BU Interactive Marketing 2015 Summer Class Slides - Part 1

Editor's Notes

• #2: Well, this is what you signed up for. I hope. If not, SOMEBODY’s in the wrong room, and, to be honest, I hope it’s you.
• #3: Not sure what that makes you…
• #35: Marketing has been going digital for quite a while now, but the first real transition to digital happened in the 1970s with the creation of email and the first digitization of traditional mailing lists and phone directories. Since those early days of digital telesales, so much has happened. In the 1980s, with the advent of the PC, we saw the first real contact management systems appear. But it sat on your computer. You had to manually enter updates – it had no way to connect to your calendar. Although the Internet existed, there was no web to connect to. And none of your contacts had email addresses unless you happened to work at a university or research institute. The first REAL digital marketing innovation didn’t happen until 1994, when the precursor to WIRED magazine created what is widely thought to be the first real banner ad, and the first search engines, WebCrawler and Lycos, took off (but the first paid search result didn’t appear until 1996, on Yahoo!’s search engine). In 1997, the first social network was built: SixDegrees.com. Great name, but who remembers being on that social network? Sales force automation technology was also improving in the 1990s. By the end of the decade – and what a great decade it was – all the ingredients were in place for the digital marketing revolution. Since the turn of the millennium, things have accelerated as customer relationship management and marketing automation tools have taken off. But the real change in how we’ve looked at digital marketing has only happened in the last couple years…
• #36: Just a couple years ago, digital marketing was a subset of marketing, which was otherwise still analog-centric… [read slide]
• #37: [Read] So let’s talk about two key components that I highlighted from these definitions: channels and push vs pull.
• #38: This diagram, from St. Joseph’s Communication, shows how our thinking about channels have evolved. What is a channel? Simply put, it’s a way or means of reaching a consumer or customer.
• #43: So how do you measure movement down this funnel? Well, I’ll give a great example of how one company does this. I was first introduced to HubSpot when its CEO, Brian Halligan, spoke on a panel I organized about the work that he makes his CMO Mike Volpe do each month to report on sales. Using HubSpot’s own technology – HubSpot, by the way, is the company that first popularized the concept of “inbound marketing,” to contrast its approach to content marketing with that of more traditional “outbound marketing” or “interruption marketing” efforts ,and thus to highlight the importance of SEO in the content game – Brian asks Mike to report (visually) on which marketing programs or campaigns are driving traffic the furthest down the marketing funnel. Because they’re using some sophisticated techniques to track these campaigns online (a few of which I’ll reveal to you), this becomes relatively easy for Mike to do. But it was a revelation to me, and to many other marketers. The most essential tool to track the effectiveness of your efforts is a web analytics tool, the most popular of which is Google Analytics. As a very simple example, I can track which pages on my web site are attracting the most traffic. But I can do a lot more. Google Analytics is critical to any marketing measurement you may want to do, but it’s only as effective as how you set it up and how you feed it. When you set up Google Analytics, don’t ignore the “Goals” section, which is the closest that Google Analytics can come to the magical reports that HubSpot can generate for Mike and Brian. And when you’re using Google Analytics, take advantage of its support for “campaign codes.” Campaign codes allow you to add extra information at the end of a website URL that tell Google which campaign, which medium and which traffic source generated the most attention to your site. If you Google “URL builder” you’ll find the online tool that Google created to help you create these codes. Let’s say, for example, that you want to create a campaign that drives traffic to a particular page on your website that is offering a discount on a product you sell. That page has an offer, a “get more information” button and a “buy now” button on it. We’ll name the campaign “Summer 2014 Sale.” Medium has four default labels: referral, organic, cpc for paid search, and (none) for direct traffic. Think of these as the big buckets of traffic, the highest level marketing channels. Create new channels at the same high level and don’t get too specific. For example: email social banner (or display) print direct-mail Source has three types of labels by default: website names for referrals, search engines, and (direct). Think of these as your target audiences – the users of specific websites or search engines, or people who already knew you and came directly. Describe who’s viewing your campaign content with source labels like: newsletter-subscribers facebook partner.com = the website where you put your banner ad industry-today = the name of a publication where you advertise postcard-list = the name of the mailing list (Hat tip to Lunametrics for these descriptions: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2011/09/08/4-steps-campaign-data-google-analytics/ ) Once you’ve defined these codes, go to the URL builder and feed the original URL and each possible combination of codes to get a series of unique URLs, all pointing to the same page, but defining different sources and mediums. As you create and promote your content online, be sure to use these URLs appropriately – using the facebook code only on Facebook, for example. Now, when you go into Google Analytics, you’ll see much richer reports, and it will tell you, on a campaign-by-campaign basis, which channels and campaigns are most effective! Now these URLs can be awfully long and cumbersome, so I take one more step before I release them to the public or my sales and marketing teams: I shrink them using a link shortener like bit.ly. Bitly benefits me two ways: it makes for shorter, more tweetworthy links, but it also adds another layer of measurement if I create an account on the platform and always log in when I’m shortening links. Bitly provides its own reporting on clicks, so in case Google Analytics is mis-configured or I want a sanity check, it’s a great backup for me.
• #45: ROI is a calculation of value. But value doesn’t just come in a pure monetary form. We’ll come back to a discussion about value in a few minutes, but first, let’s explore ROI a little deeper.
