I've recently given three presentations about our passion here at Smart Insights, which is getting the most value from the fantastic customer and market insight available online through tools like Google Analytics and user feedback software.
We believe that the majority of managers don't give the right business priority to using analytics for improving performance. Consequently, they're often used for spewing reports which are ignored rather than identifying problems and opportunities for business growth. Our mission, through guidance on this site and consulting work is to help companies get more value from their investments in digital marketing by driving improvements using Google Analytics.
Far too much time is wasted exporting, importing and formatting data into dashboards used to run teh business.
These presentations suggest some approaches to make analytics more actionable and build them into business processes in a lightweight, integrated way.
Show Me the Money! Driving Commercial Value from Your Analytics
This presentation to…
I recently read a great document, Brand Trends for 2010 (PDF), by Brand Keys with sound principles that can be applied to many business. It got me thinking how brand development has really come to the fore in digital marketing, likely because of the rise of social media, after the long obsession with all things direct response. I think this is a good thing and in line with what matters to us, as customers.
So, for my first post on Smart Insights I wanted to explore some of the Brand Keys predictions further, share my thoughts and see if anyone else had things that they wanted to share on this subject given that "€œbranding"€ and "€œbrand development"€ have so often being misunderstood.
First - It"€™s important to recognise that building a strong brand has always been important if differentiation and avoiding having a commoditised product or service matters to you.…
Our digital marketing software update showcases the latest software tools to help improve your digital marketing from the ones we have reviewed this week.
We include software in different categories including SEO, Email marketing, Social media and web analytics
Sign-up to our enewsletter if you'd like a reminder of the updates each Friday.
Our recommendations on Internet marketing tools for week starting 30th August 2010
6 Page monitoring services and plugins
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: Yes we can use feeds or Google Alerts to keep an eye on new announcements, but"€¦
Implication: if you have a competitor page you have to monitor for product or client news these are great options.
Best tools to customise Facebook Pages
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: A review of the 12 best services for making Facebook page tabs.
Implication: Econsultancy had a…
Web analytics essentials are our weekly round-up of advice and developments in software tools to help you get the most from your investment in web analytics.
Do let us know any developments that you think we're missing by tweeting @SMARTinsights. Sign-up to our enewsletter if you'd like a reminder through the updates each Friday.
Our recommendations on Site Design and Web Analytics best practice for week starting 30th August 2010
Google Analytics Intelligence update
Value: [rating=4]
Commentary: I have updated my step-by-step guide to using the custom intelligence feature to summarise the new features added.
Implication: Never find the time to go into Google Analytics to check changes to your digital camapaigns or site's performance? The custom alerts feature of Intelligence will automatically remind you of significant changes.
New Google Analytics Weighted…
Review of consumer and business access and usage levels of digital technology should inform long-term strategy development for Internet marketing. The trends show adoption of new digital technologies that can be used to create a roadmap of when new services like social networking or mobile marketing can be introduced. These statistics sources also suggest changes in consumer behaviour and perceptions of privacy and trust influenced by digital media.
Here we highlight the best free Internet statistics information sources from around the world, mainly from Government sources.
UK digital technology adoption statistics
In the UK, the five primary sources for digital technology adoption and usage by consumers and businesses are:
1. Office of National Statistics The official government source - search for Internet
2. Telecoms sector report from Department of Business, Innovation and Skills
3. Ofcom research on telecommunications adoption Includes broadband, mobile penetration
4. Digital Britain initiative from the Department of Culture, Media…
An eBay Business Strategy case study
A 2010 update on eBay
Increased use of mobile Ecommerce. The eBay mobile app for iPhone was downloaded seven million times by January 2010. Consumers are shopping more and more via their mobile phones with more than $600 million worth of sales transacted through mobile applications in 2009.
eBay's Growth strategy. According to the SEC filing "Our growth strategy is focused on reinvesting in our customers by improving the buyer experience and seller economics by enhancing our products and services, improving trust and safety and customer support,
extending our product offerings into new formats, categories and geographies, and implementing innovative pricing and buyer retention strategies. Over the course of 2009, we continued to make significant changes that were designed to improve the user experience on all of our sites, including changes to pricing and shipping policies. In 2009, we also made significant steps to create a faster and…
My tip for the best book to help you with your marketing in 2010 isn't one of mine, or one on social media, although recommendations on this will follow soon since I have had a lot of questions about the best book on social media recently. Instead, my recommended book is on marketing analytics. Please recommend the books which you think will help marketers most across the whole of marketing to the comments. TIA!
The main audience for this book is arguably for web analytics specialists who will probably have already devoured the book and enjoyed the great chapter on careers advice. But I think there are gems for all involved in marketing in this book which will help you get the most out of your traditional or online marketing in 2010.
In fact, I think the book's title is much narrower than the content which covers many aspects of customer insight…
The pace of development of new software to help digital marketers measure, manage and improve through 2009 has been incredible.
There has also been no shortage of statistics about how consumer search and socialise online.
This page shows the most popular types of software and statistics according to the "voice of the crowd" - that's use you - I have featured these tools and software in my Twitter - partly to be useful and partly just so I can remember the developments without doing a full blog post.
This top 10 list is ordered according to how many people have clicked through from Twitter to my directory created with Mediwiki - you can also view the full list of software tools and statistics for digital marketers.
Social Media Usage Statistics…
Miles Bennett, CEO of web analytics consultancy Numberminds is a web analytics specialist who helps companies improve their reporting and analysis capabilities so they can get better results from their web marketing. They has helped many of the UK and European retail financial services sites set up and get value from their web analytics solutions. These brands include Unilever, Barclaycard, Barclays Bank, Mint Credit Card, Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest, Abbey.com, Lombard Direct, Ulster Bank and Coutts.
I've known Miles for a few years now and he is a regular speaker and acquaintance from the London Marketing Optimization Summits (www.emetrics.org and www.searchenginestrategies.com). Since he sees many of the barriers and problems companies face in implementing web analytics he's in a great position to advise on how to avoid these problems by getting web analytics implementations right first time.
Q1. Looking at the big picture of digital marketing reporting and performance improvement, what…
I love the expression Cult of Analytics! Two reasons. First, it's a great name for a book. The book in question is from Steve Jackson which is in the Elsevier E-marketing Essentials series for which I'm editor.
In a future post, I'll explain the techniques I've found useful from the book, in particular, the REAN framework which I have succesfully applied in some recent consulting projects.
[amazon-product]1856176118[/amazon-product]
[amazon-product region="us"]1856176118[/amazon-product]
Second, it highlights the difference between companies that are successful in their digital marketing and those that lag behind. This post highlights how Amazon has successfully applied the principle of developing a "Cult of Analytics" to drive its success.
Amazon's Culture of Metrics
The expression "Cult of Analytics" highlights one of the reasons behind Amazon's success - the culture that their CEO Jeff Bezos has instilled, almost from Day 1.
In Amazonia:Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot.Com Juggernaut, an excellent book charting Amazon's early growth from…
