The opinions blogged herein represent only those of Tony Faustino and do not reflect those of his employer, persons or companies mentioned herein, or anyone else. The posts on this blog are provided "as is" with no warranties and confer no rights.
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Isn't this incredibly ironic? Remember when it was Netscape and Sun Microsystems who made their case to federal regulators about Microsoft's anti-competitive practices?
Apparently, Dave Heiner (Microsoft's Deputy General Counsel) published a blog post on the company website titled, Competition Authorities and Search. Heiner's post says (among many other things) if you're concerned with antitrust concerns with Google, "we suggest firms talk to the competition law agencies (complaining to Microsoft won't do much good)."
Not surprisingly, a significant portion of the blog post talks about Google's market leadership position in search. Microsoft's Bing recently combined forces with Yahoo, and they want their combined search offering to gain greater market share.
The following text (in italics) is from the "Competition Authorities and Search" blog post:
Both search and online advertising are increasingly controlled by a single firm, Google. That can be a problem because Google’s business is helped along by significant network effects (just like the PC operating system business). Search engine algorithms learn by observing how users interact with search results. Google’s algorithms learn less common search terms better than others because many more people are conducting searches on these terms on Google.
These and other network effects make it hard for competing search engines to catch up. Microsoft’s well-received Bing search engine is addressing this challenge by offering innovations in areas that are less dependent on volume. But Bing needs to gain volume too, in order to increase the relevance of search results for less common search terms. That is why Microsoft and Yahoo! are combining their search volumes. And that is why we are concerned about Google business practices that tend to lock in publishers and advertisers and make it harder for Microsoft to gain search volume.
Can you actually believe that big and powerful Microsoft is trying to make a case that poor little Bing needs a more level playing field? Who would have thunk it?
I'm looking forward to seeing how Microsoft and Google battle it out in the next 10 years in not only search but also other services (i.e., packaged software vs. cloud computing, Internet Explorer vs. Google Chrome, and the mobile wars). Why? This fiercely growing rivalry will tremendously benefit the global consumer with better technology choices that will continue to reshape and impact our professional and personal lives.
Google's Mindset I've written in a previous blog post what I've learned about how Google approaches innovation / reinvention. Google's attitude is to:
* Question everything * Ask "why does this have to be the way it is?" * Encourage engineers to push the envelope, to assume that their mission is to disrupt traditional ways of doing things
Facebook's Mindset According to the Fast Company piece, "hacking" plays a key role in Facebook's corporate culture. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's CEO) explains this process as:
* Being unafraid to break things in order to make them better * The root of the hacker mindset is "there's a better way" * Just because people have been doing it the same way since the beginning of time, I'm going to make it better
Here's a Facebook blog post written by Andrew Bosworth (a top Facebook engineer) called Working With Zuck. Bosworth describes four (4) characteristics about working with the famous twenty-something CEO:
* Zuck Expects Debate * Zuck Isn't Sentimental * Zuck Experiences Things Contextually * Zuck Pushes People
This shows how great minds think alike, and it's no surprise that Facebook and Google ranked as #1 and #2 respectively in Fast Company's list of most innovative companies.
I know there's a lot currently being written about future businesses that Facebook and Google may compete in (i.e., vertical search), but I think the fiercest area of competition will be in the war for talent. Check out this recruiting video Fast Company posted as part of the article. There's no question both firms are targeting many of the same talented engineers:
In this blog post, I'll discuss what I've learned from Avinash's webinars. His insights explain how companies can reinvent measurement of their online marketing initiatives. Also, I've added extra notes by including content from his books.
Rule #1: Review & Take Action on Your Bounce Rates
Avinash is passionate about how marketers can improve the performance of their websites. This is why he espouses implementing metrics that will reveal when your site is performing poorly (e.g., your site sucks).
Bounce Rate: A Powerful Measurement of Website Performance and Visitor Behavior.
Avinash defines bounce rate as an "audience behavior" metric that tells you (1) if your visitors are coming to your site and leaving right away or (2) if they're staying longer to read more of your site's content.
From Web Analytics 2.0, he defines bounce rate as "the percentage of sessions on your website with only one page view."
Examine Your Bounce Rates and Take Action. Bounce rate benchmarks that he recommends in monitoring and evaluating your blog / website:
Good: 25% to 30%
Not-so-Good: 50% or higher
Low bounce rates may provide clues on undiscovered referral traffic (is that traffic valuable?)
