Biznology Blog: January 2008

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January 31, 2008

Update on the New Google Analytics

Last week, I wrote a post on the new version of Google Analytics which drew a response from Avinash Kaushik, Web metrics guru and current Google analytics evangelist. Avinash, well-known for his blog and best-selling book, wrote me to clarify some of what I explained last week. I thought his points were well-taken, so I am revisiting the subject today.

Avinash wanted to clarify my discussion of Google Analytics' ability to handle very high traffic volumes. I characterized Google's approach as sampling which dropped data, but Avinash explained it more clearly:

For the high volume traffic, the Google Analytics' Terms Of Service (TOS) is very clear. Up to five million hits a month is OK for anyone, if you go beyond that (and five million is a huge number to hit!) then it states that you must be an AdWords customer (though no spending requirement is stated) and then the number increases x times (x is not specified but makes it a number of times the five million hits, even if you multiply it by two or five).

Perhaps the most important thought is that Google Analytics does not drop data. 100% of the data is collected, even if you send hundreds of millions of hits Per Day (which many sites I know do—seems crazy!).

There are two sampling scenarios:

1) The GA TOS states that, at Google's discretion, it may request you to sample the data, i.e., send it less data (though given the numbers are talking about millions of hits a day the sample captured will still be more than statistically significant). All data will be processed and report to you.

2) In the second scenario, again, 100% of the data is collected but if you run very large queries for a very large time period (since Google never deletes your data no matter how large), then that query will sample the data stored to ensure it actually returns results to you. Intelligent algorithms are applied to ensure that the results are statistically accurate.

If this happens, the Google Analytics report will clearly state that the data was sampled and it shows you the rate of sampling (in a little yellow square next to each metric).

Both of the above are precisely what all paid Web analytics tools do, too. Every vendor has contracted limits in terms of data you can send them. The more data you contract for, the more you pay.

If you breach your contract limits with any paid vendor, they will ask you to either sample the data at the collection point (your site), so you don't send them all the data, or they will ask you to pay more to collect all the data. Even in the latter scenario, to have your queries return with results (and I say this from real experience) you will have to sample the data that has been collected.

Avinash also thought that I should clarify when support for the old version will end. He rightly points out that Google has announced no end date for support, but I seized on their statement that it will be "at least 12 to 18 months" as why I advised folks that they might want to consider moving this year. It's certainly possible that Google will be supporting the old code even several years from now. Avinash advises existing Google Analytics users to switch to the new version if they need the new features, but not to worry about it too much if they don't.

Thanks, Avinash, for helping my readers with this important decision.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:18 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 30, 2008

Search Marketing Is Direct Marketing

I have a busy travel schedule this week and I was graced with a hotel with broken Internet access yesterday, so I am posting today's blog from the airport before my flight. That's why I am going to cheat, rather than write a completely new post. Revenue Magazine posted one of my columns online, "Search Marketing is Direct Marketing"—I hope you enjoy it. Back with a longer post tomorrow, I promise.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 29, 2008

Microsoft's Controlled Experiments

Regular readers know how much I care about experimentation in marketing. Seth Godin is starting to call this "layering" and it's at the heart of my book, Do It Wrong Quickly. But no good name has emerged. I was contacted recently by Ronny Kohavi, Microsoft's General Manager of Experimentation Platform, who uses the market research term "controlled experiments" for what they do. Ronny came to Microsoft from Amazon, where he served as Director of Data Mining and Personalization, and he's written four of the top papers on machine learning according to CiteSeer. He was gracious enough to answer several questions for you to explain how experimental marketing works in real life.

Me: Tell us more about your job—do you work on the Live site or somewhere else in Microsoft? How do you end up working on so many experiments and how did you start doing that at Microsoft?

RK: I joined Microsoft in 2005 to work on something different, but after the first few months I realized that there were a lot of opinions on what to build, but little data. There was no easy way to try things out, so I felt that I could make a greater contribution to Microsoft by building a system for running controlled experiments. I started a small incubation team, and managed to attract some of the best people I worked with in the past.

The team built the first version of the Experimentation Platform in a year and we went live with two experiments on two properties: the MSN US home page, and Windows Marketplace. The team is doing two things at Microsoft:

• We are building the software and the service, i.e., the Experimentation Platform.
• We are educating Microsoft teams about this alternative to developing software, i.e., quicker cycles where experiments are run to help guide the features and to help evaluate ideas. This very much aligns with the "Do It Wrong Quickly" theme.

Me: What was the purpose of the solitaire vs. poker test for the Game Downloads page in Windows Marketplace (shown below)?



RK: One of the simplest ways to improve clickthrough rates is to change images. It's usually trivial to change images, and when someone is designing an image, they typically have several alternatives. Instead of betting on one, try the top three (and encourage diversity of ideas). What is surprising to people about this example is that many predict the winning image incorrectly and, more annoyingly to some, that the difference is so large (61%). It's very common for the technical audience to prefer the Poker image and confuse themselves with the target audience.

Me: What was the result of this test in terms of action?

RK: Use the winning image (although the site has changed since then). More important than the specific test, which in this case was their first experiment with us, was the learning that "Just do the right thing" is harder than it seems. When the team was asked which image would win, their vote went for Poker. When running experiments, it's always fun to take bets in advance about the delta between the two versions. It's humbling to see how many times we're wrong, not just about the magnitude, but even on the direction. In experiments I was involved with at Amazon, many features that we thought would be strong were simply flat: no statistically significant difference. Knowing that something does not work, however, has value: it eliminates one idea so we can move on to others. If you have 10 keys to open a lock, every one that you try which doesn't work provides additional data. Moving fast isn't enough; you want to move effectively in the right direction, and that's what experiments allow you to confirm.

Me: What do you see as the big cultural issues in getting testing into an organization?

RK: The main reason to avoid something new is inertia. Microsoft has developed software for years and many believe they have the art perfected. With services and websites, there is extra information that is readily available: customer interactions. The ability to prototype ideas and see how customers react to them is something that was not available 15 years ago.

Here are some reasons why people avoid experimenting:

• Some believe it threatens their job as decision makers.
• Program managers select the next set of features to develop. Proposing several alternatives and admitting you don't know which is best is hard.
• Editors and designers get paid to select a great design.
• Failures of ideas may hurt image and professional standing. It's easier to declare success when the feature launches.
• We've heard: "We know what to do. It's in our DNA," and "Why don't we just do the right thing?"

Me: What are the best ways to overcome cultural resistance?

RK: I'm not sure I know the "best" way, but what we are doing today is based on several efforts:

• Raising awareness and educating people. We give internal talks and run classes. We know the message is resonating because we initially had a hard time filling the classes, and now they're booked with waiting lists.
• Showing successes. Running experiments with those that are on board and showing successes will help others see the opportunity. As with every population, we have the early adopters and the skeptics.
• Highlight the limitations. Experimentation is not a panacea for everything, so we should recognize when it is appropriate and highlight the limitations so it's not misused.

Me: Can you could explain the advantages of controlled experiments?

RK: When I was director of data mining and personalization at Amazon, the two most successful innovations by my team were not on any road map the year before, and were initially ranked so low by myself and the team that one was given as a ramp-up project to a new employee, and the other given to an intern. The projects generated hundreds of millions of dollars in incremental revenue. Such an observation is very humbling and highlights the biggest advantage of controlled experiments: we can try a lot of things quickly, and let users guide us.

