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Are Pageviews Becoming Irrelevant?

In the old days of the internet (approximately 2 years for you traditional marketing folks), data was measured in terms of one or two primary metrics. If you said "hits" please exit my site immediately. Thank you, now that I have your attention, let's continue...

Primary success metrics of a given online campaign were routinely measured by leveraging total visits with the average number of pageviews per visit. This was a gold mine. I could create seemingly limitless reports based on this most elementary data. Of course that was in the days of synchronously loading page data – before scripting methodologies such as AJAX had to complicate matters.

Fast forward to today, page views are still a main stay within analytics programs such as Google Analytics however I question whether or not they should be. This belief can still be summed up within a few short accronyms and one syllable words: AJAX, PDFs, and Flash.

This method of scripting, a document type and multimedia application have been causing havoc for web analysts for some time now. And Adobe, you still have not convinced me that Flash is completely queriable. Especially given the fact that so many people still use Flash within a timeline. That is instead of it's one frame object-oriented routines with simple "getURL" linking structures found within this said frame. (And this is just one example of Flash 'issues' with regards to analytics, I have several more). Like text that is broken apart or part of a graphic instead of dynamic text instances.

The point is creating 'fake' pages that only have the responsibility of being logged within analytics programs (to aid with AJAX and PDFs) is a tedious process.

So... What metrics do I particularly like to use when providing reports to clients? Every vertical marketplace is going to be different however if I had to pick two to replace the above two metrics in terms of equal importance it would most likely be "Bounce Rate" and "Average Time Spent on Site".

AJAX can have many calls to varying pages occurring within the same HTML based document. PDFs can have text that has been converted as an outline (and is essentially speaking, merely a graphic). Neither of my above-mentioned two metrics are clouded by AJAX, PDFs, and Flash.

With “Bounce Rate” I can see definitively that someone came to a given site and left immediately thereafter. If this rate is unusually high I can then monitor that cluster of users against a series of other metrics (visitor loyalty, and traffic sources) more effectively than I could have done with a “pageviews” metric on a site predominantly coded using a series of AJAX calls.

With “Average Time Spent on Site” I can still see that a given user spent (X) amount of time on a given site. Since I can correlate this data across a series of given days, I can analyze why time on site may have been so very much higher on Monday, June 23, 2008.

At the end of the day, the one quote I will always repeat is ‘the only thing constant is change.’ Within the area of internet technology this could not be more true as I have seen entire methodologies completely change online within 12-18 months.

That being said, as the fundamentals of a more engaging Web 2.0 are starting to be realized it becomes more important than ever that web analysts provide clean and accurate data to web strategists so that they can react with a proper course of action for a given web campaign.

5M Impressions or 5 Relationships?

I came across a question the other day that made me really scratch my head.

"What is more important: 5 million Impressions or 5 Relationships?"

This question was apparently posed by Joe Marchese, President of SocialVibe at the OMMA Social Conference in New York. After reading a recap of the conversation it became clear Mr. Marchese is slanted towards the belief that relationships are more important. And let me preface my post by saying that as a marketer I tend to agree with his rationale. However it is also clear to me that there is another side to this story that shouldn't be ignored.

In all of my experience with social media marketing we have been ingrained to believe that relationships are key. After all, relationships breed other relationships and so on and so forth.

While 5 million impressions will likely establish awareness, they will not necessarily create any sort of direct and long-term relationship with with a brand. Through establishing a relationship, a given brand can establish loyalty. Through loyalty a purchase is more likely to occur. I keep this notion close to me when working with a client - in other words is this client going to engage with me as a "partner or a paycheck?"

That being said, I want to present the other side of the coin. Let me give you a hypothetical:

Imagine 5M impressions of a given campaign resulted in an average 1% conversion rate (or 50,000). The conversion (or goal) in this example is simply a driver to a given website. Of this hypothetical 1% (50,000) let's also reasonably assume that 3% (1,500) are driven to pick up the phone or purchase directly from this website. These hypothetical 1,500 individuals then receive a product/service.

You can see it now that it would be easy for a marketer to spin this campaign as a success; after all 1,500 people made a purchase. (1,500 is certainly greater than 5, correct?) Despite the fact that 1,500 made a purchase, it would however be ignorant to believe that these individuals have formed a relationship with a given company.

Statistics have shown that these hypothetical 1,500 may never be driven by the same impulse to purchase again. Despite the fact that the product/service was even satisfactory.

