Dear Avinash: Your Digital Marketing + Analytics Challenges Answered.

Dear Avinash: Your Digital Marketing + Analytics Challenges Answered
By Avinash Kaushik
Every once in a while I take a pause and answer your questions, your burning questions (!), about digital marketing and analytics.
I'd requested you to submit questions on my Facebook or Google+ pages and am always delighted at the wide range of challenges you share.
For some answers, What is Avinash's typical day like? Hour-by-hour report please. :)?, you'll have to wait for my biography (thanks for asking Simo Ahava!). I'll answer a selection of other questions in this post.
We will cover questions in four areas: business/strategy challenges, analytics/technical challenges, career/self-development questions and rampant speculation.
Many of these questions have multiple possible answers, I invite you to participate in the discussion by adding your own answers via comments.
Let's do this!
^ Business/Strategy Challenges
Glenn Walker

Hi, I have recently started working with more enterprise clients, its been fun but there are a lot of new challenges. I am having issues prioritizing 1) recommending fixing on site issues affecting real traffic levels versus 2) correcting significant configuration issues in Analytics measuring current site traffic. Both are large scale issues requiring buy in from execs and multiple departments.
I need to pick my spots and decide where to assign resources first. Grow traffic first, with even with bad measurement I can find positive ROI areas for growth or invest time getting Analytics in order first for more objective decision making? How do you think about making reconsiderations for a scenario like this??

Strategy one…
Prioritize by where you will make money for your client quickly. Even the worst analytics configuration in the world will most likely allow you to measure cart and checkout abandonment rate. If you can fix that, more revenue will immediately flow into your client's bottom-line. They will show affection towards you. Bank it. Next, it should be easy to measure bounce rates for landing pages (you would have to have zero code on the site not to be able to do this). Find campaigns where they are spending most money, lower the bounce rate and reduce acquisition cost. Earn more affection.
When you feel you have enough, use it to buy time/money to go fix the configuration problems.
The mistake we make is that we obsess about every big, small and insignificant analytics implementation challenge and try to fix it because we want 99.95% comfort with data quality. Six years go by. Nothing changes for the business. We wonder why data people are not loved. :)
Don't make that silly mistake.
Strategy two…
Book two hours with the senior most company leaders who will talk to you, and create the Digital Marketing and Measurement Model .

If you have the DMMM, you have your priorities clearly laid out.
If there is anything you can measure, even with your broken analytics implementation, do that first. Add value to the business. Then prioritize fixes to the analytics implementation based on what your DMMM indicates is important to measure.
Strategy three…
Leverage the Digital Analytics Ladder for Magnificent Success to help you prioritize where to focus next.

Identify where your company is currently, what the next optimal step is in the ladder and give it all your attention in terms of data analysis or analytics code fixes.
Three different strategies to help you figure out what you should do next, even with a horrible analytics implementation. What they have in common is they encourage you to extract whatever value from the data you can first, prove your worth to the business, and then focus on analytics code fixing.
Stephen Cornelius

How do you come up with compelling analytics KPIs if there isn't a simple relationship between online activity and profit, for example when you sell online content via a traditional offline annual subscription sales process??

I'm afraid there isn't enough context in your question to answer it specifically. There can be so many different answers based on your specific scenario.
But if you would like a quick collection of tips: Multichannel Analytics- Tracking Online Impact Of Offline Campaigns The enabler of tying offline activity to online is ensuring you have a weak or strong primary key. The post provides more detail.
I believe these two posts with a collection of some of my favorite metrics will inspire you: 1.Best Metrics For Digital Marketing: Rock Your Own And Rent Strategies 2.Best Web Metrics / KPIs for a Small, Medium or Large Sized Business.
Joseph Boisseaux

Why is it so incredibly difficult to make people understand that last click attribution model is just idiot? That seems so trivial common sense that I am wondering if France is not in a parallel dimension.

This does drive me bananas! In this day and age using last-click attribution to measure digital success is spectacularly dumb. Genuinely awful.
Who is to blame?
First, I blame the analytics vendors. Vast majority of Adobe Analytics / Google Analytics remain last-click based. (Yes, yes, yes, with GA you can dive into Multi-Channel Funnels reports to move beyond last-click.) Many other tools remain 100% last-click based. If they won't take this seriously, how will they users ever see the light?
Second, I blame you and myself and all other analysts. Even when we have free solutions like MCF in GA with free attribution modeling tools, we don't really use them. Yes it does take a small mental shift, but if, the smart ones (!!), won't make the shift how can we blame anyone else? Are all your reports and presentations beyond last click?
Finally, and only lastly, I blame the management teams. They still tend to think of digital as a fulfillment channel. They have still not embraced the strategy for optimizing for marketing portfolios and still obsess about optimizing silos (they learned this from their TV, Print etc. strategies). They are actively losing money and actively creating upset customers. But they don't realize the cost. I blame their entrenched thinking.
Oh, and nothing is weird about France. Pretty much every company here is using last-click (at least until I visit them :)).
If you would like to move beyond the stupidity, sorry, of last-click:

Strategic advice: Multi-Channel Attribution: Definitions, Models and a Reality Check
Tactical advice: Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models.

Justin Dux

Tag Management. What you need to know before you choose third party tool.