Me: Do you have any one-to-two page case studies of projects you've worked on that you would like to share?

RK: We have several talks and papers.

Me: If you had to explain your ACM article to the average marketer, what would be the key insights that marketers need to know but most don't have today?

RK: Controlled Experiments have existed for tens of years, and the math is well understood. With the web we have an unprecedented opportunity to try things quickly and make data-driven decisions. Don't fall into the trap of believing you know what is best for the customer, and don't let the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion) guide you.

Me: What is the most important thing you'd like to say to marketers that I haven't asked you about?

RK: Marketers love a good catch phrase that's memorable. I would tell them to avoid HDD (HiPPO Driven Design).

Some of us tend to think of experimental marketing as something only born-on-the-Web companies know how to do. Thanks to Ronny for helping us see how a big company can do it, too.

Posted by mikemoran at 7:39 AM

January 28, 2008

What's the Truth About Your Site?

It's no wonder that your customers have learned to be a bit wary on the Web. Spam steals their attention. Scams still their money. Phishing steals their very identities. Some of your customers are relying on search engines to separate the wheat from the chaff. If your company shows up at the top of the search results, searchers assume that it's because your company is reputable, but John Nagle thinks Google needs some help.

John is the founder of SiteTruth, which provides a real-world check on any commercial Web site. Search engines do a wonderful job of examining Web factors to deduce the importance of a site. Google's PageRank examines the number and authority of links to any site—other search engines use similar techniques. But John says that spammers and scammers can sometimes infiltrate the search results, despite Google's best efforts.

SiteTruth uses traditional off-line investigative techniques to check out the business behind the Web site, and it does it automatically. John demonstrated how SiteTruth works on a keyword such as "tampa hotel" as it scores Google's regular results, and you can try it for yourself. (SiteTruth can work the same magic on search results from other search engines, too.)

How does it work? SiteTruth examines up to 20 pages on a Web site looking for a postal-style address for the business responsible for the Web site. SiteTruth validates a site's SSL certificate to ensure that it is a "real" certificate, not just a so-called "domain control" certificate, which anyone can get. It uses the address and the URL to locate the business in the Yellow Pages database and in Open Directory. It also looks for a valid Better Business Bureau seal of approval. You could imagine that the service could one day look up business identities with Dun & Bradstreet or credit reporting agencies or a dozen other company reference files.

By looking at all these factors, SiteTruth makes a determination whether a commercial site is trustworthy, or whether some questions might be in order. "If a site is reasonably legitimate, we'll come up with a business identity," John confidently asserted.

I checked it out on several well-known Web sites—most came up green or at least yellow. Then I tried it on my own site: red.

"A lot of blogs have this problem," John admitted. My site has no mailing address listed because I am an author, not a business. I saw no reason to list my home address on the Web. Because I don't have an e-Commerce site, I have no SSL certificate and even though I've tried, my site has been on the waiting list for Open Directory for years. And, no business, so no Yellow Pages listing and no BBB seal.

But that's OK. My site really isn't a business, so it's OK that I don't pass muster as a trusted merchant.

I'd like to see SiteTruth go beyond search results to be used as a browser plug-in or a GreaseMonkey script. That way, I could refer to it whenever I browsed the Web. SiteTruth is still in alpha test, so I'm not sure how John will make money from this idea. Maybe he could sell spam fighters and identity theft services in ads on the detail pages for each company's ratings. Or sell the service to one of the big search engines. Whatever he decides to do, I think SiteTruth is a good idea whose time has come. Why aren't we using real world methods to test the legitimacy of Web sites?

So, go ahead. Check out what SiteTruth says about your Web site. If you're red, maybe you should be doing something about that. You never know when one of the search engines might decide to use some of these factors in its ranking algorithm.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 25, 2008

Inside the SocialRank Blog Rating Service

Typically, a new communication tactic emerges before anyone knows how to measure its value, and blogs have been no exception. You can look at your Technorati rank, or use FeedBurner to measure your subscriptions, but you should expect more metrics to emerge in this new field. One such emerging metric is from SocialRank, whose badge I display on my site. (My blog breaks into the top 100 marketing blogs now and then.) SocialRank is self-described as the new Web 2.0 network to discover the top stories of the blogosphere within your areas of interest. To learn more about SocialRank, check out this interview with one of its co-founders.

I recently sat down with Vishen Lakhiani, co-founder of MindValley, the Internet marketing company behind Blinklist and SocialRank. Well, I didn't really sit down with him. Um, I spoke with, uh, well, I didn't really speak with him, either. Look, I sent him some questions in e-mail and he sent back the answers, OK? Geez, it sounds so much better to say I sat down with him...

Me: What is the purpose of SocialRank for bloggers and for readers? What is your business model?

VJ: The Net has become a popular place where we are completely overwhelmed with information. Imagine you are looking for articles on entrepreneurship. Well there are hundreds of blog posts going up daily on that topic. But this causes a problem....YOU have limited time. Out of the hundreds of new posts on entrepreneurship that went up today - which ones do you pay attention to?

Here's where SocialRank helps. Now if you're looking for today's top news on entrepreneurship—just visit StartupSignal.com and it acts as a filter to make sure that out of the hundreds of new posts—only the best ones get to you.

But we are launching hundreds of SocialRank sites, covering such diverse topics as Internet Marketing, Productivity, Cats, Atheism, US politics or Gossips. Bloggers will get to know what others people are writing about entrepreneurship, and readers will get to expand their view. Relying only on one source of information is quite limited.

Me: What is the story behind the implementation of SocialRank?

VJ: We started out running a blog network. I owned several blogs on marketing and personal development, including blog.mindvalleylabs.com and mindhacks.com.

But as the owner of a rapidly growing company, I was finding it harder and harder to maintain blog postings. A lot of people were coming to Mike Reining (our co-founder) and I for marketing advice and we felt we could not keep up. So we wondered if there was a way we could automatically identify the hottest marketing stories of the day and serve these up to our fan base.

We played around with multiple options for a whole year. We owned a popular social bookmarking site called BlinkList.com and we owned around 9 blogs, so we had some room to experiment.

Nothing worked. But accident we happened to have a mathematician on our team. A bright guy from Delhi IIT, one of the most prominent engineering schools in the world. Talat tried to solve the problem with math and SocialRank was born.

Me: How does a blogger increase SocialRank? Do you have any stories of how SocialRank has helped bloggers gain attention?

VJ: Well there is a large number of factors that influence your SocialRank. But here are two of the biggest.

First, backlinks. How many other bloggers in your field point to your post? This is usually a sign of a good post.

Next, comments. We actually "read" your blog and make a note of how many comments you're getting in a given time period. The comments are a good indicator of quality content.

There is a lot more to it than that, of course. But we have to keep the actual algorithm a secret to avoid spammers gaming the system.

SocialRank scores are extremely dynamic and updated every day. SocialRank actually seeks to level the playing field and give newer bloggers a chance to catch up. Everyone gets a chance to be noticed and gain new traffic to his site.

Me: How many bloggers are displaying SocialRank badges?

VJ: So far, more than 400 bloggers are showing their support to us by displaying our SocialRank badges.

The feedback we received was extremely encouraging and useful for us. We did launch new communities, improve our content, and launch new features, such as weekly and monthly views.

Me: What are you planning to do next?

