The Science of Marketing

In a recent post on Bizmark Tech, Deb calls our attention to some pointers by Suzie Gardner on what makes good material for a company blog.  One common thread that runs through most of the content areas she lists is information, and I couldn’t agree more.  If you want your company blog to become a resource for your customers, partners or anyone in your ecosystem, you have to give them something that’s useful, something that’s relevant, something they can’t get anywhere else.  You have to inform them.

What types of information should you provide?  Well…whatta you got?  I’ve seen high tech companies that are sitting on top of mounds of data about performance and security create blogs around this information - becoming authorities in their respective industries and generating massive media coverage because of it.  I’ve seen a building safety equipment vendor centralize publicly available research and legal information on its blog, providing a resource for its audience and creating awareness for its solution.  And I’ve seen an executive at a storage hardware vendor use his blog to discuss trends in data management and backup strategies, using his unique viewpoint to promote his company’s differentiation.

The point is, the people you want to communicate with are just outside your door, and they’re looking for useful information.  Chances are your company has some inventory of information that nobody else can provide to them.  By sharing this information with them, you can open the door to new conversations that position your company as an expert, as a resource, as a partner. 

The only question remaining are - what useful information does your company posess, and how can you leverage it on your blog?

Ask any author and I’m sure he’ll tell you - it’s not easy giving birth to a book.  Now multiply that by 237 and you’ve got The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It.  Throughout the monumental task of finding all these authors, getting their releases signed, chasing down their chapters, editing their work and weaving it all together; Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan have made it look easy.  And now, about nine months after kicking off this project, I’m told that Gavin and Drew are going into ‘ahem’ labor and putting the finishing touches on the book.  We even have a due date - October 25!

Goofy puns aside, this effort really is about the children, with proceeds from the book benefitting Variety: The Children’s Charity- an international organization dedicated to improving the lives of children around the world.  The first edition of The Age Of Conversation raised well over $11,000 for this worthwhile cause.  This year, we’ll look to do even better.

I know this process is a ton of work for Gavin and Drew, but it’s a labor of love and they’re doing a great job.  Hats off to them for all their hard work.  I’m really rooking forward to the special delivery (from Amazon) next month.  In the meantime - would someone please go get some ice chips - stat?

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I love looking at Google Analytics.  I do it every day for both this blog and our corporate web site looking for patterns, insights and clues to help increase eyeballs and hopefully business. One of the areas that I focus on is referring sites - how visitors got to our web site.  For each referring site (including direct links), Google Analytics lists visits, pages/visit, average time on site and bounce rate (percentage of visitors that exit on the same page they enter). Here’s some statistics and observations for our corporate web site from the beginning of the year until now.

Visits

• 39% - direct link (someone typed our URL into the browser)
• 35% - search engines
• 26% - other referring sites
• Of the other referring sites, 9% were from this blog and 5% were from LinkedIn.

Pages Per Visit

• 6 - direct link
• 4 - this blog and LinkedIn
• 3 - search engines

Average Time on Site

• 7:45 - direct link
• 3:01 - this blog
• 2:33 - LinkedIn
• 1:47 - search engines

Bounce Rate

• 23% - LinkedIn
• 38% - direct link
• 44% - this blog
• 53% - search engines

The conclusion is that social networking sites:

• Generate additional visitors
• Produce quality visits (more time on the site, more pages per visit, lower bounce rate) as compared to search engines

So, why not beef up your social networking efforts?

If you haven’t added the StumbleUpon toolbar to Firefox (or, God forbid, Explorer), you gotta do it - now.  StumbleUpon is the web’s equivalent to channel surfing, a "lean back" experience that  - with a click of a button - delivers interesting content to you without searching.  You never know what you’re going to get, but 99% of the time you’ll like it.

StumbleUpon is simple to use, just go to their web site, register and choose categories of interest (e.g., hiking, cooking, pets), and download the tool bar.  You’ll then see a button on your browser that says "Stumble!".  Click it and a random page is served up based on your interests and its popularity with users.  You can then rate the page with the thumbs up and thumbs down buttons on the toolbar.   I can Stumble for hours.

So, what does this have to do with your blog?  Well, just like other rating sites, you can take the pedestrian approach as in the eHow.com article "How to Use the Stumbleupon Toolbar to Increase Website Traffic.", which basically says vote for your blog and blog posts. And that’s OK, but it takes time.

I stumbled upon another method that resulted in periodic order-of-magnitude increases in traffic to this blog. One day, while I was Stumbling, I found a great blog on pricing anchors and wrote a blog post about it.  One day that week, the visits to this blog increased 10X and have continued to jump up to that level for few days every month.    I will continue to note any relevant content that I StumbleUpon to see if I can recreate the increase in visits.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Thanks to David Armano, the much anticipated cover design for the future best seller, The Age of Conversation 2: Why Don’t They Get It, is locked and loaded. And I think it’s a beauty. I know I can speak for my fellow TSOM contributor, Jeff Gwynne, when I say that it’s an honor and a privilege to be part of this massive group effort. Hats off to Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton for all the work they’ve done to pull together what I’m sure will be a great read. And many thanks to the 236 other contributors, I’ll include your names and links below. The Age of Conversation is truly a labor of love, with all proceeds going to benefit Variety The Children’s Charity.

With the release of this book now just around a month away, I can’t wait to get my hands on it to see what the other contributors wrote. If you’re on my holiday shopping list, get ready, because you’ll likely find a copy in your stocking this year. If you’re not on my holiday shopping list, send chocolate and you will be.