First, if you are going to touch the code on your site make sure you get a tag management tool right now. Analytics implementations are getting numerous (tools) and more complicated with every passing data. Get a tag management tool. It will speed up code changes, it will improve the quality of your tagging, angels will sing songs in your praise.
How should you choose one? I'll share the same advice with you I'd shared about choosing a web analytics tool in Sept 2006… Get the nicest free tag management tool you can find. The Google Tag Manager is a good one, you don't need to use Google Analytics to use it. Deploy it. Enjoy it. Revel in its glory. At some point you'll bump into a small issue. Note down the limitation. If it is not a deal-breaker, keep using the tool, keep benefiting from it. Then you'll find something else. Make a note of that one.
At some point, three years from now, because you'll evolve your sophistication, you'll have five limitations and now it has reached a big problem point for your company. You now have your "what do you need to know before your choose a third party tool" list. You will make the smartest possible decision for your company because your selection will be based on your experience with a free tool that you actually used rather than reading competitive FUD literature, and you found actual problems you could not live without.
You're welcome.
^ Technical Analytics Challenges
Mehdi Oudjida

What would be the future of Adwords marketers with not provided searched query ?
- Their reflex would be to expand the number of bought keywords as work around (manual long train work) to try to understand the performance using directly bought keywords?
- It would drive a part of ads to cheaper bids (for the beginning) of long train keywords ?
- Adwords min bulk quotas to be displayed need to be reduced by Google to follow this responsive behavior ??

There might be some confusion here.
What has actually happened is that Google team has announced that they are removing the query from the referrer on ad clicks by users who use secure (SSL) search on Google.com. So analytics packages et. al. won't have access to this data.
But you as the advertiser will still see the data in the Search Terms report inside your Adwords account. You will be able to measure performance of your bids just as you did in the past.
For automated reporting you can also use the AdWords API Search Query Performance Report or the AdWords Scripts Report service.
There is a small bummer here for sure. I like to analyze my AdWords keyword performance using custom reports , especially using dimensions like Matched Search Query, inside Google Analytics and in context of other campaigns I'm running.

I can't do this anymore and I'm sad about that. But, I'm adapting to the new reality and playing with available options.
Isak Easa

What is a way to analyze Not provided data in GA, its increasing day by, can you suggest how to analyze brand vs non brand out of it?

You are in luck!
Ok, only partially. But, here's an extremely detailed posts that looks at five different data sources to help you make the best of keyword data that is available in other places to optimize your SEO (or even PPC) strategies: Search: Not Provided: What Remains, Keyword Data Options, the Future.
The post covers what is still there in your analytics tools, competitive intelligence tools, Google Webmaster tools, AdWords Keyword tool, and SEO tools.

And you can definitely do brand vs non-brand analysis using these options. It is not perfect, but it is also very far from insufficient.
Alexander Velinov

My question may be a trivial, but… Do I need campaign tagging with utm parameters for Google Analytics in order to receive more valuable information in multi channel funnel reporting and what exactly valuable information may I achieve ? Let use the question in general way.
I know that it depends of business, goals, measurement plan, resources and so on… But i talk in general. Btw our business is lead generation website and we have a lot of campaigns in different channels. Till now (I am in company from month) we use internal link tracking system which works only in user session, and do not use cookies so i think that we don't have exact information for real business decisions. Thanks in advice.

Let's unpack what is going on here.
Most of the time the way Google Analytics (or WebTrends or whomever) knows where someone came from is by parsing the information in the URL. If someone comes from a link, that information gets provided to Analytics, you can see where the visitor came from. If there is nothing in the referring string, that visit is marked as Direct.
If you are deliberately sending traffic, say via a campaign or an activity you are undertaking, it is best to pass that in the referral string. That way Analytics knows it was your handiwork to send that traffic. It will put that data in Campaigns section of the Acquisition report.
Here's an example. I post on twitter, http://goo.gl/W6P01k, the link brings you back to my website, and you'll see this url:
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-web-metrics-digital-marketing-own-rent-strategies/?utm_source=social-media&utm_medium=twitterfbgp&utm_campaign=aktw
The URL parameters help GA put the data in the right place and classify it as a campaign. Like so…

I can now see the value of my social media campaigns clearly, and segment them by Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and then lastly Facebook (Oh, I love you Twitter, I love you so much!).
So a very long way of saying that if you do anything to generate traffic, always use campaign tracking parameters. Always. Typically this will apply to Paid Search, Affiliates, Email Marketing, Social Media, and Display campaigns.
If you have a lot of them, aggregate them up. In my case above I can see individual campaigns or just create and advanced segment for social-media.
Fruition Internet Marketing

Do you have any metrics to measure the effectiveness of offline campaigns (Print/TV/Radio)??

You have three options at your disposal, depending on how hard you want to work / how accurate of an answer you want (and remember, you don't always need the most accurate answer – it is very smart to do, even back of the napkin, cost benefit analysis).
I'd outlined the simplest possible option in a post on how I measured the impact of one of our radio campaigns on our digital existence and profits. Here it is: Excellent Analytics Tip #12: Unsuspected Correlations Are Sweet!

The graph above is the end result, fascinating results. Please read the blog post for all the details.
Your second option is to ensure that you invest in various techniques that allow you to create a primary key to tie your offline campaign data with online behavior and outcomes. More details are in my post on tracking online impact of offline campaigns .
Finally, the hardest option, and the one that is most rewarding and perhaps even the most accurate, is to measure effectiveness of offline campaigns by leveraging controlled experiments .

My example in the post is about measuring the value of catalog and email campaigns, but the technique you would follow would be the same. For additional inspiration seek our media-mix modeling techniques.
Measuring multi-channel campaigns and outcomes takes some effort, but if you are willing you can totally do it.
Martin Penner

Why is Google Analytics telling me that the average time-on-page for my homepage is 16 minutes? It can't possibly be true?

