Notice that it has been a moment since the last post? Fear not — Zimanablog is being moved to a different hosting site, with a new theme and a few new articles on marketing, analytics, and what-not to boot. So stayed tuned…
Archive for the Business Category
How to expand your analytics knowledge: Three books that show managers how
Posted in Analytics, Business, Web Analytics with tags Analytics, Branding, Business, business intelligence, customer segmentation, Google Analytics, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Small Business, Small Business Trends, Web Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics on June 2, 2010 by pdeboisNeed a little more information on using analytics within your organization? There are three great books that I have had the pleasure of reviewing at Small Business Trends, an award winning small business blog started by editor Anita Campbell. Written by the leading experts in web analytics and business intelligence, these can help develop an organization around the timely use of analytics tools.
- Web Analytics 2.0 (Avinash Kaushik) explains how organizations can implement a web analytics mindset as well as advanced analytics reporting/analysis concerns.
- Analytics At Work (Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris) — focuses on analytics within an organization. Differing from their first book, Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work is for medium sized organizations that want to incorporate business intelligence tools for operational efficiency but not as a leading advantage in a given industry.
- Yahoo Web Analytics (Dennis Mortensen) — this book is more than a how-to regarding Yahoo! Web Analytics. It’s perfect for online merchants who are interested in Yahoo Web Analytics, but also advanced analytics practitioners who need additional ideas for Javascript code and segmentation analysis.
I have also reviewed other business books with Ivana Taylor, founder of DIY Marketers and the book editor for SBT. We try to review business books we genuinely like and that have great use for small business owners. A great one Ivana did is called Success Made Simple which featured perspective from Amish small businesses
Small Business Trends covers a number of great small business subjects and tips. Definitely a must follow for any small business owner.
What other business books have been a great aid to your business or outlook?
Taste of Technology Small Business series kicks off its sessions with cloud computing
Posted in Business, Social Media with tags Business, cloud computing, DropIO, Google, Google Aps, Microsoft, Office, Ramon Ray, Small Business, smallbiztechnology on May 28, 2010 by pdebois-
- Steve Greenwood demonstrates Drop IO
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- Raymon Ray of Smallbiztechnology introduces John Conklin of Microsoft
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- Taste Of Technology Panelists
This week in New York I had the pleasure of sitting in one of several Taste of Technology session. Held at the Samsung Experience retail store in the Time Warner building and hosted by Small Biz Technology editor Ramon Ray, the Taste of Technology sessions are meant to showcase new tools to help small business and the discussions based on those tools.
The May session panel consisted of Jonathan Rochelle, Group Product Manager for Google; John Conklin, Business Productivity Solutions Specialist for Microsoft; and Steve Greenwood, Head of Products for start up DropIO.
Each covers how their products rely on the cloud to deliver quality service. Highlights included a review of Google Apps, discussion on the upcoming SkyDrive for Office Live (my personal favorite, it is additional storage and free features with Office 2010), and an explanation of DropIO, a new online storage service in which uploaded files & video which can be shared regardless of file format. Given the Apple-Adobe battle over Flash (A reminder was announced today as NBC and TBS declined to place their content on the iPad: see the Marketwatch article), DropIO gives a means to share video without concern about the format available to the user, although DropIO is used privately and meant for a few user, as opposed to video sharing sites like YouTube.
Much of the discussion turned to browser usage, with many questions from the audience regarding reverse compatibility and how much that reverse compatibility — browser, internet capability — may hold back some segment of internet users. Security of course came up as well.
There are other Taste of Technology Small Business sessions planned through the year, in New York City and soon to be announced locations. For more information, take a look at the Smallbiztechnology site for details. Ramon is a great guy and excellent host, having attended the Small Biz Technology Summit earlier this year, which featured Seth Godin and a wide range of speakers.
iPad ushering e-zine version of Car and Driver; How analytics on content, reader engagement may follow
Posted in Analytics, Business with tags Advertising, Car abd Driver, Cars, digital Magazines, Google Analytics, IPad, Marketing, Small Business, Web Analytics on May 12, 2010 by pdebois
Car and Driver on iPad (Image Source: Autoblog)
Car and Driver has just released an e-zine version for the iPad according to Autoblog. This is part of the start of the e-zine movement, though C and D’s publisher is not alone (see the Zimana blog post on the foray by Bonnier/Popular Science into electronic magazine content ).
The Autoblog gang was a bit underwhelmed with the e-zine Car and Driver, considering the offering as just a transfer of the magazine with no significant features that take advantage of the new format. That’s a missed opportunity to create renewed interest in the magazine, particularly as now there are so many sources that break car news instantly, such as … er…Autoblog.
