10 Digital Marketing Trends for 2013

This blog posting is one of my favorite series, I’ve been posting a list of 10 digital marketing trends in ’11 and ’12.

So what’s expected to happen in 2013?

Brazil has the FIFA Confederations Cup in preparation for the ’14 World Cup, the US has a fiscal cliff to climb and together with the EU an imbalance on revenues and expenses to address.  The NFL has some skulls to crack to fix their concussions problems, those employed in the US will hire the unemployed in foreign lands (read more outsourcing), more foreigners will purchase US land, buildings, businesses and IP, and of course, VP Biden is the newly assigned czar on gun control.

IMHO, 2013 will follow Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

So here they are: The top 10 digital marketing trends of 2013.

10. Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

9.  Cloud computing enables scalability to allow for new experiences in video games

8.  Digital Content across devices enables personalization that follows users across platforms

7.  TV is old.  It’s still king of the screens, but it’s content that folks want anytime, anywhere on all four screens. 

6.  The Smartphone begins its attack on plastic in mobile payments.

5.  Tag Management becomes a competitive imperative

4.  Users prefer mobile devices when reading magazines and shopping

3.  Social Media Mainstream and Niches continue to grow, especially in Emerging Markets except China

2.  Big Data will lead to consumer insights and smarter experiences at the speed of light

1.   The glory goes to the man in the arena and not their bankers and consultants.  

10.  Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

So have you seen websites that try to encourage your behavior by offering you a little badge for doing something?  Foursquare gives you a badge when you check into the same place three times for example.  Dashlane offers badges when you save passwords in their password and credit card maintenance software, and Fitocracy makes working out with your friends a competitive game.  Users can Level Up by improving their bench press and earning a badge, post it to facebook and let the world know about their development.

As Daniel Pink will tell you in his book, Drive, human nature is best motivated by a sense of purpose, autonomy and self-mastery.  These types of immediate rewards for accomplishing small tasks might seem like it’s meant for grade school kids, but the data doesn’t lie.  Gamification increases engagement, helps users spend more time on site, and

that drives ad revenue and subscriptions since folks tend to develop a sense of being invested based on the recognition and the bragging they’ve done on social networks.

We’ve come a long way from that LinkedIn profile bar that showed 90%complete.

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Ensighten Provides Marketing Enablement for Websites

Interview with: Josh Manion, CEO and Founder of Ensighten

Ensighten is a partner of Lima Consulting Group and is the tag management software that we use to manage digital marketing services like web analytics, ad networks, content optimization, social sharing, conversion pixels and voice of consumer on customer websites.

Q: What made you start Ensighten?

I started Stratigent, a web analytics consulting firm, in 2002 to work with big brands with very complex tagging requirements. So I experienced the pain of managing tags first hand. We tried a couple of the tag management products on the market at that time, but their container tag approach didn’t scale well for enterprises and didn’t support all enterprise tagging use cases, like complex web analytics data collection and site content personalization. In 2009, I decided to solve the problem myself with a fundamentally different approach. The objective was to reduce, or in many cases eliminate, the need for IT / developer involvement in tagging while not limiting the functionality of any marketing service.

I had four key design requirements for the system we built which became the foundation of Ensighten:  it has to deploy in a single line of code, support any tagging use case or vendor without custom development by either party, support any device, and accelerate page load in the process.

Q: What is different about your tag management solution than others?

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Web Analytics for Amateurs: Part 1

Those who are new to the mysteries of web analytics may ask: What is web traffic analysis?  What are its principal metrics?  How can measuring it help me grow my business?

Web analytics is the study of user behavior on a web page.  The Web Analytics Association defines it thus: “Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.”

Those who are unfamiliar with web analytics usually consider it a technical tool.  But make no mistake – web analytics is, first and foremost, a business tool, which can and should be used by any organization with a digital presence.  Good web analytics tools measure critical factors such as return on investment and site usability with speed and precision at a reasonable price.  They allow users – even those without a technical background – to measure their digital marketing strategies in minute detail.  Stakeholders can see results in real time, allowing them to make critical business decisions quickly, or look at “big picture” reports that clearly show whether or not their ebusiness communication strategy is going in the right direction.

What does web analytics give us?

Web analytics allows businesses to better identify user preferences, and understand how visitors interact with their website.  Stakeholders can easily determine which site features and content are the most popular, and which are leak points.  They can uncover visitor preferences according to geography, user actions, length of visit, or completion of certain tasks.  This type of segmentation is an organization’s best ally, allowing marketers to customize their offerings based on actual user behavior, rather than simply throwing around hypotheses based in conventional wisdom about what works and what doesn’t.

What tools do you need to get started?

People: It’s impossible to overstate the importance of investing in talented analysts, who possess the education and experience necessary to transform raw data into valuable information.  Avinash Kaushik isn’t exaggerating when he says that, for every $10 spent on analytics tools, $90 should be spent on the people who are going to use them.

