Web Design > Industry News for Advertsing, Web Design and Corportate Identity

1 2 3 4 5

Google and SEO
How to find start-up ideas

Chris Dixon had an interesting post a while ago about how to find start-up ideas. The advice boiled down to keeping a spreadsheet of ideas and talking to lots of smart people (entrepreneurs, potential customers, VCs, people at big companies). It’s good advice. Paul Graham also wrote in 2008 about startup ideas he’d like to [...]

7/19/2010 11:46:53 AM

CEquity
Banking is going mobile!

There is this huge debate in India about who should own and drive the Mobile banking journey! Should it be the telecom operators or the banks! Recently, Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said at the Banking Technology Excellence Awards, “World over, there are two distinct models in mobile banking - the bank led model and the mobile operator led model. The Reserve Bank has a clear preference for the bank led model.”

Indian mobile banking has two major segments: the urban segment and the rural segment. Celent, a consulting company, estimates that urban mobile banking subscribers will reach 65 million by 2012. The rural mobile segment represents a huge opportunity to bank the unbanked population, thereby adding a revenue stream. But I wonder how much are banks dipping into their vast treasure trove of transactional data to actually analyze the behavior changes that are driving adoption! Are consumers following a path through more advanced usage of ATM's and on to Internet banking and then they become Mobile banking users? Or are Mobile banking users distinct consumers with different needs?

Whoever leads this journey, banks or telecom companies,the important thing is who is more likely to drive customer adoption and be more “customer centric” in their focus? Both industries, Telecom & Banking have a huge “new customer acquisition focus” and both have over the last 5 years been penetrating the market and bringing in a huge set of customers who are now beginning to expect far better customers service and more products configured to their needs. In my view the critical area to think about is how are banks profiling and developing a better understanding of their customers who are “early adopters” of tech led services such as Net banking, Mobile banking, Direct pay etc.

Banks have so much information about what is leading to this kind of channel migration. How much of this information is being looked at analytically to deliver a better “one view” of this “new age” customer?

7/6/2010 9:27:00 AM

Google and SEO
Webspam projects in 2010?

About a year and a half ago, I asked for suggestions for webspam projects for 2009. The feedback that we got was extremely helpful. It’s almost exactly the middle of 2010, so it seemed like a good time to ask again: what projects do you think webspam should work on in 2010 and beyond? Here’s the [...]

6/30/2010 11:17:14 AM

Google Analytics
Converting To Asynchronous Code

A sinking bowl: fill it with water and use it to track time

There's a pretty strong push now for everyone to move to the new Asynchronous Google Analytics Tracking Code. It's the only code that's available from the interface now, and nearly all of the documentation includes examples of this as the primary code to be used. Converting your code to the new async code might seem like it's just a hassle, but there are benefit to using the new code. Because the code loads asynchronously, there's no longer any danger that it will interfere with the loading of the rest of your page. This means that the code can now be placed up in the header of your pages rather than right before the closing </body> tag. The result is that you'll be able to track a greater percentage of your visitors than your were previously, which will improve the accuracy of your reports in Google Analytics. Now if your setup isn't too complex, converting won't be too big of an issue. Your old code might look something like this:

Notice that the only modification on this code from the standard code is the line for subdomain tracking. The approach to converting something like this to the new asynchronous code is pretty standard:

Google has provided several migration examples if you need more information. But what if your code is a bit more complicated? Perhaps you've added initial referrer tracking to your Google Analytics Tracking Code:

The trouble with this type of modification is that it includes a bit of logic in addition to the standard tracking method calls. Something like this certainly looks possible:

This will work just fine for this example. But your code most likely looks very different and may have even more modifications. The benefits of the asynchronous code certainly sound nice, but do you really have the time and resources to change the code, test it, and then figure out where you missed a bracket or comma? Fortunately, there's a fairly straightforward way to convert just about any traditional Google Analytics Tracking Code snippet to the asynchronous code:

I personally like this style a lot for several reasons. It can turn the conversion process from a 1 to 2 hour project to a 10 to 20 minute project. There are also far fewer chances to make mistakes. Rather than having to change every single line, you can follow a few simple steps: 1. Start with the following code:

