The important question for big data isn’t, “what is it?,” but rather “what should I do with it?” Big data is no more than lots of bits and bytes from everywhere that mean little in and of themselves, but with expertise and vision big data can offer insights that will help your business grow. These insights might be about your customers, or about your suppliers, or your processes.

If you’re investing in big data, it’s critical for you to have answered the “why” question. At issue is not whether you need big data capabilities—you absolutely do. The important point is to understand early on, before investing, what your goal is with the investment, and how it will help you to grow your business. Only with a clear strategy is it possible to separate actionable insights from useless noise, and big data is mostly noise. Left unanalyzed all those FourSquare check-ins at Dunkin’ Donuts won’t really do you, or anyone else, much good, but sorting through them takes expertise, the right tools and some patience.

Big data offers a gold mine in terms of insights for those who know how to avoid the massive veins of iron pyrite and focus on the slivers of the real thing hidden within. What makes it hard is that the mine itself is growing everyday; you can dig deeper, but more stuff grows behind, ahead and all around. What constitutes forward movement in this scenario is like saying which way is up if you’re floating in outer space.

This is why a clear strategy is critical. It’s also the elephant in the room anytime a conversation about big data comes up. Big data isn’t the point; the point is what can be done with it. Getting started means, as with any good marketing strategy, defining the goals first. What do you want to accomplish?

The answer should be clear and focused. For example, “I want learn how customers shop differently from Monday to Thursday” is a more effective goal than, “I want to get people to add one more item to their cart.” The second goal can come after getting some analysis on current behavior; don’t try to change shopper behavior until you know more about it, and specifically what you want to change.

If knowledge is power, then big data is the nuclear core waiting for the right inputs that will create a reaction to deliver nearly limitless energy. But it takes more than a pile of uranium to spark a reaction, and the same is true for big data. The nuclear physics analogy is apt in the sense that deriving a benefit from the mountains of data we can collect with very little effort is right up there with “rocket science” in terms of difficulty.

The right approach will include simple steps that build on each other, and can be changed as discoveries are made. It may be called big data, but tackling it will require small advances in the direction of the larger vision. Get those nailed down and you’ll be on the right track. But make sure you know what you’re after, and how the answers you seek will help your business grow. It all starts with asking the right question.

Social media has taught us that everyone has a voice and many brands, businesses and startups are encouraged to empower their employees to share in the company’s grand vision, participate in defining the voice of the company, create content and even act as the companies' ambassadors.

Here are 5 reasons you don’t want to invite everyone to the party:

1. CREATIVE CHEMISTRY CAN KILL

The wrong mix in a creative meeting can kill that meeting. In a situation where ideas are flying, an errant look of disapproval or a quick interruption can shoot a fledgling idea right out of the air, and I’ve seen it happen.

Look out for the naysayers as well! They believe they’re just pointing out potential flaws in new ideas, but what they’re really doing is casting themselves as the arbiters of good and bad before it’s really time for anyone to be making these kinds of judgements. Lock that guy in a room until the meeting’s over then show him what you have when the ideas are ready for scrutiny.

2. YOU SPEND VALUABLE ENERGY BEATING BACK THE BAD IDEAS

If you’re like me, you think there’s a place at the table for everyone’s ideas. I’m doing a 180 on that. Explaining to the group why this or that idea doesn’t fit takes energy and reduces focus. Regardless of the group you’ve assembled, there will always be some of this, but being selective about who you invite can limit the energy and focus spent on thinking through, debating and ultimately rejecting certain misguided ideas.

Plus, some people just have really sucky ideas.

3. YOU WASTE TIME IN MEETINGS

Listening to everyone takes time and attention away from the collective goal which should always be to solve a problem. I don’t mean a problem as in something bad, necessarily. I mean like a math problem, an equation that needs to be solved, like how do we reach new customers and make them care about this product or service?

4. THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF CREATIVITY

OK, there are different kinds of creativity. There’s business creativity and there’s strategic creativity and then there’s the people who can think up funny ideas, paint paintings, make music and invent stuff. Perhaps the most dangerous people  in the room are the ones who think they’re creative but really aren't. These can often be the most vocal in the group and need to be uninvited fast.

5. EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT AGENDAS

Your VP of Sales may not have the same immediate interests as your Social Media Manager. You may even have existing animosities between different team members. Some may have political reasons for shooting down others' ideas. Some people may love speaking up with their ideas to show how active and committed they are to the success of the company regardless of whether their ideas are productive, constructive or even on topic. Others may not be very vocal and hang back, deferring to others.

THE SOLUTION

Everyone on your team is smart in different ways. There’s a reason people gravitate to different jobs and different industries. There’s a reason why people like different foods and do different things. So be selective about who you invite to which meeting and stay focused on which problems you're solving and who's best suited to solving them.

The big story in 2020 is a Quantified Everywhere advertising landscape.  We are in the nascent days of this movement today as content targeting delivers digital advertising pegged to browsing and social behaviors. Data-driven advertising newsrooms, like sparks & honey, leverage insights from predictive analytics to drive real-time creative executions and content delivery that is more of the moment, more compelling and more engaging than traditional calendar and media-based advertising.

But this is only the beginning of the data-driven advertising newsroom of the future. The combination of quantified, sensor-based data, social data and transactional data will create a real-time marketing nirvana for the advertising industry. It will also open up new media spaces by turning currently unavailable physical environments into new storytelling experiences. Screens will be everywhere via new materials and projection technologies, sensors will be embedded in ALL physical objects and link ALL objects together into a unified network, and the average consumer will have enhanced sensory capabilities via the ever increasing computation power of 2020 Smart devices.

At the center of the Agency of the Future will be a sophisticated data-driven bridge with companion AI robots. Imagine a wall of screens and projection technology that constantly feeds data and information that cultural strategists, data scientists, creatives and AI bots can quickly access to take the pulse of what is happening now and what is expected to happen in the future.  The “bridge” in the agency of the future will operate more like the user interfaces from the movie Minority Report with predictive analytics and machine learning playing the role of the human-like Precogs. That is, it will be an always-on, predictive command center, both for accessing and analyzing data and information in real-time, and also for deploying the right branded stories and experiences to the right consumers at the right moment.

This model will allow for seamless shifting between rematerialization and dematerialization. Digital technology and data will be used to create a deep understanding of consumers, digitize the physical world with one click, rematerialize digital files via fast, real-time 4D printers and distribute branded content via the complex networks of physical and virtual screens.

Imagine passing someone on the street that is wearing an amazing pair of sun glasses. A digital ad for that item could appear as you pass by and simply by indicating you want it, the glasses could be digitally delivered to your 4D printer where it would be manufactured and assembled. The speed at which we go from the digital world to the physical world and back again will be nearly instantaneous.
Think this all sounds like far-fetched science fiction? Data-driven newsrooms, predictive bridges, AI robot strategists and 4D printers are all being developed today. These fringe signals will continue to double in capacity and performance each year, while costs are driven down. The effect of exponentials will shift the industry from an outdated, linear model to what I see as a Quantified Everywhere advertising renaissance.

