Category Archives: Work

Uncovering The Right Models For Campaign Attribution

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Since the advent of online commerce, marketers are seeking solution to one unresolved question. How do you evaluate performance of online campaigns? Particularly, at a time when global organisations are increasingly relying on online advertising to improve visibility. It is true that measuring offline campaigns can be equally tricky, but online measurement is titillating. Simply because, there are enough mechanisms to employ a tangible measurement tool and marketers dwell with an increased expectation of being able to track and measure online campaigns.

Also, without effective measurement, it is a little challenging to convince senior management, those particularly averse to the new world of digital media. Lack of a good attribution model skews marketing contributions either by over-inflating or by under reporting the performance of a particular campaign.

Typically, an average conversion will have multiple touch points. For illustrative purposes, I have tried to capture five common online channels, which assists the conversion path. In the below example, I have taken paid search as the user’s first touch point, before he/she visits other channels such as display/display retargeting, affiliates, organic search, social media and finally converts by visiting the website directly. Now we are clearly aware that a user interacted with 5 different channels before converting, but what we don’t know is how much of an influence all these channels have on the user’s buying behaviour.

Old school attribution logic says that since the user visits the website to convert, this particular event should be fully attributed with the conversion, which clearly is the last click model. But does that mean that there is little need or necessity to run campaigns on different channels? This is where it begins to get clouded.

Marketers have experimented with different attribution models to identify the significance of a particular campaign. For example, from the above instance where a user travels through five different touch points starting from paid search before converting, we could attribute campaigns the in the following ways.

  • First click: Where Paid Search as the first touch point claims full credit for the conversion
  • Last Click: Since the user comes directly to the website, this model completely ignores the initial touch points and attributes the conversion to the direct visit.
  • Distributed: This is one of the simplest of attribution models where each channel is equally attributed.
  • Linear: This particular model attributes the value to a conversion based on recency of the user interaction in an ascending order, with the last touch point receiving the highest attribution.
  • Weighted: Weighted attribution model focuses on weighing the campaigns based on their significance.We have seen the different attribution models that can be applied to campaigns. But does that explain which model we should be using? Yes, I personally feel that weighted attribution is the way to go. However, one must realise that there are some subjective considerations while using this model.

In the above example, I have indicatively weighed Paid Search and Direct Visit with the highest attribution, while sharing a smaller percentage between the other touch points. This is a completely subjective option. Instead of weighing Paid Search higher, you may feel that for your particular campaigns, a display ad which has an online promotion initiates the traffic push. In such an instance, you may want to weigh a higher attribution to the display ad. Or you may feel that the one of your high converting keywords gains significant keyword positions on search engines, resulting in higher traffic, for which you may consider weighing Organic search with a higher attribution. You may even want to award a higher attribution to the recency of the interaction.

Weighted attribution certainly allows you to attribute the conversions effectively, but is it ‘the’ model for attribution? Well, it is debatable. However, one must understand that to fully comprehend the impact of different channels, it is imminent that we have to delve deeper. What the weighted attribution model offers is an improvement over other attribution models.

An Essential Guide to Successful Blogger Outreach

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Blogger OutreachWith social media rapidly consuming the internet space, it is increasingly becoming a part of our media landscape. In the recent days, more and more online news sites have embraced the pay wall model, resulting in social media, particularly blogs becoming an important source of news, opinions and products. Blogs represent an affordable opportunity to promote products & brands.

SO, WHAT IS BLOGGER OUTREACH?
In simple words, it is a process where businesses reach out to bloggers who are influential within a particular area of interest to the brand, product or service and have an interested audience (or target customers) where they can facilitate a conversation.

Businesses encourage this conversation, by offering something valuable which could be of interest to the blogger as well as his/her audience, which will then ensure acquisition of the bloggers audience, who could potentially be repeat customers to the business.

HOW DOES BLOGGER OUTREACH WORK?
Bloggers have an audience and have the ability to open a window of opportunity for the business to reach out to their reader-base, some of who could already be customers and many who are completely new. These readers help the brand websites by not just being a source of traffic, but also by being advocates of these brands to their own communities as well as search engines, which effectively would help in increasing conversions online as well as offline.

Most bloggers tend to write about subjects they are passionate about and on most times, the write-up is owned by the bloggers. The blog and the subject matter are therefore, extremely personal endeavours to bloggers. Choosing an influential blog /blogger in areas not just specific to the blogger, but also for us to promote our brand sentiments is the first step towards formalising a blogger outreach strategy.