2. Copy everything between "try {" and "} catch(err) {}" from your old code and put it where it says "// Put your code here." If your code is old enough that it doesn't have a try...catch block, just copy everything between the the last opening tag of your Google Analytics Tracking Code. 3. Replace "_getTracker" with "_createTracker". If you have multiple tracking objects, in addition to pageTracker, like a secondTracker, then you'll need to change the _getTracker lines for these objects a bit more. Something like this should work: secondTracker = _gat._createTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-Y", "secondTracker"); The "secondTracker" in quotes could be anything at all, but using "secondTracker" might make it easier if you have to reference this later on. If you have additional code, such as ecommerce code, you can convert these according to the migration examples. You can also follow the following steps: 1. Start with the following code:

2. Copy your additional code, minus any script tags, and paste it where it says "// Put your code here." 3. If the code used pageTracker as an object, then you're done. If the code uses secondTracker instead, then you'll need to change the "var pageTracker._getTrackerByName();" line to the following: var secondTracker = _gat._getTrackerByName("secondTracker"); You can also just add this line if your additional code uses both pageTracker and secondTracker. One thing that's worth noting in the all of the above async examples is that no where is pageTracker or any other tracking object declared as a global variable. This means that if you have any onclick events that use pageTracker, you'll need to update them as well. While this might seem like another pain to go through, it's actually very necessary to ensure that ga.js has loaded, the tracking object has been created, and all methods already applied to it have been run, in order, before the onclick event can run. The benefit is that you no longer have to use try...catch blocks, checks for object existence, and recurring setTimeout statements to ensure that everything works properly; it's all taken care of for you in a much more robust way. So let's say you had an onclick event like this: onclick="pageTracker._trackEvent('Videos', 'Play', 'Marketing Video', 10);" You would have two options for converting this to async: 1. onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Marketing Video', 10]);" 2. onclick="_gaq.push(function () { var pageTracker = _gat._getTrackerByName(); pageTracker._trackEvent('Videos', 'Play', 'Marketing Video', 10); });" Which option should you go with? Option #1 is usually best for simple onclick events like the one above. For longer, more complex onclick events, especially if you're setting them dynamically, option #2 makes a lot of sense since you can simply wrap all of your statements and simplify your conversion process. As a final note, if you need to use secondTracker or some other tracking object, this can be done option #1 style like this: onclick="_gaq.push(['secondTracker._trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Marketing Video', 10]);" The name preceding _trackEvent in the must match the name you passed to _gat._getTrackerByName. For example, suppose your converted Google Analytics Tracking Code had the following statement: secondTracker = _gat._createTracker("UA-XXXXXXX-Y", "tracker2"); The correct way to reference this in your option #1 style onclick event would be the following: onclick="_gaq.push(['tracker2._trackEvent', 'Videos', 'Play', 'Marketing Video', 10]);" The reason you use tracker2 instead of secondTracker is that tracker2 is the name that the tracking object was registered under, while secondTracker is simply a local reference to the tracker2 tracking object. You can avoid this confusion by simply using the same name for both as shown earlier. Also note that we didn't register a name for our local pageTracker objects, so these use the default tracking object, which is referenced without a name in option #1 style statements. Feel free to leave comments if you have additional situations that steps don't seem to address. Also, while the above steps may be enough to fully convert your code, you may still want to consider purchasing support to do this, especially if you have a more complicated setup.

6/30/2010 7:59:52 AM

Google Analytics
Can Facebook Grow My Business?

A few months ago I posted a mini case study on a lead generation client for whom we've been able to find success on Facebook over time. Of course we have also seen less-than-stellar advertising performance (i.e. compared to Google/Yahoo/MSN) on Facebook for clients in other spaces.

So, the question that's often been on my mind since we started managing Facebook advertising, is whether or not a certain kind of business is a good fit for the Facebook ad platform.

So, my Facebook PPC client experiences usually translate into recommendations for clients, but I've always known that those answers are a bit linear in nature and I have yet to find someone with a few more Facebook battle scars to provide more insights.

That was until yesterday, when I discovered a 10-question quiz for the business owner or PPC manager that may be wondering "Is Facebook for me" @ Perry Marshall's new website/tool www.isfacebookforme.com - catchy URL. Here you will find a series of 10 "Yes or No" style business model questions that "provide instant feedback on whether Facebook could be a main traffic source for your business."

I completed the survey for the client that we've had success with on Facebook, and it gave me a 6/10, meaning that "Facebook will probably be a significant way for you to get more customers affordably" - and I can say that it has!

So, if you're considering Facebook now, consider checking out this new tool and getting a heads up on these 3 questions that it can help answer:

- Can I advertise on Facebook and make a profit?
- Will my products appeal to Facebook users?
- How much time should I devote to understanding how to advertise on Facebook?

