Radiating Thoughts
Articles, discussions, and expertise from the Impact Radius team.
Is It Time for New Technology?
When should you shop for “affiliate” or “performance marketing” technology? Three scenarios suggest a review of the latest options:
1. You don’t currently have technology in place and you need it.
2. You have technology but it no longer fits your needs and you’re ready to upgrade.
3. You already have it; it doesn’t do what you need and you’re ready to shut the channel down. Read More →
Coupon Strategies for eCommerce Brands
On Tuesday, Feb 7th, Impact Radius co-founder Todd Crawford is speaking at the Online Marketing Summit to share some expert coupon strategies for eCommerce companies. Here are some highlights of the key action items he's recommending. Read More →
The Big Conversion Tracking Lie
Failure to attribute every referred action is a big issue for performance marketers. The numbers whispered in private conversations cite between 5-30% lost. That’s a big, expensive problem. But a bigger problem is that somewhere along the line we’ve all grown to accept the breakage. We believe that technology deficiencies can’t be overcome. The message “this-is-as-good-as-it-gets” is not only a big problem: it’s a big lie. Read More →
#2012Marketing Solutions
In the summary of our #2012Marketing Challenges Series, we referenced our plans to post solutions for each of the topics listed in the series. We're pleased to announce the publication of our 2012 Marketing Solutions e-booklet. It's available for free from our resources page. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenges Executive Summary
I've spent over 25 years in managerial roles and learned early in my career to ask anyone presenting me with a problem or issue to also recommend a solution or next steps. Otherwise, every problem becomes my problem. And that scenario quickly cripples organizational effectiveness.
After a while, this rule becomes part of the team's culture. So, when we conceived of the "#2012Marketing Challenges" series, we planned to include a "solutions" piece right from the start. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 12: Emerging Media Opportunities
By 2016, Forrester predicts that online advertising spend will overtake TV. Advertisers will spend almost $77 billion online, comprising 35% of overall ad spending.
And with the next evolution of digital channels such as Microsoft’s Kinect, Apple’s iAD, and social gaming platforms such as Zygna taking the centre stage, marketers will have to try a little harder than a QR code, a mobile website, or a social media web 2.0 campaign to keep up in the digital age. The emerging media platforms are racing to amaze their customers with innovative and novel experiences. And marketing has to keep pace. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 11: Getting It All Done
Earlier this fall, at Digital World Expo, we conducted an informal survey asking marketers about their biggest challenges. Nearly everyone described a common scenario: Managing their many priorities with too few resources. Getting it all done with less. Less budget. Less headcount. Less time.
Whether or not marketers actually need to squeeze more from their budgets, staff or daily schedule, the perception is getting it all done is an increasingly difficult goal. Why? What's changed in recent years to challenge marketers with the fairly straight-forward goal of generating leads and closing sales? Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 10: Executing a 3-Screen Strategy
Last year, Microsoft released a study on the evolution of a 3-screen media environment. The premise of the study was that marketers need to be aware of the behaviors and attitudes of consumers towards each screen, how consumers expect their different media to work together, and what consumers expect from their media and advertising experiences. As we move into 2012, here at Impact Radius we have been talking to our clients and thinking about the challenge of marketing to the evolving “multi-screen” consumer. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 9: Acquiring New Customers via Social Media
Does social media generate new business? Are the customers buying more because of activity in the channel? Or should we even be asking performance related questions of our social media efforts? Whatever the answers - "social" remains a buzzing topic among marketers.
The case for social media as an engagement tool and customer retention strategy is undeniable; however, many companies question whether or not social media drives new customers to buy. Should marketers invest in the channel, and if so, what amount of budget is the right amount of budget? Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 8: Adopting Attribution Reporting
Tracking marketing campaigns used to be easier — TV, radio, and print were the three primary media channels and if people came to your store, or ordered from your catalog, it was relatively easy to trace their purchase path. These days, customers come to us from a myriad of sources: display ads, QR codes, email campaigns, media partner sites, TV ads, comparison shopping engines, organic search, PPC ads, etc.