Two things to remember.
All web analytics tools by default don't measure time on page for a bounced visit. So if many people come to your site and leave instantly from your home page then their time in the system is N/A (not available). Of the sessions where time is measured (because a click was made on a link that goes into your site), it is entirely possible that for a good percentage of people they land on your site, go do something else, for whatever reason, later see the tab open and make a click and go deeper into your site causing a higher time period to be recorded for your site. They can't leave the tab/page open for a lot time, after 29 minutes of inactivity the visitor session is terminated. There could be other such reasons causing your high home page time on page.
Check if you have a high bounce rate, if so you don't need a lot of people to exhibit weird behavior for your time on page metric to get messed up.
Bonus reading: Standard Metrics Revisited: #4 : Time on Page & Time on Site
Denis Pinsky

In recent years an increasing percentage of traffic is being labeled as 'Direct', for the most part I know why this is happening, but is analytics industry working on something that will provide more accurate 'Channel' attribution??

Here is a comprehensive guide to look over: Excellent Analytics Tip #18: Make Love To Your Direct Traffic The post shares six reasons why traffic is imprecisely classified as Direct.
I do think the analytics industry is all it can to classify your traffic as cleanly as possible. There are other shadier ways to solve this problem, they will break privacy laws and breach user trust and so I'm glad no legitimate analytics solution is doing anything like that.
Recently the single biggest reason for a spike in Direct traffic is the massive increase in use of mobile applications by all of us. A huge chunk of social media consumption is via dedicated mobile apps. And I don't think you need me to share with you the number of mobile apps, and numbers on mobile app adoption. Mobile apps don't pass a referrer, the visitor gets classified as Direct.
So, for every single campaign you execute, very link you share via social media, and every single action you might undertake on mobile, make sure you are using campaign tracking parameters .

All the traffic you generate will now be classified correctly. The ones others generate might not be, but there is not much you can do about it.
If you want to go one more step further and really ensure all things at your end of the responsibility spectrum are covered, check that you have your analytics code implemented completely and correctly.
Bernardo Contopoulos

My current challenge: I want to measure how much the increase in usage of my subscription-based online content is caused by an increase in new subscriptions, and how much is caused by efforts we make to stimulate older subscribers to use more our content (ongoing training, phone calls…)?
As far as I’m concerned, I’m dead on the unique visitors metric (or news vs. returning), as it seems more and more people/companies clean or block third-party cookies.
Short version: how can I measure the results of our efforts in client acquisition and retention distinctively, if I cannot totally rely on unique/new vs. returning visitor data?

You are right, you cannot rely on new and returning visitors/users.
This is a little bit of a complex problem, so you are indeed better off working with an authorized consultant who can evaluate your unique circumstances are help you implement the right solution very quickly. Here's a list: www.bit.ly/gaac You can also try to "figure out out" :), but I'm afraid if you don't have the technical chops (and that is ok) it will simply take you too long.
All that said there are two solutions that might work.
You can use custom variables, with scope set to Visitor or User, to anonymously identify people who have received your new subscriptions and measure increased content consumption by those people. You can also of course use this strategy to differentiate between new and old subscriptions. Oh, and if you want to analyze behavior of new subscribers from a specific time period, say everyone in Jan 2016, you can use the spiffy cohort analysis option in advanced segmentation . Truly sexy stuff.
Another more advanced strategy might be to leverage the User ID option with the new Universal Analytics roll-out by the team at Google. This will allow you to do some pretty spiffy things related to tracking people and do so across devices (which my above recommendation will not do).
Bonus: User ID implementation guide .
Dan Chow

What is the best way to avoid sample data in segments and views in GA? (without upgrading to GA premium :))

Use standard reports. They are not sampled (unless you apply filters of some kind or advanced segmentation on top of the report and other such things).
Sampling kicks in most frequently when you are looking at the data across a very large time period and use my favorite Google Analytics features like Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation.
Also please remember that while the default sampling is applied at 250k, you can change this (look at the top right of any given report) to anywhere from 1k to 500k.
For a more detailed and specific answer: How sampling works in Google Analytics

With sampling what GA is trying to do is not have you wait for five hours to get a perfect answer, or have your query time out, both of which happen commonly in other tools for large datasets. It is very quickly trying to five you a good enough answer. It uses very advanced strategies to ensure it is a good enough answer.
Sometimes that is simply not sufficient. Either our peers don't know how to use sampled data, or have a psychological barrier to overcome. In those cases, please use the techniques outlined above or pay for the Premium version.
Bonus: Web Analytics Data Sampling 411
^ Career / Self-Development Questions.
Kaja Sousek

How to not get frustrated if you are responsible in corporation for digital marketing, but you are the almost only one there, because digital dept. is nonexistent and you get to your Hippo two times per year to discuss digital things?
On the surface it may looks like that everything is running smoothly as you care about website, run campaigns, do reports & analyses, but you know all the time that your company did not buy "big picture" yet.

It does not seem like your company takes digital marketing seriously. If they did, you would see the HiPPO more than twice a year. Even if you were not the most important person on the digital side of your business.
So with that as a background, what do you do?
If you have enough influence (and you can have that even without a big title), then try to take charge of as much of the digital effort as you can and prove to them that by being serious you can win big. Pick the area with the most amount of revenue or cost, use data and digital savvy to improve revenue even more or reduce cost a lot. That will attract attention.
If you have very little influence, try to pick a small area. Say, email marketing. Rock it. Prove how well it can work. Perhaps the right light will shine on your effort and your management team will take you seriously, and then the digital business.
If you have no influence, keep doing the best you can but get your resume ready and find another job. This is not always an option, you might be in a geographic location where this in not an option at all. But if it is an option, in this type of a scenario without any influence for the sake of your personal passion and ambition you are better off some place else where you can add value and achieve professional success.

