As ever, it’s a question of balance.  Third-party suppliers will always be a vital part of the marketing industry.  If only because the economics make it sensible to use an agency that’s beating media owners over the head with a bigger stick.   Or wise to buy into a PR company’s network or a creative hotshop’s spark. 
However, the growth of networked media may well start a shift away from branding created by third party suppliers to marketing driven by internal teams.   In networked markets customers don’t want to talk to the brand, they want to be heard by the business.  And that might be difficult to achieve when the customer hotline goes through to a PR company in Soho.  For marketeers, the way to the top table could then be more about smart investment in new assets that sit on the company’s balance sheet (even if they are white-labelled from GoogleBook).  And less about buffing up the agency’s awards cupboard.  Indeed, P&G’s Tremor network, a product sampling platform, is not only shifting goods but is rented out to other companies as a service, thereby adding to the bottom line. 

Of course, the future will always be about results and who can deliver.   However, even the vast media players will admit they don’t have the iron-like grip over the new media barons such as Brin, Page & Schmidt, whose revenues are largely made up of thousands of smaller direct customers, as they did over the old guard.   ‘We used to show up at ITV and say if we don’t sign this cheque, you are going out of business’, a Media Grand Fromage once told me. ‘You can’t do that at Google,’ he added pointedly. 
Furthermore, Google’s Adwords system has educated the marketplace in the ways of media self-service, a development that Facebook…

…may now compound.  After all, there aren’t any economies of scale in the keyword auction system – only brute financial power and SEO nous.  And why hand over a small fortune to a media shop when all it does is boost its revenues and plump up their buyout price?  Furthermore, the auction models and other live data systems are being applied to traditional media, such as TV.   Marketplaces that currently rely on planning teams reporting back on abstract notions such as OTS, TVRs and GRPs.  Media reports over Lunch at the Agency may be fun, but a real-time Feed analysing media investment on your Blackberry will impress the Chairman more. 

Certainly on the social side it’s difficult to see how an outsider can provide what the marketplace requires ie direct, two-way communication with a company representative.  Undoubtedly, an agency can get the ball rolling and advise on the approach.  However, a Facebook page run by an agency is always likely to leave the customer feeling that he is being held at arms length.  Dell’s social success has been about an internal team jumping into the conversation, not an agency adding doublespeak. 

And when it comes to campaign measurement, how long will brands bother measuring media, when they can just track sales?  As media is gradually all sucked onto one cloudy-IP platform or another, it will become easier than ever to see how loudly marketing activity does or does not make the tills ring.  Who wants to know about the research house’s view of Awareness and Recall, when a new daily dashboard reports back on Sales and Shekels? 

More radical still, what if networked media means, as MIT’s Professor John Maeda suggests that, ‘the product is the message and the message is the product’?’.  That’s certainly the Steve Jobs view of the world, where internal systems are building a brand so powerful that new product extensions become world news. 

The exciting aspects of media and marketing at the moment is that it feels like everything is up for grabs.  Including that special Client-Agency partnership.  No one expects the Big Four Ad Networks (aka WOIP) to disappear anytime soon. However, the rebalancing between internal systems and external suppliers may be the greatest change of all as the era of networked media becomes ever more real.

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In Part II, the focus becomes more complex because we dive into the dynamic elements that the advertiser needs to understand in order to correctly attribute the PPC click to a sale.

3. Your Cookie Window is Too Long or Too Short: Now this depends on your business model, the type of product that you sell, whether it is B2B or B2C, what the cost is etc etc. The important element to consider in allocating the appropriate cookie window is the length of your sales cycle – if you cookie window is too short, as in, it is set at 30 days but people take on average 50 days to make the purchase decision then not enough sales will be attributed to paid search and it will appear that your campaign is underperforming. On the other hand, if your cookie window is too long, you may then be attributing too much revenue to the PPC click, particularly if your selling cycle is short.

4. How is Multi-Channel Attribution Handled? Imagine someone who has never visited your website, clicks on a PPC driven keyword and lands on it. Then that person fulfils the desired conversion on the website. Thus, the keyword that was clicked on can be directly attributed to the conversion. That’s the simple version.

Most frequently though, searchers visit your website multiple times, via multiple channels – both offline and online. If this is the case and somebody visited your website through three different channels on three separate occasions, making a purchase on the fourth visit, which of the channels and which of the clicks should receive the revenue attribution?