The quiz is here: www.isfacebookforme.com

6/24/2010 12:35:36 PM

Google and SEO
[POLL] Help me pick my next 30-day challenge!

This month I made my 30 day challenge be “Don’t respond to email after 10 p.m.” I’ve done very well overall on this challenge, and I like the results a lot. I’ll probably try to keep up this behavior. Now I need to pick my next challenge. I read through the 350+ suggestions and comments that [...]

6/24/2010 12:08:34 PM

Google Analytics
Want Higher Landing Page Quality Scores in Google? Here's How:

Google Recently rolled out a new series of advanced tests for their Google Advertising Professionals program, and in some of the study material they explain what affects advertiser's landing page quality score.

Here are three areas Google wants you to focus on to help ensure your website receives a decent quality score:

"Relevant & Original Content"

*Make sure visitors can easily find what your ad promises
*Don't copy content from other sites, make sure your copy is authentic and original

"Transparency"

*Openly share information about your business (contact information, address, about us section)
*Only charge for items that are actually ordered
*Follow through on every promo and promise you make

"Navigability"

*Make it easy for visitors to navigate around your site
*Avoid too many pop-ups, pop-unders, or other "annoying" elements
*Don't require visitors to register in order to get access to your site

For more information on which types of sites Google tends to give low quality scores to visit this informative page in their help center.

Poor landing page scores can lead to higher cost per clicks, limited ad exposures, and in some extreme cases Google may even shut down your account. Also, it's important to note that focusing and improving these aspects of your website is not a guarantee that your quality score will improve.

6/23/2010 9:31:04 AM

CEquity
Who needs "New Customers"?

I worked in 2 organizations’, which had a “sense of urgency” about existing customers. I was the head of Marketing for Shoppers’ Stop and later for HDFC Bank.

The CEO himself led the “sense of urgency” in both companies! At Shoppers’ Stop we built a base of Loyalty program customers (over a million customers) contributing to over 60% of store revenue and at HDFC bank we reduced cost of acquisition by cross selling to existing customers using analytics.

But generally I do not see the same urgency across companies and industry and so I was quite amazed to see this bold statement from the Macy’s CMO Peter Sachse in his keynote speech at the Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference talking about a shift in company focus. For Macy’s, “What we don’t need to do is get new customers,” Sachse said. Instead, “we realized that all we need to do is take care of those who already love us.”

Here’s how it all started: Last year, Macy’s embarked on an intense research project to better understand their current customers. They conducted dozens of focus groups. Talked with nearly a thousand people walking out of their stores. Combed through all of their transactional data to find themes in buying patterns and shopping habits.

The company has set out on a goal to encourage each existing customers to visit the store one more time each year. “Half the battle is won if we can get them to walk into our store,” Sachse said. “And if we convert them during that visit, our comp store sales will explode.” To accomplish that goal, he said, “We had to get a lot closer to the customer,” which has led to the company’s new strategy of customer-centricity.

Here are some tips from Peter Sachse on how Macy’s is making decisions with the customer in mind:

• Make merchandising decisions with the customer in mind. Macy’s used to let buyers make merchandising decisions strictly with P&L statements. Today, the company layers customer insight over the sales metrics, which helps buyers make more holistic decisions over how pulling a product might impact customer behavior and overall sales. The product is no longer king anymore, said Sachse. Instead, the customer is queen. (Or king, of course.)

• Start all meetings by asking “what will our customer get out of this discussion?” At Macy’s, Sachse says, “If there’s no answer, the meeting is over.”

• Create a customer-champion team. Macy’s Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren calls himself the chief customer officer. Who’s the customer champion in your company?

6/18/2010 11:34:00 PM

Google Analytics
How to Place Ads on YouTube with Google AdWords: Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, I showed how to launch YouTube promoted videos through Google AdWords. When you promote one of your videos, you are paying YouTube to funnel more traffic to the video... but the traffic still stays on YouTube. (Of course, you can include a call-to-action link in your video that goes to your website, but that is more a feature of the video than a specific advertising strategy.)

You probably want to do more than just get people to watch one of your videos in an environment controlled by YouTube. You want to get people to come to your website where they can take a desired action and you can make money.

There are multiple ways you can get your ads to show on YouTube searches, inside and alongside other people's videos. With the right targeting, this can be a very profitable way to take advantage of YouTube's enormous amount of traffic.

Text Ads in YouTube Search Results

YouTube is a Google search partner. If your AdWords campaign is opted into the Google search partners network (in the campaign settings), your ads will also be displayed on YouTube for relevant searches. The problem is that Google currently provides no way to segment or optimize keywords/bids/ads for a specific search partner.