Webbing Yourway

Do you believe that a person who focused on the technical in and out of the analytical tools, had a job that did nothing but implementation and training users how to use the tool, is at a disadvantage to those those that only use the tools to drive insight / reporting but cannot tell you how the tools work?
If yes, why do you think this is the case and do you think it is fair??

It is one of those cases were we have to define what disadvantage really means.
If you consider disadvantage to be having a limit on how high your salary can be and how high your influence on the business side can be then yes, I do believe that having a job that is only focused on implementation is a disadvantage.
But if you are at your happiest doing a job that is technically challenging and allows you to solve difficult data collection and data processing challenges, then it is not a disadvantage. You are doing what makes you happy. Is there anything more important?
As to why I consider it to be a disadvantage (with the above mentioned definition)… Analysis is an incredibly difficult challenge not because it is hard to use the tools, it is hard because you have to be comfortable with ambiguity, you have to deeply understand business strategy, you can't just stop at data puking rather you have to identify actions to take (which means big network of people relationships and business savvy) and compute impact and then recommend things that will work (or you are out of a job). These jobs also mean, for better and for worse, more interfacing with senior management and influencing them (in your technical job you won't as much, even as your job is important), and that does matter a lot.
So, those jobs will pay more, will allow you to drive more change than a job that is simply implementation and tools training.
For more on this, and salary structures and job promotion options, please see this post: Analytics Career Advice: Job Titles, Salaries, Technical & Business Roles.
Kara Martens

What is the best way to start really learning Google Analytics, beyond the basics? Certification? Specific reading materials? or just old-fashioned hands-on training??

If you simply want to learn how to use Google Analytics, your very first stop is the Google Analytics Academy, learn all the material in the Digital Analytics Fundamentals course and proceed to take your Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) test.
I do believe that tools training can take your career forward, but less far than you might desire. You want to actually get good at analytics. The business of analysis. Transforming data into insights. And all that good stuff.
In that case seek books, blog posts, certifications that teach you how to think about analysis. This blog is a good start, :), but there are others. I link to some in the right navigation. You are welcome to consider my book Web Analytics 2.0 (which is not tool centric).

In terms of certification, I'm biased but I do recommend the Web Analytics Master Certification program at Market Motive (my start-up) that focuses on the art and science of analysis (and not reporting or a particular tool).
This blog post shares other practical tips, books and certification options: Web Analytics Career Guide: From Zero To Hero In Five Steps!
Josh Thomas

Thanks for everything you're doing for the community. As a B2B marketer looking to get more heavily involved in web analytics, I'm looking for a place to start – specifically your books.
As a beginner, should I plan to start with the slightly older An Hour a Day, or is that information already in or updated within your second book Web Analytics 2.0? ?

Hello Josh. I recommend skipping Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and just jumping to Web Analytics 2.0 (chapter 5 specifically provides advice on B2B and non-ecommerce websites).
Please also see the post above titled Zero to Hero, I believe you'll find it to be of value. And please see the Unmissable Articles listed on the bottom right of this post.
^ Rampant Speculation
Suzanne van Tienen

To what extent do you personally believe unique user (cross-device) and persona based analytics will succeed – and stick??

Let's get this out of the way: The world already lives in a multi-device, multi-channel world. It is silly, even today, to pretend otherwise. Your current, today, right this very moment, digital analysis should be based on person-based analysis.
Not people-based, a euphemism I use to refer to small groups of "persons" where you can't identify any one person. Person-based, where you can track a person and their behavior across devices and channels. Digital first. Digital and real-world in the near future.
How likely is this?
See my reply above to Joseph Boisseaux where he, rightly, complains about all of still being stuck with last-click attribution. And switching away from that is actually really easy, and businesses still refuse.
So person-based analysis will take a long time. Initially it will just be technical challenges (it is really hard to implement a unique user_id tied to one person, no matter easy analytics tools say it is). Then there will be challenges related to privacy and government rules (unclear at the moment, and if they become clear what their impact might be).
Does this mean you should not try?
No. You are making wrong decisions already by not focusing on person-based analysis. Every little step you take away from visit-based analysis makes you less wrong every day. And that is totally worth shooting for!
Let's end on that note of optimism.
As I'd mentioned at the start of this post, each question above could have a slightly different answer. I would love to have you jump in and help the folks who asked the above questions benefit from your experience and wisdom. Please share your insights via comments below.
Thank you. Merci. Arigato.

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Best Metrics For Digital Marketing: Rock Your Own And Rent Strategies.

Occam's Razor

by Avinash Kaushik.

Best Metrics For Digital Marketing: Rock Your Own And Rent Strategies

46 Comments | Print | PDF

In a world of infinite choice, the ability to pick critical few metrics to focus on is, well…, critical. It is the difference between plodding along, or winning big.
But choosing what to focus on is extremely hard.
You have to have a deeper understanding of the business, an expansive knowledge of what is possible (and not just inside Google/Adobe Analytics), and, this is so, so, so important, the ability to balance the now and the near future.
We all, myself included, fail so often because of the difficulty inherent in those three elements. In many cases we don't have sufficient knowledge for one and three, even if we are ok with two. And that's not because we stink. It is because often we are just the data girls/boys.
I recently had an opportunity to recommend to a group of CEOs everything they should measure for everything they should do with digital. You can imagine, in a world of infinite choice (!), this is a non-trivial challenge. I wanted the end product to be a handy-dandy list they can use to check if their employees are focused on the right things.
In this post I want to share that one-page list of the best metrics for digital content, marketing and business success with you. I hope the metrics will be helpful, but more than that I hope that the thinking behind whittling down from the infinite to the finite will be of value. If you get the think, you can definitely go out and create your own list of the critical few.
Ready to rock and roll?
Context #1: A Reminder About the Importance of ABO.
I believe in always focusing on the complete customer-business journey. In earlier posts on this blog, I've simply defined the journey as Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes.
Each stage focuses on a unique facet of the digital business…

