Category

Marketing

• Internet, Marketing

  Evidence-based website management

  09.30.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  I’ve read Gerry McGovern’s new thinking for a while. They are great insights and reminders of what managing content is all about, and how it’s not a stand-alone thing. His postings from September 17 and 24 are good examples.

  From his Evidence-based website management posting:

  The Web is the perfect environment in which to make management decisions based on evidence and facts, rather than emotion and opinion.

  Absolutely. Websites are measurable. Content is measurable. Measure the effect of a page, change the page, and measure the result. It’s simple, it’s organic, it follows the rules of evolution. The better genes win. This applies to content, navigation, design, everything. There is no place for opinion if it’s not based on data. But you’d be surprised how many opinions are out there without any data to back things up.

  From his Time for content to become more scientific posting:

  Senior managers don’t take content seriously because people who write content don’t come across as being serious. If content professionals want more respect, they need to present content as a science, not an art.

  This is true. It applies to visual design as well. The challenge is that creative people consider their delivered product perfect. But in an online environment, it’s only the perfect starting point. Evolution is key. The copy or design that produces the best results is what creates perfection.

  Instead of arguing and resisting the fact that evolution is key, they should embrace it. After all, you’re working in a business environment. As a manager, you should make sure you leave plenty of budget and resources available to evolve things after something is completed.

• Marketing, tourism bc

  Analytics driven creative through multi-variance testing

  08.28.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  Part of our marketing philosophy is to ask people to do something in our communications, usually with the website as the call to action. It is therefore extremely important to create effective landing pages where people can follow through. A percentage point increase in task completion can make a huge difference in the overall results of a campaign.

  A landing page needs to follow through on a call to action, should be relevant to the message, re-enforce it, be credible, desirable and usable. Some of this you can test easily, others not so much within the time and budget available. I’ve stated once in a meeting that I prefer a blank landing page over a aesthetically pleasing landing page if it produced better results. OK, I was a little fictitious but the point is that what matters are results, not personal opinion or preference.

  Multi-variance (or A/B) testing is something we have employed for a while now with good results. Try two or more different options to a design, measure the results and roll out the one with the best results. Then use that design as the starting point for further iteration. If you have the traffic, and the right (agile) people and processes, this can be very effective. What you end up with is a design that very much driven by analytics, not personal opinion.

  Last spring we used Google’s Website Optimizer to automate the process with great results. Joel, Eric and the rest of the team did a great job and Google wrote up a case study and published it on their website.

• Internet, Marketing, tourism bc

  Results of HelloBC.com’s User Generated Content strategy

  08.02.07 | Permalink | 2 Comments

  It’s been a few months since we implemented the first phase of our User Generated Content strategy. I thought this would be a good time to share some results.

  
  Since we integrated HelloBCBlogs.com into our HelloBC.com website in March, we’ve seen a rapid increase in traffic to our blog entries. In July, we received almost 200,000 blog pageviews. The blog entries help us in our SEO efforts; 5% of our organic Search Engine traffic lands on a blog entry. We also have over 1,000 subscribers to our RSS feed.

  
  The entries from travelers is showing a steady climb and we’re approaching the 300 mark. We were aiming for quality first; tips and information people can do something with. All entries are tagged with a community and an activity. This allows us to present relevant blog content alongside our official information. Between our staff, visitor centres and traveler entries, we cover almost 100 communities in BC and over 80 activities so far, for a total of 350 community/destination combinations. That makes for a great diversity of content, so it’s working out very well.

  From a User Experience perspective, the blogs are fantastic. The average pageviews for a blog visitor is 4 times that of an average visitor. Qualitative research conducted in some key markets proved that our unique strategy to position blog entries alongside our official information on the same page is working beautifully. It adds a layer of credibility and insider information consumers really appreciate. Our traffic patterns confirm this as well, many visitors will move back and forth between official information and blogs.

  We see room for improvement. We’d like to see more consumer interaction with our blogs for example. People don’t leave many comments, but a fair number of people rate the entries. We have some ideas to further evolve the blogs with the goal to grow it into an online community. I’ll share some more details when I can in the future.

  See also my previous post about our User Generated Content strategy.

• Marketing

  How to use DM to destroy your brand

  07.31.07 | Permalink | Comment?

  We used SkillPath Seminars to train one of the members of my unit a while back. Since then, we have been bombarded with DM pieces; all hard-copy, almost all irrelevant to our needs. I’m guessing 2 or 3 pieces a week. When I received the one in the picture below I had enough of this complete waste paper (and my time).
  
  
  I sent the following email to SkillPath:

  To whom this may concern,

  Please remove me from your Direct Mail list. The volume of irrelevant
  communications is beyond all proportion. This is a complete waste of
  paper and has destroyed your brand for me. Have you ever heard of email
  marketing?

  Preferred Customer #: *********
  VIP #:***********

  Sincerely,

  William Bakker
  Director E-Business

  I received the following reply the next day:

  William,

  I have made the requested changes to our mailing list. I do want to let you know that our brochures are preprinted
  and you may continue to receive these until the preprinted supply is exhausted. This may take
  3-4 months depending on the volume of mail received. I apologize for the inconvenience. If there is anything else I
  can help you with, please let me know.

  Thank you,
  [Name]
  e-care Coordinator
  SkillPath/CompuMaster/HRC

  SkillPath’s solution to this customer service issue is to keep sending stuff for 3 or 4 months to an already annoyed customer. What a perfect way to destroy your brand.

William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog