What’s wrong with my kids? I spend my days talking to clients and prospects about the virtues of social media marketing. My clients worry social media is all kid stuff—but my kids have no idea what I’m talking about.

Their social lives flow through Facebook. They don’t walk into a restaurant before checking it out on Yelp. They post photos to Picasa. “Social what, Dad?”

They’re on Linkedin to check out career opportunities. One of them is looking to be a mayor on Four Square. Over dinner I learn what’s not to be missed based on their daily (hourly?) Digg perusals. But, do they talk about new apps? Nope, it’s just “now you can do this.”

I try to educate them on the basics of engagement, but do they listen?

A friend of theirs established a Facebook page (Fiesta World) and is tapping into his extended network to validate a marketing idea. But, his eyes glazed over when I tried to talk to him about crowd sourcing.

These kids have no appreciation for the fact that two-way ongoing conversations have replaced one-way message broadcasting. They just don’t get that what they can’t even describe is playing an essential role in extending brands and achieving business goals. That GPS apps are revolutionizing engagement strategies. That whole industries are changing their product development and customer service models thanks to ongoing, instantaneous customer conversations on fan-based or corporate community sites. They just don’t get it.

What’s the matter with kids today?

Successful online marketing starts with a strategic process backed with data insights. Have you wondered who owns web analytics data in your organization? Does more than one team member use the data? Are they talking to each other to understand different perspectives and opportunities? Most often they are not. This is where web analytics governance comes into play. It provides a process to ensure success. However, there are some challenges.

What are the challenges?
A study by Jupiter Research showed the top challenges cited by decision makers in companies with $50 million or more in revenue. The top three challenges include the following.
51%: Improving usability of site
44%: Demonstrating ROI
44%: Understanding/influencing customer satisfaction

How can I overcome the top online marketing challenges?
By being ruthless in your pursuit of excellence. To start, you will need to structure a web analytics governance committee. This should include your search engine marketing strategist, social media marketing strategists, digital strategist, technology, creative and other groups. The executive leading this committee will help to define the strategic process.

How does the Web Analytics Governance process work?

Step 1: Establish the team structure and assign ownership and accountability.
Step 2: Gathering and presentation of facts.
Step 3: Data analysis and reporting.
Step 4: Predictive modeling and recommendations for improvement.
Step 5: Plan and prioritize initiatives.
Step 6: Optimization. Return to step 2.

Why is Web Analytics Governance important?
Web analytics governance helps to avoid hunches that can cost time, money and competitive advantage. The process improves an organization’s productivity and knowledge base thus delivering greater customer value and profitability. It will also help to inform business intelligence and will show you how you can engage customers to deepen relationships and improve satisfaction.

How do I ensure success?
Teamwork. The dynamic interaction of your web analytics committee will mirror the social market space and empower your team to capitalize on real-time communication. With the introduction of real-time search, explosion of social media and mobile applications, marketers will need to develop a marketing mix that can evolve and adapt to changing technologies. This is achieved with a web analytics committee and a strategic digital marketing mix. And again, this happens with teamwork!

How does my marketing plan keep up with changing technologies?
What happens when real-time search interferes with the users’ experience? Where will they go to search for information? At Wayfinder we have our finger on the pulse of market trends and monitor them to ensure that your marketing performance doesn’t skip a beat.

For more information regarding web analytics governance and developing a digital marketing strategy, please call Luca Angeli at Wayfinder at 415-277-6968.

The Harvard Business Review’s article on “Competing on Analytics” affirms my own personal religion for data. The article highlights a few challenges that must be met in order to be competitive in today’s business climate. These challenges include the lack of leadership, the lack of intelligence on rising competition and the lack of meaningful data in general. With these three major riddles solved an organization can transform fragmented sources of data into a powerful strategic weapon. Let’s delve deeper into the challenges and why they are important.

Organizations require leadership to be able to act on usable intelligence. Roadblocks to look out for include: lack of a clear and well-defined focus from top-level leadership, a culture unable to embrace change, or simply not having the right people or technology to process data. If your organization exhibits any of these characteristics you’ll want to get them in order, and quickly. If any one department is not contributing to your source of strength it will be weakened, and all business and marketing efforts will be as well.

Organizations often lack the ability to exploit competitive data and turn it into intelligence. Rising global competition has intensified the need for proficiency in data analysis. Western companies are having a difficult time beating their Chinese and Indian competitors on product cost, but there’s hope. Analytics can provide the insights on which business processes should be optimized to squeeze greater performance where there’s slack. Furthermore, research can provide insights into your competitors’ pricing strategies and levels of inventory. Segmentation analysis can also provide the details to emphasize in your value-communication strategies. These insights and others can get your organization back on even playing ground with the competition.

Organizations may lack historical data sets. This basically sets them up for failure since decisions are not based on data insights. To paraphrase the old adage: history will repeat itself if it is not recorded for us to learn from. Mental modeling simply can’t compete with computer-aided modeling to inform business decisions. So take the guesswork out of decision-making and invest the time in developing a model that provides performance metrics that your organization can act on.

There’s a long road ahead. Analytics insights will only blossom after the following requirements have been satisfied: data strategy and sourcing, technology and time. Hang in there because it will take time to have enough data to be able to use it with confidence. “Presto e bene non vanno insieme.” Translation: Fast and good don’t go together. So be patient as the right type of data takes time to amass to support future forecasting.

But the time it takes is well worth the benefits. As Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah’s frequently puts it, “Do we think this is true? Or do we know?” The correct answer is very comforting. And from there, the rest is all details in my book.