Who you choose to spend time with in the office can affect your learning curve and, consequently, how prosperous you become. In order to learn everything you can to achieve your vision, you need to surround yourself with colleague, employers and clients who are on fire, people who have a clear vision. This is true of friends and even romantic relationships, but it’s especially true of the people you work with .

The goal is to accelerate learning while making it fun. Being with people you like who are also skilled and prosperous allows you to almost effortlessly develop the same skills that make them successful. The transformation happens through osmosis.

You should admire the people for their determination, for the knowledge they’ve acquired, for the values they live by, and for their efforts to achieve success not only in their job, but in their life. To help you spot those people, look for these six attributes:

• The proactive: Those who are designing their life with a plan in mind
• The goal-oriented: People who constantly give themselves something to work toward and a way to build a sense of accomplishment
• The passionate: People who exude energy and ideas, and follow them through to achieve great things
• The curious: Those who are constantly exploring and learning, who are multifaceted in their interests, and who enjoy sharing what they’ve learned with others
• The unconventional: Those who are innovators, who ignore the naysayers, who make their own paths
• The connected: People who may know other people whom you could turn to for career advice or help

Spending more time with these kinds of people will not only provide you with a shorter path to prosperity, but will also be a lot of fun. So remember, pursue the passionate, avoid the zombies. Try it!

English: Rackwick on Hoy. The sea was still & a profound green that changed with the light. Rackwick was almost deserted in spite of the warm day. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“What exactly is a buyer insight?”

I was asked this recently.  It made me think.  It is a term you hear and easy to quickly assume you know.  Turns out, there seems to be confusion given the rise in the use of the term “insight”.

Defined

A good place to start is with a brief answer to the question itself.  Here is my guiding answer:

A buyer insight is a profound, not-so-obvious, revelation as well as understanding of buyers, which leads to new innovations, value creation, marketing & sales capabilities, and business growth.

The basis of this definition is a buyer insight must be profound and it must alter an existing direction into one offering growth.

Do Not Confused Fact With Insight

One of the biggest areas of confusion I have noticed is misinterpreting a fact as an insight. One way of putting it is insight goes well beyond fact.  To be profound means an insight is an often unforeseen as well as unarticulated observation, which leads to a new deep understanding.  This new deep understanding then reshapes business growth strategies.

Uncovering facts of how buyers do things can result in improving effectiveness.  However, improving effectiveness is not a clear direct connection to a profound insight.  Mislabeling fact as insight can actually impede deep understanding and innovation.

Simply put, labeling as a buyer insight the “how” of buying processes can lead to a dead end.  How companies and buyers establish criteria for purchase decisions is a focus on process and even established policies.  While in B2B marketing, this knowledge may be new, for B2B sales it is not.  I often get this reaction from B2B sales reps when they see some of the information resulting from buyer personas – “wait, isn’t this the same as Miller Heiman” or the many other sales training methodologies.

Many a good sales leader expects their sales force to be effective at understanding how to mesh the sales process with the buying process.  Marketing effectiveness is enhanced when we also understand the early stages of the buying process involving digital research and evaluation.  Understanding “how” helps us be more effective but such facts may not necessarily be a profound game changer we can call a buyer insight.

The Softer Side of Why

A buyer insight is derived from what I call the softer side of why.  They stem from buyer goals, fears, motivations, perceptions, why buyers think as they do, why they desire, and why they value certain things over others.  As you can see, these are often very hard for buyers to articulate.   They are usually not so obvious as well.  It takes hard work, digging deeper, face time, and use of skilled techniques to reach a special understanding we can call a buyer insight.

An common illustration we can all relate to can help make the point:

My hunch is many readers are Starbuck’s lovers.  A well known fact is Starbuck’s gained a level of insight on how customers were becoming loyal to Starbuck’s not necessarily for the coffee itself but for the experience.  Starbuck’s took insight to a deeper level.  Uncovering the insight of music being the largest element of the experience.  It was not apparent at first (not so obvious).  This profound insight led to a new business growth strategy.  The Starbucks compilation CD’s.  Which has proven to be a way of enhancing customer loyalty and creating a new revenue category.

In my recent article, How Activity-Based Buyer Persona Development Generates Opportunities, I used an illustration of a B2B situation whereby the decision to choose logistics and transportation carriers were being made in loading centers versus the front office.  What was the reason why?

The motivation was a personal goal and desire to get home on time.  The archetypal buyer persona was in their 30's and had family activities right after work.  One carrier’s system was perceived as taking longer than the other.  This perception resulted in the competitor system being chosen more often.  The profound insight led to a redesign of a new speedier ordering system.  A new marketing campaign was developed to subtly highlight you can get home on time.  This was not-so-obvious at first and something Directors of Logistics were reluctant to share with superiors - let alone the selling company’s sales or marketing reps.

These illustrations serve as examples of profound buyer insights, which led directly to business growth.

The takeaway here for B2B Marketing and Sales leaders is this: think of buyer research and buyer persona development as a gateway to profound buyer insights.  Challenge the presentation of facts as insights.  You are in need of game changing buyer insights to be a market leader – not mere facts.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.  If I can be of help, schedule time with me at So Helpful Tony.)

Related articles

• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing
• Map Content to the 5 Phases of the B2B Buyer Persona Buying Cycle
• How Activity-Based Buyer Persona Development Generates Opportunities
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

• What is a Buyer Insight? (tonyzambito.com)

I have displayed some images for your viewing pleasure.

I was in a text message/web support infinite loop that was leaving me very frustrated. I was receiving daily text messages with Monster.com info that I couldn't cancel. (I follow hiring trends as part of covering the marketing industry.) I tried canceling my Monster.com account, but continued to receive the texts. I reached out to their tech support, but received messages that told me to log in to change my settings. (But as I had already cancelled my account, this was obviously frustrating advice.) After four unsuccessful attempts to get help through the web form... I turned to Twitter.

I tweeted to @monstercareers for help. At first, no reply. So I blogged. (See the post below.) Then I found a phone # for employers who want to advertise on Monster.com, and hoping I could sweet talk my way in to tech support, I called... that's when things started to change.

• First, the person who I was connected with through Monster's phone # was very helpful. She connected me with tech support AND gave me their direct extension.
• Tech support gal Kendra was great to work with. She confirmed that my account was cancelled, and manually cancelled any alerts being sent to my email/phone.
• Then I received a tweet back from @monstercareers.
• Then... I received a personal email from the head of tech support for Monster with his direct line. I called. Not only was he helpful and friendly, but he stayed on the line with me making sure they had not only cancelled any email alerts, but to check to make sure I hadn't created any accounts I had forgotten about (I hadn't), etc.
• Then......... Monster.com PR called. Yes, my tweets and blog had caught the attention of the mother ship. Kristen was a tad guarded for about 5 seconds, as I was apparently an angry journalist out to make Monster.com look bad. As I'm actually a pretty nice person, who by this point was relieved by the amazing customer support she had received, we had a nice conversation and I told her how impressed I was by Monster.com's response.

Btw: this is where I want to clarify something. The text messages below are neither formatted by nor sent directly by the Monster.com communications team. Back when I had started my Monster.com account, I had set up an email/text message forwarding filter through gmail. Recently I had searched through old filters in my gmail and couldn't locate any that appeared to be text forwards of Monster emails, so was convinced the texts were coming directly from Monster. But I'm pretty sure the texts were forwards of email alerts. (Which also explains why I couldn't cancel "text message alerts" through my Monster.com account. So the gmail alerts are what is pictured below.) Learning this greatly changed my perspective.