This is not the case with relationships. Since I have already indicated that relationships usually result in loyalty, a repeat purchase is highly likely and often times offsets the costs that were incurred through a campaign of 5M impressions. Let's face it, people talk to their friends and their friends tend to listen.

Marketers are continually facing the reality that people are turned off by advertising. People do not believe what marketers tell them. They DO NOT want to be sold something. They are already super-saturated with branded messages being shoved down their throats.

However these same people continue to be passionate about their brands and will even attempt to share their experiences with a given brand to others. This is not necessarily in an effort to promote the brand but rather in an effort to help out their friend/colleague.

With regards to the initial question posed, "What is more important: 5 million Impressions or 5 Relationships" I want to stress that any success metrics will vary by client. However you need to ask yourself, as a marketer, is the purpose of the campaign to form a lasting relationship or a simply get a quick sale?

Graphing Social Patterns

I just returned from DC where I attended the Graphing Social Patterns conference. Keynote presentations included representatives from Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo, & of course Google.

I must say that I went to this conference with no expectations. The CEO of Lorel joined me on Tuesday. In many regards I hoped there would be a good deal that he could take away from this conference. However at the same time I hoped that it would NOT be too introductory for me. For the most part I was rather pleased.

The first day of the conferences focused primarily on the business case for social media, the importance of widgets as well as general tactics in viral marketing. At night there was even an app nite focusing on demos of various developers.

Day two was extremely developer centric, focusing on “what’s under the hood” of many of our favorite social media apps.

All in all, I was pleased with the conference, I learned a fair bit and networked like a mad man. My only minor criticism would be creating a business case for focusing social media based on different age demographics. We all know that the 15-35 crowd is a sponge, focusing on all forms of social media. However how do us marketing types reach older skewing age demographics? Our options are clearly limited as age skews.

Secondly and equally as important, I still question whether the long tail of social media will actually even exist within Facebook and MySpace? The concept itself has certainly become more main stream. Look at cnn.com for example with it’s Facebook feeds and iReport capabilities. Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay.

For what it’s worth, should Dave McClure and gang put on another show next year I will likely be there.

Social Media in Plain English

This video is too brilliant not to share:

http://www.vimeo.com/1083838?pg=embed&sec=1083838

ROI and Social Media

Obviously social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are newcomers to the online marketing world. Their core focus is clearly evolving. Being that they are so new, it is easy to understand that most marketers are simply not experienced in marketing to these type of communities.

Unlike web analytic software (Google Analytics, ClickTracks, Omniture, etc) there is currently no widely accepted standard dashboard in existence that is able to monitor all forms of social media and in effect determine ROI. This process is left almost entirely to the marketer. There are many attempts to monitor conversations and measure overall buzz (Buzzlogic, TruCast). I have spoken with and demo’d the material of these two firms and they both measure conversations fairly well.

It seems to me that in order to measure success and inevitably ROI, you need to first establish your own objectives and determine which KPI’s you wish to follow. I think it’s reasonable to believe that without indicators such as revenue growth and conversion metrics it is hard to determine overall ROI.

In the business world, ROI is typically determined by taking the amount of the total investment and dividing that by the amount of the return. Since social media marketing is based almost entirely on trust and dialogue, how can you measure this?

I believe that the metrics used in calculating the success of a social media marketing campaign area going to be unique. In short, a focus on lead generation and driving sales is going to have a different set of ideal metrics than a general focus on user engagement.

I am finding out in my own research, there are several ways to determine an individual's likelihood that they are providing influence to others - a common determinant in the success of a social media marketing campaign.

Metrics to consider: Do they have a blog? How many posts are within this blog? Do they have social network profiles? How many ‘friends’ do they have? How long have they been a member of a particular social network? How long has it been since their last login? Additionally, what kind of digital footprint are they leaving across the web?

Again, certain campaigns are going to follow a different set of parameters though it's a starting point.

Measuring Success Within Social Media

I measure the success of any web initiative though clear use of metrics. I love analyzing "the numbers" because it gives me further incite into user data that as a marketer I may not have otherwise understood yet alone considered.

In my travels I came across a post by Rachel Happe. In this post she highlights methodologies for measuring social media success.

What I like the most about her proposed series of metrics is that for different individuals there are different types of metrics that should be analyzed. Great post Rachel!

Understanding Web Analytics

"What's the difference between hits and visits?" I took a deep breath before attempting to explain the answer to this million dollar question to a group of board members during a client pitch this past week.