Are we able to efficiently find the right people and influence them? Can we deliver an incredible experience that blows the mind of our current and future customers with its sheer beauty, intelligence and simplicity? Do the customer and the company both end up with a win-win (they get joy and task completion, we get some current revenue and possibly a long term repeat customer)?
Most of the time when I look at the dashboards and reporting efforts in companies, they are usually obsessed with one of these pieces or maybe even a couple. Rarely is there an insane obsession with all three. Some of this is because we are organized in silos, no incentive to think end-to-end. At other times it is because of a lack of skill or the ability to analyze the complete journey.
Focus on all three with everything you do with digital analytics. Strive for a a balance across all three in terms of people, processes, and analytical focus.
One good way to accomplish that is to ensure you have an optimal org design, and that your Digital Marketing and Measurement Model exemplifies this balance.
Context #2: Own + Rent = Great Digital Success
I believe that if you want to win in digital, with your ABO strategy, you have to do Own really well and you have to do Rent really well.
[Bonus reading: Rent or Own? The Optimal Digital Investment Strategy]
Your primary owned channel is your website, mobile or desktop. It could also include your blog, your recommendation engines, your customer forums, and all kinds of other digital existences that you own outright. You own the domain. You own the customer relationships. You own decisions around content, creativity and evolution. You. Everything.

Your primary rented channels, at the moment, are your social existences. On Instagram, Pintrest, Google+, Vimeo, Weibo, Vkontakte and others. You are able to contribute content on these channels, you are able to engage with the audience, you are able to control the conversation/your presence a bit. But you don't own anything else (data, relationship, creativity, etc. etc.).
If you want to win on the web, you have to do both Own and Rent really well. You pretty much don't have a choice. But if you are going to suck at something, sucking at rent is preferable.
Best Digital Metrics: Own Existences/Strategies.
Close your eyes and just imagine the number of metrics you can use to measure the success of your marketing efforts. 25? 50? 68? More?
It would not surprise me. We have so many, and it is not that they are terrible. It's just that there are so many and I set myself the challenge to just focus on two metrics each for acquisition, behavior and outcomes. Just two.
Can you feel my pain? How can we just pick two? #omg
For acquisition my goal was to pick two metrics that would incentivize our teams to behave in the most optimal manner. I abandoned CPC (I hate that metric, it incentivizes short-term thinking of the worst kind). I even abandoned CPA (not enough focus on what makes the ads good). And many others.
I settled on Clicks and Assists.
Clicks because in this case I'm more obsessed about performance marketing. Clicks will get you and I to focus on ad copy, bids, other creative elements, precise targeting (or retargeting), ad placement (quality score for search!), and so many other things that go into making sure that our ad does not simply show up to the party but also entices a physical reaction (Click!).
Assists because most marketers continue to exhibit suicidal tendencies by sticking with last-click attribution. The best way to stink at digital today is to do last-click attribution (and the analytics vendors don't help, last-click is default… they want us to go out of business!).
I want you to focus on % Assists as your standard metric for marketing success (best place to find it is in the Google Analytics MCF Assisted Conversions report). Reward campaigns (owned, earned or paid) that deliver the person who converts right away AND the campaigns who deliver the people who convert after a few days. Assists incentivizes the right behavior by your marketers.
[Bonus read: Multi-Channel Attribution Modeling: The Good, Bad and Ugly Models]
For Behavior, I picked Bounce Rate and Visitor Loyalty.
Bounce Rate to encourage an obsession with landing pages. Far too often with our ads we write checks that our site can't cash. Far too often the Marketer's are paid on ad metrics and not what happens on the site. I want to fix that. Hence Bounce Rate. Create great landing pages, ensure there is clear continuity between your ad, link, email campaign, social contribution, press release, and the place you are sending the traffic to.

Visitor Loyalty because I've grown less fond of "repeat visits" with the passage of time. Repeat visits is too low of a bar. Visitor Loyalty empowers a focus on one person and the quest to impress them so much that they want to come to your site (content or ecommerce) again and again and again.
Best practice: Look at your Visitor Loyalty report, pick the number that is most optimal for your business (say, more than 5 times in 30 days) and set that as your target. Now measure like crazy!
I hope you noticed that the behavior I'm encouraging with Visitor Loyalty is the reason why % Assists is such an important metric as well.
You get people to stay for more than one page during their first visit… and get them to visit your site multiple times… how can you not win!
[Bonus read: See-Think-Do: A Content, Marketing, Measurement Business Framework]
Finally for Outcomes, I choose my absolute favorites: Macro and Micro-Outcomes.
The best websites in the world have a portfolio of outcomes (in case your customers are not ready to jump into bed with you right away!). Some of these outcomes add value to the business in the next 30 days, some over 90 days and some over nine months. The portfolio empowers you to solve for every type of customer, and let them move at the pace they are most comfortable with.
You are not going to be successful if your owned digital existence does not have a portfolio of outcomes, here's an example for a casino/destination…