Results and lessons?

The good news is, not only will I stop receiving the email alerts (which, as reminder, were forwarding as texts) within 10 days or fewer, I am also reminded of the power of social media. You see, I have 7,400 Twitter followers. Many of whom are marketers. Possibly someone with 50 followers would also have gotten a personal response from @monstercareers... but my bullhorn is a little larger, and I need to use it carefully.

This has also reminded me to be very cognizant of the user experience I'm helping create, and to take user feedback very seriously. Even though Monster.com was only responsible for part of my frustration (1. multiple helpdesk replies that told me to log in, though I was clearly stating that I had cancelled my account, 2. the 10 day delay on having email notifications stop (I know, not everything in tech can be immediate. But 10 days is a long time to wait, check, try again.), and 3. no other way to get help except through the web forms), my frustration was very real. The response I received from Monster.com respected that.

Which is why, no surprise to marketers, I have now gone from grumbling about a company to hailing them as a great example of customer service. This is the best result a customer service department can hope for, and yes, I've gone from complainer to evangelist.

So I will say it again: Monster.com rocks. Thanks Kendra, @monstercareers, Jaime, and Kristen.

I've included the original blog below, in case you find it interesting. But the real story is the Monster response. Which was great.

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Original blog post:

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I love following job boards. It's a great way to know what's trending in the industry. For example, I knew about Sony's Crackle two years ahead of time, because I saw that they were hiring web coders and media producers for a "new Sony media property." And Indeed.com is a treasure trove of who's doing what.

But recently, having a relationship with monster.com has become a, er, monster experience.

My Monster Problem

I don't remember when the monster.com text messages started. Obviously I must have added my mobile # to my account at some point. Something my 2013 self can't believe I did. (Maybe it was an additional account security confirmation option?) And obviously I must have clicked "yes" on some form about "would you like to be contacted via mobile about jobs that fit your selected options?" It made sense at the time. And it wasn't bad receiving a list daily of ten titles companies were hiring for in my area (LA media and marketing). LA is a great bellwether for the greater industry.

Fast forward to now.

I am receiving daily gibberish text messages from Monster (they're mostly nonsense characters, with no clickable links). And they come at inconsistent times. Midnight in NYC when I'm on a work trip and finally fall asleep (and am using my iPhone as an alarm)? Ping! 5:30 a.m. on a morning when I'm sick and really wanted to sleep in? Ping!

I want them to stop. Block them, you say? I would love to. They come from different phone numbers every time. I'm not kidding.

Left: Monster sends gibberish text messages with no clickable links / Right: Monster sends from a different phone number each time, so you can't block them

Cancel them out of my account? Well see, I had a genius moment that I greatly regret. Thinking I was too busy to poke around the account settings, I instead cancelled my Monster.com account thinking this would obviously make the text messages stop. Right? Um. No, now I'm locked out of Monster (by my own hand), with NO ACCESS to stopping the text messages.

Contact Monster support? Done. Four times. The various auto-reply messages tell me to log into my account and change the settings. I have replied multiple times that I CANCELLED MY ACCOUNT. Alas. Whether reply bots or very nice people, they don't get it and aren't helping.

Restart my account, add my phone #, wait a day, remove my #? That's the current attempt. I'll let you know how it goes. (And yes, my fresh new account let me add my phone # even though it's already in the system. Which made me wonder: does this mean ANYONE ELSE could add my #, and I'd be receiving text messages with NO WAY to stop them? Or did the system somehow know not to send me a confirmation text?)

In the meantime, I've taken to the social front. I tweeted to @monstercareers this morning. No reply yet, but maybe having 7,400 Twitter followers will give me a slight boost in being taken seriously? And now I am blogging.

Lessons for marketers

Brand loyalty is a valuable thing. So here's what I've learned, and want to apply at my own company:

1. DON'T ANNOY YOUR CUSTOMERS. If we send spammy texts, emails, Facebook posts, etc. our audiences won't take us seriously. It's much easier to lose goodwill with our customers than to build it. Protect your brand! Give your audience something of value at every touchpoint!

2. Don't over automate. I have a genuine complaint, and I can't find help. My next step will probably be contacting Monster's PR team. That's how desperate I am. Monster.com has a very efficient system. I get an auto-reply email within ten minutes of submitting a help desk request. But that's all. No human interaction. Nothing else I can do.

3. Reevaluate your user-side communications on a regular basis. First, how can Monster's communication team not be aware that they're sending gibberish text messages? They need to revisit all communication aspects on a regular basis, to make sure they're working correctly. But second, if they do know, aren't they embarrassed? These text messages, like everything else with Monster.com, are automated. Maybe Monster's comm department doesn't have much influence with their dev department? Or maybe the texts looked good at one point, but a system update messed up the display and it was never rectified? Whatever the case, it's not working.

Monster.com, I would love to do a follow up to this blog about how you've contacted me to help with my problem. You can reach me by clicking the "contact Bethany" link on my author page. I'd like to think you're proud of your brand, and don't want to pester your users with annoying-but-fixable problems.

In the meantime, any other ideas?

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UPDATE

I love social media. Received a reply from @monstercareers via Twitter a few minutes ago. I also found my way to a very helpful tech person named Kendra by calling Monster's phone # for employers who want to advertise, and asking if they could help me reach a tech person.

Not 100% sure the situation is fixed yet... but we're getting close.

Monster.com, consider this part 1 of my follow up blog about what a great experience it was working with you to solve this problem.

At the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF) annual “Rising Stars” Awards Dinner Tuesday night in NYC, Terri Bartlett – DMEF President  - announced the rebranding of the organization introducing a new name – Marketing EDGE (www.MktgEDGE.org), aligned with the organization’s mission to Educate, Develop, Grow & Employ the next generation of marketing leaders. This rebranding clarifies the organization’s mission and vision to all constituencies including students, corporations/employers, academics/educators and individuals.

“Rising Stars” Recognized & Celebrated

The evening was a major fundraising success with record-breaking attendance… in excess of 400 people created a “sold-out” event at Three-Sixty in a trendy downtown NYC venue. The evening celebrated 6 of the marketing industry’s “Rising Stars” (40YO and under) including JP Lind – Co-Founder SpotRight, Matt McGowan – MD, Americas – Incisive Media, Kim Postulart – Marketing Director – Democratic National Committee, Brion Roberto – Global Head – Digital Marketing & Social Media – Diageo, Slavi Samardzija – EVP, Market Intelligence – Wunderman/KBM, and John Wernz – EVP & CMO – Wealth Enhancement Group.

These next generation marketing leaders are steeped in digital marketing, marketing technology, analytics, social media, and mobile marketing skills. This underscores the importance of current and future education, training/development, internships/placements, student and educator forums being led by Marketing EDGE.

Epsilon receives Corporate Commitment Award

The evening also celebrated Epsilon as the recipient of the 2013 Corporate Commitment Award. Epsilon has been a consistent and long-term sponsor and champion of the Marketing EDGE programs.

