Monthly Archives: March 2015

March 9, 2015 · 12:38 pm

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Anyone who has worked in marketing, advertising, or media is familiar with the concept of attribution.  It’s the notion that a certain message promoted an action – hopefully one that converted into a sale.

English: Dashboard 1

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was always taught that the reason brands should use multiple media is that each medium had a role to play in that conversion process.  TV generated awareness, print was good for research and product information, radio was the great reminder medium.  Digital?  What was that?  Aside from the use of a coupon or an offer code or tracking via direct mail, the attribution chain was pretty much determined by special surveys and the thrusting of a licked finger into the air to see which way the CMO‘s wind was blowing.

It’s obviously very different today.  Many sales are made via online stores and are, therefore highly trackable.  Attribution, however, is still a bit of a mystery although less so.  Nevertheless, it’s a critical data point and as a recent Forrester study stated:

Organizations leverage many channels to reach and grow customers. The average marketer we surveyed is using 13 channels to drive his or her marketing and media objectives. This reflects marketers’ increasingly omnichannel approach to win, serve and retain their customer base. Sixty percent of these channels are included in marketers’ attribution measurements.

Obviously, missing almost half of your touchpoints in any kind of measurement isn’t great but it’s a start.  So what is this exactly and why is it important to your business? Think about your own purchasing activities.  You decide to buy a widget.  You might do a search which leads you to a website.  Organic search is touchpoint one.  You do your research and leave.  Maybe the site sets a cookie and remarkets to you (were you looking for information about widgets?) and you go back.  Remarketing is touchpoint two.  Maybe a week goes by and you see an article on widgets that brings you to the site again.  Content and a referral is touchpoint three.  Now you’re ready to buy and you search for “best widget prices”.  You click on an ad and end up there again.  Paid search is touchpoint four.  You buy.

The question is which source gets credit for the sale.  That’s the secret sauce of attribution.  The first click?  The last click?  How do you weight the journey to conversion?  Broaden it from just digital to in store and other media.  How are they to be accounted for (maybe the missing 40%)?  The majority of marketers surveyed (76%) have moved beyond single-touch attribution, but only 11% use advanced algorithmic attribution and as the study muses marketers may be hesitant to adopt advanced attribution approaches because they find them difficult to understand and communicate to their organizations.   I’d add there may be a hesitancy due to fear of contradicting the entrenched thinking about the need to support various channels and marketing activities.

This will continue to be a big issue – giving credit where credit is due.  How are you thinking abut this?  What are you doing about it?

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March 6, 2015 · 11:55 am

Indian Food And Your Team

It’s Foodie Friday and what has my attention today is an article in the Washington Post Wonkblog.  Anything titled “Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious” has my full attention. After all, anyone who cooks wants to learn some secret to make everything taste better, right? As it turns out there was a business secret in there as well.

English: Thali

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As reported in GeekWire:

The researchers broke each dish down to ingredients and compared how often and heavily those ingredients shared flavor compounds. What they found was the less often dishes “shared” flavor compounds, the more delicious they tended to be. “The unique makeup of Indian cuisine can be seen in some dishes more than others, and it seems to be tied to the use of specific ingredients,” they reported. “Spices usually indicate dishes with flavors that have no chemical common ground.”

In other words, in the West many of us try to find flavors that “go together”.  The MIT Technology Review put it this way:

The food pairing hypothesis is the idea that ingredients that share the same flavors ought to combine well in recipes. For example, the English chef Heston Blumenthal discovered that white chocolate and caviar share many flavors and turn out to be a good combination. Other unusual combinations that seem to confirm the hypothesis include strawberries and peas, asparagus and butter, and chocolate and blue cheese.

And of course, as with so many things in this world, that’s a right answer, not THE right answer.  The lesson from Indian – and as it turns out many other Asian –  cuisine is that more flavors with less overlap makes for a better dish. And that is a great business point too.

Many of us build teams that are way too homogeneous.  In our effort to hire people who will “fit in” to the team, we don’t optimize our flavor profiles – how well the team functions.  The team would be much better with people who have less overlap.  You need members who will challenge ideas and not just go along.  More perspectives, more skills, more voices equals a better product.  Just as what makes a great chef is the ability to get those contrasting flavors to mesh so too is the test of a great manager how well he or she can bring together a diverse team of strong people.

Recipes as a network – who’d have thought that?!?!

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March 5, 2015 · 12:09 pm

Stopping By The Woods

I woke up this morning to yet another snowfall. Yesterday’s rain and melting have iced over and are now covered with a few inches of fluffy stuff. I’m very much over winter as I suspect most of you are.

English: Looking down a rural dirt road after ...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While I was out shoveling I couldn’t help but notice the silence.

Despite my hatred of snowfall, it really was beautiful and of course brought to mind the Robert Frost poem “Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening.” I suspect you’ve read it – it’s a staple of high school English classes – but maybe you didn’t consider it as a business lesson.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Simple on the surface – it’s a guy in a sleigh taking a break – but full of other meanings.  The main one is the meaning of the woods. What the heck are they and why is the narrator conflicted between an attraction toward the woods and the pull of responsibility outside of the woods?  The woods are mysterious and seductive and maybe dangerous.  If you go into them and get lost, you might die yet he is drawn to them. Why is he procrastinating in his journey?

It’s the last stanza that’s all about those of us in business.  The allure of the myriad distractions we face each day – new business opportunities, the next shiny object which lures us away from our core business – are to be acknowledged, but we have promises to keep.  We make them to our customers, our partners, our employees and our investors.  Yes, I’m aware that many consider this to be the tale of a man considering and rejecting suicide (I did teach English, after all).  That’s a lesson for us as well, albeit figuratively.  We can’t make irrevocable choices – lie down in the freezing woods.  We need to think with a broader perspective and not give in to the moment.

What’s striking in the end is how something so simple on the surface as this poem can be quite complex.  Sort of like business, don’t you think?

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