I do find it a smidgen irritating that so many Analysts and Marketers focus on single-session conversions for just one outcome (order or lead or something else). C'est tres terrible!
Macro-Outcomes help you measure immediate success, over 30 days. Notice even this is a small collection and not just one conversion.
Micro-Outcomes ensure that there is long term thinking in your company, the best kind of thinking, and that your employees undertake efforts to drive business value from every visit to the site.
Six simple critical few metrics that balance for the short and the long term, that incentivize the right behavior by our peers and agencies. And all standard metrics in any decent web analytics tool.
[Bonus read: Excellent Analytics Tip #24: Obsess About Real Business Profitability]
Let's focus on the other owned asset we have as a company, mobile.
If you've been to one of my keynotes recently you might have heard me recommend a mobile only strategy, and not a mobile first strategy. We have so much progress to make in that area. With mobile becoming the first (or even primary) digital touch-point for our customers, we have to have an insane amount of focus in this area.
[If you are short on ideas for mobile greatness: Mobile Marketing 2015: Rethink Customer Acquisition, Intent Targeting.]
For mobile Acquisition, our critical few metrics stay the same. Clicks and Assists.
Commercial user behavior on mobile is still transient rather than persistent, so you might initially get a lot more value with a focus on Clicks. After that, having thought long and hard about this choice, I still recommend keeping Assists. One day when cross-device tracking/analytics is easier (it is way too hard today), you'll be ready.
For Behavior, I have Bounce Rate and Time Spent.
Bounce Rate is even more important for Mobile, the back button is hard coded into the mobile device! (At least for Android.) You stink and they'll be gone in 0.05 seconds.
Again, because of the transient nature of mobile behavior, I made a switch from Visitor Loyalty to Time Spent. In most cases people will visit your site for a specific purpose (even more so on phones than tablets), create experiences that answer questions and get them to spend the time it takes them to have a successful visit.
The exception is a content site (my beloved New Yorker as an example). For their mobile site, I would keep Visitor Loyalty.

And one more time, because of current user behavior, and continued difficulty to transact on mobile devices, my recommendation is to focus on See and Think Micro-Outcomes.
A gigantic reason for under-investment in mobile innovation is the belief by businesses that they can't make money fast ("look, low conversions!"). That is a big mistake. Hence my recommendation to focus on Micro-Outcomes. Those metrics will incentivize the right behavior.
Though we segment Own into two pieces, you'll notice we only ended up with just seven metrics. Focus FTW!
Now let's go see what we can do for Rent.
Best Digital Metrics: Rent Existences/Strategies.
Our goals, participation options and desired outcomes all change for our Rent existences. Much less conversion driven, much more brand marketing driven, and much more longer term focused in terms of impact and outcome.
Most businesses and Marketers have sub-optimal results from their Rent efforts when they are primarily conversion driven, primarily focused on performance marketing and primarily looking for short-term impact.
In choosing the metrics, those elements were top of mind for me. (And I encourage you to keep that strategic view and purpose in mind as you choose your own.)
I've broken Rent channels into permanent and temporary. YouTube is an example of a permanent outpost. This is because for most videos uploaded on YouTube often over 70% of the views will come 30 days after you upload them. Your presence and contributions have a long life. While on temporary outposts like Google+ or Facebook your content, by most measures, "lives" for less than 60 mins – with a small trail of activity for 24 hours and then poof (!) it's gone. For Twitter, it is much, much, shorter than 60 mins/24 hrs.
Yes, on permanent and temporary channels your contributions (text, links, videos, contests, pimping) are always there. It is good for a little SEO. It does have other value (like people randomly bumping into your Twitter page). But almost all engagements your business will have, if any, will be on the latest content. Keep that in mind as you choose what to focus on.
For Acquisition, advertising you buy on YouTube, the metrics to use would be Impressions and Click-thru Rate.
Impressions because in this case a big objective is to solve for brand marketing, so getting a high share of voice is important. (Doing TV on YouTube!)
Click-thru Rate to give a tiny amount of incentive to extend the conversation beyond just the initial impression. CTR will encourage a focus on any commercial purpose of the ad, and creation of a great experience (on YouTube or your Owned channels).

For Behavior, we focus on Views and Completes.
Views because the primary front of our existence are our delightful non-boring videos. We want to encourage consumption of that content to enhance brand perception and move the brand equity up a few points.
But Views by themselves can drive sub-optimal behavior in Marketers. We counter-balance that with Completes . It will encourage a focus on video content, its ability to retain attention and, if we rock, will drive the outcome metrics.
For Outcomes, YouTube is not focused on conversions/short-term outcomes. We focus on driving organic Views (and Complete!) via Social Amplification of content. There is nothing that works better for brand marketing then getting other people to take your content, slap their own name on it and help you reach their friends/lovers/followers – an audience you might not otherwise reach.
And we focus on one of the most precious thing you can get from an audience on any rent channel: Attention! In this case measured via the growth in Subscribers . In study after study we have seen that your Subscribers are the ones who view your content on YouTube first, and their ability to help you out with the initial social amplification is the difference between a pin dropping in a forest or lighting the initial flames of, wait for it…. wait for it…. wait…. viralness!
Subscribers are your biggest fans, you earn more of them, your life becomes exponentially easier over time because you don't have to keep renting audiences via advertising (though please buy advertising, people who work at YouTube have bills :)).
[Bonus Read: Only three things work on YouTube, learn more about them... YouTube Marketing And Analytics: A Primer For Magnificent Success]
Home stretch, measuring our Temporary rent existence/strategies.
This is a bit harder because while there is some commercial intent we can tap into (regardless of if we are a news site or an ecommerce/lead gen site), it is extremely difficult to grab attention (very short half-life of your contributions). You have to deal with things like EdgeRank, or the faster-flowing-everyday river that is your customer's Twitter stream.
I must have mentioned somewhere in this post that picking your critical-few is hard work!
For Acquisition, advertising we buy on Twitter, Facebook etc, my choices were Impressions and Likes/+1s.
Impressions, see above section on our permanent presence.
Likes/+1s is interesting, is it not? This was really hard. Why would you advertise on your temporary social channels? It turns out there is almost no commercial intent (or at least 43 times lower than email campaigns, see this graph – and click Follow!). My recommendation is to focus on getting outcomes on your social presence. Measure Likes/+1s at a post/brand page level. Pure brand marketing with a pinch of engagement on your rent channel.