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I really like Chris Brogan’s latest blog post, "Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss". If you are considering launching a B2B blog or you are getting push back from management about starting a blog, it is well worth the read. Chris’s #1 way to sell is

Social media tools like blogging, social networks, and social bookmarking are more effective in reaching the millions online than a traditional website.

While our web site and blog don’t reach millions, i thought I would look at the Google Analytics data to see just how many people visit each. I went back to December 2007, when we started The Science of Marketing Blog to make the comparison. From December 2007 to the beginning of August 2008, here are the (rounded) visit stats.

ImageArchitects.Net (Web Site) 900

TheScienceOfMarketing.Com (Blog) 3600

Not only are the visits 4:1 in favor of our blog, it should come as no surprise that our blog is the number one referral site to our web site (and number three source behind direct visits and Google searches).

Given that a blog is inexpensive to implement (Chris’s #3 way), why wouldn’t any B2B organization expand the reach of their brand and messages with a blog?

As I was surfing the YouTube the other day, I decided to tune in to the Politician Channel and was surprised at what I saw.

Barack Obama: 1,150 videos and 55M views

John McCain: 219 videos and 4M views

That’s a 5-to-1 difference in number of videos posted and close to a 14-to-1 difference in views.

I’m not trying to wax political (something I would never do in a blog) and I know the whole John-McCain-is-old-doesn’t-use-the-computer-and-hates-bloggers thing, but, with all due respect, what the fig?

There are something like 60M broadband subscribers in the US. Now, knowing that, if you

1.) Needed to get the word out to a large audience

2.) Had a communications tool that hit that audience and was (practically) free

Wouldn’t you take advantage?

Something for us B2B marketers to think hard about. If social networking tools could change the outcome - why not?

The final cuts have been made and the roster is down to 237 authors for The Age of Conversation ‘08. Image Architects made the team (and we’re hoping not to be assigned to Triple A).

Next up: design and layout (summer) by Drew and Gavin and their associates. Followed by a fall release in all major media markets. All proceeds of the book will go to Variety, The Children’s Charity. So, stay tuned.

Until then, below is the roster of authors for The Age of Conversation ‘08.

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I’ve been noticing a trend lately, and I think I like it. As I tune in to my favorite marketing blogs, I’m seeing more and more posts about business/corporate blogging. To me, interest from bloggers reflects interest from the mass market, and that’s what has me so excited this morning. That and the Yankees mini-sweep of the Tampa Bay "Rays", but I’ll try to keep it focused.

As an example, Ardath Albee wrote a provocative post asking readers to take a good hard look at their corporate blogs to see if they’re boring. In the post, she cites a recent study by Forrester that tracks some interesting trends in corporate blogging. Ardath also offers some tips on how to spice up your corporate blog, and a good discussion follows. It’s definitely worth checking out.

Another good post by Lee Odden covers three common mistakes companies make with their blogs, why they make them, and how to avoid them. One of the underlying themes of Lee’s post is that companies need to think through how a corporate blog fits into the marketing mix strategically, and how it’s going to work mechanically. I couldn’t agree more. Don’t just sign up for a Wordpress account - build a plan so your blog serves a purpose and sustains and scales.

We’ve also written some recent posts on business/corporate blogs, including one on sourcing good content and another on the emergence of a "Chief Blogger". As the interest in this area grows, we’ll definitely be writing more. I have a feeling other bloggers will too, and that’s music to my ears.

Now - is it just me, or is "The Rays" a goofy name for a baseball team? I mean, I would understand if everyone on the team was named Ray. Focus, Todd, focus.

I like movies. Actually, I love movies. So it should come as no surprise that I am one of Netflix’s eight and a quarter million subscribers. Two weeks ago, Netflix sent me (and every other subscriber) a hastily written e-mail that announced they were eliminating a feature called "Profiles", which allows multiple members of a household to maintain a separate queue of movies, separate ratings and a separate community of friends - all under a single subscription. For my wife and I, this feature solved the constant struggle between Dirty Harry and When Harry Met Sally - allowing each of us to pick our own movies according to our own tastes. For parents, it also helped keep Dirty Harry away from Harry Potter, I’m sure.

So when Netflix pulled the plug on Profiles, the backlash began, and the blogosphere started spinning fast. Hundreds of bloggers began writing in protest, thousands of readers left comments expressing their dissatisfaction, and soon Netflix’s own blog was barraged by notes from unhappy customers. Oh, and then there’s the Internet petition. The morning after Netflix’s announcement, I added my name at position #482. That night, there were about 1,500. And in a few days, that number doubled.

The happy ending: earlier this week I was pleased to receive another hastily written e-mail from Netflix that began "You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles." This is an example of how social media is working, not only as a platform that can elevate the voice of the common man, but as a strategic business tool. In this case, blogging helped movie lovers unite and fight back against a corporate giant. But it also helped Netflix by providing invaluable market research about one of their features.

I hope Netflix and other companies take note. Blogs are more than forums for over-caffeinated counter-culture geeks to express their feelings. They are a new way to listen to customers and gain insights into what they want (and what they will buy). For Netflix, the listening should have started before they axed the Profiles feature, but in the end, they did the right thing.

My question is: can blogging be as effective in the business to business world as it is in the consumer market? We think so…what do you think? We’re listening.