VJ: For many of our niche categories we may eventually launch non-English versions. We're already doing this for regional sites like the SocialRank site for Belgian bloggers, Belgique. DailyVoices.com. We are also working on facilitating the top stories discovery flow. We all have multiple interests in our life. For instance, I want to know the latest news on Internet marketing, but I also enjoy discovering new photography tips. In the future, I will be able to get this in one location, instead of visiting MarketingLens.com and PhotoTipsDaily.com.

Me: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Vishen.

Posted by mikemoran at 11:56 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 24, 2008

Can You Ever Overdo Experimental Marketing?

I spend a lot of time talking about getting started on something instead of spending so much time contemplating what to do, and designing the perfect plan. Internet marketing is about constantly experimenting until you find something that works, so the faster you get to it, the better. But I was asked recently if you can suffer from the opposite problem, where you engage in endless activity that later turns out to be pointless or even harmful all in the name of experimentation. You can. And although it's far less common than the "not getting started" problem, it pays to watch for signs to avoid.

When someone writes a book called "Do It Wrong Quickly," it goes without saying that that person likes hyperbole. (And then I went ahead and said it anyway.) Of course, I don't mean you should be trying to do it wrong, but rather that you admit that most of what we try is wrong, and we need to measure the results so we can fix it. And I often tell people to change it, change it, and then change it again.

But there is a time to stop.

Here are three reasons to decide that a particular aspect of a campaign is OK as is, at least for now:

• You reach diminishing returns. In economics, it's well-known that you get most of the value of any action when it is first taken, eventually getting to the point that doing more and more returns less and less. When you are tweaking a campaign, and you see that your clickthrough rate soars with a change, but then further tweaking that change shows little improvement or even regression, then it might be time to work on something else.


• You have bigger fish to fry. Don't miss bigger opportunities just to perfect a small one. Even if you think that you can dramatically improve a campaign, it's not worth doing if you are missing the chance to improve another one that drives even more value to your business. Work on the most important things first.


• Excessive change is sometimes penalized. George Michie had an eye-opening post a couple of weeks back in the RKGblog called "PPC Copy Changes Can Hurt You"—he illustrated several reasons why constant churning of your paid search campaign can be counterproductive. In addition, you could imagine that daily updates to your LinkedIn profile or incessantly changes to your Web site architecture and design could cause feedback to be bad, regardless of the intrinsic value of any particular change in and of itself.

So, experimental marketing is a good thing, but only when it is measured in terms of business value. If your experiments are making big improvements in your most important campaigns, you're working on the right things. Like any technique, experimental marketing can be abused when it is approached as an end in itself instead of a way to improve business results. I write about this less because I suspect more companies are at the starting line deciding whether to run. What about your company?

Posted by mikemoran at 10:13 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 23, 2008

The New Google Analytics: Should You Switch?

Most of you know that my favorite price for things is "free." (I've even put together the Skinflint Internet Marketing Guides for those that want to spend nothing for their campaigns.) I've long used Google Analytics on my site as a free way to track how many people are coming, and have recommended it as the cheap way to do the same on your site. In December, Google announced a new version of Google Analytics, prompting the question of whether you should switch.

Whether you should switch to the new Google or not depends on what you have now.

If you already have Google Analytics, you will eventually need to switch to the new version. Google has announced that the old "Urchin" script is being replaced by the new "GA" script and the old script might stop working by the end of this year.

My site was using that old script, so I spent about 20 minutes today changing to the new script. I had used a technique called a server side include to place the script on every page of my site, so I just needed to change that one file to make the change. I can't tell how well it's working yet, but I'll look at my numbers over the next few days to see.

The tougher question is what you should do if you have a different metrics service or software package—one that you currently pay for. In the past, a few features have driven most adoption of high-end metrics:

• Better reports. Google Analytics has reports that handle most situations, but some companies depend on customized reports for their business that go beyond what Google can do.


• High volume traffic. Google Analytics has been alleged not to be able to keep up with very high volume Web sites, relying on sampling to randomly collect data. Dropping data wouldn't be everyone's favorite way to solve this problem, however.


• Tracking more than page views. Until now, Google Analytics could not track events other than new Web pages. Now it can track Flash, AJAX, and other events.


• Data sharing. Some suspicious types worry about Google having access to their metrics, so they buy someone else's solution instead. No feature added to Google Analytics will quell this crowd.

My take: You won't do better if your budget is zero. If you already use another metrics solution, you must evaluate not just the loss of function, but the pain of migration and the disruption in your data. No two metrics systems count things the same and they can't ingest the old system's data for you to see your history in one system.

I'd be interested in hearing from others who have reasons to use Google or one of its competitors for metrics.

UPDATE: Avinash Kaushik of Google clarified two of the points in the post, and I provided his feedback in a new post for you to read before making your Google Analytics decision.

Posted by mikemoran at 12:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 22, 2008

Cooking Up Your Web Marketing

Thanks to all who provided feedback on yesterday's post on how "Web Marketing Is Like Cooking," especially Jennifer Laycock's nice post at Search Engine Guide. I noticed Seth Godin posted today on "Layering," which is a nice name for experimental marketing.

Seth's "Layering" sounds an awful lot like "Do It Wrong Quickly," which is great, because we sure need a name for it. I know what I am trying to say when I say "do it wrong quickly," but no name has really caught on.

Should it be "adaptive marketing"? How about "Marketing 2.0"? "Experimental marketing?" Geez, "layering" sounds as good as anything.

I guess more important than the name is whether people know what to do. Will they start to give things a try? I know that it goes against every fiber in your beings (some of you), but we need to start. We need to remember that those old neurons are firing because of where we've been, not where we're going.

We've learned that marketing is hard to start, costs a lot, and carries huge risk. But the Internet changes it all. None of those things are still true, but we're caught up in our impulses formed from years of old-style marketing. And most of us work in corporate cultures that vilify errors.

So, if thinking about marketing as cooking does it for you, great. If "fail fast" gets you moving, cool. If "layering" gives you the metaphor you need, excellent. It doesn't really matter what you need to tell yourself. Just get started and don't stop.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 21, 2008

Web Marketing Is Like Cooking

My wife is a great cook. Not just good. She's an outstanding cook. I mean restaurant quality. When we first got married, she learned that I loved Indian food, so she started making Indian food at home. Sometimes I'm drawn to the kitchen by that uniquely Indian scent of 29 different spices wafting through the air. She's measured her spices ahead of time, each one patiently waiting for the right moment in the process to make its appearance in the hot oil. Even as I write this, I can almost hear the sizzle of mustard seeds landing in the pan. So, what does this have to do with marketing? Read on.

I can go on and on about what a great cook Linda is. She uses fresh vegetables and other ingredients. She makes dishes that are healthy as well as delicious. But there's something I haven't told you: She always uses a recipe. In fact, she often uses a recipe even when she's made a dish many times.

Does that surprise you? Sure, a lot of great cooks can just size up a pile of ingredients and wing it. They don't need recipes; they can just create. Linda is not that kind of cook. No matter what she's making, she'll crack open a cookbook or she'll Google something. She wants to have someone else's plan in front of her when she's doing her creating—she's not creating a recipe, she's creating our dinner.

And you know what? I couldn't care less. The food tastes every bit as good when Linda uses a recipe as it does if some other cook creates something.

Why am I telling marketers this story? Because most of us are not the people who create recipes. Most of us won't conjure up some entirely new method of marketing. Most of us don't fancy ourselves the creative type. We are always on the lookout for someone else's good idea.

And you know what? Your customers couldn't care less. Your marketing can be just as good following someone else's recipe as if you created the idea yourself.