Be aware that YouTube promoted videos get preference on their search result pages. As more people use promoted videos, there won't be much room left for traditional text ads.

Ads on YouTube Content (Video) Pages

Ads on the YouTube content (video) pages can be one of three types: text, video, or image. In part one, I showed how to get your promoted YouTube video to show up on content pages. In the section below, I'll explain how to target YouTube video pages with ads of various formats that take users directly to your website.

In order to use any of the ad formats described below on YouTube, you'll need to have the proper campaign settings in Google AdWords.

Step 1: Target managed placements

In the campaign settings, target "Relevant pages only on the placements and audiences I manage" in the Content network.

Step 2: Set YouTube as your only managed placement in your campaign ad groups

In the "Networks" tab in your ad group, add "youtube.com" as a managed placement. You have a few options at this point. You probably don't want to simply target all of YouTube with your ads -- instead you want to target only the YouTube visitors that would be interested in what you have to offer.

There are two methods available for targeting the specific segment of YouTube visitors most likely to be interested in your offer:

Only target specific videos
Instead of adding "youtube.com" as a managed placement, you can use the YouTube Video Targeting Tool to get the placement URLs for specific YouTube categories, channels, or videos. Keep in mind that only a subset of YouTube videos are available for direct targeting.
Refine your generic "youtube.com" placement with keywords
If you'd rather target all videos related to a list of relevant keywords, then go ahead and add "youtube.com" as a managed placement, but refine your ad group targeting by adding keywords to the ad group as well. Your ads will then only show on YouTube video pages relevant to your keyword list. This is the simplest option and will usually give you more traffic than targeting specific videos.

Once the above campaign & ad group settings and placements are completed, the ad formats included in your ad groups will determine the eligible ad blocks on YouTube. Below are the possibilities...

Ads Beside the Video

Image ads size 300x250 are eligible for display to the right of the video on YouTube. This is a great placement that can yield high CTR for relevant ads.

Ads Inside the Video Itself

There are four ad formats available for getting your ad to show up in someone else's video:

Text Ads
Any text ads you add normally to your YouTube campaign will be eligible for display in the bottom section of YouTube partner videos. These show up for a few seconds during the video and then at the end.
Image Ads (InVideo Static Image)
Image ads have a much higher CTR than text ads, so you should use this format whenever possible. YouTube accepts in-video static images advertising size 480x70 that show up on the bottom of the video (like the text ad). This isn't a standard image size within AdWords, so you'll need to add it through the Display Ad Builder tool.

In the "Audio and Video" category, choose the "InVideo Static Image" format.

In-Stream Video Ad
As above, the in-stream video ad is a Display Ad Builder format found in the same category. It can either be 15 or 30 seconds in length and plays either before, during, or after the main video. (The system chooses at what point in the main video your video ad will play.)

Note that in-video image and video ads both allow a companion banner size 300x250 that can accompany your in-video ad. When eligible, this ad will let you do a near-takeover of the video page with an in-video ad and a complimentary image ad at the same time. The companion banner upload is found in the display ad builder settings for your ad.

Your bid and quality score will need to be high enough to win both auctions for the companion banner to display. If the companion banner doesn't make the cut, your primary in-video ad will still be eligible for display.

As you can see, there are a lot of options available for targeting YouTube with your ads.

6/14/2010 9:38:52 AM

Google and SEO
Give Buzz another look

Have you given Buzz a try recently? Robert Scoble just asked if it was time to reconsider Buzz. Coincidentally I said almost the same thing in a question and answer session with Danny Sullivan last week at the SMX Advanced search conference. I’ll repeat what I said last week. Do you remember when you first started [...]

6/13/2010 10:01:24 PM

CEquity
Why “Less is More” in Retail?

Retailers find they sell a lot more of nearly everything by reducing the number of brands on offer, but figuring out what should stay and what should go is not easy. In economics they call it the "paradox of choice," the idea that a shopper, when faced with multiple options tends to focus too much on which item to choose, and is therefore less satisfied with the item she finally picks.

Reducing the number of products can help companies increase sales by as much as 40% while cutting costs by between 10 and 35%, according to a 2007 study by consultant Bain & Co.