Once we choose the blog/blogger and our niches, there are many ways to work with them (see box).

Bloggers Interest

WHY BLOGS?
The great thing about blogs is that they work in conjunction with the existing marketing efforts. For example, an online press release could generate sufficient buzz to result in a blog review. This blog review can then be promoted across a multitude of social media sites such as Facebook & Twitter, be bookmarked through social bookmarking tools such as delicious & digg and even communicated through our email marketing efforts. This results in creating that social influence which is fast evolving as one of the key metrics in the buying decision making.

Benefits of Blogger OutreachAbove all, blogger outreach of course, substantiates SEO efforts and helps in ranking higher on search engines, thereby ensuring higher visibility and traffic. The SEO benefits mainly come from the social interaction within the blogging community, where information and opinion is shared with individuals across many domains. Considering all these factors, Blogger Outreach remains one of the favoured strategies for online marketing. However, it has it’s own risks associated with it, which we will leave for another day.

Credits: 4 Imprint Blue Papers – Blogger Outreach.

How to Track Google Adwords Sitelinks in Analytics?

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A few weeks back, Google announced a great new addition to adwords, letting advertisers to display sitelinks on their ads, similar to sitelinks which appears for organic searches. Adwords sitelinks allows an advertiser to add four additional links to deep content within the site and are particularly useful as they can show the customer a quicker way to get to important sections of the site. Unlike, Organic Sitelinks which cannot be influenced, Adwords lets the advertiser choose upto ten relevant links to be shown to visitors. It’s a handy addition as it gives the advertiser an option to highlight promotions and seasonal offers for a given site.

Dell Sitelinks

However, a point to note is that sitelinks do not automatically appear for all the enabled keywords. They only appear for an ad which occupies the first sponsored result for a search and also has a higher click through rate. Therefore, the probability of displaying sitelinks for an ad is higher for brand or sitename terms, where the advertiser enjoys a first position listing as well as a higher click through rate.

Nevertheless, enabling sitelinks on adwords fairly simple.

  • Log on to Adwords Account
  • Navigate to campaigns, then click on settings.
  • Scroll down to the ‘Networks, Devices & Extensions’  Section
  • For each individual campaign, click on ‘Show additional links to my site’ under ‘Ad Extensions’
  • Specify the links you want to display for your ads. You can add upto 10 links, but Adwords will automatically show 4.

Now, how do you track these links? How will you know if the Adwords Sitelinks are bringing in any conversions? Well, since Sitelinks is a new addition to Adwords, Google hasn’t implemented tracking on sitelinks yet. The first time I enabled Sitelinks for Adwords, I was seeking out various ways to track these links on Google Analytics. When I contacted the Adwords team for answers regarding tracking, they sent a neat little document on how this could be done, which I have summarised below.

Advertisers must add a query string to the end of each URL which works as an identifier for Analytics. For example, if www.example.com/category/page is the URL, Advertisers must add ‘?sitelinks=page-identifier’. The URL will look like this:

www.example.com/category/page?sitelinks=page-identifier

Adwords Sitelinks Tracking on Analytics

Now some of the sites already utilise query strings in their URLs such as this:

www.example.com/category/page?id=22

In this case, advertisers have to append the URL to include both the queries as below:

www.example.com/category/page?id=22&sitelink=page-identifier

Once the identifiers are in place, you can track sitelinks on analytics by following these simple steps:

  • Log on to Analytics
  • Click on the relevant website profile
  • Once you are in the dashboard, click on ‘Traffic Sources’ on the left navigation menu, which expands to show different options. Click on Keywords. It displays the list of keywords from the Adwords Campaign.
  • Select the filter ‘Landing Page’, which can be found below the tabbed menu and you should see the keywords which brought traffic to the site and the corresponding landing pages.

Hopefully, Adwords Sitelinks should improve CTRs and eventually result in higher conversions.

From Organic to Paid Search!!

