Category Archives: digital media

October 7, 2014 · 11:06 am

Look Through The Windshield

Today’s wake up call comes from the good folks at Hubspot.  They do a report each year on their area of expertise which is inbound marketing.  What the heck is that?  Well, you’re sort of reading some now, since the screed is not just a way for me to blow excess verbiage out of my system but also a way for people who might need some help with their business to see how I think and where I can help.  Company blogs (yes, I’m a company) are a form as are corporate social media and SEO.  Inbound marketing is just a fancy way to describe content companies put out there to attract the right customers and to generate leads.

Hubspot’s report – The 2014 State of Inbound Report reviews how companies are using this marketing form.  It contains the aforementioned wakeup call as they discuss measuring ROI – return on investment of those activities:

Given the compounding benefits of measuring ROI, you’d assume most marketers would list it as their top initiative. Surprisingly, very few marketers — even marketing leadership — are prioritizing it. Only 15% of marketers ranked “proving the ROI of our marketing activities” as their #1 marketing priority and a little over half (53%) of marketers we surveyed are measuring ROI.

Yikes.  Almost half aren’t even attempting to figure out if what they’re doing is providing them with the desired results.  Marketers should have a clear way to measure success otherwise how can they allocate resources in a manner that maximizes the benefits of their marketing efforts?

I wish I could say I’m surprised but I’m not.  The “newness” of new media seems to obfuscate the fact that part of the benefit of digital is that it is highly measurable.  It’s not just knowing for the sake of knowing either.  As the report says, marketers that measure ROI are 12X more likely to generate a greater return year-over-year than a lower return. In other words, simply the act of measuring ROI correlates with positive results. 

You wouldn’t drive a car without looking through the windshield.  Not measuring the results of, and return from, your marketing or any other business activity is doing just that.  While driverless cars may almost be here, business activities will never become that way.  If we don’t look out the windshield we’re heading for a wreck.  Thoughts?

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September 30, 2014 · 10:56 am

Ready – Fire – Aim

Yet another piece of research that caused an eyebrow to rise up bubbled up in my news stream yesterday.  This one is from the Ascend2 folks via MarketingProfs and concerns strategy in digital marketing.  Two thirds of the marketers survey think they’re doing an OK job with another quarter believing they are doing a great job.  It’s what they identified as challenges that piqued my interest and which is our topic today:

Marketers say a lack of effective strategies is the biggest obstacle to success in digital marketing… More than half of marketers surveyed (51%) cited strategy issues when asked to list the major factors preventing them from fully achieving their digital marketing goals. Budget constraints were the second most cited obstacle (picked by 38% of respondents); lack of training/experience was next (32%), followed by inability to prove ROI (30%), and useless metrics/analytics (25%).

Budget is an issue for everyone it seems no matter what your company or role.  Given the constantly changing set of tools, I can understand the lack of training.  The other items on the list are more concerning.  First and of greatest concern is that over half feel they lack a strategy that works and yet they seem to be executing anyway.  That’s firing without aiming.  This finding doesn’t really shock me given experiences I have had with clients.  There is an appetite to jump into new spaces without giving much thought as to why or how.  What’s of interest as well is what happens when marketers are asked about what does seem to be effective:

Some 54% of respondents rate email as one of their most successful digital marketing tactics; 48% rate websites as a top tactic; 47% search engine optimization; 43% social media. Email is also seen as a relatively easy digital marketing tactic to execute, with only 11% of respondents rating it as one of the most difficult channels.

No surprise – email is well understood by most companies since it’s been around for a long time.  It’s also in wide enough use that one can benchmark and learn from the mistakes of others.  Much easier to aim before firing, right?

“Why” needs to come before “how”.  Aiming needs to come before firing.  After all, no brand has that many chances with consumers and if you can’t hit the mark the first time there might not be a second.  You agree?

 

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September 29, 2014 · 11:17 am

You Sowed It – Now Reap!

If you’re in the business of marketing, the latest report from the Adobe folks ought to scare the heck out of you.  It their 2014 Adblocking Report and the findings are neither welcome nor unsurprising.  In 17 slides the document raises questions about why any marketer that wants to reach a young, tech-savvy audience would bother to invest in digital ads.  Let me explain.

There are 144 million active ad blockers installed around the world.  That’s a smallish percentage of the total web usage base but among certain segments the number has reached critical mass.  27% of US web users report using ad blocking software and among 18-29 year olds the number rises to 41%.  The software is mostly installed on the Chrome browser as well as other user-installed browsers.  One would think that those who don’t use the pre-installed big 2 – Internet Explorer and Safari – are probably more technically literate and I’m guessing they are a desirable audience.

Why do people install ad blockers?  Nearly half say they just don’t want to see ads but a third of folks are open to seeing ads, just not in the obnoxious and intrusive ways many sites display them.  Another big reason is a concern about privacy. In fact, this sums it up quite nicely:

The majority of adblock users do not object to advertising in principle. They are acting out against a number of ad formats that make it harder for them to access content. Many adblock users also cite practical or privacy reasons for adopting adblock. There is an opportunity to acknowledge all these concerns with advertising that respects the user’s privacy and hard-earned attention.

 

In other words, why is the ad world so dead set against opt-in ads?  We tend to take privacy concerns for granted and now it’s coming back to haunt us.  We believe people so want our content that they’ll sit through a 60 second video to watch a 15 second clip.  We pop things up, under, and over.

We’re reaping what we’ve sown.  As a marketing community we cannot escape the consequences of our actions. Maybe it’s time to have another think about how we monetize content before this sort of software moves to mobile, which is where the audience is heading.  Thoughts?

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