• #46: ROI essentially measures two things: money and time. More specifically, you can use ROI calculations to determine how long it will take to recoup the cost of a specific investment.
• #47: The tangibles of ROI can be expressed in a very simple equation. ROI, when expressed as a percentage, is the revenue that is generated from your investment, minus the cost of that investment, divided by the cost of that investment. Gains are the total revenue generated that can be attributed to the program / campaign. If the program or campaign is not aimed at revenue generation, you can substitute “cost savings” for gains. Costs are the total cost of program / campaign, including both hard costs AND staff time, typically calculated by FTE %age of salary or hourly rates. Note the phrase “can be attributed.” Attribution is the hard part…
• #48: ROI is a form of valuation, and valuation is in fact one of five different categories for measuring social media marketing activities. Katie Paine, whom I absolutely adore, talks about the Three Os of measurement, to which I add two: inputs and valuation. I’m a PR guy, so I’ll talk in terms of PR programs for a moment. The inputs to any integrated marketing program are a critical factor in its success. Inputs measure the contributions (in terms of time and materials) to the integrated PR program. These inputs come from the client marketing team, other supporting client-side teams and the agency management team. I’ve spent most of my career on the agency side, and know what it’s like to have my feet held to the fire when it comes to producing results. Agency teams, however, can only be so successful without the active participation of our clients to the PR process, so we have learned to also hold our clients partly responsible for their contributions to the program. These contributions -- the inputs to the PR program -- don’t come just from the client PR contact, however. On the client side, the product development group, HR department, client services group, the management team and many other departments play a role in providing the necessary fodder for a successful PR program. Inside the agency, the management team is responsible for allocating resources -- team members and time allocations -- necessary for the success of the program. Output captures the physical product of our work. It measures the direct and immediate results of our PR program. Traditionally, we have measured those results that are visible to the general public, such as the amount of coverage secured, but this can be supplemented with less publicly visible metrics, such as number of pitches sent, the number of briefings conducted, etc. Many agencies will differentiate between internal output metrics that aren’t shared with the client and shared metrics that they will also report to the client. While this category of metrics is the traditional favorite of PR professionals, it is often eclipsed by our last category, outcomes, because of its results-driven approach. Nevertheless, no PR program -- integrated or traditional -- should skip over outputs; they provide valuable insight into the productivity of a team. There is much to measure beyond inputs and outputs. Thanks to the insights we can glean from social networks, we can also peek into the minds of the communities we’re trying to influence. Outtakes measure how effective our communications efforts are in changing minds. While measuring outputs is the easiest measurement category, measuring outtakes is by far the most difficult, as we have to rely on external signals that might indicate a change in attitude toward a particular company, product or topic. These signals come in many forms, but in general we rely on studying what people say, who they interact with and how they behave around brands.   Companies focused on raising brand awareness tend to rely on metrics in this category. Typical metrics include share of voice, sentiment and applause rate (likes, etc.). Analyzing content requires an investment in editorial oversight to either manually sort results or oversee (and override as necessary) any automated functions, such as sentiment analysis, which is notoriously difficult to accomplish. It’s one thing to change minds, but another thing entirely to change behaviors. Outcomes measure behavior changes. More specifically, they measure “conversions.” Conversions are typically thought of as transactions of some form or another. They are most often thought of in terms of transactions. But the transaction doesn’t have to be monetary in nature. It can be any event that drives a prospect one step closer to the ultimate conversion: the financial transaction that results from a sale.   Outcome measurement is very popular in integrated PR programs that include a demand generation component -- programs in which the PR team is (at least partially) responsible for supporting direct sales. Anything that could indicate movement down the sales funnel could be a potential conversion, from email opens and click-throughs to requests for information to the final sale and participation in evangelism or affiliate programs. Finally, there’s valuation, of which ROI is one of the bigger metrics. Let’s explore each of these in more detail, highlighting some of the key metrics in each…
• #49: Essentially, marketers are motivated by one of two primary factors. Either they’re trying to raise awareness and feed the top of the sales and marketing funnel, or they’re trying to drive leads a little deeper into the funnel. An awareness strategy is ideal for marketers who want to, for example, influence the influencers of big ticket or long lead item purchases, or perhaps to drive the sales of impulse, small ticket or in-store retail items. The top campaign or program priorities for awareness marketers are: exposure, “eyeballs” and quick purchases. Paired with strong analytics, this can be very effective. A lead generation strategy is ideal for marketers who want to reach the buyer of big ticket or long lead items directly, or drive online sales. The top campaign or program priorities for this strategy are: actions and wallets. Paired with a solid email marketing program and some marketing automation technology, this approach can be very effective as well.
• #53: It starts with SMART Objectives http://overtonecomm.blogspot.com/2010/10/commonsense-social-media-measurement.html In order to get results from your marketing and public relations programs, you have to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. We call these SMART Objectives. They are: Specific: not vague Measurable: have numbers attached to them Attainable: Are not too easy, or too hard to achieve Results-Oriented: they are tied to business goals Time Bound: They have a time frame by which they can be accomplished Another way to think of this, is by asking yourself: How many/much of X results to I hope to achieve by X date? How many, by when? Let’s look at an example of a SMART Objective…