High bounce rates provide an indication that audience engagement may be low for particular pages or specific content
For blogs, a bounce rate might be high for a particluar page or post because the visitor reads the post and then exits. That's not a bad thing, but if you want to learn more valuable insights your blog, Kaushik recommends examining and segmenting the bounce rates of your new visitors. Based on his sample screen shots, it looks like segmenting new visitors can be performed in Google Analytics.
Here's a great video by Avinash explaining Bounce Rate. In particular, I admire his highly technical explanation that Bounce Rate is an indication of your website visitor saying, "I came, I puked, I left."
Rule #2 Move Beyond The Top 10 & Monitor Statistically Significant Changes/Events
Look Below the Fold. Too often, marketers focus only on their Top 10 Performing Content Titles or Top 10 Performing Pages for insights (Yes, I plead guilty as charged). Avinash recommends looking deeper by examining items demonstrating significant statistical changes:
* Keywords that are increasing or decreasing * Top 10 rising content pages / titles * Top 10 decreasing content pages / titles
Significant Statistical Changes Can Inform Your Content Strategy Choices. Monitoring these changes results in evidence for altering content strategy. He suggests setting up "Alerts" in Google Analytics and experimenting with the alert sensitivities. By drilling down further, we can uncover insights about:
* Referral Source * Date * Geography * Content Type
Demand More From Your Data So You Can Take Action. Avinash says he often finds important revelations such as new websites that are driving high referral traffic. One of the first questions he asks is "was it because someone new is linking to me?" If you're not looking for these types of changes, you may lose great marketing opportunities. That's why we should all "dig deeper" and "look beyond The Top 10."
Rule #3: Segment, Segment, Segment
Many Different People have Many Different Intentions. I love the simplicity and power of that statement. This is a key insight of well-performed web analytics. Marketers should always strive to understand why the audience visited their websites and even more importantly try to figure out what the audience was trying to learn during its visit.
Analyze the Depth of Visit. Avinash defines the "depth of visit" as a distribution of the content consumed (e.g., the number of pages people are reading on a particular visit). In particular, he likes to look at visitors who are consuming three or more pages. These are the audience members he defines as "Loyalists," and they are visitors to be cherished.
Create and Manage Advanced Segments so You Can Love Your Loyalists. The example Kaushik described here looked like it could be implemented in the "Manage Advanced Segment >> Create Advanced Segment" of Google Analytics. This form of analysis will tell you the specific type of content that's preferred by specific visitor.
This type of analyses will help you build simple bar charts that you can analyze by what I'll describe broadly as:
* Number of Content Pages of Topic A, B, or C * % of the Overall Visits Those Content Pages Garner
By looking at your content this way, you can understand:
* Am I emphasizing a particular topic too much? Look at the % of visits here and determine if they're low (especially if you've dedicated a high number of content pages to this topic)
* Do I need to create more content around a particular topic? See if you have a low number of dedicated content pages to this topic but the % of overall is visits high.
Rule #4: We Don't Get Love Because We Don't Make It a Goal
Learn How to Set Up Conversion Goals. This was a key takeaway and another powerful feature I need to learn and set up in Google Analytics. Avinash defines conversion rate as "the percentage of people who take action on something that's of value to you." In the case of blogging, these valuable actions could include:
* Subscribing to your blog or newsletter * Giving you an email address * Reading the "about page" of your blog
Rule #5: Silence the HIPPOs by Experimenting and Learning to Fail Fast
HIPPOs Make a Website Suck. Avinash defines HIPPOs as the Highest Paid Person's Opinion. These folks can make a website suck by imposing their opinion (and this opinion may not represent the voice of your customers). This is why you should conduct experiments and see how they perform. Point being, if you're going to fail, "fail well" by failing fast.
Google Web Optimizer allows you to perform A/B testing (and you can test for free!). Even better, you can learn the results in as quickly as 6.5 minutes -- now that's fast!
A sample experiment might be testing how well a certain type of email campaign performs (i.e., includes all images because that's what the HIPPO wants). You could test different types of emails such as:
* Text only * All image * Hybrid
At least this way, you can validate how well different options work with measurable data. If you have data to back you up, the HIPPO is dead in the water!
If you have some favorite Avinash Kaushik quotes or learnings from his books or presentations, please post them in the comments. I would love to learn more pieces of wisdom about web analytics!
