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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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

Creativity in New Marketing

Leaders in the development of new technologies, such as Adobe, Google, IBM, WebTrends, and Yahoo, are currently locked in a race to create powerful analytics tools in the field of digital marketing.

Thanks to their innovation, the business data available to organizations becomes more detailed every day, allowing for the creation of extremely reliable market research campaigns.  In just minutes, these new platforms deliver comprehensive customer profiles, evaluate the quality and appeal of web content, detect digital consumer interactions, and much more – all in real time.  These powerful tools are super-effective for making decisions and solving complex marketing problems.

In the face of these limitless technical possibilities, one unique human skill is now allowed to take center stage: creative development.  It is no longer enough for marketing professionals to simply craft intelligent campaigns, design exciting concepts, or effectively convey emotion.  Instead, marketers face the new challenge of using detailed data to develop a distinct message that is valuable and attractive to thousands, or even millions, of unique individuals – all of whom are looking for something both innovative and attention-grabbing.

By leaving the numerical work to technology, businesses now have more space for imagination and talent to flourish.  As a result, achieving excellence in the vast ocean of web content is no longer the privilege of a small group.  These days, anyone who wants to develop their creative skills can do so at any time, thanks to these powerful new analytics tools.

10 Most Common Web Analytics Mistakes

So you want to know the most frequent questions I get about web analytics and online marketing? I’ve tried to present them here and answer a few of them so maybe I can save you, my clients and future prospects some time so we can get onto executing profitable campaigns.

1) Free analytics are good for my business and are just as good as paid ones

Coremetrics Platform offers more than Google Analytics

First, let me say, I like Google Analytics and Yahoo’s Analytics solutions. But Google Analytics was built for Google. It serves their interest, not yours.

This might be the most common myth out there, and possibly one of the most dangerous. First and foremost, to directly dispel this rumor, the truth is that enterprise analytics solutions offer levels of detail and capabilities that free solutions such as Google Analytics don’t. Although free solutions can be hacked to a certain extent to extend their capabilities, at the end of the day they fall far short of the paid solutions in providing meaningful reports to a diversified group of stakeholders. If for example you had any interest in tracking the video drop off rates, or immediately integrating custom analytics events, records or values with a recommendations engines, you can’t.

The Omniture Online Marketing Suite offers a platform to manage the online marketing discipline for sophisticated digital marketers.

Beyond capabilities alone, you also get a lot of important side benefits as well. First amongst them is accountability and support. With free solutions you’re not paying for anything, so you get a community of blogs and consultants, which we belong to actually. If you’re paying for a solution, and if for any reason it has a problem, we’ve got help from the analytics provider to get the job done.

With paid solutions you own your data and can integrate it seamlessly with PPC bid management platforms, multi-variate testing platforms, and a host of other add-ons and integrations like Salesforce, NetSuite, SugarCRM, email marketing solutions, ad-server networks and more.

The future of analytics is in an analytics suite approach, not in point solutions. Of course, if you want to own your own data from Google Analytics, they offer a license to purchase Urchin for approximately $3,400 (the company that Google acquired in 2004 that is today known as Google Analytics). The future of analytics isn’t more data, but instead the ability to act upon that data in an a fast, efficient, and measurable way. Free solutions will never offer the level of integrated optimization that paid solutions do, and due to the great competitive advantage that such features offer, a business should be wary of the risk that going “free” might entail. Bottom line: If your business relies on the internet, you should investigate using a paid analytics platform. I have seen cases where the answer is to stay on a free solution, but more often than not, it’s time to increase conversions and there’s too much at stake to penny pinch.

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Can digital agencies do Strategy?

It’s difficult to find a digital agency that operates at the level of a strategic management consulting firm.  Can they make the transition?  It would mean a new group of relationships.  Some of the management consultancy’s have done precisely this.  Diamond Partners, an off-shoot of McKinsey, used to do technology strategy only.  But now they build websites too.  Some of the larger defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin have digital ad agency capabilities and Public Relations teams that are as big as the Madison Avenue agencies. read more