Now Is An Ideal Time To Join MarketingEDGE

We encourage all students, executives and companies to check out the programs offered by MarketingEDGE including The Next Generation Leaders Forum, I-MIX, I-MAX, Student Career Forums, Scholarships, and Journal of Interactive Marketing.

If your company or organization has a talent management strategy to identify and acquire next generation marketing leaders, you need to consider joining Marketing EDGE (www.MktgEDGE.org) and speaking with Terri Bartlett about getting involved in one of the organizations programs as a volunteer, speaker, sponsor or Board Trustee.

As a Marketing Edge Executive Board member, please feel free to contact me to discuss sponsorship opportunities or answer any questions you may have about the mission and scope of Marketing EDGE and how you and your company can get involved.

The most underused feature in DFP allows you to upload rich-media creative like Flash graphical display ads in batch.  I think many ad traffickers attempt to use it but find it often fails to work.  They eventually give up reasoning that it is a browser incompatibility conflict especially with the older Javascript DFP interface.  I settled on this reasoning for a long time before my workload motivated me to contact DFP Support services directly to address this issue and I found out it is not something at all obvious to an experienced DFP user.  If you are using the older DFP Javascript interface often you will receive creative from clients in a Zip file.  The batch upload feature in DFP will accurately process this Zip file eventhough Zip is an accepted format.  You will usually see that once the files are uploaded as a Zip, the image back-up file is not associated to the correct Flash creative file even though you have selected your Flash creative template.  The situation has nothing to do with any glitch but rather a hidden step not documented.  That hidden step involves extracting the Zip file you receive from clients and reorganizing each creative into individual folders.  This is only worth your time if you work on campaigns with a large of number Flash creatives running at the same time, such as a manufacturer that wants to run different graphical ads for the many brands they sell. Here are the specific steps involved.

1. Unpack the Zip file you receive from clients containing your rich-media Flash ads.
2. Create a folder on your computer called HTML.
3. In that folder create folders with different names for each of your of the Flash ads you have.
4. Place the Flash graphical ad along with its back-up image file (usually a JPEG) under each of their own folder.
5. Go back to the top of your folder structure and compress the one folder called HTML. And what you should get is a Zip file that looks like HTML.zip.  Upload this file onto DFP using the batch feature, remembering to select your Flash creative template when doing so, so that DFP can insert the Flash file and back-up JPEG image properly into your code.

In the new web based version of DFP you can drag and drop your Flash and back-up image files from your desktop folder into your browser when you are at the screen asking for your batch files.

If you receive third-party tags,  DFP recommends that “if you upload a TXT file, DFP will set the creative type to third-party (instead of DFP inRed redirects). Keep in mind that if you want to upload more than one third-party creative, you need to have a separate text file for each creative,” from DFP Help Center.  If you are uploading only a few third-party tags and a batch process is not necessary, I personally prefer using the DFP inRed redirect tags that some clients provide over generic Javascript tags.  The reason being those DFP inRed redirect tags means the client is using DFA on their end and those tags, shorter and easier to handle, work between DFP and DFA. If you work closely with your client you may also “Get a text file from your DFA advertiser. Ask your DFA advertiser to export tags as a text file and to include internal redirect among the tag types,” from DFP Help Center.

Another underused feature of the basic DFP module is the sales intelligence it can provide if you fully utilize it to keep a record of your salespeople, their accounts and the rates of your campaigns. If you currently do not do this now, registering the names of your salespeople and the information on clients such as key contacts and address as well as the rates of campaigns already running will definitely be labour intensive.  Even so, being able to group accounts by sales rep and the revenues of each campaign will let you run regular as well as year-end reports in minutes, for your sales and finance teams, that usually take up days of an ad trafficker’s time. In reality it is simply a one-time project that ought to take no more than a couple of weeks and once the information is all entered into DFP it requires minimal effort to maintain and keep up.

Finally schedule automated reports for clients that request information on their campaigns regularly.  Offer to set up in DFP weekly, biweekly or monthly reports to be sent to other people including your client and salesperson, not only yourself.  DFP lets you capture campaign information for the past week, past month or for the lifetime of a longer campaign up to the day the report is generated. It has these reports emailed out on a Monday morning in the form of CSV or EXCEL files attached to a pre-populated email that you compose.  In light of this also send yourself and your ad ops supervisor campaign delivery reports that will let you see any ad campaigns that are missing their regularly scheduled impression goals as soon as possible.

Some have adopted an evolving hourglass paradigm that acknowledges the importance of interactions before, during and after the transaction. Good brand marketers and digital experts are realizing the impact of how techno consumers have taken control of the marketing funnel. Youth today are more equipped and well adapted to research, evaluate, purchase, promote and potentially trash any brand or product at will.

As brands address loyalty with coupons, discounts and rewards, we often overlook the simplicity of addressing consumer needs with the right information at the point of interest. Positive experiences happen when we provide the techno-consumer with tools, customization and choice. What can we provide as marketers to make sure our customers questions, concerns and best of all “accolades” are properly and openly communicated in the language they are now accustomed? The youth audience lives in a world of 140 characters, Snapchats and Instagrams. Their attention span seems shorter, yet their ability to take a brand to stardom, or bury it in the dust, is more powerful than ever.

The customer journey has been compressed and the time to develop a customer relationship is now. Physics 101 exposed us to the dynamics of how a gas, when compressed, heats up and the molecules move around much faster. It’s happening in our market today with our ability to access data and share our experiences. Consumers have greater access to information and therefore our expectations and brand perception shifts according to how quickly and easily brand marketers can provide what they are looking for. Mobile and social media allow consumers to take control and even be a marketer of your product, and the significance of ongoing brand loyalty – and its more powerful counterpart, brand disloyalty – has never been so relevant.  Experience-driven environments and “always on” connections represent opportunities to develop and maintain loyalty.

Immediacy and relevancy – both in selection of tactics and targeted messaging - are the two most important factors in your marketing communications strategy to inspire loyalty both before and after a sale. Those who fail to appreciate this sea change are in danger of creating disloyal customers, who can endanger the life of a brand as it has been well established that a negative experience is shared much more often than a positive one. It’s this insight that necessitates a new strategic planning model that recognizes what happens before, during and after the purchase.

Say, for example, you’re looking for a dining room table at 2 pm on a Saturday and need it tomorrow for a party. You search for a suitable style on your mobile tablet and discover a few possibilities. You scan a few product reviews from people you don’t even know (and therefore can’t really trust) and settle on a couple options. Now…the moment of truth: whichever marketer delivers the opportunity and proximity for immediate purchase wins the sale. You can call ahead to see if it’s in stock and get driving directions. And all this happens in a matter of minutes in real-time.

COLLAPSE OF THE FUNNEL

The standard sales funnel model has been used since 1898 (!) and outlined 4 major steps which mapped the customer journey from the moment a brand attracted consumer attention to the point of purchase. The 4 stages included Awareness, Consideration (Interest), Preference (Desire) and Transaction (Action). Marketer-driven awareness, as we now regard it through paid, earned or owned media is always positive and limited in time and space.

