Digital marketing today

"There is one difference between winners and losers when it comes to web analytics. Winners, well before they think data or tool, have a well structured Digital Marketing & Measurement Model. Losers don't." - Avinash Kaushik in his blog post.

If you have read any blog post here you will notice that it’s related to digital analytics or web analytics. And, all of which tie up with digital marketing, which is where the sum of efforts you put into digital analytics (DA) is headed, in making your digital marketing better.

But, what is digital marketing anyway?

Source

Digital marketing is selling things to people via anything that is electronic, has a pretty screen and will let people click on it. Here's a definition from Wikipedia that leaves no doubts:

"Digital marketing is marketing that makes use of electronic devices (computers) such as personal computers, smartphones, cellphones, tablets and game consoles to engage with stakeholders. Digital marketing applies technologies or platforms such as websites, e-mail, apps (classic and mobile) and social networks. Many organisations cross traditional and digital marketing channels."

Today, when you talk about digital marketing you will hear words like Analytics, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Visitors, Views, Engagement and what not. Digital Marketing is not what it once was in the 1990’s. Looking back, it has come a long way since.

Digital marketing centers around creating an experience for your customer, be it via Online, mobile or within social networks. It involves listening to how your customers interact with your digital content. Then, monitoring, predicting, experimenting and adapting what you deliver to what your customers want.

At this point, it's worth musing what Seth once said about connections in the digital age:

"There is no market for humming, for example, because everyone has unlimited humming at their disposal at all times. So, in the abundant digital world, what's scarce? Where is the economy?

It's in connection.

Who trusts you? Who wants to hear from you? Who will collaborate and support and engage with you? 

These are things that don't scale to infinity. These are precious resources."

By knowing who your customer is, what he does and a whole lot of other details that have sparked off the privacy debate, you can make your marketing more relevant and experience more personalized. (You've surely read this one, I presume.)

Almost everything digital that touches your customer, can be used to make his or her experience wholesome. Like, altering your landing page based on feedback from your digital metrics. And, with the state to which social media has evolved to what it is today, and data driven decisions it is possible to reach out to your customers at a personal level than ever before. It possible to connect with your customer than ever before.

Previously, what was once traditional marketing, today works in tandem alongside digital. Here’s an example of how that could be done:

“Each year companies spend millions of dollars for a 30-second Super Bowl ad to reach a wide and captive audience. By adding a digital call to action--like an invitation to like the brand’s Facebook page to be entered in a giveaway--brands can extend the value of that advertisement and get a broader return on their (very significant) investment. Once that consumer engages online, marketers can provide additional details about the product in the ad, invite them to opt-in for future communication, or offer a digital coupon or promotion in order to encourage the type of active engagement that digital channels have to offer.”

Here are few relevant numbers that show the state of things these days:

• Internet users: More than 36% of the global population today, compared to 21.7% in 2008.

• Mobile phone users: 60.7% of the population this year, compared to 40.0% in 2008.

• Smartphone users: Just under one-third of mobile users and about 20% of the global population, compared to 3.7% of mobile users and 1.5% of the population in 2008.

• Social network users: About a quarter of the global population, compared to 8.3% in 2008.

• Facebook users: More than 15% of the global population, compared to 3.1% in 2008.

• Total ad spending: $517.10 billion in 2013, up 2.8% from last year, compared to $484.30 billion in 2008.
  
• Digital ad spending: More than 22% of total ad spending in 2013, compared to 12% in 2008.

• Mobile ad spending: Just 2.6% of total ad spending and 11.9% of digital ad spending, compared to 2.1% in 2008.

And to close, here's an infographic from Mobile marketing watch relating analytics and digital marketing:

Source

References:

1. Digital Marketing and measurement model 

2. Digital Marketing

3. The end of the expert - why no one in marketing knows what they're doing

4. Making digital and traditional marketing work together

5. Worldwide Ad Growth Buoyed by Digital, Mobile Adoption

6. Seth's Blog: Scarcity and abundance in the digital age

7. Infographic: Analytics Driving Digital Marketing

The Game of Digital Analytics: Gamification of the Metrics

The Game of Digital Analysis:

Gamification of the Metrics

           

What is Gamification?