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After two and half years at Arena, I decided to move on. Actually, it wasn’t an option I was looking at, but during my time off a few months back, I had casually met a recruiter to understand where I stand after my experience as an online marketer. Although, it did sound positive, nothing came out of the interviews immediately and I completely forgot about it as I returned back to Arena from my sabbatical.
It was nearly two months later that I got a call from a company and after going through the role again, I thought it could be challenging but I wasn’t fully convinced. I thought hard for a couple of weeks considering a whole lot of possibilities. Although, I was working as an marketer, I was only involved in organic search side of things and the new role promised plenty of opportunities in managing paid campaigns as well as other offline activites. Also, I am very keen on building my repertoire as complete marketing professional. This was enough to convince me to take up the role.
While monitoring search traffic and running reports, I used to marvel at how efficiently optimised and organised the campaigns were at Arena. Now I have a big challenge of doing something similar as my first challenge and I spoke with the external Camapaign Managers this afternoon to terminate the existing contract. SO officially, I am manning paid search from today.
Paid Search

Paid Search

After two and half years at Arena, I decided to move on. Actually, it wasn’t an option I was looking at, but during my time off a few months back, I had casually met a recruiter to understand where I stand after my experience as an online marketer. Although, it did sound positive, nothing came out of the interviews immediately and I completely forgot about it as I returned back to Arena from my sabbatical.

It was nearly two months later that I got a call from a company and after going through the role again, I thought it could be challenging but I wasn’t fully convinced. I thought hard for a couple of weeks considering a whole lot of possibilities. Although, I was working as an marketer, I was only involved in organic search side of things and the new role promised plenty of opportunities in managing paid campaigns as well as other offline activites. Also, I am very keen on building my repertoire as complete marketing professional. This was enough to convince me to take up the role.

While monitoring search traffic and running reports, I used to marvel at how efficiently optimised and organised the campaigns were at Arena. Now I have a big challenge of doing something similar as my first challenge and I spoke with the external Campaign Managers this afternoon to terminate the existing contract. SO officially, I am manning paid search from today.  Lets see how this goes!

Get Your Website Right For Driving Up Sales

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Online retailers often face a huge conundrum. Although their primary objective is to drive traffic to the site and ultimately sales, they have to battle with a variety of mediums to achieve this. From the site development and maintenance to user experience, occupying enviable spots on search engines, and reinforcing the companies presence on various forms of online media, is all a massive challenge particularly in a web 2.0 driven age. Despite the surge in internet users, online shopping is still a distinct experience from visiting a high street retailer.

Consumers Shopping online not only get a cost advantage, but they are also served with an incredible amount of information helping them make the right decision. With many price and product comparison sites, blogs, product reviews, feedbacks etc, online shoppers, usually are equipped with product knowledge prior to their purchase. However, despite a wealth of information, consumers often bank on search engines to help them make a purchase. This is where, a company’s approach to its online presence comes into play. User engagement plays an important role in the performance of a website, therefore emphasising the need to develop a site that aids consumers in making a right decision.

Arena Flowers has recently been used as a case study in a forth coming text on Internet Marketing. We are quite pleased with this new development and we feel that we are doing things right. However, there’s always room to improve and enhance customer engagement and we constantly strive to understand internet marketing in its entirety to achieve this. We do rely on customer suggestions and feedback to improve our offering. However, since we are being used as a case study in an internet marketing text, we feel that it would be wise to take suggestions from one of the authors of the text on improving our website. So we approached Dr. Dave Chaffey, a leading Internet Marketing consultant and trainer and the author of best selling books on online marketing for an interview and he gladly agreed. Watch this space for tips on optimising a website for better customer engagement.

Crafting a Green Business Strategy

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Going green seems to be the industry buzz word these days. Everyday I get many emails announcing the launch of eco-friendly, ethical, green websites and services. Clearly, green seems to be selling. Businesses are trying to cash in on this phenomenon. Not the Arena Flowers is lagging in terms of being green. From the beginning we have shaped a green, ethical outlook to our business. We are trying to differentiate our USP by being a green florist. However, there are still many areas where we could improve and we are working on this.

In the recent years, a company’s environmental emphasis has become one of the most important issues. Businesses across various sectors have discovered that a certain section of consumers will buy products, or avoid their purchase, based on the firm’s environmental performance. These consumers are more ethically aware and reach out to seek information on how a business responds to their environmental concerns. As this segment of environmentally aware, green consumers amplify in numbers, a green strategy beyond doubt becomes the way forward for businesses. Government legislation, reaction to competition and other dynamics within the industry is also driving organistions to etch a green commitment.