Now, with faster and better communications technology and more familiarity with social media, the funnel has collapsed the stages of Consideration and Preference. We mentioned what happens to a gas when compressed, well it’s happening at retail and it’s happening online. We as consumers have greater access to information and therefore our expectations and brand perceptions shift according to what and how we access content both online and off. As the physical and digital worlds continue to merge, consumers can imagine applications before a marketer can.

With increasingly limited ad budgets, marketers are challenged to spend smarter, not more, and devote a new level of attention to the post-sale experience. Ongoing interactions not only inspire ongoing transactions, but also inspire ongoing positive comments through social media. And with consumer expectations that mark stay current of leading edge technology, the price of not delivering immediate and relevant content has never been higher.

THE HOURGLASS OF THE HOUR

In the hourglass model, the collapse of the top funnel pushes more activity to the bottom part of the hourglass. Post-transaction, what happens next is another Consideration phase where a customer evaluates the purchase decision over time to determine if he or she will continue a Preference for the brand, and what to reliably tell friends. It’s at this most critical stage that marketers have embraced CRM, ongoing communications, loyalty rewards and even personal contact.

Developing initial customer loyalty and maintaining it following an initial transaction involves interactions that occur over a longer period of time and are no longer exclusively under a brand’s control. A brand has less control over social media interactions than do existing customers…and even those who have never purchased the product but share what they hear! Brands must now insert themselves in a customer’s ongoing conversations providing the ability to interact at key touchpoints with immediate and relevant content.

If you develop loyal customers, they become your advocates, ambassadors and even defenders. They also become a source of earned reach when they share positive experiences. This is really nothing new, as word-of-mouth has always been understood as the most powerfully persuasive form of marketing.

So what if a customer has a negative experience? Here’s where we need to become ever more sensitive and attentive, because there really is such a thing as disloyalty, or “negative loyalty” that can result in negative awareness. The funnel has been flipped so that awareness is not only the beginning but the end of the marketing process.

THE SANDS OF THE HOURGLASS

This has been more a strategic than tactical discussion of current technological and marketing developments and their effects on the planning process. The implications go beyond a brand’s media mix to include a technological mix. And this now occurs in an omnichannel universe that includes web, mobile (including emerging “auto” mobile), digital out-of-home and in-store communications. And cutting across all these channels is the rapidly changing world of “omnitech” which includes NFC, touchscreens responsive design, natural language, Bluetooth proximity and wearable tech. Also, while primarily focused on the pre-transaction funnel, Big Data can be cracked to better understand the dynamics of both loyal and disloyal customers and how they share through social media. People trust other people more than they trust companies.

It’s not just about creating interactions that inspire transactions, but transactions that inspire further positive interactions. Immediacy and relevancy will be the new hallmarks of digital strategy, so you’d better move fast.

Seventy-eight percent of consumers are price conscious and promotionally sensitive.^[i] This feeds the top activities a consumer engages in when preparing for a grocery trip^[ii]: make a shopping list; select paper coupons to take on trip; review printed and online circulars for the stores you plan to shop at; and search for coupons online.

We saw the percentage of consumers who regularly use coupons increase from around 64 percent pre-recession (2007) to around 80 percent during the recession and still hover there in 2012ⁱ.  This demonstrates the permanent shift in consumer behavior that was created by the recession and is the reason marketers must understand how consumers use coupons in order to maximize return on investment (ROI) for their brands.

There are multiple brand objectives a marketer tries to fuel with coupons:

• Acquire new buyers (trial)
• Increase share of purchase among switchers (product selection and repeat)
• Drive volume with pantry-loading offers
• Retain loyalty among their top consumers

Regardless of the brand’s objectives, marketers need a strong media integration strategy that drives scale, efficiency, merchandising support and targeted consumer activation in order to achieve promotion success.  The three most common coupon tactics or channels used by marketers and consumers alike are print (Free-standing Inserts-aka FSIs), in-store and digital coupons.  We will dive into these to understand who is using these coupons, how usage of the channel is trending and what objectives are best achieved with these tactics.

Print Coupons (FSIs)

Consumer Usage^[iii] The percentage of consumers using print coupons has stayed constant at around 67percent for the last five years.

Demographic Profile³ Used by all consumers, but skew toward age 45 and older driven primarily by newspaper being the dominant distribution medium (average age = 48).  Household income of over $35,000; and 39percent have children in the home (98 Index for HH’s with Kids).

Objectives          Scale, Efficiency, Merchandising Support

In-Store Coupons

Consumer Usage³ The percentage of consumers using in-store coupons has increased about 6pp from 43 percent to 49 percent of consumers over the last five years.

Demographic Profile³ Skew toward age 25 – 54 (average age = 46).  Household income of over $50,000; and 42 percent have children in the home (105 Index for HH’s with Kids).

Objectives          Scale, Merchandising Support

Digital Coupons

Consumer Usage³ The percentage of consumers using digital coupons has grown by over 140 percent from 12 percent to 29 percent of consumers over the last five years.

Demographic Profile³ Skew toward age 18 – 54 (average age = 41).  Household income of over $50,000; and 49 percent have children in the home (123 Index for HH’s with Kids).

Objectives          Efficiency, Targeted Consumer Activation

The key to deploying these coupon tactics within a strong media integration strategy is understanding how the consumer plans and shops (i.e. their unique path-to-purchase) and mastering the unique reach of consumers across this path.  There is tremendous cross-usage of these coupon tactics by a consumer.  For instance, 85 percent of consumers that use digital coupons also use print coupons³.  If we break this down further to understand the primary source of coupons for a digital coupon user we see:

• 75 percent of digital coupon consumers obtain coupons via email
• 63 percent  obtain coupons in-store
• 60 percent  obtain coupons from the Sunday newspaper
• 52 percent  obtain coupons from the mail
• 52 percent  obtain coupons from Internet sites

There are two conclusions to draw from this:

1)      The majority of a brand’s coupon strategy must be driven by what is required to influence a consumer along the path to purchase. For instance, if they want to influence a consumer who is planning their shopping trip the FSI makes sense.  If they want to influence a consumer as they are thinking about meal ideas, connecting with a consumer on food-oriented websites will drive consumer awareness and activation.  Lastly, if they need to drive an impulse purchase, in-store coupons provide strong activation at the point-of-sale.

2)      There is a finite group of unique consumers who use digital coupons, but don’t use print coupons. This equates to about 8 million consumers or 4 percent of adults.  “Digital Only Coupon Users” are powerful in that they are true unique reach.  Just as important, they are an audience that is very difficult to find³.  They tend to be Millennials and Gen X-ers with an average age of 39, household income of over $75,000 and strong presence of kids in the home.
As brands plan their coupon/promotional strategies they must align their priorities for achieving scale, efficiency, merchandising support and targeted consumer activation.  Key metrics to assessing this will be required volume movement, budget, desired ROI and knowledge about consumer shopping behaviors.  This will ensure they leverage the consumer’s strong demand for value and drive great results for their brand by activating consumers where they plan, shop, share and buy.

[ii] Kantar Retail ShopperScape, February 2011 and 2012

[iii] Scarborough Research, Multi-Market 2012 Release 2

Thanks to ever-advancing tools and technologies, it’s now possible to pull together vast mountains of data from disparate company sources – the web site, customer service organization, CRM and purchase data, for example – and uncover trends and insights it would be impossible to see before. Indeed, Internet-based marketers have the ability to see into their customers’ behavior and history with a depth and precision that was unimagined a few years ago.

For sure, keen understanding is a good thing. But hard data and insights alone will only get you so far. What really counts is figuring out how to translate this new knowledge into higher sales and better conversions. In a sense, nothing much matters unless brands can use all of that Big Data to actually attract, delight and retain their customers. So how does this “delight” factor really help brands? The more you give people what they want, the more rewards you’ll see on your websites – think full shopping carts, more reservations, positive customer reviews, and eventually more repeat business. All of that means one thing for brands – more revenue.

Having worked with a number of online marketers who are beginning to leverage the bottom-line potential in data-driven marketing, here are six sure-fire ways brands can make data work for them.

Continually optimize the customer experience.

So if you’ve been reading thus far, you know just how far-reaching the impact of Big Data can be in improving a brand’s overall customer experience. But all too often, brands get caught up in the excitement of it all (yes, big data can be exciting) and try to change everything at once. To put it simply, don’t rush into it. It’s far more productive to adopt a ‘test-and-learn’ philosophy, and think in terms of continual refinement and iteration. Two dozen incremental improvements in site design or wording or personalization will get you much further than trying to ‘innovate’ in one fell swoop. We see this every day.

The most successful marketers are optimizing and refining all the time. They steadily move ahead, with a thousand baby steps, finding something to improve almost every day. It’s important to note that this may call for some adjustments to web development processes. The most agile marketers can typically go ‘live’ with tweaks, adjustments, or tests in a matter of hours. (Slow marketers wait for the next release. Don’t do that.)

Translate business goals into customer experience goals.

Create separate initiatives or projects for each of your business goals, such as acquiring new customers, boosting conversion rates, improving customer loyalty, or increasing lifetime customer value.  This makes it much easier to determine what type of data to reel in, and exactly how to apply it to that aspect of the overall customer experience. Focus a team or a project on one objective at a time.

Champion the big data value internally.

In some organizations, moving toward data-driven, evidence-based marketing may call for some extra communication to get everyone on board. Encourage knowledge sharing and continual learning. Let everyone know what you found out. Simplify everything. Present data and outcomes in easy-to-understand terms that managers can use to make decisions that count. Use pictures and graphs to get your point across and get buy-in from the CMO. Communicate plans and achievements across the organization. Don’t hide results.

Take a holistic, cross-functional view.

Your Big Data initiative should address all facets of the customer experience, which means it needs to include marketing strategists, analytics gurus, web developers and especially creatives, who may sometimes not fully grasp the impact of these hard numbers on their work. If you show them how it will help them, they’ll get it and help you champion it. Then integrate with those responsible for e-commerce and site optimization. But I can’t stress enough how important it is not to silo yourself.

Mine your own customer data first.

It’s easy to look outside first, but sometimes looking within can result in some real data treasures. The real-time data that your website and CRM systems are gathering is far more valuable than anything you can obtain from an outside vendor. That's because it’s about your own living and breathing customers. And it’s data that your competitors don’t have so leverage it to the best of your ability. The typical aggregate data you can capitalize on in a Big Data strategy include: acquisition source, geography, interaction behavior, transaction behavior, recent visits, frequency of visits, social attributes, form inputs, conversion rates, conversion values by product or category interests and channel/device.

Move toward a fully-personalized experience for each customer.

For most marketers, the goal should be to make in-session decisions as to what customers should see, what offers your brand recommends, what you say to them, how you tell/show them, and where you’re connecting with them. Ask yourself this simple question: How can I craft a custom experience for each visitor? That will have some tremendous rewards for your business including more clicks, more time spent on web pages, fuller shopping carts, and more revenue overall.

So, just as the medium enters its most exciting, vibrant period yet, why is CBS selling its European and Asian outdoor divisions and converting its American division to a separately managed real-estate investment trust with its own stock market listing?

When CBS announced that the company would sell its outdoor advertising units, there was no discussion of the promise of Digital Out of Home. Digital inventory brings entirely new capabilities in terms of targeting and optimization that completely differentiate the medium compared to traditional out of home.  For example, daypart targeting enables advertisers to vary multiple ads throughout the day based on time, weather conditions or even traffic patterns.  Social data can trigger campaigns and creative, allowing advertisers to engage in a dialogue with their audience.

Recent innovations bringing new targeting and programmatic buying to Digital Out of Home increase the opportunity set further.  For example, buying Digital Out of Home inventory based on a certain cohort of mobile user being present is a real-word retargeting opportunity that is happening today with virtually no pushback from anyone in the triangle of benefit: buyers, sellers, or consumers.  Attribution is taking a huge step forward as well.  Knowing that certain users were exposed to Digital Out of Home media, it is now possible to tie that knowledge to purchase history, foot traffic or mobile search data, which lets advertisers derive concrete metrics from their Digital Out of Home spend.  As the technologies making their way into the segment enable advertisers to target their messages even more accurately and gain increasingly precise measures of attribution, many people point to the personalized marketing memes in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report as the future for Digital Out of Home.

All this is what makes the CBS divestiture so curious – things are just about to get interesting as new technology gets pieced together today that will lead to exciting opportunities tomorrow.  Put another way, if one of the three most dominant players in the sexy online video space exited the medium, everyone would be left wondering why.

It’s The Medium, Stupid
The digitization of traditional media is not a new phenomenon.  For instance, people have been piling on the newspaper industry for years.  But, few seem to understand that the failure of the newspaper industry in keeping up with digital trends has long been one of self-reflection. Being printed on paper was and still is seen as a key benefit to many in the old guard.  However, as long ago as the mid-1990s, smarter leaders in that segment already understood that paper and all the costs involved with it – from pulp to ink to printing and delivery – were burdens, not benefits.

The same is true for Out of Home media, of course.  Over time, there will be fewer and fewer workers on ladders and scaffolding replacing the signage on that roadside billboard.  The trickle of digital and the expansion of screens into elevators, malls and other venues we travel through during the course of our days will become an ever-steadier stream.  There is a time on the horizon that only those digital screens that are aligned programmatically will be useful to consumers and advertisers.  Unfortunately for CBS, others will own this media.

Advertorial, also known as "sponsored content," is a piece of editorial material where the editor has commercial interest. So, when a brand pays a newspaper to publish an article that paints its products in a positive light, that's an advertorial. Each publisher has their own advertorial guidelines - some allow commercial content to mimic editorial without attribution, others are more explicit. Well researched advertorials that provide deep, engaging content can perform very well for advertisers and pay a premium to the publisher. However, as any good content it requires time to produce and is therefore hard to scale. Poorly targeted advertorials without attribution can be perceived as a deceptive practice by the consumer, so brands and publishers need be careful to project a positive image.