• The Last Click – This way you are in a sense disregarding the first three clicks and their marketing channels, which means that they are not receiving some percentage of due credit. This has to date been the most common form of attribution within paid search, wherein, no matter what the interaction of the searcher was prior to the purchase / conversion, it is the keyword directly prior to action that is given 100% credit for the conversion.

• The First Click – Vice versa to last click, this model turns things around and ultimately says that no matter what happened after the first click, it is that first interaction with the website that is ultimately the most important. So, 100% attribution is allocated to the first click within the conversion window.

• Linear Allocation – This method credits each touchpoint that led to the final conversion. If four visits were required to drive the conversion, each one is given equal credit for the conversion. Even though this may not be fundamentally the case, such equal attribution, at least this method recognises each touchpoint rather than dismissing them like last and first click do.

• Weighted Allocation – This is the most complex of the models because it is in itself dynamic and unique to each business. This model takes into account all your marketing touchpoints and weights each touchpoint according to a statistically developed model to attribute revenue for the sale.

Most businesses will either be doing no attribution modelling at all, or they will focus on the first three, given their relative mathematical simplicity. In a perfect world, we would all be using some variation of the weighted model.

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The biggest weakness of the average website today is its copywriting. Getting an awesome design is the easy part of having an online presence; saying your piece – intelligently – is much more challenging. Yet that’s what makes sales

This post looks at three internet marketing websites with exceptionally engaging copy. They lay out what they do in a conversational and clear manner, striking a chord with visitors that solves their problem and compels them to buy.

Traffic Geyser – The Power of Social Proof

In their video sales letter, Traffic Geyser does a great job of speaking to listeners as if he or she is a friend just hanging out right there with Mike Koenigs, Co-Founder of Traffic Geyser. While this video sales letter provides a little more hype than Infusionsoft’s does, it still offers friendly, informative, smart copy that includes success stories in an uncomplicated format that leaves readers wanting to learn more.

Take Aways:

• Write conversational copy that sounds like it’s from a friend who really wants to help the reader achieve their goals instead of strictly providing information.

• When the goal is lead generation, always leave readers wanting more and provide an easy sign up form so they can get more.

Infusionsoft – Genuine Personalization

If there’s one website that gives serious internet entrepreneurs hope for turning their business around to really start making a profit, it’s Infusionsoft. Through their engaging, yet informative content, Infusionsoft shows how they relate to businesses that may not be doing well by giving their problem a name, ‘follow up failure.’

Going the extra step by having Infusionsoft CEO and Co-Founder Clate Mask speak the sales copy via video on the homepage, really takes the copy a step further in personally addressing the needs of entrepreneurs.

The true desire to help an entrepreneur that comes through in the video copy is enhanced by the professional and genuine nature of Clate Mask.

He’s believable, personable, and inspires trust while the straightforward, down to earth copywriting does an excellent job of compelling visitors to learn more.

Take Aways:

• Solve the reader’s problem in your copywriting by giving the problem a name and showing how your product or service can help.

• Choosing the right speaker for a video sales letter is crucial to its success, regardless of how compelling the copy is.

Butterfly Marketing – Selling Through Telling

Mike Filsaime’s website, Butterfly Marketing, opens with headlines that grab your attention before the sales copy takes you straight into the many incredible success stories of internet entrepreneurs using the Butterfly Marketing product. In fact, you don’t get to the actual sales letter until after reading a whopping 22 success stories, many featuring proof and audio testimonials.

The strength of this lengthy sales letter comes in knowing how to tell a story using testimonials, which builds trust. The length of this sales letter doesn’t detract from its success because it flows very naturally and is engaging, friendly, conversational, clear, and compelling. As you read the sales copy, it draws you in and makes you want to read more as it provides a ‘you can do it too’ attitude.

Take Aways:

• Create a collection of success stories from your clients. If you don’t have any on hand, create a campaign to build an arsenal of success stories that you can use to prove success, rather than just promise it.

• Short and to the point is not necessarily better when it comes to copywriting. Lengthy sales letters tend to outperform short letters that just get straight to the point.

Take Action:

To recap, here are six strategies you can apply to increase the muscle of your sales copy:

• Solve the reader’s problem and give the problem a name.

• Choose the speaker for a video sales letter carefully to ensure putting forth the right image for your product or service.

• Write friendly, motivational copy instead of stiff, strictly informative sales letters.

• When your copywriting is to generate leads, leave readers wanting more and you’ll get the lead.

• Build an arsenal of success stories instead of just promising success.

• Write long sales letters with headlines that interrupt [in the sense of grabbing people] and copy that engages and educates before making an offer.