Here is an extract from an interesting article in The Globe & Mail:

Several months ago Wal-Mart Canada Corp. decided to overhaul one of the staples of its grocery business – the peanut butter aisle. It dropped two of its five lines of peanut butter to free up scarce shelf space for cinnamon spreads. But the decision didn’t cost the retailer a single jar in sales. With fewer selections to browse, customers wound up purchasing more than before.“Folks can get overwhelmed with too much variety,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising officer at Wal-Mart in Mississauga. “With too many choices, they actually don’t buy.”

In a reversal, retailers are now reducing the amount of choice on their shelves. After years of tempting customers with ever expanding arrays of brands, hues, sizes and flavours, they’re racing to simplify their offerings. The recession has encouraged them to focus on top sellers and private labels while throwing marginal products overboard.

But look at the India situation:

Here are some facts from a recent article by Meenakshi Radhakrishnan-Swami

FMCG companies in India have had a fairly smooth run until now - given that the average kirana is 150-200 sq ft and has space for less than 1,000 SKUs, they didn't need to create endless product variations and extensions of the same brands.

Compare this with Barry Schwartz's list in his 2004 bestseller The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More, based on a visit to his local supermarket in the US: 285 types of cookies (21 options in chocolate chip alone), 95 different snacks, 360 shampoo types, 40 options for toothpaste, 275 varieties of breakfast cereal, 175 types of teabags.

Schwartz's supermarket was a "not particularly large store", but Indian consumer goods companies would struggle (and fail) to stock even that level of products (and remember, this book is three years old): Cadbury India has over 100 SKUs in two categories, Procter & Gamble sells over 320 SKUs across five categories, while Hindustan Lever has more than 700 SKUs in over 20 categories.

If hypermarket visitors are not to be confronted by acres of empty shelves, then, consumer goods companies will have to expand their portfolios substantially. "

Here is my view:

I wonder if Retailers would like to explore using their Loyalty data to understand purchase behaviour at an SKU level. Companies like Big Bazaar & Spencers would have humongous amount of data which can be used effectively. Analytics on this data would throw up actionable insights.
Also I am sure that a Retailer could partner very effectively with a credit card company to further overlay information on his loyalty card behaviour and analyse his assortment better. Partnered analytics is still a new concept in India and I wonder how it could explode action-ability.

6/6/2010 4:53:00 AM

Google and SEO
SEO site review session from Google I/O 2010

A couple weeks or so ago, we did an SEO site review session at Google I/O 2010. The video from that session is now live: The video is about an hour long, but I hope it’s a pretty good use of your time if you’re interested in search engine optimization. Enjoy!

6/4/2010 5:02:53 PM

Google and SEO
SEO Advice: Make a web page for each store location

If your company has a bunch of store locations, please don’t hide that information behind a search form or a POST. If you want your store pages to be found, it’s best to have a unique, easily crawlable url for each store. Ideally, you would also create an HTML sitemap that points to the web [...]

6/3/2010 2:30:42 PM

CEquity
Making Hospitality Marketing Customer-centric

Most often hospitality industry talk a lot about customer service at the property as a key differentiator to customer experience & satisfaction.

I believe this is not the case and most often, it starts with even before the customer visits the hotel or the restaurant of choice. Also, there are many a times, the post usage experience is forgotten and very rarely have I ever seen any credible data-led customer marketing intiatives in this phase.

It was interesting to see Intercontinental Hotels do very interesting customer marketing work in this area. Here are some interesting facts:

Intercontinental Hotel Group’s (IHG’s) uses of data-driven marketing to improve communications with existing customers and prospects is an interesting case study for many hotel groups across the world.

Lincoln Barrett, vice president for guest marketing and alliances, shared that, for IHG, building a customer-centric marketing strategy is based on 3 Key pillars:

          - Invest in technology
          - Expand into new frontiers
          - Build a centralized customer organization

She was talking at the UNICA Marketing Innovation Summit in Orlando.

She talked about the need for real-time data mart that would allow IHG to match the data it was gathering through proprietary and third-party sources to existing customer information.
According to her this step also made it possible to gain immediate access to data for analysis or campaign building purposes – a significant upgrade to IHG's previous functionality, which updated records in batches and only made data available some 30 days after a customer incident (like a hotel stay).
She talked about some interesting trends in hospitality Marketing - Right Time marketing, Channel Synergy, Glocal Communication, Non-member marketing etc.

5/30/2010 2:23:00 PM

Google Analytics
How to Place Ads on YouTube with Google AdWords: Part 1

In search volume alone, YouTube is the #2 search engine behind Google itself. Yet even with its gigantic size, it is easy for YouTube to get passed up by online advertisers. Many advertisers ignore the opportunity due to the convoluted process required to explicitly target YouTube with ads. This means there is less competition for ad space on YouTube and great rewards for those who can crack the code.