Content Marketing is the practice of using content to drive attention to other content. The difference from an advertorial here is that the buyer is not necessarily making an offer to purchase to the consumer. For example, content marketing is frequently used by news sites to buy traffic from other news sites. The benefit to the buying publisher is a potential increase in the additional ad revenue driven by traffic they "bought" from other sites similar to theirs. The benefit to the selling publisher is incremental revenue from traffic that was leaving their site anyways. This strategy allows publishers to capitalize on popular pages about recent events, seasonal travel destinations, etc.  A larger publisher that charges a higher CPM on its site can acquire traffic from smaller sites cheaply and earn revenue on the spread. The added bonus here is that both sides offer pure editorial content, so the user is continuously engaged, and not deceived. Brands can also utilize content marketing very effectively by creating educational content for their consumers, and using content marketing to drive traffic to their blog and social media pages. HubSpot calls this practice "Inbound Marketing." Thanks to offerings like OutBrain and Zemanta, and recent advances in semantic analysis, content marketing can be automated at scale.

Native Advertising is the newest term here, and is yet to obtain a universally accepted definition. In my view, it is defined as content that seamlessly blends into the context, design, and functionality of every page that it appears on, while being overt about its sales intention. The goal of native advertising is not to conceal an offer to purchase - it's to make this offer so relevant that each user will be compelled to follow through and explore it. By definition, native ads must be as much user-driven as the rest of the content on the page. Native advertising has actually existed for a while before having a term coined for it: Anthony Young of AdAge brings up Google AdWords as an example. Facebook sponsored posts is another one. The key that differentiates Native from traditional advertorials and content marketing is that native doesn't need to "mimic" content. It needs to be a call to action of content, whether it is sponsored or not. A variety of native advertising platforms exist, and each offers unique pricing, solutions and scale. This year, publishers, brands and agencies will need to evaluate emerging native advertising opportunities on their individual merits.

Find them before they find you

They're out there - and they want to derail your next project. I hear the Jaws theme music when I think about them. Who is this project management scourge? Read on.

While working on a recent project for a very large client of mine, I was reminded of a valuable, but often overlooked,  lesson in project management. The danger of the surprise stakeholder (cue dramatic theme music)!

To protect the innocent, we'll call my client Mega Corp. Earlier this year, I agreed to take on a custom software development project for Mega Corp. We agreed on the scope, statement of work to be completed and the overall timeline. The project team on our client's side was very well-organized and detail-oriented. Life was good!  As we approached the end of the project and were about to start a final round of user acceptance testing, I received an email informing me that the project was being scrapped in favor of a watered down version of our expected final product. -How could this have happened?

First, let's take a step back and talk about stakeholder analysis. This process is a crucial step in the success of any project. In plain English, it's a guide for project managers to identify and rank individuals who have a vested interest in their project. This includes stakeholders who can impact the project in a positive or negative way. The more powerful the stakeholder, the more the PM needs to communicate with, and possibly persuade, the individual to ensure their project is a success.  In organizations where the project manager has no direct functional authority, I recognize this as good old "managing up." In other words, a good PM, no matter what their level of authority, knows how to charm their way to success.

Now, going back to my friends at Mega Corp. The client did gather requirements from their end users and they did clearly define what the goal of the project was. What they failed to do was identify a specific internal group that would also be using the end product. This team was brought into the discussion very late in the game with a single new requirement that could not be accomplished with the solution we agreed upon. The head of this department was high enough in the organization that all other departments involved were forced to accept an altered end product with much less feature functionality than originally specified. This invalidated about 50 hours of development time for my team and even more hours for my client's internal teams - SURPRISE! This is a classic project management no-no. So how do you protect against this?

The number of stakeholders on a project varies between 1 and 1 million.That last sentence might be an exaggeration, but you get the point. If you manage projects internally for an organization, you need to know who's who in each department.  After your first few projects, you have a pretty good idea who your influential stakeholders are and who you need to communicate with the most. If you mange projects for outside clients, or the public sector, the rules are different. Each new project mandates a unique in-depth analysis. In my particular line of work, developing online software, I find it important to ask the client's point of contact to identify who their stakeholders are. In many cases, people need help with this because they've never even considered this type of question. Even after getting a verbal confirmation that all stakeholders are identified, and they have signed on to the project, it's helpful to politely push your client to ensure they've done all they can to identify critical stakeholders. This can be very tricky when dealing with a bureaucratic organization, but it's worth the hassle. To assist in this area, take a few minutes and read this post from MindTools. It offers an excellent explanation of stakeholder analysis and a toolkit to help users create their plan. Before your next big project, take the extra time to not only plot out who your immediate stakeholders are but also those of your end clients.

While most teens are playing video games or updating statuses, there is a growing trend of young people taking interest in app development and entrepreneurship.  The app is a perfect interactive medium for developing a plethora of valuable skills needed in today’s business world.Young people can work together on a technical project while also being creative.  Whether it be design, programming, development or marketing, some bright teenagers are doing to mobile apps, what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did to computers.

Here is a breakdown of some high profile young people developing mobile apps that garner angel investments and sell for millions:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nick D’Aloisio: As of late, the 18-year-old Summly creator is by far the most renowned teenage app developer in the world.  Yahoo purchased his mobile app Summly for $35 million in addition to extending an offer for D’Aloisio to join the Yahoo team at their London offices.  Summly summarizes news articles and optimizes them for smartphone consumption.  In addition to recognition by Yahoo, D’Aloisio is considered the youngest entrepreneur ever to receive venture capital funding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brian Wong: Brian is essentially the forerunner to Nick, he previously held the title of youngest entrepreneur with VC funding at the age of 18 (Nick beat by a year at 17).  Brian created the app Kiip, which is dubbed “an achievements based rewards platform.”  Kiip partners can integrate the app with their current gaming apps to use rewards instead of ads.  For instance, a Skittles game app with Kiip integration will reward a user for hitting a high score with a free pack of Skittles.

Liam Thompson and Aron Hendrickson: The pair of 16-year-old friends created a digital interactive study calendar on the iPad for fellow students at Oakfields Community College in Middlesborough, England.  Liam and Aron used their own first-hand experiences at school to influence the design and development of the app.  In addition to the calendar function there are study tips and a feature for students to leave questions for teachers and receive answers through the app.  After selling the app to their school, the duo formed their own company called Educational Solutions Ltd.

Beau Young: As a music theory teacher and personal instructor, Beau was searching for a way to enhance the learning experience of his students.  Beau taught himself programming in his spare time and created multiple apps that continue to earn him hundreds of dollars in compensation each month.  Quick Chords and Music Resources are music theory apps for the iPhone and Mac built for his students as well as anyone in the world interested in learning music theory.

Growing focus and interest in programming and computing is a sign that we are entering an economic and business environment where young talent can compete with million dollar corporations in the app game.  The trend of young app developers and their financial success may serve to increase interest in computing.  As worldwide cities such as London and New York City attempt to assert themselves as tech meccas like Silicon Valley, local governments and academic institutions should set themselves to cultivate young minds to help create the Summly or Kiip of the future.

Upon deeper consideration, though, is Twitter opening itself up for some rightful criticism with this partnership? When a public health concern arises, few people want to hear that a company is profiting off it (despite the fact that many do). Rather, the public expects even the greediest of corporate entities to step up to the plate and do what they can for the greater good, profits be damned. By announcing its partnership with Everyday Health, Twitter seems to be saying, "We have the ability to identify disease outbreaks early. And now that there's a way to make money off of this ability, we'll do it!"