Businesses are being constantly monitored for their environmental performance by their stakeholders, more so in the flowers business as the industry has invited severe criticism for sourcing air freighted flowers from third world countries. Air freighted flowers in refrigerated units spells a heightened environmental concern due to the high level of CO2 emissions involved in the process. Also, the exploitation of workers in third world countries is another cause of worry although this seems to have been mitigated in the recent years through the presence of organisations such as Fair Trade which monitors the human as well as environmental concerns. However, there is a perennial debate about the ethical benefits of fair trade affiliation as a majority of producers governed by the Fair Trade code of conduct tend to be larger organisations relying on cheap labour.

Also, despite the popularity of green initiatives and a willingness by a section of environmentally motivated consumers to pay a premium for green products, such strategies might not yield the desired results yet. There is still a higher proportion of demographics which inspite of showing an ethical commitment, might place their self interests above the environment. After all, the fundamental principle businesses thrive on is to address consumer needs by creating a valued offering. There are a variety of aspects which could create these valued offerings and going green is one of them. Under these circumstances, it becomes comfusing to pursue a line of green strategy which is beneficial to organisations as well as the stakeholders and the environment.

There are many reasons for a business to think green. The external business environment in which a business operates in offers plenty of leads to begin with. The big retailers in the UK are a good example. Taking cue from each other, all big retailers are treading the green path. Waitrose, Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Asda etc have all adapted green initiatives. A good green marketing strategy could form the basis of a competitive advantage. Also, a business seeking to leverage a competitive advantage through a green strategy should be confident that such a strategy could be ingrained into the ethos of the company. Also, there are plenty of hurdles if a business adapts a green. I guess green businesses are subject to closer scrutiny by the public and media and the shortcomings are easily picked.

At Arena Flowers, we have realised that by being transparent with regard to our environmental policies including our production, packaging and disposal, we seem to evoke a higher interest among our customers, while we have strong foundations to contribute towards a clean and green environment. We believe that if given access to the right information, customers often make the right choice. For this reason, from the very beginning we have placed a special weight on how we respond to the environment.

Google Adds Fuel to the Browser War

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When Will asked me to do a post on a website trying clone Arena Flowers, it coincided with Google’s launch of the Chrome web browser. I had related the two and was about to hit the publish button, when I realized it makes little sense to tie in a search behemoth to a little known flower website based in Australia. So abandoned the post and decide to port it to my blog instead.

Over the years we have seen many successes being replicated and at times these imitations have gone on to do better than their predecessors. Take the issue of Internet browsers for example. Internet Explorer has ruled the roost for years despite constant threats from other better, feature rich browsers. But in the last few years, browsers are technically superior, less resource intensive and feature filled. Firefox is the best example. Year on year, IE’s usage has been declining by 7-8%, primarily due to a similar increase of Firefox users. Following the success of Firefox, which in essence is bankrolled by a company which dominates the web world, Google, the very firm has announced the launch of Chrome, a next generation web browser which represents a technological shift in the browser market.

Google’s entry to the browser market raises several interesting questions to the search marketing industry. Following the recent launch of Internet Explorer 8, which packs in advanced privacy settings preventing search engines, Google in particular from collecting user centric information related to ad performance, a nifty search bar and several other features which are predominantly inclined towards Microsoft’s services including Live Maps, Encarta and Live Spaces etc.

In any case, retreading the history of Internet browsers is quite laborious, but what spurs the interest is how the search industry reacts to chrome in the coming days. The blogosphere is abuzz with Chrome’s launch and the first screen shots have started trickling in along with a detailed technical view on the browser through the official comic book by Scott McCloud. It’s a pity that there’s no news of Chrome for Mac, but knowing Google it should be on the way soon. In any case, whenever it is available, you can download chrome from here.

Waiting for my Blackberry Pearl

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Blackberry Pearl 8110The prospect of balmy, sunny days around the corner makes April one of the exciting months of the year. But there’s another reason which adds to my excitement, for in April every year it’s time to renew my mobile phone contract. I have been with Vodafone for three years now and was contemplating leaving Vodafone for exciting offers on O2 or Tmobile. I am after a Blackberry Pearl 8110 with the Blackberry Internet Solution™ and the added functionality of a GPS. Not that I drive, but a GPS is quite handy even while walking point to point (Sounds funny using GPS for Pedestrians, it’s more of a “it’s there, try it” thing). And of course, a Blackberry is no good without the Emails and Internet.