That’s okay for now. The discussion of content — and how to best measure its effects on readers — continues unabated. The best that these and other organizations can do is to use as much analytics tagging as technologically possible to learn how people use the content and provide better services for all.
How to determine your most valuable customers: Customer Lifetime Value, inferred from analytics data spots the best segments for profits
Posted in Analytics, Business, Web Analytics with tags Analytics, Business, business intelligence, Google Analytics, how can my business determine the value of my customer segment, how to value your customers, keywords, Marketing, Small Business, Web Analytics on May 6, 2010 by pdeboisAvinash Kaushik has always been a great evangelist for the Google Analytics solution, with useful tips at the Occam’s Razor blog, along with having written two books on the business of web analytics (see the Small Business Trends’ book review on his book Web Analytics 2.0). There are great examples of how to extract value from analytics data. This post on customer lifetime value shows the influence of analytics data to determine your most profitable customer segment.
Explained by David Hughes of E-mail academy , the concept answers three questions regarding the value of an acquired customer base:
- Did you pay enough to acquire customers from each marketing channel?
- Did you acquire the best kind of customers?
- How much could you spend on keeping them sweet with email and social media?
This concept, along with inference of the analytics data, can guide businesses to understand which segments of website traffic are worth the marketing effort. Remember, your analytics data is more than just examining keywords. You can examine your online presence, and infer some answers, as well as guidance for others. I love this post from Avinash because it gets into the meat and potatoes of value. This is not entirely new; Annastatia Holdren gave great comments during her Adwords training about monitoring the value of your keywords so that you are not paying more for traffic (you can read more on the value of clicks here)
Key takeaways relevant for business owners looking to review their analytics.
- Focus on discovering the actions of a segment, not just an individual – analytics is about understanding a group of given traffic.
- Being at the top of a given SERP may be costly in some instances. There are many ways to drive customers to your site without going head to head on a keyword which may be expensive to use in an Adword or CPC campaign. That expense becomes particularly costly if there are few visitors converting from use of that keyword.
- Even if your business attempt to gain a SERP advantage via a focus on keywords, an overfocus on certain keywords can eliminate choices of other keywords and phrase which has lower traffic volume but potentially better odds of conversion – more sales, more sign ups, etc.
- Business owners should be open for other means for customers to discover their site — even a well constructed print ad that links to a great landing page can general the right traffic if the ad is exposed to the right audience. Foursquare, Twitter, Yelp, and social networking sites have provided new means of discovery.
To read the full explanation of the Customer Lifetime Value process, see the post at Occam’s Razor.
Crain article on digital sites geared for women shows segmentation is essential for savvy business online
Posted in Business, Marketing, Social Media, Web Analytics with tags Marketing, business intelligence, Small Business, Social Media, consumer, Business, demographics, search traffic, marketing to women online communities, Crain's New York, Crain's on May 5, 2010 by pdebois
Today many online communities court women for lifestyle and consumer interests
Crain’s New York had a great recent article on online media properties and the increase competition among online women communities. The article focused on the relaunch or iVillage — NBC is attempting to make a portfolio of brands — as well as Glam Media’s continued dominance. From the article:
“Magazine publishers are also getting better at identifying audiences across their networks of sites and delivering them in big numbers, media buyers say. Hearst Digital Media’s network had 17.6 million visitors in February, comScore reports, and Conde Nast Digital had 15.3 million”
These are just the opening salvos — Glam Media has the largest number of unique visitors at 78.0 million (comScore figure). All hail from the “fragmentation of audiences and the way people now use search engines to travel around the Web.” You can read more at Crain’s New York (Site has a thing or 2 for Women)
Takeaways for small businesses:
- Business owners must pay attention to the different sites/properties available to their business, and see if there is an audience that rings true to their goals — to strengthen its position in a market or even extend its audience (long tail).
- In paying attention, businesses should decide what services and features to focus on the most — the fragmentation that is occurring has made being a jack-of-all-trades a very expensive proposition to maintain. The cost for marketing to as much traffic as possible may exceed the revenue generated. See the Zimana blog articles on segmentation and the Orient express as well as the post on the Lexus LF-A launch for examples of how large organizations deal (or not deal) with segmentation.
- In focusing on a segment, the marketing dollars and effort will be better focus and can yield better results for campaigns and attracting the right visitors who will convert.
What Kick-Ass Teaches Small Businesses About Targeting the Right Market
Posted in Business, Marketing with tags Business, consumer, entrepreneurship, Marketing, segmentation, Small Business, Web Analytics on April 18, 2010 by pdebois
A product can gain buzz, like the movie Kick Ass did initially... but is the buzz coming from the right audience?