Now, understand, I'm not telling you to plagiarize or to shamelessly duplicate something someone else did. I'm saying something else.

Stop feeling held back in Web marketing because you're not creative. Or because you don't think your ideas are any good. Or because you can never think of something to try.

The great thing about doing it wrong quickly is that you don't have to be brilliant. You don't have to be the one with the great idea. You don't even have to get it right on the second try.

What you do need is persistence. To be willing to try. To be willing to draw inspiration from someone else's recipe. If you keep trying things, you'll eventually lurch into what's right, even if it wasn't your idea, and even if you didn't create any new marketing. Maybe all you'll ever create is new customers. That's good enough.

You can be a great cook by following a recipe. The food tastes just as good.

So what's stopping you? What's preventing you from giving something a try? What is it that's holding you back from trying just one experiment today? If it's lack of creativity, it might be time to break out the recipe book.

Posted by mikemoran at 5:13 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

January 18, 2008

David Bradley on Big Company Web Marketing

I've been writing a lot lately about how big companies and small companies might use different approaches (and have different problems) when it comes to Web marketing. I've noticed that some folks in small businesses seem a bit skeptical about how hard it is for big businesses to do Web marketing well. They know it is hard for them but think it's easy for the big guys. I decided to speak to David Bradley, veteran of several large company Web efforts, to get his take. I'd worked with David years ago at IBM, and thought he'd have just the experience to shed some light on this. See if you think I was right.

David, a veteran Web marketing executive of IBM, SAP, and Corbis, is now a Senior Vice President of MarketBridge, the Web Marketing Consultancy. David firmly agrees that big companies have unique Web marketing problems not seen in smaller ones.

David believes that many big companies are stifled by their division into specialties because "The Web is not [treated as] a profession. Industrial designers get it. Web user experience does not fit into the normal org chart. Only born-on-the-Web companies have done it as a fundamental extension of their brand." As an example, he recalls that while at Corbis, "We dealt with the same information technology and application issues, and were constantly asked, 'Why do you need an agency?'"

This frustrated David no end, as it would anyone, who lamented "How you search for and find images on the Web was fundamental, which all [the Corbis executives] agreed with intellectually, but they never addressed it as a priority." He also recalled that at IBM, "Every [organization] wanted to control the Web, but most didn't 'get it.'"

None of this is news to me, having spoken to many different medium-to-large organizations. David asserts that part of the problem is that large companies haven't adapted as quickly as they need to: "The Web is still an oddly-shaped peg that doesn't fit into the organizational hole, [at least] in organizations that have 20-30 year-old organizational ideas."

David believes that you start your corporate religious conversion with an understanding of direct marketing and your business model. (I like this guy.) He told me how they did this at Corbis and at IBM:

You need a business model around unique customers and transaction types. You need transactional use cases, such as end-to-end commerce, where the Web can start the process but you close over the phone, and where you read about it on the Web and generate a lead [for an off-line sales channel].

At Corbis, we sold royalty-free images end-to-end on-line, but not royalty-bearing ones, because the photographer still owns rights to them. The Ansel Adams collection is a great example. [The rights holders] want to approve usage and negotiate pricing.

Corbis also offers rights services, such as the image of Steve McQueen or another celebrity. If you've ever seen the U2 video Window in the Skies—many special licenses were required. [For that kind of business,] the best you can do on-line is to create interesting stories to generate a lead.

Business models cut diagonally across your organization chart. Usage occasions don't fit into the rows and columns of an organization chart. When ibm.com changed from a corporate Web site to being a channel business, there was contention over whether the PC Division should have its own store. [Some thought] the only thing people would buy online were PCs. It was a huge decision to have one overall commerce experience. [IBM head] Lou Gerstner looked at this and said we need to think about commerce across the whole portfolio.

David's take on how to approach Web marketing at large companies will serve him well at MarketBridge, because this is exactly the kind of experience their large clients need. It's so easy for a large company to just move forward under its own momentum, because it can take a long time to notice you are going in the wrong direction. You can laugh off small problems precisely because you are so big, where those early warnings would be taken far more seriously in a small company.

If you work in a big company, have you tried to steer the ocean liner in a new direction? Or are you happy to go along with the ride? If you are, you might want to take a peek at where you're headed, because a lot of the ships need to plot a somewhat different course. If they don't adapt to Web marketing, then you might want to be boarding a new ship.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2008

Which Customers Are You Listening To?

Glenn Gow brought to my attention a post he wrote a few weeks back that should get us all thinking. In it, he summarizes a recent MITSloan Management Review piece that upbraids most marketers for doing the easiest kind of market research: Listening to our existing customers. Instead, we need to hear what the entire market wants, not just those people that already buy from us.

The prescription given is for full market panels, which makes sense. Market research has always operated based on customer panels and ensuring that you cover your entire target market rather than just the folks you know makes perfect sense. In the past, I've written about online panels that might get you lots of coverage for very little cost.

And I agree with that, up to a point. It's critically important that we keep in mind what online panels are good for. They're good for getting to the "why" behind behavior. But they are not always accurate.

My problem with market researchers is that they are sometimes too wedded to the tried and true survey techniques they are familiar with. Market researchers need to get involved with Web metrics so that they can help analyze the treasure trove of information we get every day from our Web sites.

Market research needs to embrace all methods of learning about customers. Online panels are great, but let's also analyze what customers actually do in real-life situations.

Posted by mikemoran at 4:27 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 16, 2008

Can You Increase Your Site's Popularity?

For whatever reason, I seem to be running into people lately who are unhappy with their Internet marketing results. They've been trying a lot of things, but they are getting tired. They tell me that "a small business can't break into the game anymore" or "my industry has already picked the winners and losers" or some other rationalization that explains why they can't change their company's trajectory. I think they are wrong.

I'm not saying it's easy to increase your site's popularity. I'm just saying it's possible. (Remember, too, that popularity is rarely the end goal—you want to increase your sales.)

It is undeniably true that it is harder to enter the market on the Internet than it was just a few years ago. Just as in any other maturing tactic, as more people start to do it, it becomes harder to stand out. Where a little work in 2002 got you noticed, you might need to do a lot more work now.

But it's still possible. Yes, companies are much more entrenched at the top of your industry now, but you can dislodge them. Look at what Progressive has been doing in the insurance industry. They have an interesting and different take on what customer-friendly means: showing quotes from other companies—and they've used that to get attention they'd have never gotten with a more traditional message.

To rise above the clutter, you need more than tactics. You need to be different. Let's look at where the competition is the toughest to prove the point: at the very top, at the most popular sites on the Internet.

Matt Tatham of Hitwise kindly provided these numbers to me. Look them over and see if you notice something. Who broke through in 2006?

Looks like MySpace. Why did they break through when others did not? Because they were doing something very different. Social networking was a powerful way to break through the clutter and get noticed. Suppose we compare 2006 to 2007? What do we see then?

This time it's Facebook. They didn't have a radically new idea from MySpace, but they have begun to execute it better. Both of these companies broke through in the most competitive arena possible.

Your company can break through in the less competitive bounds of your industry. Start thinking about how you can act differently than the competition or execute better. Tell a better story and follow through. There's always a way to stand out, and it's usually not about marketing tactics. It's about being different, like Seth Godin's Purple Cow.