HubSpot conducted a webinar on February 18th titled: The State of Inbound Marketing 2010. The webinar focused on key trends in inbound and outbound marketing uncovered from a survey HubSpot conducted in early 2010. Hubspot's analysis reveals many insights on how businesses are using inbound marketing to reinvent and improve their marketing strategies. This is great content so I've posted the slides in case you didn't have the opportunity to attend the webinar.
Mike Volpe (VP Marketing @HubSpot) and Adam Blake (MIT-Sloan MBA Student) presented many thoughtful insights. Here are some golden nuggets that really hit home:
Insight 1 - Cost Per Lead for Inbound Marketing Channels is Significantly Lower Versus Outbound Marketing Channels (Slide 5) Inbound marketing channels (i.e., social media, blogs, SEO - organic / natural search, PPC - paid search / Adwords) cost per lead averaged around $134. Outbound marketing channels (i.e., telemarketing, trade shows, direct mail) cost per lead averaged around $332 per lead. Thus, inbound marketing lowered costs per lead by 60%.
Insight 2 - Almost All Inbound Marketing Channels Generate Lower Costs Compared to Any Outbound Channel (Slides 6, 7) 63% rated social media and blogs as "below average cost" for generating leads. 43% rated SEO as "below average cost." In addition, these three inbound marketing channels performed better than all outbound marketing channels. In slide 7, Mike observed that the outbound channel 2010 results for "below average cost" were better than 2009 for all categories. He noted customers are probably negotiating better terms due to current economic conditions (e.g., a short-term benefit).
Insight 3 - Social Media is One Component of a Healthy Inbound Marketing Mix (Slide 8) The lesson here: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Although respondents rated social media as their most important source of leads, SEO and blogs rated second and third respectively. In fact, SEO was rated only 1% lower than social media (i.e., 59% to 60%).
Successful Google results via organic search will continue to be important. The eMarketer article, Organic Search Still Reigns, reinforces why landing on the first page results of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing is huge. The rationale: 95% of search-referred traffic comes from first-page results. Less than 2% of search-referred traffic comes from visitors willing to keep looking after the second page of results.
Insight 4 - Blog Post Frequency Significantly Impacts Customer Acquisition (Slides 16, 17) Most respondents said they blog primarily once per week. However, the firms most successful at customer acquisition were those who blogged more (i.e., two to three times per week, daily, multiple times per day).
Mike and Adam think this is a result of gaining more experience in blogging. When a firm blogs more frequently, it gets better at writing. This yields better content which attracts more site traffic (and firms begin investing more time in their company blog). When HubSpot was a smaller firm, Mike noted it blogged once per week. When the firm started growing, their blogging frequency increased and they now create blog posts on a daily basis.
Insight 5 - Smaller Companies Implement Inbound Marketing (Larger Firms Not So Much) (Slide 13) 44% of smaller firms utilize inbound marketing (versus 32% for larger firms). Mike and Adam cited how smaller firms have more limited marketing budgets (i.e., many are start-ups). In addition, the larger firms are more established, and they probably achieved their status through outbound marketing.
Insight #5 doesn't surprise me. It makes sense why smaller firms would look to blogging, social media, and organic search as natural marketing vehicles. The biggest expense is the investment and prioritization of time to inbound activities. For the larger firms, I think they look at inbound marketing as additional channels to augment traditional marketing activity.
I've been reading Googled by Ken Auletta and it's a fascinating history about the company.
The book highlights Google's engineering-driven or fact-based decision making culture. Auletta points out how former executives say that Google's founders don't value marketing. In fact, he writes: "Larry Page is aggressively disdainful of marketing and public relations."
This is why I'm surprised by Google placing a television ad during the February 7th Super Bowl. In case you didn't watch the game or haven't seen the ad online, here's a video clip from YouTube:
According to various sources, this television spot cost Google approximately $5 million to $6 million to air. Here are some good blog posts and articles you might want to check out:
1. Google sees Bing's search engine market share climbing and is carefully monitoring its progress against Google's core business
2. Microsoft's investment in Bing's advertising budget is sizable (~$80 million to $100 million)
3. Microsoft has taken a sound tactical approach in securing Bing partnerships (i.e., Bing is the default search engine in all HP PCs worldwide; exclusive rights to the online video coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics being featured on the MSN homepage)
4. The Microsoft advertising warchest is sizable (i.e., ~$1.2 billion spent in 2008)
It will be interesting to see if Google will execute future "traditional" advertising campaigns. I'm looking forward to seeing their next moves and how marketing and branding may fit as part of their overall business strategies.
