instinct and experience. We have experience doing x, y, z and it makes us feel good. It’s safe.
Safe can also be a waste of money.
When a conversion is not related to a sale, how do you set value?
Create a point system. You’ll assign an arbitrary number, but it works as a comparative measurement. You always want specific, measurable goals.
1 person opening and reading your email newsletter = 5 points
1 person viewing a specific video = 5 points
1 person signing up for a newsletter = 10 points
1 person creating an account on your ecommerce site = 100 points
Looks arbitrary, but it works.
If you run Campaign 1 and have 300 people viewing a specific video:
300 people * 5 points = 1,500 points
If you run Campaign 2 and have 200 people sign up for your email newsletter:
200 people * 10 points = 2,000 points
The $ value of each campaign is unknown, but we can see the relative effectiveness. Instead of saying, “we should do more of Campaign 1, it drove the most people”, we can see that Campaign 2, although it drove fewer actions, these actions are of higher value.
Before spending any money, always consider what your specific, measurable goal is worth. As long as you can measure relative effectiveness, you can evaluate whether you are wisely spending money.
Armed with the cost per conversion and the value per conversion, you can make a lot of sense out of the results data. You can easily determine which marketing activities are most effective.
Having trouble figuring out a point system?
Understand the relative value of your online and offline activities. Start with your gut instincts, set the arbitrary numbers, and, as you collect accurate, specific and measurable results, refine those arbitrary numbers into actual dollar values.
For example, if your gut tells you that in-person networking events generate a value of 10 points, but posters only generate 5 points. Then you have the beginnings of a scale.
Posters = 5 points
In-person networking = 10 points
If you and your marketing and sales team can agree that online networking and social media is equal to in-person marketing, then online networking is 10 points. If your team is skeptical, then you can negotiate. If online networking is of greater value than posters but lesser value than in-person networking, agree to give it 8 points.
From chaos to order.
Posters = 5 points
Online networking = 8 points
In-person networking = 10 points
Here is how I’d pair off some common online and offline marketing activities. You have to determine the value order and points based on your business context, but you can use these pairings to help those who operate on gut instinct, or those with little experience online, begin to create a point system.
Advertising (radio, print, direct mail) • Online advertising (email ads, banner ads, search ads
Articles in print (circulation numbers) • Articles Online (unique visitors to site)
Marketing messages with telephone hold music • Email signatures
In-person networking • Online networking
Posters • Web badges and widgets
Press releases • Electronic press releases
Letters to the Editor • Blog comments, Online reviews
Referral program • Online affiliate program
TV ads • YouTube videos
Word of Mouth (real world) • Word of Mouth (virtual world: blogs, forums, wikis, email forwards)
Corey Rollins and I live blogged the Internet Marketing Conference (September 11 and 12) for TechVibes. Links to our posts are below:
General Interest
IMC: Keynote Address by Eric T. Peterson.
Author Eric T. Peterson says that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing analytically. Why web analytics is important and what it means to your business.
IMC: Social Media Marketing Success Stories.
Capulet Communications on 5 social media tools.
IMC: Best Tips and Conference Summary.
A quick review of key points from the conference.
IMC: Shannon Ryan on Engagement Marketing.
A really short post with 5 tips for engagement marketing.
IMC: Enterprise 2.0 by Jon Husband Wirearchy Network.
Why hierarchy does not work in a wired world.
How-To
IMC: Usability Testing Without the Lab Coats by Andre Charland from Nitobi.
3 tips for usability testing.
IMC: Engage Community With Your Brand by William Azaroff of Vancity.
Excellent case study on how Vancity Credit Union used social media to create an online community.
IMC: Expert Panel Tips on Writing for the Web.
Monique and an expert panel talk about writing copy for landing pages, email newsletters, multilingual sites and more.
Search Marketing
IMC: HubSpot Website Grader.
A quick measurement of how well your website performs from a search and social media perspective. Test your own site.
IMC: Search Optimization Panel.
An expert panel on search optimization. What makes them tick and ticked about SEO practices.
IMC: Tool Demo on SEO Browser.
Really short post on SEO-Browser.com. Know what a search engine sees when it comes to your site.
Measuring Success
IMC: Website Monetization.
Why defining goals, assigning value and measuring is worthwhile.
IMC: Monitoring Website Performance by Anil Batra of Zero Dash 1.
A great presentation by Anil on why people waste their time tracking statistics that are interesting and what they should be measuring.
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