            It is simply absorbing the fun elements in a game (what we call Game Mechanics or Game Techniques) into real-world applications.[1]  It is simply taking the fun and often addicting features of video games and applying those same features to real-world, non-game situations and applications.  The last decade saw a huge surge in the gaming industry, surpassing the music and movie industry, to become the leading form of entertainment globally.[2]

             
Gamification of Analytics

            In a way, business and digital analysts already have a built-in game feature when it comes to analyzing the metrics and creating actionable items off of those analyses.  Imagine for a moment that the metrics are points within a game, which is one of the five most commonly used game mechanics[3].  The object, just like in a video game, is to get the highest score possible.  For the analyst, this comes in the form of higher site traffic, or higher customer conversion.       

When an analyst pours over the metrics, identifies an area of improvement, and then implements changes to improve the business, they have the benefit of running the numbers again after the improvements to determine whether or not a new “high score” was achieved.  This desire to observe, strategize and implement new methods is a pattern found in both analysts and “gamers”.

            Moreover, there are other commonalities which show correlation between analysis and gaming.  Multiple tools exist to show comparisons between different companies success or site traffic, providing the analysts with something akin to a leaderboard, which is another one of the commonly used game mechanics.  This gives the analyst, not only the ability to see how their actions improve their business, but how their changes stack up against the competition as well.

            But why stop there?  The next step might possibly be to make the analytics tools themselves, such as Adobe SiteCatalyst or Google Analytics, function more like video games.  What if a failing metric took on the characteristics, and perhaps even the avatar, of a video game “mini-boss” and it was up to the analyst to determine the correct course of action to defeat that adversary?  Another option might be to construct the analytics tool in such a way as to create “levels” of success so that as the analyst improves the metrics through analysis and implementation, new levels are achieved via increased revenue or decreased cost.

Whatever the future of the analytics tools, it is clear that at least in some small way, analysts just might be gamers at heart.  Why not indulge that passion and turbo charge the fun factor of the analytics industry?

Driving Success through Gamification           

          

As a final note, there have been many studies and trends showing that the gamification of websites and apps drives engagement with products and services and creates a stronger, deeper connection to the customer.  One such example is this post on Social Media Today[4].  While the world of digital analytics evolves and companies benefit more and more from these “gamer” analysts, perhaps the analysts should also try to incorporate gamification into their repertoire of actionable items. 

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[1] http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/what-is-gamification/#.UwDxGLRB-Hw

[2] https://sites.google.com/site/kmsocial/gamification

[3] http://mashable.com/2011/07/28/gamification/

[4] http://socialmediatoday.com/1688141/increase-community-size-participation-and-loyalty-using-gamification

The Facebook Page: The Good, The Bad, The UGLY

Facebook. Everyone knows what it is and I’m pretty sure mostly everyone has an account.  You can post an update, message a friend, create an event, post photos, and read the news of everything posted.  Another part to it is where you can create a Facebook Page of whatever is of interest to you.  There are many different kinds of fan pages where mainly your goal is to get as many likes as you can.  Once they like it, they can read about it and see your posts on their news feed.  This allows you to get yourself out there and recognized by more people which in turn could help improve your business.  It’s one of the methods to advertising.  

Facebook Page Metrics and Insights

To utilize the Facebook Page to your advantage, Facebook provides you with aggregated anonymous insights about people’s activity on your page.  This is where you can view the different Facebook metrics like how many people your post reached, how many people clicked it, how many people liked it, how many people commented on it or shared it.  If you don’t know how to utilize this Facebook fan page to your advantage, don’t worry there’s a breakdown on “6 Facebook Metrics Marketers Should Be Measuring”. [1]  This might be a little outdated so you can always go to the Facebook help option as well to get more up to date information on your fan page. [2]  With these metrics you can learn which posts are good, which posts aren’t as good, and how to improve your page based on what you see. 