Vodafone LogoAfter much thought and deliberation, I rang Vodafone last week to find out about my options of owning a Pearl with the same network. Vodafone doesn’t advertise Blackberry Pearl for individual users…I wonder why!? As Pearl is one of the hottest selling Blackberry devices. However, for business users, they do have attractive tariff. After speaking to their customer services, I was quite convinced that Tmobile is a better option until I stumbled upon the offers by O2. Both the networks offer decent tariff for a Blackberry along with the voice and data plan. I finally decided to call it quits with Vodafone and informed them of leaving and requested for my PAC code. I was assured that the PAC code would be sent within 4-5 days. To my surprise, instead of the PAC code, I got a call from Vodafone retentions department with an offer which not only matched the other two networks but also bettered them. But the only hitch, no GPS subscription with Vodafone as it costs an additional fee!

Vodafone TelpmapVodafone certainly offers free GPS Subsription for Blackberry customers, but I was told that they have stopped including this as a package from the day before they called me. A big lie! Just checked their site this morning on the GPS is still free for 12 months. In any case, Vodafone is offering the GPS service in association with Telmap and it’s possible to buy this service for a one off £39.99 Annual Fee or a £4.99 monthly fee. Sounds good! I took the bait and the device should be delivered anytime soon.

Also, today is the day I complete exactly one year as a Marketing Analyst at ArenaFlowers.com. A year has passed so quickly!

Bose Triport Headphones & the Flower Forums

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Bose Triport HeadphonesIt is amazing how many thoughts and ideas emerge in a forum discussion offering interesting insights into many aspects of a particular topic. I find forums quite useful for many everyday issues I come across where I lack the necessary knowledge or approach to get out of it. Recently, I was gifted a Bose Triport headphones to go with my iPod and though it is an incredible product with brilliant noise amplifying abilities, it does have a major setback. Bose ships these earphones with three pairs of detachable eartips. No matter how careful you are, you end up loosing these eartips very quickly…at least I did. The earphones never stick to your ears and most Triport users are constantly seen holding the earphones closer to their ears to ensure it doesn’t fall off. It is extremely frustrating and you never get to enjoy the music peacefully. And within two weeks of receiving this as a gift, I had lost all my eartips. And the Bose earphone is designed in such a way that you cannot use it without the eartips. How annoying!?!?!

Anyway, my quest to find replace ear tips lead me to find other Bose users who have experienced similar difficulties. Most of these customers have vented their frustrations on forums and I not only found a good number tips from where to get them but also that I could order the eartips directly from Bose free of charge. And of course I found all these on forums. Basically, forums are a great way to connect with like minded people and it makes perfect sense for businesses to host a forum to interact with customers.

The dearth of online forums and message boards in the florist industry is a bit surprising considering that its such a huge market. Of course forums and message boards do not belong to the same age as blogging, social bookmarking and networking, as they are the predecessors of the existing mediums. But forums are great resources where a community of like minded individuals share there knowledge and ideas. Also, it provides a firm base for businesses such as ours to build customer relationships. However, starting and managing a forum is an arduous and time consuming task. Nevertheless, we are convinced that we should be starting a forum to connect with our customers and suppliers. Thanks to Bose’s problematic headphones!

If any of you are experiencing similar issues with Bose Triport Headphones, call their Customer Services on 0800-085-9021. It’s been a few weeks since I complained and am yet to receive mine. I contacted them last week to check the status and was told that they have run out of stock until end of April. Though the headphones are good, I would give a big Thumbs Down for the product unless they come out with an enhanced version. Sad that many of us owning the older versions feel cheated. Sennheiser has better ones!

Combating Content Theft

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Recently we have noticed quite a few websites and blogs using fresh flower images from the Arena Flowers site without permission. While we feel privileged to see our flowers on multiple mediums, particularly blogs as they seldom benefit commercially by using our flower images, it is the systematic disregard of commercial websites which is worrying. Controlling the use of content and images of an online medium has been problematic for their owners as an average blogger or a web publisher has little or no idea of copyright laws.

Since the launch of Arena Flowers website, we have seen a couple of sites offering flower delivery services clone our web layouts. However, in the recent past, we were slightly put off by a publisher when he started passing our images as his own to woo customers to his business. When we contacted him to advise him of the potential consequences, he started playing the hardball by arguing that he copied the images as he believed that he was not in violating by taking it from a website which allowed him to save the images on his computer. Of course imitation is a compliment, but copying is not. Either people have a rudimentary knowledge of copyright and trademarks or they they turn a blind eye. For small businesses, when information and digital content is widely available, it is a great temptation to choose the easy path of passing others images as their own to gain access to customers. But they seldom realise the costs of such ignorance.