In this post I hope to clear up the confusion and tell you exactly how to get your ads showing on YouTube.YouTube is both a search engine when searching for videos and a content site when watching videos. While there are a few high-dollar ad buys available directly through YouTube, most of the ad inventory can be purchased through Google AdWords on a CPC or CPM basis. Generally speaking, YouTube as a search engine is reached through a search targeted AdWords campaign. YouTube as a content site is reached through a content or placement targeted AdWords campaign.

YouTube Promoted Video Ads

When you do a search on YouTube, two types of ads can show up: sponsored text ads and promoted video ads. The sponsored text ads are brought in through YouTube's search partnership with Google. If your campaign is opted into the search partner network it is automatically eligible to display on YouTube search results. You can't explicitly target your text ads on the YouTube search results page -- it happens behind the scenes.

You can, however, explicitly target the YouTube search results page with a promoted video. A promoted video is a YouTube video you pay to get people to watch. You'd probably only want to do this if there is some call to action in the video itself that will encourage viewers to visit your actual website after watching your video.

If there is a promoted video eligible for display on a YouTube search result page (i.e. if you are bidding on that query), it will always rank higher than sponsored text ads. This is because YouTube wants to keep people on their own site. The sponsored text ads link to external sites while the sponsored video ads link to a specific video on YouTube.

So here's how to post your promoted video ad...

Create a Google AdWords campaign opted into both Google Search and Google Search Partners in the campaign settings. If you want your promoted video ad displayed on relevant video watch pages across YouTube, you must also opt into Google's content network. You may wish to create a separate campaign for this purpose so you can use different keyword lists for YouTube search vs. YouTube content targeting.
Create your ad groups as you would normally, but skew the keywords toward searches that would be popular on YouTube. You can use the YouTube keyword suggestion tool for ideas.
The ads themselves are what makes this a YouTube promoted video campaign. Don't include any standard text or image ads, otherwise the network settings above will kick in and you'll indeed be targeting Google search + partners. Include only ads of a specific format: a Display Ad Builder ad using the "YouTube Promoted Videos Template." This is found in the "Audio and Video" category of Display Ad Builder. Once you choose this format, you'll be able to select the YouTube video you wish to promote.

What about getting people to your own website? You're paying Google/YouTube to get someone to visit another page on YouTube's site. That can't be your end goal. Of course your video will probably mention your website and you'll probably have a link to your site in the video description -- but YouTube gives you another call to action link you need to use: a Call-to-Action Overlay.

A call-to-action overlay resembles a sponsored text ad at the bottom of your video. It shows up at the bottom of your video for a brief period of time during the video and then at the end of the video. The difference from a sponsored text ad is that it doesn't say "sponsored ad," it is free for you to use, and it links to your own website.

Before posting your promoted video campaign, perform the following steps to activate your call-to-action overlay:

Sign in to your YouTube account
Click Account at the top of your dashboard.
Click Edit next to the video you will be promoting.
Fill in all required fields under Call-to-Action Overlay.
Click save changes when you're done making all changes to your video.

Here's some more helpful tips from Google on how to optimize your promoted video campaigns.

In part 2 of this post I'll show you how to target the content side of YouTube and get your ads displaying on relevant videos.

5/28/2010 9:18:11 AM

CEquity
Analytics is sexy ..what about making it work!!

Making Analytics sexy doesn’t make it easier to implement! And this is where the challenge lies in Analytics. Striking headlines make for easy copy but don’t do wonders for executing analytic intent within a corporation.

Unfortunately executing analytics is hard work and demands the coming together of business skills, advanced statistical knowledge and technology capabilities. For years there have been sexy headlines about a retailer who found that diapers and beer are purchased together by men on Fridays. Recently one can see this story about Why Visa Predicts Your Divorce?

Unfortunately the challenges faced at the implementation level are really about making your way through issues about company's structure, process, incentives & the really big one about “silo mentality”.

Making a great Analytics scorecard is possibly only about 35-40% of what is required –much more needs to be done in terms of change management and all the nitty gritty of wading through the implementation. The greatest analytics would not solve the problem of the sales channel continuing to sell a higher margin product! Even if analytics predicts that the next product more likely to be purchased is a different one-the sales channel would continue to sell the higher margin product. In such situation what is needed is the ability to be able to articulate the business case for analytics which involves having a voice in the decision making process of the corporation. Often Analytics teams may be structured as independent support functions and then they would not have the authority to seek such changes.