It's a gray area, for sure. What do you think? Do corporate entities have a responsibility to detach revenue-generating activities from their support of the greater good? Or is the general public now willing to accept that even certain public health services might be brought to them by sponsors?

An ongoing Adweek investigation has made programmatic buying an even hotter topic in digital marketing news. While it is more time-efficient and cheaper than buying premium inventory directly from a publisher, does buying on ad exchanges really improve campaign ROI?

At the moment, I think the answer is no.

The problem with ad exchanges is in part an issue with the inventory of the exchanges themselves, and in part with the agencies doing the buying. While Cost Per Thousand Impressions Rates (CPM) and Cost Per Click Rates (CPC) are lower on ad exchanges, the logic that these lower costs make exchanges a better option than direct buys is flawed.

Publishers make ad inventory available to exchanges as a way to sell ad space that otherwise wouldn’t be purchased. This allows advertisers to serve ads to these placements at a lower CPM or CPC than buying direct from the publisher. This means ad exchanges are riddled with less-than-desirable ad placements, especially at the lower CPCs and CPMs. Often these placements are well below the fold on publisher sites and if you’re buying from a less reputable exchange your ads may even be served to bot-generated, foreign, hate and porn sites. ComScore reports 54% of ads are never rendered in-view, and industry insiders have reported up to 20% of ads are served to “dark” corners of the web.

So why are agencies so keen on exchanges? It’s because big agencies, serving millions of ads, don’t have the time or the manpower to buy directly from publishers—it’s simply too inefficient. Instead they take a spray and pray approach to digital media buying, in which they buy 10x the ads on exchanges at 1/10 the cost of premium inventory and hope they achieve the same success. The problem with this approach is that it assumes all clicks are created equal and ignores how much influence a well-placed premium buy, above the fold, on a reputable site can have on brand consideration and purchase intent.

As marketers, we need to stop thinking of clicks as just clicks and start thinking of them as people. The purchase process doesn’t end at a click, and for that reason neither should our measurement of campaign success. What’s important is what happens after the click. Is the person actually in our target market? How long was that person on the site? What did they view on the site? Did they share something? And most importantly, did they purchase something?

As a digital media planner, it’s still important to consider the context of your placement not just the cost. Direct buys of premium inventory may come at a higher price but it is likely they also will have a higher ROI when customers display much higher engagement after the click.

The Community Manager now sits at the intersection of the corporate marketing team and the target audience. This is a unique position that helps companies understand exactly what their consumers want and how to use this knowledge to provide content that forms a lasting relationship with those consumers. Today a brand’s most loyal followers can shape future product releases, get the word out, and make or break a new product or campaign. This means a brand must be seen as a trusted partner who listens to their followers to inform the content they are creating.

In much the same way that we’ve retired the ‘phone operator,’ it’s time to retire the ‘Community Manager’ title. ‘Editor-In-Chief’ or ‘Chief Content Officer’ is more apt, and a worthier title for the level of responsibility involved. This is fitting since many magazine editor-in-chiefs have now moved on to brand roles. Editors from Vogue, Cosmo or W Magazine are now working at Saks, Net-a-Porter and Louis Vuitton, companies that were once their advertisers.

Content, Content Everywhere

Brands are transitioning to produce more content and foster closer interactions with their audience. A recent eMarketer study showed that while content marketing was the leading tactic for 18.9 percent of marketers worldwide in 2012, that percentage has grown to 34.8 percent this year. This can be attributed to the huge amount of information constantly accessible to modern consumers.

One of our clients, PepsiCo, has fully engaged itself in the art of content marketing. On its homepage, Pepsi is licensing relevant information from around the world, and on social media platforms such as Tumblr, they’ve turned the job of content creation completely over to the community.

All of this is being done to bring fans closer to the brand -- even letting them participate, rather than simply using them as an audience. However, this also creates a greater need to curate, and that responsibility falls directly on the Community Manager. This is the person in an organization who knows what fans want, what they’ll best respond to, and what fits a brand’s vision and values.

The Community Manager today now may review hundreds of content submissions on a daily basis from news sources, internal employees and external contributors, and then has to edit, format and distribute to a myriad of social destinations: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest -- the list goes on and on.

Welcome to the C-Suite

The new state of online media requires a fundamental change in how the job is approached. More time should be spent developing and distributing compelling content, ensuring that online interactions are curated around a common editorial theme.

A Community Manager’s goals should become:

• Understand what the Community, and Readers, Want – Through social interactions, customer feedback, newsletters, events, surveys and more, Community Managers are able to fully understand what their readers are interested in and what content is generating the best response. This can be extended further to really understand what the market is responding to in regards to all the efforts a brand is undertaking: new products, marketing campaigns, PR and events.
• Guide the Editorial Voice – As the intermediary between brands and fans, and an extension of the marketing department, the Community Manager sets an editorial schedule that will generate timely and compelling content that resonates with readers at the right time. This editorial calendar should tie into the marketing events a brand is already doing.
• Recruit New Contributors – Community Managers have a high-level view of their most engaged followers and fans. They can use this insight to recruit the best fans to create content, receive invites to brand events or test new products.
• Speak with Authority – Community Managers need to embrace the role of being the face of the company. It might not necessarily be in a media interview or investor meetings, but they do serve as the voice of the people. Their interactions with fans hold more weight than a salesperson or marketing representative, so they should speak with confidence and conviction in order for what they say to resonate far and wide.

Conclusion

It’s clear that Community Manager is an antiquated title. Not only are they bridging the marketing and audience divide, keeping a brand’s online readership engaged and growing, but they can be the most direct link between company and consumer.

It’s time companies retire the Community Manager position, and Community Managers retired an antiquated mindset, and start acting like what they really are: Editor-In-Chief. It’s a subtle change, and one that re-emphasizes that community management is only one part of a much bigger role in marketing.

But not all call tracking is “that” kind of call tracking. You know, the creepy, shadowy, spying call tracking. Nor is it the other, even creepier call tracking, the type where a jilted lover or suspicious spouse is monitoring your calls.

“Call tracking,” as it’s generally known in digital marketing, could more accurately be called call measurement and attribution. We attribute phone calls to the marketing tactics that are driving them, as well as measure data related to those calls. And while we do record calls for many of our clients, we do so following local laws and regulations. (You’re probably familiar with the ubiquitous “This call may be monitored and recorded…etc., etc.”) These call recordings have a real purpose; they give marketing and call center teams the ability to assess call quality, call topics, and can aid in coaching call center staff.

What are some of the other things we track related to phone calls? We report on a number of metrics, such as call duration, call location, keyword and other campaign information, geographic data, time of call, the number that is calling, etc. Integrating this data into your CRM ties this call data to subsequent conversion data, giving more insight into marketing ROI, engagement and overall effectiveness.

While we can’t help the NSA determine your political affiliation or threat level, we can inform marketers as to what marketing channels (or keywords) are driving phone calls rather than online conversions. This gives “credit” for sales that your program is driving that you previously were not able to track. For SEM professionals, call tracking gives you greater insight into previously “underperforming” keywords and campaigns.

So, when you see headlines and news stories related to call tracking, remember that there’s “that” type of call tracking, and there’s call tracking related to marketing measurement and attribution.