Posted by mikemoran at 8:38 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

January 15, 2008

Biggest Mistakes in Search Marketing

You know that I am a big fan of doing things wrong quickly, which is my way of describing radical experimentation. I like to say that if you keep shooting at the sky, eventually a duck will fall. But that's no reason not to aim. Check out my guest post on the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog for the three biggest mistakes in search marketing. After you read it, at least you'll know some places to avoid aiming.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 14, 2008

Making the Free Thing Work

Last week, I criticized BusinessWeek for an article that told small businesses to steer clear of Web 2.0, which I think is bad advice. Thinking about it, I do understand that Web marketing can be frustrating, but small businesses with small budgets might need to put up with some frustration. They may need to "make the free thing work."

Making the free thing work is something my wife and I talk about a lot. We've got four growing children and things can be expensive, so we spend lots of time living with the limitations of the free thing.

Yes, private school would be better, but public school is free, so maybe we can supplement what they are getting. Sure, hiring a tutor would be nice, but maybe we could tutor them at home based on what we know.

I have a 28-year-old TV in my office. Why? Because it still works. When it conks out, then I'll find out what high definition is all about. Until then, I don't miss what I don't have.

I bike a lot in the summer, but my bike cost $10 at a garage sale. And I like that because I can park it anywhere without stressing about it getting stolen. Geez, the lock cost more than the bike.

You get the idea. There are lots of areas in life when you can make do with the free (or at least the cheap) thing. But sometimes you have to put in a little effort to make it work.

It takes time, effort, and patience to tutor your own kids. (Did I mention patience?) That TV has a problem with the volume control, so I've had to futz with it a lot to make it work. (Now, no one is allowed to adjust the volume except through the remote for the cable box.) That bike is a steel 1970 Schwinn that is a lot heavier than any bike made today, so it takes more effort to ride. (I tell myself I get a better workout.)

What's this have to do with marketing? Plenty.

Check out my Skinflint Guide to Internet Marketing for a bevy of ways to make the free thing work. Free tools and free techniques are exactly what small businesses need to do. Yes, they are more work. Yes, they can be frustrating. But small businesses must decide to put in the time and deal with the frustration to make the free thing work. If they try a few things for a while, they'll eventually land on a couple that work, which will give them an edge over all those that lament about how Internet marketing is too hard or costs too much.

What about your company? Do you try what's out there for free? Or do you just complain about what a pain it is and how you can't afford it? That's not what successful small businesses do with the Internet.

Posted by mikemoran at 12:39 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 11, 2008

"Our Customers Know What They Want"

If you read my post the other day, "Are You Helping or Selling?" you understand how I feel about solving your customers' problems instead of just trying to sell them something. Not everyone agrees, however. Perhaps you said to yourself, "This doesn't apply to us. Our customers know what they want." One reader, who would understandably like to remain anonymous, fears that will be the boss' reaction. What do you say when your boss reacts this way?

As human beings, we try to be rational, but it's very hard for us to get away from our own personal experience. Usually, relying on our experience is extremely rational. It protects us in many situations, but sometimes it leads us astray, and this is unfortunately one of those times.

Imagine that your store was located in a hard-to-find location and you never gave anyone directions. You could watch every customer walk into your store and tell yourself, "Look at all these customers that come here with no directions—why do we need to bother with them?" You are only serving the ones that can find you without directions, so of course they don't need directions, but what about everyone else?

Likewise, if every customer you see already knows your company and the products you sell, it doesn't mean that you have no need to adopt problem-oriented helpfulness in your selling. Rather, it means that, because you have no helpful information available, people that need help are going elsewhere. The only ones that can find you are the ones that don't need any help.

So when your boss says, "Our target market just knows what they want," you need to ask, "How do you know?" If the proof is experiential or anecdotal rather than based on any testing you've done, it's time to run a test. Likewise, my anonymous reader wrote, "I still believe that as we deal in many parts that are out of production or have other unique features, there are at least some customers who only have a slight idea what they want that could be converted earlier." I suspect that's true, but we still need to test it. If you're willing to test what you think versus what the boss thinks, you have a chance of winning. Otherwise, it's a standoff of opinions. And opinions are like necks—everybody has one. What we need is data.

So even though they say experience is the best teacher, it's not the perfect teacher. usually we can trust our experience to yield the right answer, but we should continually question our experience in something as new as Web marketing. Testing our assumptions usually yields the better decision.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 10, 2008

Weak, BusinessWeek

I have to admit at the outset that I have always loved BusinessWeek Magazine. It's not as thick as it used to be, but I consistently find it full of good writing and insightful opinions. I'd be proud to write for them myself. But a Twitter from Jennifer Laycock alerted me to an article posted this week that is just so far off the mark that it's hard to know even where to start.

The article, "Tech Solutions Your Small Biz Can't Use" by Gene Marks, seems like one of those link-baiting contrarian pieces that wants to pooh-pooh the conventional wisdom. Go ahead and read it for yourself. I'll wait right here.

Gene Marks might be a very smart guy, but it's hard for me to agree with much of what he writes here. In fact, it's easy to summarize what I agree with: Don't believe all the hype—just because something works for one business doesn't mean it will work for yours. I also agree that I've seen few businesses so far for whom mobile applications are working in the U.S. (but if you're in Japan, there are many successes). And CRM software might be overkill for many small businesses when simple contact management would suffice.

But that's it. The rest of the article is a real disservice to small business owners. Let's take them one by one.

RSS Feeds. Maybe RSS Feeds aren't for everyone, but I find it much easier to scan through a list of headlines than to have to connect to a dozen different Web sites each day to see if anything is new. Sure you can waste your time poring over RSS Feeds just as you can waste your time doing anything, but I've never heard anyone say that it takes longer to get information with RSS. Gene's assertion that abandoning RSS somehow puts you back in control of getting information is at odds with my experience and that of everyone I know.

Spam Filters. Maybe Gene is using the wrong spam filters, but I can't live without my SpamFighter. It was a breeze to install and I've never had a minute's trouble with it. I don't understand how anyone can advise people to manually handle their spam.

Antivirus Software. OK, if you advise people not to use antivirus software, you are just a nut. Now, I am not here to tell you that it is easy or it is always pleasant, but as someone whose computer has contracted dozens of viruses over the years that have been detected by the software, and one that was not not that cost me a week's worth of time to correct, I put up with the problems. This was the most egregious thing Gene had to say. Please keep using your antivirus software, folks.

Blogs. Blogs are not for everyone, of course. But small businesses can use them every bit as effectively as large ones. Gene's right that you need to have something to say, and it does take time, but most one-person consulting shops I know have a blog. It certainly doesn't make sense for every business, but there's no reason to discriminate based on size—any business with information to share can use a blog effectively, big or small.

Search Engine Optimization. Gene is totally wrong here. In fact, as I wrote the other day, small businesses have an edge in search marketing over big ones. I can't tell you the number of times I have walked into a major corporation that is being outranked by its dealers and affiliates for its own brand name product searches. Small businesses that work to get links will do well in SEO for far less money than any other marketing tactic.

AdWords. Paid search isn't right for everyone, but Gene's belief that it's mass marketing suitable for Coke or Pepsi is ludicrous. All search marketing is the exact opposite of mass marketing and it's exactly wrong for low-priced offline mass market sales like soda pop. Studies show that paid search yields more leads per dollar than direct mail and lots of other tactics, so why small businesses wouldn't at least try it is beyond me.

Online Video. Here again, I don't know what planet Gene is on. Blendtec and many other businesses have shown how video can get you a lot more bang for your buck than traditional tactics.