Christine O’Kelly wrote this for Red Fly Marketing, an Ireland internet marketing company.Red Fly’s fine lads, in addition to sipping Guinness, also run a search engine optimisation company (though not simultaneously…usually); they also handle the techie/graphics side via a web design company.

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A new report published by eMarketer, “Social Network Ad Spending: 2010 Outlook” documents the major shifts in social network advertising spending that emerged in 2009 and will ultimately unfold in 2010.

eMarketer observes that Facebook is becoming the premier destination for marketers in the U.S. as well as many worldwide markets. At 350 million users, its momentum appears unstoppable.

In 2009, marketers funneled an estimated $2.2 billion to advertise on social networks worldwide, with $1.2 billion spent in the U.S. In 2010, Facebook will account for nearly 25% of all social network ad spending worldwide, up 20% over 2009. 2010 also represents the year that Facebook officially surpasses MySpace in ad revenues. eMarketer predicts that Facebook will earn $605 million versus $385 on MySpace.

The shift represents a significant loss to MySpace, dropping 23% in U.S. ad revenue in just one year while Facebook jumps 34% in the U.S. and 65% worldwide.

“As more marketers incorporate social networks in their business, they will no longer look at them as siloed destinations. Instead, they will look to increase the impact of their social network presence by linking it to other marketing initiatives, both online and offline,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report.

eMarketer predicts that U.S. online social network ad spending will increase 3.9% over 2009 and will grow 7.1% in 2010 and 7.7% in 2011. As social media becomes ubiquitous in marketing over the next year, I anticipate 2011 numbers to increase significantly.

These increases come at a time when total U.S. online ad spending is falling and thus represent a greater share of online spend.

Advertising, however, represents only one facet of an overall integrated marketing program. Engagement is something funded by “sweat equity,” dedication, and a genuine desire to help someone do something they couldn’t do before they met or heard from you.

According to Williamson, “When companies budget for social media marketing in 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of their expenses will go toward creating and maintaining a fan page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the impact of a social network presence on brand health and sales.”

As eMarketer documents, 2010 will be the year that social network advertising intersects with other forms of social marketing, including earned media. Earned media is just that, it’s earned. It is the result of strategic community cultivation and the investment of time, resources, and expertise in a network of passionate brand beacons and empowered advocates.  While earned media is usually advertising-free, otherwise it’s then referred to as sponsored conversations (paid, not earned), budgets still must cover time, energy, and the people who lead community-focused programs across multiple social networks.

Sponsored conversations are also expected to rise in 2010. Josh Bernoff at Forrester Research wrote a thoughtful post in March 2009 that offered guidance on how businesses can introduce paid media into the overall social mix.

Together, earned and paid media are far more effective when the programs are humanized. The difference between social network advertising and marketing and traditional online campaigns are the ecosystems where engagement is fostered. Social networks are “social” and therefore respect and empathy are the minimum antes necessary to potentially earn attention, a precious commodity in Social Media. Without a genuine intent to offer value, trust is elusive.  It’s the difference between shouting “at” people and speaking “with” someone.

Before you’re a marketer or advertiser, you’re a consumer. Bring that perspective to the marketing table…

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At it’s core, B2B lead generation is about building relationships. In today’s commoditized business climate, the one thing that sets apart companies with a complex sale is how well they build and nurture long-term leads.

Throughout this series, I’ve discussed many aspects of lead generation and emphasized how organizations can optimize the process. I’ve talked about creating the right mindset, and how to repair the rift between sales and marketing; I’ve discussed how to create the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well) and how a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture can help organizations zone in on their sweet spot as well as the importance of a well maintained database; I’ve outlined a multi modal approach and emphasized its role in effective lead generation, as well as the aspects of an effective lead management process. Today, I’d like to talk about the part of the process that fundamentally stops viable leads from leaking out of your marketing funnel. Lead nurturing: It’s the one thing that will make all your hard work come together – or the one thing that could make your whole process fall apart….

While lead generation initiates and perpetuates dialogue with the right people in the right companies in the quest for opportunities that are relatively imminent, lead nurturing keeps the conversation going over time, building solid relationships. It allows the creation of interest in products and services while bringing the leads to sales-ready states when the buying opportunity presents itself.