USA Today posted an article on the movie box office. Not usual. In it, the article mentions the anticipation built for the movie Kick-Ass, even with comparison to another comic book turned movie 300. Not usual either. What was unusual was the relatively low box office. Yes there was online buzz. What’s not kicking ass here?
Well, buzz does help for exposure. But the movie had a risk — The main characters were kids, yet the movie had an R rating.
Takeaway for small businesses:
- Any ol’ buzz is not equivalent to sales — if the audience talking about the product the most can not use/see/purchase it, then the buzz is worthless. Which means….
- The target consumers really need to be the ones doing the buzzing to make an event/product launch a success. Otherwise…
- The benefit of what is being offered is not of value to the intended consumer. In this case, the tough sell was getting adults who could see an R-rated movie interested in seeing an action movie with children as main characters.
The last point is not a light subject in movie making. Even Star Wars creator George Lucas, who admits he likes the R2-D2 character the most, was concerned that A New Hope (first Star Wars movie) may not appeal to moviegoers because the earliest scenes had no humans onscreen between the attack on Princess Leia’s ship and when audience first meet Luke.
In short terms the benefit of a product may not be of value to a consumer. In the case of Kick-Ass, the buzz may have been a distortion to whether the movie was marketed to the right audience. But there is some financial hope for Lionsgate (see this article on the box office for Kick-Ass in the LA Times).
What do you think?
Think Analytics is for auditing SEO? Use it for its true intent, to guide your online presence
Posted in Analytics, Business, Marketing, Web Analytics with tags Marketing, Marketing Strategy, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Media, Web Analytics on April 13, 2010 by pdeboisThere are many small businesses that believe that web analytics is linked entirely to PPC and keyword campaigns. It can be. But analytics solutions can do so much more by inferring your customers wants and desires from a number of marketing channels. Small businesses are bombarded with new means to market themselves, so as a business adds a new marketing tool — both online and offline — the new tools increases the attention needed. Remember your business can market itself through:
- Powerpoint presentations uploaded online
- Video uploaded and advertised through YouTube, Vimeo, AdMogul, etc.
- Magazine and Billboard ads with URLs to a landing page
- e-Mail (like MailChimps site analytics)
- Facebook (which requires a different approach to a keyword search….more later!)
- Profiles on sites such as Linked In, OPEN Forum, Biznik
- Local or specialty associations like the Web Analytics Association and the New York Entrepreneurship
- Customer responses via Yelp and Mr Tweet.
- Blogs
Plus, there are additional analytics for some of these, sources such as MailChimp’s Site Analytics (see a previous post on the subject here).
So the point is to use your analytics solutions as an anchor for understanding your marketing and managing your costs.
How to create a video resume by IQ Workforce
Posted in Analytics, Business, Web Analytics with tags Analytics, Resume, Video on April 7, 2010 by pdeboisIQ Workforce operates a great recruiting site for analytics consultants and companies looking for analytics practitioners. Companies can post job openings for analytics and related digital marketing positions, while analytics employees and independent contractors can post their resume and web video resume to show their skills and strengthens. It is a significant and welcome development in the web analytics community, as its niche focus on WA practitioners offers increased visibility to analytics positions while augmenting many other sites for digital marketing related posting. Established in 2005, the company is a global partner of Web Analytics Wednesdays (a networking meetup hosted in various cities, founded by Eric Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified). IQ Workforce also interviews web analytics practitioners regarding the industry trends.
Corry Prohens is the Managing Consultant for IQ Workforce. He offers solid advice to all, such as great post on how to conduct a video resume, a format he has encouraged contractors to use. You can learn more about how to conduct a web video resume at the iQ Workforce blog post.
New Book Review at Small Business Trends: Analytics at Work
Posted in Analytics, Business, Web Analytics with tags Analytics, Book Review, Business, business intelligence, Competing On Analytics, Harvard Business Press, Jeanne Harris, Robert Morison, Thomas Davenport, Web Analytics on March 21, 2010 by pdeboisI have been writing a book reviews for Small Business Trends, a popular and award winning blog on small business. I have been really enjoying reading business books. Working with Ivana Taylor of DIY Marketing and SBT founder Anita Campbell has been a true privilege.
The latest analytics-related book is Analytics At Work by Harvard professor Thomas Davenport, Jeanne Harris, and Robert Morison. The book expand on the study described in the previous work Competing On Analytics by examining the framework necessary to become a more analytics-driven business culture. It’s a great read. Learn more about my review of Analytics At Work at the Small Business Trends site
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