Web 2.0. I guess Gene doesn't realize that several of the things he trashed earlier are part of Web 2.0, so it's probably not even worth dismantling this argument.

I think Gene has a huge blind spot here. He expects each of these things to be easy, to work with no effort, and to require no learning. If he tries it and it doesn't work the first time, then he gives up. That doesn't sound like a successful small business owner to me. They are the hardest working people I know. What they need to do is to learn a bit about the opportunities and then decide which one to try, along with knowing how to measure whether it is working.

If Gene doesn't have the computer skills to pull this off, then these tactics probably aren't for him. But for him to think that no small business owner should try them just because he has no clue is crazy. Perhaps he should talk to a different group of small business owners that make the Web work for them every day. I'd be happy to introduce him if he is interested.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:24 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

January 9, 2008

Are You Helping or Selling?

If you read my monthly newsletter the other day, you understand that I think that the Web is ushering in a new way of communicating with customers. Instead of the breathless hype of the old days designed to make one sale, we need to solve a customer's problem to create one relationship. If we truly help people, you can be sure that few of them will remember to buy from us. Unfortunately, more and more of our target markets are turned off by the old sales pitches and will look for true help elsewhere. If you grew up with old-style marketing, you might not agree with me, but let me explain.

A few weeks ago, the owner of a small business approached me—let's call him Les Daring. He'd seen one of my appearances and really likes the idea that you can put content on the Web that captures customers early in the sales cycle, even before they know what kind of product they want to buy. In my books, I've called this content "Learn" content, because that is what the customer is doing. (For more details on this, take a look at my article on Search Engine Land called "Are Your Customers Looking for a Problem?")

Les wasn't ready for totally helpful content. He wanted to write his content more like a traditional direct mail letter. He farmed the job out to his regular direct marketing agency and came back to me a few weeks later with the result. It read like a—you guessed it—direct mail letter.

I told him that this isn't really the kind of content I have in mind. I am talking about content that looks what a newspaper or magazine would print as editorial content, not advertising. Now, sure, when you write your page about the three ways that you can solve the problem, it's fine that the third way is the one you sell. And it's perfectly OK for you to link from that third item to a more sales-y page on your site, but that's as hard a sell as you should do.

Why? Don't direct mail letters work? Well, sure they do. And if that's the way you want to market on the Web, you have every right to do it. Moreover, if you can show that it works better than what I am suggesting, even better.

But I think the old direct mail tactics don't work as well. I've seen over and over again how a more plainspoken, factual approach works better. Let's look at a two different companies to show what I mean. Before we start, I want you to know that I don't know the folks at these companies nor have I ever bought their products, but I am familiar with their work. Each are in the broad business of search engine marketing, so I have researched them for my books and my other writing.

The first is SEO Elite Software, which sells a well-respected search optimization tool set. If you look at their marketing materials, they resemble nothing so much as a direct mail letter on the Web. Lots of exclamation points and large fonts and a long, persuasive story. Again, there's nothing wrong with any of this. I am sure it is somewhat effective.

Contrast their approach with Aaron Wall's. Aaron is also very well-respected—he sells an e-book called "SEO Book" that is a direct competitor to my first book. And I am told it's very good. But look how Aaron does his marketing—it's much more helpful than sales-y. The cornerstone of Aaron's marketing is his extremely helpful blog, which has huge readership, some of whom decide to buy his book.

Now I am have no way of knowing whether Aaron sells more than SEO Elite. But I believe that SEO Elite's sales are transactions—someone buys that product because they think it was good. Only buyers of that product would think to buy another product by SEO Elite. They have little relationship with their customers.

Aaron, on the other hand, has a strong relationship with his customers. Not only do they buy his book, but they might even get some consulting from him. If he comes out with more things to buy, they'd be interested in that also—even those that have bought nothing but only read his blog would be interested. I believe that the difference is the way that Aaron does his marketing. Aaron understands the difference between helping and selling.

Eventually Les Daring did too. He decided to write the content himself, rather than having his agency do it. He just created a few pages that answered questions he gets all the time. And he put contact forms on the page. And suddenly he started getting people contacting him. Not in droves, but a nice trickle of potential customers he wouldn't have otherwise gotten, all for the total cost of a few hours of writing. Les now understands the difference between helping and selling, too.

Do you? Do you purposely set out to solve your customers' problems? Do you provide a free tool or helpful information that attract a following? Information that will be passed on by others? If not, your old-style marketing message is probably becoming more and more invisible, as people ignore it to spend their time with companies that help them. Those are the companies that develop relationships, not just make transactions.

Posted by mikemoran at 8:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 8, 2008

Big Company Search Marketing

I was reading an excellent post today by David Meerman Scott on EMC's troubles with search marketing. I work for IBM, so EMC is a competitor of ours, but I have trouble being too critical because I know what they are struggling with. Organic search marketing for big companies is just really hard. Small companies struggle to get attention—their big problem in organic search marketing is attracting links. But they have it easy compared to big companies, because larger Web sites struggle with absolutely everything else.

Large sites frequently blow money on fancy technologies that stop spiders from indexing their pages. They have intramural competitions for the same keywords. (At IBM, we once had several different groups all bidding against each other for the paid search keyword "linux.")

But the biggest problem is that these companies can't centralize search marketing, but they must control it. That requires not just search marketing smarts, but also skills in corporate governance and organizational behavior. You must be able to put procedures, standards, and training in place to get large numbers of people to do what is needed. You also need to consistently measure that they continue to do it as time goes by.

Small companies have few, if any of these problems. If you can gather your Web staff around a table, hand them a copy of a book and say "Do this," and that solves your governance problem, you have no idea how much harder it is in a large company. In any major corporation, you'd have to spend a month of conference calls to speak to even a small number of the folks responsible for your Web site. I am certain that a number of smart people at EMC know exactly what they need to do to fix their site, but putting a program in place that gets everyone rowing in the same direction takes a lot more than merely recognizing there's a problem.

Big companies are often blinded as to the problems because the large number of people can sometimes foster an insular culture. But from what I know about EMC, I don't think that's their problem, nor is it the problem of most large companies that are flailing about in search marketing hell. Their problem is that they know what to do (or at least most of what to do) but they can't figure out how to get a massive number of people to do it all.

If you're a big company, like EMC, struggling to gain respectability in search marketing, check out an article I wrote that enumerates the problems and helps you take the first few steps to solving them, called "Big Company and Big Site Search Marketing." IBM increased its search traffic to 25% of visitors from less than one percent when it came to grips with the difficulties of behemoth search marketing, so don't despair. Your monolith can do it, too.

And if you are small company, I don't expect you to shed any crocodile tears for the large ones out there. Just be happy that this is one area where being small is far less of a disadvantage, and make sure that you are doing everything you can to compete with everything you've got. Organic search marketing, unlike traditional big-money marketing, favors the nimble and the small.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 7, 2008

Testing Designed to Annoy Customers

Regular readers know that "do it wrong quickly" is my way of telling marketers to test, test, and test again. Most of the risks associated with mistakes in off-line media are not present on the Web, so we should not fear "letting fly" with ideas that can be quickly corrected and reshaped. But there are exceptions, and I wanted you share one with you.

Before Christmas, I stopped into a major retailer's brick-and-mortar store to purchase a gift for one of my kids. At the register, I was asked if I'd like to obtain a free card that entitled me to a discount for future purchases. That sounded good, and it was free, so I said yes. I was asked to provide my e-mail address, which I thought was OK, so I did.