Here comes the soft sell. It always shocks me when a client says, “This is the first time that we’ve developed a completely integrated campaign that provides quantitative data.” This is obviously an accomplishment for them and we’re always glad to be a part of it. But at the same time, it is only the beginning; there’s always more to be done. And we’re always glad to be part of that too. The right process will allow you to take action, and measure your performance. Ready to discover the gaps? Looking to embrace data to inform business and marketing decisions? Let’s talk.

I’m a great proponent of privacy, which is why I often make it a habit to either block my browser from accepting cookies, or I will manually purge them every once in a while. The creep-factor alone is enough reason—such as when websites offer me products based on my browsing habits, previous orders, or my location, which unfortunately (read: disturbingly) often includes dates with single men in my area. Yes, I’m talking about you Facebook! You are worse than some of my family members.

It makes me wonder who else in cyberspace knows my personal information.

What are cookies, you ask? Cookies are small packets of data created by a web server for a web browser, which contain a user’s preferences or personal information. They are housed on the user’s computer (often without the user’s knowledge and permission) and subsequently sent back to the same server when the user accesses that same site. There has always been, and probably will always be, a debate on whether cookies are a good or bad thing.

Personally, they still make me uncomfortable. Imagine walking into work tomorrow and your coworkers are gathered around the water cooler discussing the granny panties you bought yesterday from Amazon.com. They really were for my grandma! It was her birthday!

In 2005, it seems a lot of us had those same fears, with about 40% tossing our cookies on a regular basis. Today, the trend seems to be that users recognize the perks of user-friendly websites that save you time from entering the same usernames and passwords over and over again. It makes sense—the busier our world becomes, the more efficient we need to be. Not only that, but the information that we can gather from users’ browsing habits and personal information can be important for statistical purposes and for improving sites. Even the White House proposes to lift a current cookie ban on federal websites.

The truth is, if you use a computer on a regular basis, you inadvertently give up your privacy because, really, you can’t delete all your cookies. There is an evolved breed of cookie out there called Flash cookies or Local Shared Objects (LSO) that will hide out in secret places on your hard drive and dodge browser attempts at cookie purges. They are able to do this because either these files have different extensions than the ones the browser is searching for, or because the cookie data is actually stored in a file that this browser is using and thus won’t allow for deletion. That’s scary!

Like spam, you can put as many restrictions on internet cookie usage as you want, but those cyber tricksters out there will still find a way to circumvent any obstacle. And as long as technology keeps changing, the number of ways to dodge those obstacles will only increase.

Nevertheless, I encourage you to make it a ritual to delete the cookies you can get to every now and then, especially if you share a computer. Not only do I want to keep my own business private, but I really don’t want to know yours either.

Mckinsey & Company, the firm that invented consulting, challenges conventional wisdom about how marketers can do more with less in the current recession. You can get the full article (with some fascinating charts) here. You have to register to access the article, but there’s a treasure trove of good thinking and analysis. If you don’t have time, here are its highlights.

Their most important findings are that:

1. This is a recession like no other in recent memory.
2. Marketers need to abandon techniques that worked in past recessions.

Here are some dos and don’ts:

DO

1. Make sure your brands’ value propositions work in the current environment
2. Fine tune product offerings
3. Get pricing right
4. Make sure your vendors are working with you to be efficient
5. Leverage your knowledge and data to market on a very granular level

DON’T

1. Assume your best markets historically will be your best markets during the recession
2. Hunker down to markets and methods that worked in the past
3. Slash budgets across the board
4. Automatically cut back office staff (and other resources) in favor of salespeople
5. Fall back to core media, like newspapers and TV, by abandoning digital, direct and social media

The Dow was down under 9,000 today. If you haven’t already, it’s time to brush up on survival techniques.

Here are a couple useful articles. The first is a blog post from Ridgely Evers, a guy who was one of Quickbook’s founders. He’s seen a recession or two and has 10 great tips, from concentrating on your best customers to dealing with cash issues.

The second is some advice from Harvard Business School here on how to look at pricing in a downturn. There’s some well-researched if counter intuitive advice. Resist the urge to slash prices across the board. It will be harder than you think to get margins back.

One more piece of useful advice. Now is the time to work with your best customers. If you don’t know who they are, find out fast. Let them know by actions not words that you value their business. They’re going through the same issues you are. Make sure you’re they’re resource of choice. Add value to get a bigger share of their wallet. Resist the urge to discount. And don’t be their bank.

Nows is the time to adjust your marketing budgets. Early in a recession getting high-quality new customers will be tough as everyone turns to their best customers. Delay any new customer-oriented marketing for later on, when the competitive landscape is more in your favor.

Emphasize cross-sell and customer retention tactics now. But make sure that you don’t sacrifice your brand to pursue marketing ROI. With too much emphasis on an offer you probably will only attract unprofitable deal chasers anyway. Instead, leverage your brand in response-based communications. That way you attract business that appreciates your brand, while at the same time delivering high ROI marketing campaigns.

We’ve got some useful tips on how to blend brand and response marketing here.

Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. The housing and mortgage markets are in the tank. Gas is selling for $4 a gallon. What’s a marketer to do? A few of us at Wayfinder Response have enough gray hair to have seen a few recessions. Here are a few tips on what not to do. Read the rest of this entry →

Defining and building a brand is an ongoing process and it’s a process that is being rewritten everyday. In the past, brand was developed by the marketing department and communicated to the target audience through advertising in a one-way conversation.

From a marketing perspective, brand was meant to create perceptions, not necessarily create action. Sure, brand marketers liked to measure awareness, perception and persuasion, but were not willing to measure a direct correlation to sales or even leads.

Today, consumers interact with brands in many different ways, and the brand advertiser can track much of this interaction. This ability to track has advertisers thinking about using brand to create perceptions over the long term and create action immediately – even if the action is not necessarily sales. Some of the keys drivers in this mind shift are: Read the rest of this entry →