For Behavior, we are going to focus on Amplification and Applause.
Amplification Rate measuring the number of Shares (Retweets, Forwards etc) on each post. Our goal is to create content that allows you to reach your second-level network. And when people amplify your content, they do so with their own brand endorsement. #awesome
Applause Rate measures the number of Likes (or +1s, Favorite clicks) on each post. It is very hard to know when you are creating content (text, links, videos, images etc) of value. Applause rate is your audience telling you what they like more and what they like less. Focus on the more content and not on the less content. :)
For Outcomes, we are going to focus on Conversation and Owned Micro-Outcomes.
Conversation Rate measures the number of audience comments (or replies) on each post. We are renting these spaces, creating amazing content, doing great brand marketing while participating in and initiating great conversations. So, let's just measure that. Do we create content that creates conversation? If not, why are we on social channels? Great outcome to measure.
Micro-Outcomes measures the outcomes that deliver value to your business over 90 days and over nine months. (For more, please see the Own section above.) This should incentivize our teams to focus on creating long term value on temporary rent channels.
[Bonus read: Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value]
[Bonus read: Facebook Advertising / Marketing: Best Metrics, ROI, Business Value]
If you want to measure the social metrics mentioned above automatically, including Micro-Outcomes, you can do so using the True Social Metrics tool.
Best Digital Metrics: Comprehensive View.
Here's the complete picture from my keynote, the best digital metrics to measure the effectiveness of our ability to find the optimal customers (current, future), influence them and deliver win-win outcomes…

While it looks like a lot, I've recommended just fifteen metrics to measure everything you could possibly to with digital for your business. Not bad, right?
Please click on the image above to see a higher resolution version, or if you want to download it.
Closing Thoughts.
We are blessed with Big BIg BIG data, and many, Many, MAny, MANY metrics! It is our ability to identify the critical few spectacularly relevant metrics to focus on that will bring personal glory to us and professional glory to our business. (Mostly it is about personal. :))
In choosing metrics you have to make trade-offs, some are painful. More than learning about the best metrics available to us, I hope you've learned about the thought process behind each choice. Why something was chosen? What behavior it will drive in our teams/clients?
And one more thing… please remember that this is a journey and not a destination. The Web Metrics Lifecycle Process is Define > Measure > Analyze > Action > Improve or Eliminate. Rinse and repeat. Make sure you remember that (and follow the process!) before you spend so much time in discussion and choosing that the optimal time to deliver insights has passed you by.
Good luck!
As always, it is your turn now.
Does your current dashboard optimally cover Acquisition, Behavior and Outcomes? When discussing a framework to ensure you have the right metrics, does your company use the Own and Rent philosophy? Would you recommend a different set of metrics for ABO for mobile? What do you use to measure the success of your YouTube efforts? How about the temporary social channels like Google+ or Facebook? Is there a metric you consider your absolute BFF that is missing from the choices above?
Please share your advice, insights, questions, critique, ah-ha moments via comments below.
Thank you.

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You're here > Home > News > Interactive & Web Design

Facebook and Twitter discuss digital marketing trends

By Matt Kapko | CIO US on April 28, 2014

The Walking Dead: Chop Shop campaign was created by Initiative for Hyundai under keynote speaker Greg Johns.

You know things aren't going well when the moderator of a panel asks the audience if anyone understands a word of what was just said by one of his two interviewees. The delivery was deadpan, but it actually underlined the vexing challenges that are making social media all the more complex and confusing for advertisers.
More importantly, the jab accentuated the mood that was taking hold in a banquet hall filled with hundreds of marketers at ThinkLA's Automotive Breakfast earlier this week. The at-times confusing back-and-forth between executives working on analytics at Twitter and Facebook followed a rather critical keynote by Greg Johns, senior vice president and client director of digital strategy at digital agency Initiative. There appeared to be little room for grandiosity or empty platitudes at this morning gathering.
"It comes down to what I think is the biggest challenge that we all face as an industry and that is complexity. Collectively over the past 15 years and more, we've done a really good job at making this very complex for all of us," Greg (below) told the audience.







Programmatic buying and selling of ads, which Greg describes as "this idea, this promise that we will be able to automate most of this complexity out," isn't working out as well as everyone had hoped. "As we are on this learning curve of it, it's actually gotten more complex than simple. It's turning a little bit into the wild, wild west again in terms of the things we're doing."

The 80/20 problem

Not only are cookies and banner ads becoming "less worthwhile to us," Greg says, "it's making the reporting that we spend so much time putting together really become less useful to us." The rush to know all data has manifested itself into what he calls the "80/20 problem" wherein marketers spend most of their time building and compiling data instead of gleaning useful insights from the data.
Although television is more fragmented than ever, the disparate infrastructure of online and social media is still no match for the reigning king of media. "We have to get that focus in place," says Greg. "We have to find our own filter."
 Brands and marketers need to create "intricate campaigns that can blow away what you can do on 55-inch screens. Unfortunately I think these are the exception, not the rule in our industry. We just can't scale," he adds.

Simplicity remains evlusive

Despite all the work and investment that has gone into digital media, simplicity seems just as hard as ever to come by for marketers and brands. Indeed part of that is due to the growing number of tools and platforms by which ads reach consumers. But, at the same time, these ads are trying to track down users who increasingly spend more of their time on mobile apps from the likes of Facebook and Twitter.
"When you think about data you can offer up a lot of complexity," says Jonathan Lewis, manager of monetization analytics at Facebook. "We want to surface data but we want to do it for the right purpose ... to simplify your life instead of adding complexity."
Lewis encourages marketers to focus less on likes and more on core metrics that lead to a lift in branding and ultimately sales. "Focusing on just social metrics as an outcome leads you potentially to undesirable outcomes," Jonathan says.
"Measuring the digital environment is harder than you might think," Jonathan says. A big reason why is because advertisers are rarely disciplined in how they approach a campaign, he adds.
The same rules generally apply for retweets on Twitter. Tim Perzyk, the company's regional head of US research and sales analytics, says marketers are skipping ahead by assuming that a share of voice matters. Retweets, for example, primarily speak to advocacy, he says.

Focus on business objectives

Tim and Jonathan both spoke about their respective company's responsibility to help every advertiser achieve business objectives that matter most to them. "We're trying to create tools that are as flexible as possible for the different approaches and strategies that you need," Lewis says.
"Across all those objectives, there should be a focus on scale," Jonathan says, echoing earlier comments from Greg. "Doing small programs is good, but doing large programs that make a measurable difference for your business is what you should be focusing on."
These experimental or narrow campaign "pet projects" can be fun, but advertisers need to develop campaigns that are repeatable and built on consensus, says Greg. "Innovation still has its place, but it can't be just metastasizing everything we do."
The challenges associated with campaign measurement and other unnecessary complexities are effectively a "forcing function" that motivates Facebook to continue building a better platform, says Jonathan. "We can actually evolve as a platform and do the thing that matters most to your business."
So what can those in the industry do today to begin effecting positive changes? Greg, who oversees digital strategy for Hyundai and Kia, admits he doesn't have all the answers but says the most important goal of all is to simplify.
"What are we going to stop doing in order to do these new things?" Greg says. That's the conversation he said he and his colleagues need to start having.

• Topics
• Interactive & Web Design,
• Facebook,
• Twitter

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Webinar: Marketing communications: new challenges and future trends.

	Marketing communications: new challenges and future trends
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	We would like to invite you to attend our next Practical Insights webinar - Marketing communications: new challenges and future trends. Topic: Marketing Communications Date: Tuesday 25 February 2014 Time: 17:00-18:00 February's webinar will explore the fast-evolving world of marketing communications. In a time of unprecedented technological and cultural change, how can marketers stay ahead of the curve? And what further developments can we anticipate in years to come? The webinar will cover: • The fundamental shift towards two-way communication. • Challenges of managing your brand in the digital age. • Likely developments in the world of social media. • Precision targeting of your messages across a range of environments. • Implications for marketing professionals and their agencies. We hope that you can join us. In addition: you can claim 1 CPD hour (category 10) for attending this webinar but spaces are limited, so please book early to avoid disappointment. Not registered on the CPD programme yet? Find out how to register here.		Presenter:  Phil Woodford CIM Course Director View the recordings of previous Practical Insights webinars via Marketing Expert. What members are saying about our webinars: "Probably the single most informative and useful 60 minutes of my working year so far" Chris Smith, Senior eBusiness Manager, Autoglass Share your views with us on Twitter... #Practicalinsights
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Ben Norman's SEO course: Day 7 - Blogs & RSS.

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|  Main Site   |  SEO Blog   |  DIY SEO   |

7 Day Search Engine Optimisation Course

Day 7 - Blogs & RSS.   Blog and RSS are two terms you will more than likely have heard of. Now the reason I am including them is because search engines love unique and fresh content and Blogs give them just that. Now having a blog is something you need to be able to commit time to as you need to keep it up to date for it to remain effective and cast you in the right light. Blogging doesn't have to be massively time consuming but it is about giving information and being seen to be the go to people in your industry. I find with my company many of the people that come through have been on our blog looking at what we say what we have done etc and it has proved to be a good tool at showing how good we really are. You could for example if you were a camera shop you could have a blog which contained reviews of all the new cameras coming out with pictures and write-ups and by optimising the blog post with the camera name and number in the title chances are you could appear high in the rankings for that term. With our blog we find we can do a post and within minutes it is being ranked by Google and more often than not for the terms in our title tag. It is worth noting this is with long tail terms you are not going to do a post with "secured loan" as the title and get a high position of the bat. I always recommend WordPress for people looking to set up blogs on their website as it is totally free and very easy to install just follow the 5 step instruction process. Once installed it is just as easy to customise and a theme can be installed for free or if you want one that will fit in with your website you can have one designed for it through somewhere like Elance for about £100. When you have your blog installed people can then sign up to your RSS feed which means that every time you update your blog they will get it delivered straight to their RSS reader meaning it is even easier to stay in touch with them. Blogs are something that I can't recommend enough as when used properly can really give you the edge over your competition and show you as the go to company in your niche. I hope you have enjoyed this course and like to receive feedback as i am always updating it and like to ensure it contains what people want. So if you have a idea, feel something else should be added please get in touch.   What Next?   Thats the end of this short course but keep an eye on your inbox for more emails from me. Alternativly keep an eye on my blog for more tip and help.