Archive for December, 2007

In a shortly to be released study by B2B, web marketers, web developers, videographers and supporting technologists may want to consider preparing for a busy 2008. Some hilights:

60.1% of all marketers plan to increase their 2008 budgets.
79.1% plan to increase their online budgets (last year was 75.6%)
Web Site Development will be increased says 74.0% of marketers.
Email Marketing will increase says 70.1%
Search Engine Marketing (SEO) will be increased by 64.3%
Other increases include video (39.5%), web casting (39.1%) and social media (26.2%)

source

I also think that 2008 will be a huge year for analytics, and for those who know how to utilize them. Skilled, science-based marketing seems to me like the smartest and lowest risk type of investment for people still bedazzled by Web 2.0 orgies. I’m hoping that 2008 will turn focus back to the business, in particular the small business, which was relatively neglected in terms of innovation for 2007.

Well, in February of this year, I posted that Lexington’s CompUSA had avoided the chopping blog as the company closed half of its stores.

Well, the other shoe is falling, and CompUSA will be putting all of its stores in Liquidation.

To everyone at CompUSA Lexington, I am really sorry about this and hope you all find new gigs quickly.

 

Sometimes It’s Just a Little Overwhelming

One of the most difficult challenges is tracking paid search performance via telephone calls for the small business. While a few will spring for a new 800 number or IVR system to get some of that information and train phone staff in its use, many cannot due to the workaday reality. Often the busy office environment means metrics go out the window in favor of just getting the order out, so the company continues to guess.

This is especially true for companies who are struggling to find their sweet spot in the paid search world. During the day-to-day chaos, few are thinking about the cost of each call - they just want to answer it and do their best to change the caller into a customer. If the staff is so busy, do you really think they’ll drill down and get the “how you found us” information accurately recorded. It doesn’t happen. Pay-per-call and click-to-call offer “embedded” tracking, but are plagued with inventory and adoption challenges. My friend Christine (CC: Nice to see you at SMX!) created a great post on Offline Conversion Tracking, which covers some of the same ground, and this issue has often come up in conference sessions.

As Greg Sterling points out, the vast majority of purchases are made offline, yet the tracking solutions are only just maturing, and others have a very healthy skepticism about some of the new solutions.

The real result of this is the “leaking” of marketing budgets that happens with a lack of tracking. The dynamics of the purchase cycle are mysterious, making strategic and tactical solutions little better than guesses.

I see basically four flavors of off-line conversion tracking from pay-per-click ads, and would like to introduce a hybrid.

anecdotal
customer question at point of sale, catalog IDs, coupons, offers
poor man’s IVR (multiple phone numbers)
cookied IVR
…and a hybrid…
cookied part number modification

CLICK MORE to see the rest of this article.

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I dislike Volusion for many reasons, but this one stands out. Searching their owners manual gives results, but you must bang through each to find anything. So far, everything in Volusion takes 5x more steps than I think it should. Anyhow, no time to write that book… here’s an example of a useless SERP typical of their online help.

Useless owners manual SERPS due to poor deployment