I started to receive e-mails (several a week) from this company, each one with an offer for a 10-20% discount on a particular product. That's not exactly what I thought I was signing up for—I thought I was getting a chance at a discount on what I wanted to buy, not on what they wanted to sell, but I let it go.

Then, last week, I got a more official-looking e-mail that informed me that to start receiving my discounts (OK, now we're talking) I have to register my card online. That seemed a bit odd because they already have my e-mail address, but I decided to go ahead. When I clicked the link, I was subjected to a dozen-question survey about my interests. I was starting to feel like this was overkill, but I went along. (At this point, it's possible that my professional curiosity about what kind of marketing campaign this is began to overwhelm my usual consumer defenses, because I think a lot of people would have dropped out here.) I wondered if my survey answers might be used so they could provide more targeted e-mail offers in the future, but they never told me that, so I am still left wondering.

After spending several minutes answering the survey, I finally got to the end. I was ready to find out about these great discounts that I now qualified for. Well, don't hold your breath on this one.

I was presented with a screen requesting that I choose between three very similar discounts: 20% off one $100 purchase, 10% off one $50 purchase, and some other offer I don't even remember now. I don't remember it because it was a lot like the first two offers. It was confusing, to say the least. I mean, I hadn't shown up at their door ready to buy something. It was as if someone called you on the phone out of the blue and said, "How much do you want to buy from me?"

But that wasn't the worst part. Every single discount offer expired within 15 days. To me, they were worthless. I had no intention of buying anything from this company that quickly. Why not give some percentage off my next purchase, whenever that is? Then, I might remember the company the next time I needed what they sell. I could even print out a coupon that reminded me. Or when I presented the card at retail or used my e-mail address in an on-line purchase, the company could remember I get a discount. Nothing but good will from these approaches, but instead I was frustrated.

Instead of choosing one of these similar and unwelcome offers, I sent an e-mail to the company telling them that their discount offers were unimpressive and that I felt that I had been taken advantage of just to beef up their market research. The reply I got shocked me:

We welcome your comments, as we rely on feedback from customers to improve on the services we provide for the program.

[Clueless Company] has been developing a variety of offers in our e-mails as we seek to provide the best services and most relevant offers for our customers. Our best way to learn about which offers are most valued and used is to apply a common marketing practice that involves running a variety of test offers to better gauge our customers' interests among several offers. We then compare responses from the different groups and customize weekly newsletters to better fit the customers personal preferences and interests.

Please be assured that we will continue to offer a wide variety of coupons, including those that can be used on any item.

Thanks for choosing [Clueless Company]. Please feel free to contact us if you have any other questions.

My eyes! Cover my eyes!

So you're blaming the idea of offer testing for this? Geez. How about understanding that your test is idiotic because it does not take into account what your customer is doing and what they are motivated by? How about realizing that offering three choices that are largely interchangeable doesn't tell you anything? How about admitting that you are just pumping up your market research without offering anything of value?

And I started to wonder if underneath all the fancy talk about listening to our customers, that some of us still don't get it. We still don't realize that customers are not stupid and that we have to give value in return for their time and information, or else we damage our brands.

I have no intention of shopping at [Clueless Company] right now. They annoyed me. There's no good reason to ever annoy your customer while testing something. The information you get is not more important than the relationship.

Your ostensible reason for testing is not merely to get information but to be able to use that information to make customers happy. If the test itself ticks people off, then what exactly are you accomplishing?

Now I know I could have had a far more provocative and link-baiting post by naming [Clueless Company] and providing screen shots and the name of the twit who condescended to explain offer testing to me, but my goal isn't to embarrass anyone. My goal is to help my readers take a close look at testing to see if you might be annoying your customers.

Let's keep in mind that the goal in everything we do is to increase our sales through better relationships with customers, which comes through satisfying rather than annoying them. As important as offer testing is, it is merely a means to an end. Don't screw up on the point of the whole thing.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 4, 2008

Bit Literacy

I am not the most organized person in America. OK, OK, I am a mess. Always have been. I'm the kind of person that started to read Getting Things Done, but I never got it done. (Yeah, I really never finished the book.) But someone recommended Bit Literacy to me, and I have actually made progress. If you're finding that Internet marketing has dumped you into a world of information overload that you can't cope with, you might want to read it, too.

I don't want to seem unkind to the other personal productivity books out there, because Getting Things Done and several other books have helped me. I just am overwhelmed at the idea of having a whole systematic approach to everything. It has been too hard to start.

Bit Literacy felt more like the kind of thing you can do in stages. I was happy to find out that I already have a good system for managing the folders on my computer and backing everything up, but my e-mail, as I knew, was out of control. I was the kind of person that left everything in my Inbox and periodically trolled through it to find the items I needed to do. I constantly lost follow-ups.

Now, it wasn't that I did not try to handle everything—I did. After reading Getting Things Done, I began dealing with e-mail better and cutting and pasting things into my to-do list for follow-up. But it seemed to take a lot of time. When I was in a hurry (frequently), I began leaving things in my Inbox again.

Bit Literacy has cured that for me the last few weeks. I began to use Mark's excellent to-do list, Gootodo, which is exceedingly simple (for people like me) but offers one killer feature: you can forward e-mail to it to create a task. So, for example, sending mail to 1d@gootodo.com ("1d" means "one day in the future") puts a task on tomorrow's calendar—the subject is the name and the body is the detail. It even handles attachments.

It was nice to be able to forward e-mails I couldn't handle today by sending them into the future, where I'll see them before the task is past its deadline. I also began to bcc: Gootodo for follow-up items, so that I remember to check on things at the right time—that makes follow-ups as easy as adding another name to the e-mail.

Because in my job I handle sensitive information that should not be made public, I am not always able to forward e-mail as is. While I am sure Mark and his team work to ensure the security of all information entrusted to them, my company would not be pleased to have their confidential information sent outside the firewall. I have taken to modifying details of tasks and changing some information in e-mails to ensure that no secrets would be divulged if they fell into the wrong hands. Not everyone would have to take these steps, but I find them a small price to pay for the use of this great tool.

I didn't take all of Mark's advice on e-mail. I don't empty my Inbox every day, settling for a few times a week. And I still don't delete things from my Sent folder or my Inbox. I move them to folders labeled 2007 or 2008 so that eventually I can just trash a whole year's worth of mail. But I use desktop search to find my old e-mail when I need it, instead of setting up folders. I think this is faster for me than deciding what should stay and what should go and where it should be stored.

Mark's book is loaded with down-to-earth tips on every aspect of computer usage, all to help you save time and "let the bits go" rather than hoarding them the way I used to. One other tip he passed along has been an eye-opener for me: ActiveWords. ActiveWords is an amazing program that allows you to set up strings of text that can be typed anywhere that get expanded to something bigger and better. For example, if I type in "cin" followed by two blank spaces, my conference call-in number is immediately placed wherever I have my cursor, such as an e-mail or a meeting invitation. I can substitute whole form letters to send as is or to modify, when I get familiar questions. ActiveWords also comes with free dictionaries that correct your spelling or capitalization as you type. You can also use ActiveWords to start programs, surf the Web, or loads of other things—I have only used it for a few days, but I am certain that it will be a huge time-saver.

These are the kinds of practical tips that Mark passes on throughout Bit Literacy. But his book is more than a compendium of tricks. Mark helps you to think differently about the world of bits and helps you apply a new philosophy to the way you work that opened my mind to a new way to think. It's one of those rare books that helped me get over a personal productivity hump.