Optimize Your Page Post Metrics

Once you know how to navigate throughout the page, you’ll find that there are many metrics for you to work with.  By knowing how each of these key metrics work, you should be able to analyze how effective your web page is and what needs to be done to boost the company sales. [3]  From the perspective of Facebook, there are also specific ways to promote your page and increase your likes.  Some methods - such as contests, promotional offers and promoting through other social media – won’t cost as much as others. [4] 

How NOT To Optimize Your Page

Now there are genuine ways to boost these Facebook metrics and then there are fictitious ways.  You want to be careful and make sure that your metrics are accurate because with all metrics, there’s always the possibility that they could be unreliable.  For instance, the Facebook Page Likes metric could be helpful or could not.  As I stated above, the more likes you have, the more detailed your metrics will be on your Facebook dashboard, but that’s if those people that have liked your page are actively participating in your posts.  On your Facebook page, there is an option to promote your page and get more likes.  The problem with paying to promote an ad is that there are businesses in other countries that get paid to like your page.  This technique, known as “click farming”, will definitely increase your likes, but it could even lessen your engagement metric. [5]  There’s more to this and I would love to discuss it, but since there are great links that describe it better and an even better video linked below about it all I’m pretty sure you’d rather read about the fraud and all those fake Facebook profiles there.[6] [7]  This video is a really good one about Facebook Fraud. 

Know Your Metrics

Overall, if you’re trying to increase your engagement and utilize the Facebook metrics to your advantage, you need to know how each one works and if they’re truly a good metric.  This also applies to all other metrics and how you analyze them.  Knowing how each one works and which ones are needed will allow you to use them to your advantage and analyze the data based on your company requirements as well as compare them to competitors and the industry.  Particularly, you would also want to make sure what you’re paying for is authentic and that you’re not getting ripped off.  If this is occurring on Facebook what happens to other social media that you pay for?  Are those authentic metrics that you're looking at?


References:

[1] Ernoult, E. (2013, March 18). 6 Facebook Metrics Marketers Should Be Measuring. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from Social Media Examiner: www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-page-metrics/

[2] What's new in Page Insights? (2013, November 18). Retrieved February 18, 2014, from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/247808452010769

[3] Tabita, J. (2014, February 11). Beyond Tracking: How to Improve Your Web Metrics. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from SitePoint: http://www.sitepoint.com/beyond-tracking-improve-web-metrics/

[4] Steeves, N. (n.d.). 7 Ways to Increase your Facebook Likes [Guide]. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from Wishpond: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/52815764009/7-ways-to-increase-your-facebook-likes-guide

[5] Schneider, J. (2014, January 23). Likes or lies? How perfectly honest businesses can be overrun by Facebook spammers . Retrieved February 18, 2014, from TNW: http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2014/01/23/likes-lies-perfectly-honest-businesses-can-overrun-facebook-spammers/#!wgii9

[6] Cellan-Jones, R. (2012, July 12). Who 'likes' my Virtual Bagels? Retrieved February 18, 2014, from BBC News Technology: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18819338

[7] Hicks, J. (2013, July 3). IG report: State Department spent $630,000 to increase Facebook ‘likes’. Retrieved February 18, 2014, from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2013/07/03/ig-report-state-department-spent-630000-to-increase-facebook-likes/

[8] Facebook Fraud . (2014, February 10). Retrieved February 18, 2014, from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

Metrification Autometrically!

Metrics! Metrics! Metrics!  If I have to hear that word one more time I think I might just scream like Doc Brown at the end of Back to the Future II. 

GREAT SCOTT!!  I thought I sent Metric McFly back to the future!

But, that's the life of a web analyst.  They look at metrics everyday.  They read metrics everyday.  They dream about page view percentages and average time on a site.  They search through blogs and books about how to improve their SEO.  They attend conferences and workshops with names like the eMetrics Summit or any of the following:  SearchFest, Social Media & Web Analytics Innovation (try repeating that five times really fast!), or Webstock (which is like Woodstock, just without all of the drugs, half-naked people dancing everywhere and the legendary Santana and Jimi Hendrix).

Let me rephrase that, they devour metrics like 30 year old's devour Alphabits cereal.

Is that a bowl of Alphabits?!  NO, fool it's an ice cold bowl of metrics! Eat up!

Metrics are like the blood that pumps through the veins of web analysts.  They devote hours to scouring metrics with a combination of tools like Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics, just to name a few.  They bust out metrics at a party like ghostbusters bust ghosts.  They have Photoshopped pictures of themselves hanging out with Avinash Kaushik....what you don't know who that is?!  Click here for some edumication.

LET'S GET METRICAL!

To further educate yourself in the ways of the web analyst there are is little metrics lingo that you will need to brush up on so you don't look like a complete maroon when attending those really neat conferences I previously mentioned above.