To ensure successful lead nurturing you must:

• Have a lead development process in place to cultivate marketing leads into sales ready leads.
• Employ methods to motivate sales people for consistent contact with prospects who may not yet be ready to buy.
• Have a process for ensuring that your Sales team hands back inactive leads for further nurturing by marketing. That centralized database that I keep emphasizing will come in handy now. Sales can make notes as to why they are not going to use the leads and give feedback to Marketing at this point.
• Capture future opportunities that are being currently missed and nurture them into viable sales. This is where Marketing can take many opportunities that are being ignored and keep them warm for Sales.
• Leverage content to position sales people as trusted advisors. A carefully crafted lead nurturing program anticipates the prospect’s questions and responds with timely answers. This inspires awareness that you are creating value by providing useful information. Relevancy is the key.
• Aid in positioning sales people as trusted advisors. By consistently offering relevant content in the context of lead nurturing, the potential customer’s inner dialogue should be: something like this: “You and I have been talking for quite a while, and I feel that you understand me, my company and my industry. You have given me useful and pertinent ideas on this issue, and you have helped me sell the idea to my colleagues and they understand and accept it. It’s a challenging project, but I think you can do it. Let’s get going.”

The true value of lead nurturing comes from the disciplined technique of staying in touch while providing the “right information throughout the evaluation and buying processes. The result is optimized mind share, efficient budget spending, profitable relationships and increased business.

Don’t let all your hard work go to waste. Keep your prospects interested, informed and feeling good about you. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read each checklist in my series.

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If you have an existing PPC campaign and it is performing decently, you can still increase its scope and hence improve its performance by targeting more keywords in the niche you are running your campaigns in.

You have to be logged into your Adwords account. The Opportunities tab in the Adwords interface is a great way to find out the keywords you are not targeting in your campaigns. The keyword ideas for each active campaign is listed and you can download them and analyze them in detail.

If your campaigns are targeted primarily to the US market, the Opportunities interface throws up keyword ideas which you can use straightaway. You can simply click the Preview button beside a campaign name and add suggested keywords straight into your live campaign.

For those outside the US, the best way to get a list of new keywords would be to click on the Keyword tools under the Tools section on the left column. Choose your location and language of choice and export the listed keywords as a CSV file and examine them manually.

You can compare them with the keywords in your existing campaign and after filtering the duplicates (along with keyword match type), you can manually add them into the relevant campaign.

A screenshot of the Keyword Tool screen is produced below.

For example, if I am running a campaign for Auckland seo here in New Zealand, in the box titled Word or Phrase, I would key in auckland seo. There is an option for choosing the location and language, traffic estimation and filtering keywords using boolean operators as in

The keyword tool results for the search term auckland seo returns the following results.

A few things to keep in mind when you add new keyword opportunities to your campaign:

• In the event that your PPC campaigns have been running for some time, if you look at the campaign’s performance over the past 4 to 6 months, look at keywords that have not recorded a single impression in that period. You could pause them before actually adding new keywords to your campaign.
• By pausing poor performing keywords, you can improve the CTR of your existing campaigns.
• Please remember that Google maintains a history of all changes made to your campaigns since their date of inception. If you delete the poorly performing keywords, in future, you may want to reinstate them. Deletion of keywords and subsequent inclusion does not enable them to start on a clean slate. They will still maintain their account history.

In conclusion, the keyword opportunities interface clearly shows where you are leaving money on the table in your PPC campaigns and you may very well take cognizance of this and improve the scope of your keyword targeting.

On a different note, Google has been tightening the noose on affiliate marketers on the Adwords network. Many Adwords accounts have been banned over the last month with no specific reasons given. This could be due to the recent FTC rules pertaining to affiliate marketing.

Some affiliate marketers feel that promoting shady products or products with names like Google Cash or Google Money Tree may be the reason for their accounts being banned though they had promoted such products in the distant past.

This is a clear warning for every advertiser that Google does maintain track of all Adwords activities. Your actions today can bit back in future even though you may be ignorant of the consequences of your current actions.

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To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one.

As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way

Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales.

Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF):

• E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year
• Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03
• Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively.
• Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order.
• Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order.
• Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year.

November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season

• 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping
• 45% plan to purchase items online
• 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items
• 27% will use the internet for product research
• 25% will go online for gift ideas

One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise.

According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group.

So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on.

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Salesperson: “My company’s number one goal is to shorten the sales cycle. How can I do that?”

His question was timely and challenging. It seems as if your customers’ number one goal is to lengthen it! The economy and an environment of heightened skepticism have doubled or even tripled the length of the sales cycle in many industries.

So what can you do that is in your control to accelerate the close?

1. Early on, qualify more diligently. Position every qualifying question from the perspective of meeting the customer’s need. Find out:

   - Budget — Has it been allocated? How much? Who controls it?