Key requirements to make Analytics work in my view are as follows:

1. Allow analytics to be both centralized & de centralized-it should not be seen as a function but rather as a necessary process to achieve more profitable results. Some companies who have “got it” tend to have had a visionary leader at the CEO level who drove this vision through-Gary Loveman at Harrah’s Casino is an example.

2. For the Analytics process to mature in any company –leadership must build a “evidence seeking” culture towards decision making. Like the old saying-“In God we trust , all else must bring me data”

Meanwhile the sexy headlines are fun to read, so enjoy!! http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-04-06/how-mastercard-predicts-divorce/full/

5/28/2010 1:10:00 AM

CEquity
Getting past lip service on Customers!

Everyone speaks of being Customer centric and I am sure you have been reading about it for years. Different names are used for it: Relationship marketing, One-on-One marketing or Customer marketing! The essence of it is often lost in the mad rush that exists in a growing market.

Increasingly India is becoming a Service economy, but our mindset is still manufacturing. We have over 600 million customers who are on some customer database either of a Telco, Bank, Retailer or Travel company. These customers are "addressable media"they hugely value a differentiated treatment at the retail point. because we know them by name and understand their behavior patterns. Retailers by the nature of their business have an even more "intimate connect" with their customers. Customers tend to become "store loyal" over a period of time and

It is far easier to market a "product" which a consumer can hold vs. a "service" which is by nature so fragmented. There is also an increasing trend towards "service-isation" of products. A washing machine is more than a product, its servicing needs are a "service offering". You could imagine a brand like "Coke" offering "dating" services.

As the Indian economy moves increasingly towards services, consumers move from Brands to Services to Experiences. Coffee costs are low at the wholesale market and we sell it as an "experience" at a higher end restaurant at over Rs. 50 per cup.

A silent revolution is on in the minds of urban consumers in India. And the revolution is about a change in expectation about how brands "build relationships" with customers. The question is, are marketers who have been used to "building brands" able to fathom the changes that "building relationships" demand.

More critically what do traditional Marketers need to do to effectively produce Return on their marketing expenditure?

To summarize, getting past purely doing lip service to ROI led Customer marketing needs the following pillars to be in place:

1. Marketing must have a significant voice in driving the "customer" agenda and setting the pace for CRM.

2. The organization must have a compelling "evidence" based culture which persuades marketing to look at customer behavior before and after every marketing campaign. This forces the marketer to look at "return on customer" along with other metrics like "return per square foot" or "Return on inventory".

3. Marketing must be sufficiently automated, using technology to do this at scale. But the automation can vary right from an excel sheet to expensive analytical and marketing automation technology. Companies should take the call of level of technology investment very carefully and it should match their appetite to do "intensive change management".

5/25/2010 11:08:00 AM

CEquity
Do you need a Customer Intelligence unit!

Some years ago, I was the head of marketing at HDFC bank and we had embarked upon a data led marketing strategy. At the heart of this strategy was the ability to extract knowledge about customers and convert that knowledge into business impact.

So we built from scratch ,a team of analysts who pored over tonnes of data to come up with actionable cross sell models, amongst other stuff! The question was what do you call this team! The intuitive answer that we had, was to call the team the Customer Intelligence unit! This was possibly the first real CIU to be created amongst Indian marketers!

So what is Customer Intelligence(CI)? Dave Frankland of Forrester, defined CI as, "The management and analysis of customer data from all sources, used to drive marketing performance and business strategy. Referring to a report published last year, for which Forrester surveyed 300 CI professionals, Frankland said the analysis firm had concluded: "not everyone understands the value of [CI]."

Forrester segmented the responders into three different levels of intelligence leveraging:

Functional: 54 percent of the professionals surveyed use customer data at a very functional level but don't have the budget, people, and respect to be more strategic and more valuable in their respective organizations
Marketing: 34 percent were middle-of-the-pack — they were only starting to use CI cross-channel to drive more functions
Strategic: Only 12 percent measured the value of CI and used it as a strategic weapon.

Those who did measure CI value told Forrester that CI drives business results. Almost two-thirds said it improved their customer lifetime value. More than three fourths said it improved customer satisfaction.

Have a look at this interesting article from Forrester:

Creating Customer Intelligence capability

Happy reading!

5/21/2010 10:35:00 PM

Google Analytics
Ecommerce Website Owners: Win A $35,000 Makeover!