Software: Business owners who don’t invest in web analytics tools are like store owners who close their eyes every time a customer walks through the door – they’re turning their backs on their best bet for growth and success.  Web analytics tools help organizations improve not just their websites, but also their entire digital media strategies.  Fortunately, there are a number of online traffic management tools for organizations to choose from –some free and others paid.  Not all have the same functionalities or measure traffic in exactly the same manner, but all will provide valuable insights to any organization that wants to grow its online presence.  The most prominent include: SiteCatalyst (formerly Omniture), Coremetrics, Google Analytics, Webtrends, and Yahoo Analytics.

Stay tuned for our next post on Web Analytics for Amateurs.  We’ll be discussing KPIs, key metrics, and objective setting.

ObservePoint’s Founder speaks out about Web Analytics Audit Software

Interview with: Robert K Seolas, Co-founder and CEO, ObservePoint

We recently had an opportunity to interview Robert Seolas, Co-Founder of ObservePoint.  ObservePoint is a partner of Lima Consulting Group and is the software that we use to conduct web audits for Omniture’s SiteCatalyst products, Coremetrics, Google Analytics, and other popular web analytics solutions.

Q: Why did you start ObservePoint?

RS: My partner in ObservePoint, John Pestana, was a Co-Founder of Omniture, one of the world’s foremost Web analytics platforms. Before retiring from Omniture, John knew the company received regular calls from customers who often complained that their analytics software wasn’t working. They always wanted to blame Omniture, but when there were hiccups, most of the time it was because there were problems with the tagging on their websites. read more

Even Smarter Analytics: IBM to Acquire SPM Software from Varicent

On Monday, IBM announced it will acquire Varicent Software Incorporated, adding sales performance management (SPM) capabilities to its already impressive Smarter Analytics offerings.  The move puts IBM in a strong position to compete for new business in the financial, insurance, retail, and telecommunications industries.

Varicent’s software should be particularly attractive to businesses whose revenue is driven by commissioned salespeople.  By automating and analyzing the collection and reporting of sales data across finance, sales, HR, and IT departments, Varicent helps businesses yield more profit from their sales, most notably by aligning compensation and other costs with strategic business goals.

In addition to state-of-the-art SPM software, Varicent also brings a network of more than 180 customers to the table.  Their portfolio includes a significant number of sales organizations within high-growth markets – in other words, the exact customers IBM must target in order to achieve their goal of building a $16 billion analytics empire by 2015.

We continue to be impressed with IBM’s strategy of uniting cutting-edge analytics solutions under the Smarter Analytics banner.  It’s also great to see software geared towards sales executives incorporated into a portfolio that already includes Coremetrics and Unica – both of which are more strongly associated with marketing.  Hopefully, by linking these two related disciplines in a single platform, Smarter Analytics will help reduce some of the tensions that often exist between sales and marketing departments.

The market’s appetite for software that can transform IT insights into profitable outcomes is still growing.  More and more organizations are realizing that analytics can help them use operational and financial data to gain a significant edge over their competitors.  And by folding the most powerful tools available into a single platform, we think IBM is positioning itself for unparalleled success in the ever-expanding analytics market.

Focusing on Content, Not Just Ads

For quite a while, the concentration in online analytics and tools to optimize results based on analytics revolved around ad optimization.  It was a world of sellers.  The focus was always on systems which could improve a company’s ability to recommend relevant products, increase conversions, and acquire traffic with increasing efficiency.  The solutions were skewed towards helping the sellers sell their ads, while putting less emphasis on the delivery of primary content.

Predictive Analytics are Ready for Early Adopters: Super Cool Sneaks from the Adobe Summit

Adobe announced their embedded forecasting and predictive models into Adobe Social, Discover and SiteCatalyst at their Annual Summit today.

I blogged about predictive analytics in my annual prediction for marketing trends entry for 2012, where I indicated that this would be the year for the early adopters to begin bringing these capabilities to digital marketing.

It’s here.

There are too many instances to mention, and many more that I expect are coming as the Product Development Teams begin to insert the Efficient Frontier (EF) models underneath the platform as underpinnings to nearly all of the products.  EF, in case you aren’t familiar with them, used Nobel-prize-winning Henry Markowtiz models called the Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) to apply the models that help financial engineers balance risk and returns on the stock market (which is essentially an auction) to the similar problem of risk (as defined by volatility and conversion metrics) and the price of keywords, which again is essentially an auction.  They’ve been around for over about a decade, and employ seven PhDs in the field.  I attended their workshops, and began to assess how these models will be embedded into the underpinnings of the Online Marketing Platform from Adobe.

So here are three things that impressed me, and keep in mind that since the EF acquisition only happened six weeks ago, none of the models have been incorporated into the platform at this time.

The Adobe SiteCatalyst product will be releasing The Navigator feature, there are new predictive analytics capabilities in the Discover 3.0 product and Abode Social shines the headlights around the corner to predict sentiment and help marketers more carefully use words that will increase engagement. read more