   - Time Frame — What are the timelines to develop and implement? (In today’s world, the two schedules can be very different.)

   - Compelling Event — “Must do” dates are a blessing and the absence of one can signal a long decision cycle.

   - Decision-making Process — Who will be involved in the decision — economic, technical, users, and other influencers? Clarify the buying process and steps.

2. Understand the BUSINESS need that your solution will address. How will your solution help your customer achieve his/her business objectives.
3. Develop a compelling Value Proposition to show ROI (ideally year one or soon).
4. Identify milestones of the sales process so you can measure progress against them.
5. Set a call objective that is measurable for every meeting — face-to-face or virtual. And debrief each meeting against the objective.
6. Continue to check for change.
7. If things slow down, ask the hard qualifying questions again, but start with the driving need — is it still a priority? Tactfully ask questions to multiple customers.
8. Develop a coach! Almost nothing will help you win the deal and know where things really stand than a well-placed coach.
9. Position your benefits and ask for the business.
10. Know when to put a deal on the back burner or no burner and when to try to resuscitate it.

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Why? The goal of lead nurturing is to maintain a relevant and consistent dialog with viable future customers - regardless of their timing to buy. In short, it’s about relationships.

To help illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead nurturing looks like (click image to enlarge).

Are there any lead nurturing channels/modalities that I’m missing?

Download Multi-Modal_Lead_Nurturing

If you keep the idea about that nurturing is about building relationships top of mind, the way you nurture leads will naturally go beyond a single channel like e-mail. You’ll start thinking about how you and your sales people can be a relevant resource. When you do that, you don’t have to sell to people. They will come to you first when they are ready.

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While I am willing to admit that I don’t give marketers their due I think that the same needs to be considered from the marketing side of the ledger as well. So what am I saying here? If you are a marketer or someone who assists sales in any way I would love to know what our impression or view of the salesperson’s job is. I know it sounds a little odd and maybe even just plain weird but I really think that there is more of a disconnect than I ever suspected between these two supposedly linked worlds.

Marketer’s are so intent on brand and demographics and psychographics and just plain graphics that they often miss the point. For all of the marketing information and data that is at our disposal in this hyper informational world I rarely see marketers being able to produce truly qualified leads that are more than just a name, phone number, e-mail and the hint that there may be some interest in the product or service that sales is tasked with selling.

A lot of the fault of this lies on the sales side as well. Sales people can be impatient and obnoxious for sure. Of course, if your livelihood was dependent on making things happen faster than is usually possible you might be demanding and a bit obnoxious as well. Sales people tend to be ‘cowboys’ in that they are much quicker to ask for forgiveness than permission. You know why that is though? It’s because in the sales process you actually uncover what the prospect REALLY needs rather than what we have ID’d their need as.

You see regardless of how many forms and surveys that are filled out they will always be limited in how well they can ‘categorize’ a lead. Why? It’s because in order for people to fill out a survey or give more ‘data’ they still need to be constrained by the question they are asked. Finding out whether something is ‘extremely important’ or ‘somewhat important’ to a person and their job is extremely limited in what it actually tells us. There are specific reasons why something is extremely important to someone and only somewhat (or not at all) important to another. The trouble comes with the realization that a person that answers a question one way can be just as much of a prospect as a person that answers it another way. The reality is in the details as to why they answered it differently. In many cases, people do not even realize that something should be more important than it is in their world.

Anyway, I have to say that while marketers can gather more data than ever I am not so sure we are any closer to truly understanding why people buy or walk away. We tell ourselves we are because we have so much information but we confuse information with inspiration. Information is very limited because we can’t really understand the exact nature of a person’s need until we speak to them and work with them to help them fully understand exactly what is happening in their world. This is where sales can be so interesting and yet so tricky all at once. Most folks don’t just open up and pour out their greatest business fears because of the perception of them being weak or some other very human reason. Only trust and real exploration of the situation can help reveal that. In order to get that trust there needs to be more than a survey. There needs to be more than an analysis of the ‘sufacely’ data that surveys, forms and web analytics produces.

While it sounds basic we have to remember that products and services are bought by people not behaviors. In most cases, these two things are very different. So what’s the answer? I have no idea. Until sales and marketing are completely connected at the hip there will always be this trouble. I suspect that except for the most progressive and forward thinking companies this will not happen in the near future and may never happen at all. Hate to be a sales ‘pessimist’ but the one place I live in is reality and rarely do marketing profiles and reality match up.

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