Explaining web metrics in a clear and concise way is nothing new to me. Especially since many clients do not take the time to consider analyzing their own data and instead focus on throwing money away on endless paid-per-click search campaigns without any sort of knowledge. I learned early on in my career, if you could explain things in an easy method, breaking down information into bite-sized chunks, chances are much greater that you could close a sale. Any salesperson will tell you that a client buys into you more than the product or service you are selling. Therefore I always made it my number one goal to educate my clientele instead of trying to pull the wool over their eyes.

Pre-dotcom bust everyone focused on getting their business online and paid no attention to any web reporting (despite the fact that reporting was also in it's infancy.) Fast forward to today and I question if really anything has changed. Clients often times clamor to get online without first considering web metrics, and in turn their own audience at all. Fortune 500 clients still do not employ web metrics into their routine. Those that do, are often times paying hand over fist to simply know the amount of hits they receive from a website. The problem that any analyst will tell you is that the number of web hits mean extremely little when it comes to metrics.

I will go one step further and suggest that a number of visits to a given website can mean very little as well. In the case of individuals within a niche marketplace it is acceptable to believe that the desired demographic is going to be more finite than a website that can pander to an extremely wide-ranging audience. Therefore it's important to pay more attention to time spent on the site, page views and bounce rates.

For example, I would much rather 100 people spending 6 minutes or more on my website, thumbing through every page vs 1,000 people spending 10 seconds and going through 1 page (or even leaving directly from the homepage.)

So back to my introductory statement and the answer I gave the group of board members for a luxury retail client... "There is a huge difference between hits and visits, but neither of which should be of a primary concern to you..."

Influencer Behavior

In the several blogs and other online articles I read there appears to be some contradiction revolving around the motive of influencers. In a few cases there appears to be a general assumption that an influencer within a given marketplace is already a customer. While they can certainly fall into this category I do not believe this to be the case. Here's my fundamental reason why...

The primary objective for targeting influencers within a given market is that they quite simply have the power to sway your current customers and prospects. Which one of us goes around telling their friends about 'product X' simply to talk about 'product X'? While I am sure it does happen on a few occasions, I feel largely this is a marketer’s pipe dream.

Since an influencer is not likely to pawn products that they simply do not believe in the first place, a component of trust needs to already be instilled between a given influencer and their peer group. The influencer may bring up a particular product or brand however they are not standing by idly to market a desired brand. Instead it is more plausible that they are simply engaging in this dialog to help their friend.

Remember, when targeting influencers through online or offline initiatives, you are NOT looking to influence an entire demographic. You are looking to influence very specific people.

Therein lies the danger with targeting and then reaching out to influencers. Consider this scenario, as a marketer, I identify specific influencers for a client. (Which I am developing some software to do and will share this with you shortly.) I hand over the list to the client who in turn blasts out emails to every individual on the list. The vast majority of these individuals then respond with a one-word answer: “Unsubscribe”. A death sentence for online marketers as the opportunity is wasted.

So you see, when people are passionately engaged, and when they are true believers in the brand they are promoting, viral campaigns will accelerate. And that is why the influencer theory of marketing continues to be one that is both useful and relevant.

Marketing To Influencers

A transformation is occurring within marketing.

Marketers are realizing that a single person's trusted advice and experience can be more valuable than that of many passive groups. Studies have shown that these key individuals, known in the marketing world as "influencers" reach over twice as many people through word of mouth as the average consumer.

It should come as no surprise then that marketers want to particularly target these influencers to increase their marketing efficiency. The question is how to do it. Many marketers attempt to lure these key individuals through beta testing, product invitations and samples.

Taking The Bait

According to a 2006 DoubleClick report on influencers, this market segment demonstrates a high-level of sophistication regarding the media and the advertising they consume. They enjoy being part of such programs and being able to learn about products in advance. Influencers are also more likely to want advertisers to target Internet ads to them based on their browsing behavior. They also like to give feedback to marketers regarding their ideas. This is evident in Starbucks recent campaign http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/ which attempts to solicit ideas from it’s user-base in an effort to "help shape it's future."

On the other hand, influencers are more likely to delete or clear their cookies and fast-forward through TV ads when using a digital video recorder than non-influencers. Simply stated, influencers are finely tuned into advertising, both positively and negatively.

Stay tuned for my next post on influencer behavior...