Now that I feel more bit literate, I am ready to go back and re-read Getting Things Done, because I think I might be able to get it done this time. I think using both of these books together is very useful, because Bit Literacy gets you started and Getting Things Done may allow you to get to the next level beyond your computer work. Go check out Bit Literacy and Getting Things Done on Amazon and get a handle on the flood of information that Internet marketers must handle to succeed.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:41 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

January 3, 2008

Lots of Blog Changes

I introduced a few changes to the way this blog works yesterday while still perfecting the remainder today. You probably notice that it looks a little different because I finally got around to putting some badges and advertising here. Some longtime readers expressed astonishment that I have two books out despite my occasional posts referring to the books. (Maybe they are longtime subscribers rather than actual readers.) So I have added some advertising for my books and sprinkled in some AdSense to pay the bills. But the biggest changes involve commenting.

I've made several changes to the way comments work on my blog:

• New human detector. I have finally given in, having failed to stem the onslaught of spam comments in my inbox by any other mechanism. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it's better than a captcha full of squiggly letters and numbers for you to decipher. So, now you must enter a random letter so that your post is accepted.
• No more preview. As ugly as it is to be forced to enter a random letter, it's even worse when you have to deal with it to preview your comment and then enter a different letter to submit. After much agonizing and gnashing of teeth (all right, all right, I don't really know how to gnash my teeth), I decided it was best to just eliminate the preview mechanism. Other blogs have done so, so I hope that is OK with you.
• No more TypeKey IDs. I thought a lot about this one, because some of you are probably using them, but I continually found bugs in the Movable Type templates associated with TypeKey and it wasn't helping me stop spam anyway, so I have eliminated them from my site. Apologies to those of you that liked them—I hope the "Remember me" setting will suffice.
• HTML now allowed. If I can be absolutely sure that real human beings are behind each comment, then there's no reason for me to limit links and other HTML in blog comments. And I am not placing nofollow attributes on the links. If your link is to a legitimate site for a legitimate purpose, I will publish the comment. If it's not, I will delete the comment. I think that is the best approach.

I hope these changes are acceptable to all of you—I tried to mix in a little sugar with the medicine. I couldn't continue to deal with dozens of spam comments each day, so I hope you can understand.

At first I thought that this kind of blog trivia might not be what most of you want to read about, but I decided that it shows the practical problems that every successful blog must deal with along the way. Perhaps someday we'll be able to carry on our conversations without being interrupted by heckling spammers, but until then we need to learn how to cope. I hope that some of this might help other bloggers working through similar issues.

On a side note, I was gratified to see that yesterday the Miami Herald named Do It Wrong Quickly one of the eleven best business books of 2007. Thanks to all of you for your support of my writing—that book would not have been written without it.

Posted by mikemoran at 11:50 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 2, 2008

Doing Well by Doing Good

If you're old like me, you remember the 1980s as a decade where people said that "greed is good." The U.S. president talked about how wealth would "trickle down" from rich to poor. Making money by any means necessary almost seemed patriotic—you were doing good by doing well. Today, I think we are seeing the exact opposite—you're doing well by doing good.

What I mean is that in the old days, many people were quick to check their ethics at the door. They'd do whatever was necessary to make a buck all week and then go to church on Sunday, for example. They'd justify their actions by explaining how they were creating wealth for everyone, but their main motivation was creating wealth for themselves. They would justify the act of getting rich as good, so whatever it took to get rich was good.

Sure, not everyone acted this way in the 1980s, but many did and many continue to do so today. Marketing was sometimes about fooling people with the fine print. Or crafting an offer that seemed too good to be true. Or secretly employing children at subsistence wages in a third world country to keep those prices so low. It's hard to see how any of these acts are terribly ethical, but they were often justified by their perpetrators as serving the larger societal good of creating wealth—you were doing good by doing well.

As buyers become better and better educated, however, the time of fooling them has passed. And as the Internet makes more and more information available, the time of ugly secrets is passing, too.

Customers are increasingly distrustful of all marketing messages. And they don't trust corporations to be good public citizens. Years of watching corporate bad behavior have made the public cynical about what companies say and what they do.

Time was that large companies had to worry about what the public thought, because their brand images could be tarnished when reporters exposed their misdeeds. But small companies often went scot-free. (I am not sure who Scott is exactly, but he seems to be free on a regular basis.) Small companies believe that no one would pay attention to their bad behavior because they are not big enough to be interesting. "What reporter would ever write about little old us?" they ask.

The Internet is beginning to answer that question. Blogs, product reviews, message boards and other information affect many businesses that the New York Times would never stoop to cover. Even if people are not talking about your company in particular, they may be talking about industry practices you follow. (I recently spoke to an independent funeral home operator who lamented about how mistrusted he has become, all because of the actions of others in his industry, and the attention it is starting to get. He's changed some of his policies to avoid guilt by association.)

Where in the past it was the role of government and media to reign in capitalistic excesses. now the Internet is adding to that force, especially with small companies that successfully flew under the radar before. Yes, that blogger might have only a few hundred readers, but if many of them are your most informed and influential customers, it's not good for them to see your dirty laundry.

So how does a company break through the clutter and rise above the mediocrity of the average ethically-challenged company? I believe that it is through good behavior that modern companies will attract a following. Yes, there will always be ethical bottom dwellers that skirt the rules. But the Internet is making cutting corners a far more dangerous practice, because the benefit of fine print disappears when exposed to the light. Violating brand trust is a story that spreads like wildfire, damaging the company far more than any edge that the unethical practice provided.

Now, I am no Pollyanna. (Then again, no one ever seems to admit to being one.) I don't expect people to suddenly start doing the right thing merely because it is the right thing. If people are motivated by greed, they probably aren't going change overnight. But the weird thing is that those for whom greed rules the day might understand that they'll do well by doing good (even if it's for what do-gooders would consider the wrong reasons).

Companies must examine their fundamental relationships:

• With customers. Fooling your customers has a shorter shelf life than it used to. When your customers realize they've been snookered, they'll tell everyone they know, which the Internet makes easier than ever before. It's better to treat your customers well in the first place. This extends even to the point of avoiding the hype-laden, breathless marketing copy of old in favor of a message that is actually helpful to your customers. Perhaps not every business can successfully market this way, but many more can do it than have tried it so far.
• With employees. Service businesses have long known that treating their employees better can provide the edge in getting customers treated better. When you give employees a piece of the action, or you pay them more, or do other things that cause them to hang around and to develop loyalty to your company, they are far more motivated to serve your customers better. The Internet is turning many more employees into customer-facing employees, through blogs, message boards, and e-mail. If you treat your employees right, they'll want to treat your customers right, too.
• With the public. No longer can companies consign their public face to public relations professionals. Everything your company does has a public context, whether it is treatment of employees, customer policies, or simply being a good corporate neighbor to the public around your location. The more successful you become, the bigger a target you'll be.

I spent my formative years in Catholic school, so even thinking about doing something unethical causes mental images of the nuns hitting me, but I haven't always been able to convince those not as tightly constrained. Now you can give even the most craven business owner an argument in favor of good works. For those that need one, the Internet is becoming a new external force that corrals bad behavior. So if your philosophy is to take every advantage you can get, the message is clear: You'll make more money in the long run by doing the right thing. You'll do well by doing good.

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Posted by mikemoran at 8:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack