Last week, Jeffrey and I were in the Bay Area of California to do some client training and work. On a quieter day we decided to visit our friends over at Marketo to catch up. A few months ago, we worked with their very talented team in redesigning much of the website, but two areas were set apart as a focus point of the redesign. As co-founder and VP of Marketing, Jon Miller would tell you how important having a…
How do you define a complex sale? Is it a B2B purchase? Is it planning a family vacation for 2 adults and 3 kids ranging in age from 4-12. Can it be purchasing new pillows for your bed? How about when deciding on an enterprise testing and targeting solution? As marketers we use the term frequently but as I often find people sort of know what it is when they see it, but don’t really define it well. You’ll often…
Ever since Google Analytics was introduced in 2006 people began an obsession with “what” happened on their website. They could understand that a certain number of visitors came to the website, that so many of them used the internal search, and that so many clicked here versus there. However, in order to progress to the next level in the analytics journey, you need to begin to understand “why” these things happen. Are there particular elements that decide certain behaviors on…
Good Copywriters Are … “What makes for good online copywriting?” Both marketers and copywriters have their reasons for asking this question. “Can you recommend a good online copywriter?” Ah. Unfortunately we have considerably fewer answers to that one (although we wish we were busting at the seams with them). So one day, I enlisted my colleagues in brainstorming the answer to this related question: “What qualities must a good onlne copywriter possess?” Here are 13 things that we would look…
You may be in a test cell right this moment. Go to Amazon.com, search for a book and look at their add to cart button, ready to buy area. Is the background of the box white or blue? Amazon is doing a significant test to their add to cart button and the area surrounding it, what I call the “ready to buy” area. This is the first major test of this area I have seen in years. In 2008, I…
The closer you look, the less you see… Caught up in the day-to-day rhythm of business we rarely take the time to zoom out and see the big picture. Google search seems like magic and it only gets more magical. Let’s take a look at magic. Your brain, mine too, tricks you. The human brain fills in gaps to make sense of our world. For example in the image below what do you see? Do you see a triangle? You…
The social and mobile revolution is about data. It is the enormous volume, real-time velocity and variety of data from disparate sources that is causing indigestion issues for most business’ corporate metabolisms. It’s not a publishing revolution! The disruption caused by social and mobile technologies is not entirely about how the voice of every customer can be shared in public at anytime and anyplace. There has been a major change–customer have different expectations of the companies they patronize. Technological and…
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.” – Jack Welch Fifteen years of working with many organizations (it is an impressive list) has taught us most organizations have not yet achieved a point where marketing analytics is like financial reporting: simplified; fairly universal; with a clear line of sight to business financial statements and tied to specific goals and objectives. If everyone had a simple marketing analytics framework that made reporting simple, then everyone…