For example, you should know a little about the following:

• Page Views - the amount of times a page on a website has been viewed.  These can be viewed by new, repeat or a return visitor.
• Entry page - which is generally the very first page on a website that is viewed.  For example when you visit Walmart.com, that first page is the entry page.
• Exit page - is the opposite of the entry page!  Exactly!  It is the last page you left from a website.  
• Bounce Rate - is basically the rate of how many times a visitor exited a page on a website versus those that have stayed on the page.  For example, say you go to the Walmart.com link and search for motor oil.  Then you decide that Autozone has motor oil to and for a better price, so you type in your address bar www.autozone.com.  You bounced from the Walmart page to the Autozone page.
• Conversion - this is a measurement of how many visitors have performed or completed some action on the web page.  For example, purchasing an item from Amazon.com or initiating a download from a website.  
• Count - which is a measurement of how many visitors have entered a page on a website
• Average time on Site - How long did visitors stay on your site.

Now with some lingo under your belt, your almost ready to get started into the world of web analytics.  The next step is to understand exactly how some of these measurements are categorized.  Generally there are 3 categories that metrics fall under:

1. Individual - Activity of a single web visitor for a defined period of time.
2. Aggregate - Total site traffic for a defined period of time.
3. Segmented - A subset of the site traffic for a defined period of time, filtered in some way to gain greater analytical insight.[1]

The next step to understand, is that all of these metrics are the results of visitors...visiting a website.  This brings us back to another set of important metric lingo...visitors...

Not these visitors!

These visitors....

There are three types of visitors in the web analyst lingo.

1. New Visitors - Are visitors that have visited a website for the first time.
2. Return Visitors - Are visitors that have returned to the website.
3. Repeating Visitors - Visitors that have repeatedly visited a website during a specified time.
4. Unique Visitors - Wait didn't I say that there are 3 types of visitors?!  I did, and I am glad you caught that, because that means you are actually reading this post!

The three types of visitors: New, Return, and Repeating, are considered part of  Unique visitors.  Unique visitor is defined as "the number of individuals within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site.  Each visitor is only counted once in the unique visitor measure for the reporting period."[2]

So...uh..What Does All This Mean?

Now that you understand some of the basics it's now time to jump into the why of web analytics?  One metric to notice when you are testing out some analytics tools on your website, is the Average Time on Site.  For example, why were the visitors on your site so long?  

Were they engrossed in a web article like this one 

V-Day Special, How Web Analytics is a lot like Dating or were they staring off into space?  It's a good idea to figure that one out.  

If you have a shopping cart on your site, it's a good idea to ask yourself how long did it take for a visitor to get there and make a purchase.  How many of those visitors were new visitors?  There's a metric for that too!  

So what do you do with all of these metrics?  Like any good web analyst you search for patterns.  

Do you see a pattern? Hmmm...keep looking.

Web analysts are excellent at finding patterns within their metrics.  They can see why visitors spent too much time on their website or why they bounced out after 30 seconds off a specific page.  All of these metrics set patterns and trends that are used to figure out how to improve conversion rates on a website...which is that completed event thing I mentioned before.  

What do these trends tell you?

This is the Bounce rate of this blog.

This is the Number of Visits to this blog.

This is the Percentage of New Visits on this blog

The peaks tell us that there were quite a few that visited this blog on that specific date while the valleys are the opposite.  The same can be said of the bounce rate and the % New Visitors.  Since this blog first got started in January we have had 3,771 visitors, 2,067 of them unique with an average bounce rate of 60.81%.

From these trends we can also see from where our visitors are coming from:

The darker green = where most of the visitors are coming from.

Here you can see the the United States is the main visitor demographic with India in second place.

So far what does all of this tell us?  The majority of our visitors are from the United States and let's see what page is the most viewed....looks like with a total of 10,039 page views that the post in the lead is customer analytics incorporating with 264 page views.  Ah, but look at the unique visitors!  The blog post about the problems with google analytics is leading the pack.

SO....with all of this new information swirling around your brain, it's a good idea to let it sit for awhile.  And while you're at it, read some other more interesting posts like these for our blog site:

Adventures in Ghostery

Yesterday's Web Analytics is Today's Digital Analytics

The time has come to end this post before I get a higher bounce rate!  Please read other posts while on this site to get those rates up!  

Related Resources

[1] http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-standards-26-new-metrics-definitions/

[2] http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.digitalanalyticsassociation.org/resource/resmgr/PDF_standards/WebAnalyticsDefinitionsVol1.pdf