We're very excited to announce that BigCommerce, the leading innovator in hosted ecommerce software for small business merchants (and one of our fabulous clients!), has just launched the BigCommerce $35,000 Ecommerce Makeover Contest to discover online merchants who have the potential to become the next ecommerce giant (think Amazon.com, Zappos.com) but need a little help to do it!

BigCommerce Contest.jpg

From now until June 15th, 2010, small online business owners can enter the contest by posting a 60-second video to YouTube with the tags "bigcommerce" and "ecommerce contest" that communicates why they should win the ecommerce makeover and other relevant information about their business.

The grand prize winner will receive all of the following amazing services and resources to help grow their business faster:

BigCommerce Diamond Store, with two-year free subscription
Professional store redesign & migration of the store to BigCommerce
Two-year MailChimp email marketing subscription
One-year Fan Appz Pro license for social media marketing
Google AdWords Account Audit & Strategy Session* from ROI Revolution!
Online sales and marketing program consulting from Sales Rescue Team
Significant promotion & various PR opportunities
Full case study posted on BigCommerce.com

Four runner-ups will receive a two-year BigCommerce Gold Store subscription, PR opportunities and a case study on BigCommerce.com.

BigCommerce invites eligible contestants to submit their videos now through June 15, 2010. Five finalists will be selected by the judges to enter the final round, at which point finalist videos will be posted on the BigCommerce web site and Facebook page where the public will have an opportunity to vote for their favorite submitted video. Public voting runs from June 29, 2010 through July 9, 2010. The grand prize winner will be announced on July 15, 2010!

To be eligible, contestants must be online merchants based in the U.S. with less than 1,000 products on their site and have been selling online for at least one year. The contest is open to both current BigCommerce clients as well as customers using other ecommerce shopping cart platforms.

More contest details and official entry guidelines can be found here. Good luck and we look forward to helping develop the next ecommerce giant!

*Don't qualify for the contest but still want to grow your online business? Learn how we can help you get the most out of your online advertising with a comprehensive AdWords account audit & strategy session!

UPDATE:
As of May 25, 2010, the contest is now open to anyone (18 years or older) in ANY country with little to no experience selling online!

The contest was previously limited to US residents only with at least one year of online selling experience.

Click here for all the details and official entry guidelines. Best of luck to all the contestants out there!

5/21/2010 2:07:18 PM

CEquity
How to make information affect behaviour?

I read an interesting article on how data which is coverted into information affects behaviour. Most often, all data analyzed and presented as information to users or even to customers may not necessarily have the desired impact to affect behaviour.

Here are some interesting perspectives and points that we need to think to help present data in a manner that can seriously help people change behaviour:

Intuit/Mint are great examples of customers having their financial data(online) of where they spend their monies and how they invest & save. By uploading this data, do people change their behaviour to either spend less or save more? - Mint definitely believes so. According to Mint, they started as analysis tool but slowly progressed into providing insights to customers on their current behaviour and promoting actions that affect behaviour!
The question really is if data can help change behaviour, how do we present this data so that it really has a telling impact on the customers/users who are using it?

The idea data according to this article that can help this is:

a. Passive data ( The user has nothing to do with this data)

b. Non-invasive

c. Real-time

d. Focussed ( Like a dashboard with key metrics)

e. Linked in real-time to the desired effect

f. Simple to gain insight and understand

g.Linked to private and personal benefits ( Weight loss/gain)

h. Linked to public benefits ( Reduces carbon footprint)

i Quirky positive feedback

j. Non-threatening negative feedback

k. Socially connected to take advantage of human nature

This led me to think how we present various data to our stakeholders across businesses and user departments today. We still have a long way to go especially given the fact that discovery of insights after mining the data, needs to be presented well for it to change behaviour across an organization. Also, if we want customers to either buy from us more or recommend alternative products or services, it needs to be done a lot more intuitively by presenting the facts & insights well to get them to consider our recommendation.

5/17/2010 10:26:00 PM

CEquity
Affiliate Marketing meets Social Marketing

With digital marketing taking centrestage, it time to reassess and evaluate age-old marketing techniques and adapt them to new digital world. Here's how Domino's Pizza is doing it.

Domino's Pizza is using the persuasive power of socially connected consumers who have huge influence over each other; the key idea here is how they harness that power and put it to work for thier brand—with rewards, of course, for the consumers in question.

Domino's Pizza has developed a widget that consumers can place on their social networking profile, blog or other online presence, which their friends can then click on in order to order a pizza. For every order, they get 0.5 percent of the sale.