Attribution reporting is a relatively new technology designed to help you understand the many different ‘touch points’ that consumers have with your brand. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 7: Consolidating the Digital Marketing Toolset
One of the biggest draw towards digital for marketers is the ability to track and generate performance data. Everyone needs data, and today even the most amateur of digital marketers have access to a combination of databases, software interfaces and analytic tools to manage campaigns, study web analytics, track media partner conversions and create reports about social influence. The trend towards data has however made data collection and reporting more complex: suddenly, we are all using a myriad of software interfaces, reporting tools and good old fashioned spreadsheets to manage, measure, track and optimize our online marketing campaigns. The challenge becomes the ability to aggregate this data and extract it in meaningful ways for all stakeholders across the organization. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 6: Finding Clarity in Data
The promise of digital marketing is that metrics, measurement, and data-driven decisions will help marketing executives to produce a higher ROI. And yet, as most top-performing marketers know, the proliferation of campaign data and tracking analytics has actually made our jobs harder, not easier. Layer on top the convergence of offline and online marketing campaigns and the issue further complicates itself.
Consider that in a 2011 study by Forbes nearly half of respondents reported increasing their spending on business intelligence and 78% reported that they were placing more scrutiny on what channels performed. Read More →
Consider that in a 2011 study by Forbes nearly half of respondents reported increasing their spending on business intelligence and 78% reported that they were placing more scrutiny on what channels performed. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 5: Privacy vs. Personalization
In September 2011, Facebook was hit with a viral storm of angry status updates from its users, protesting the social network’s proposed new monthly fee. It was a hoax, of course. Facebook never intended to charge its users, stating on their login page that Facebook is “free and always will be.” And it wasn’t even a new hoax. The same one spread in 2010, and resulted in 300,000 users signing a petition against the new fictional charge.
The lesson, though, for marketers is how little the average person understands about companies like Facebook and Google. As any marketer knows, the prime movers in the digital economy are not user fees: the real prize comes from the control and harvesting of data from vast audiences. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 4: Daily Deals, Social Buying, and Coupons
Robert Collier, an early pioneer of direct response marketing, often said that one of the most powerful ways to influence people to buy is to present them with a novel offer. Consumers crave novel experiences, and if they have never seen the offer before they will buy in throngs. But, as he warned, don’t rely on the trick to last long. Novelty has a short shelf life after all.
In 2010, consumers found novel offers through the explosion of deal sites. They could use their collective bargaining power to get ridiculously cheap products and services from their local merchants. And they bought. Groupon grew from $33 million in sales the year before to $760 million in 2010. Yet, in 2011, it looks like the novelty is wearing off. Since July 2011, according to Experian Hitwise, Groupon has seen a 50% dip in its web traffic. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 3: Truly Integrating Online and Offline Media
At the Web 2.0 Summit, eBay CEO and president John Donahoe said “[The] boundary between online and offline is blurring. Consumers are embracing this, and retailers need help.” Clearly, the buzz around the importance of integrating online and offline deserves its place in conversations. At the same time, though, integration isn’t easy. To achieve true integration of online and offline, we need to think beyond simply including URLs in TV and radio ads, or placing a QR code in your print ads. Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 2: Mastering Display
In the first quarter of 2011, more than 1.11 trillion display ads were delivered to US Internet users. With recent advancements in remarketing and behavioral targeting technology, it’s clear that display advertising is making a huge comeback. And according to Forrester’s recent US Interactive Marketing Forecast, by 2016 advertisers will spend as much on interactive marketing as they do on television advertising today. Display ads in particular will grow from $10.9 billion this year to $27.6 billion in 2016!
Read More →
#2012Marketing Challenge 1: Mastering Mobile
There are two consistent trends in mobile marketing. The first is that consumers are adopting mobile and tablets faster than marketers can adapt to. The second is that marketers announce every year that THIS is the year of mobile.
So why is all the buzz surrounding mobile based on projections rather than execution? Perhaps it boils down to the reality that this exciting and potentially profitable channel is filled with some pretty complex technical, strategic, and creative challenges.
Read More →
We've given away an iPad2!
Last week Impact Radius was 'exposed' to the inaugural Digital World Expo (#DWEXPO) - a next gen marketing conference held at the prestigious Las Vegas Mirage resort. Ignoring the "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" rule, we're going to share a little about what happend on our trip. Read More →
The Foundation of a Successful Marketing Campaign
Advertisers are constantly in search of the right data to provide them new insights into their marketing efforts. This all important data is what allows them to optimize their return on ad spend (ROAS). The question many advertisers ask themselves is, “am I seeing the whole picture?” The old adage, “you don’t know what you don’t know” keeps a lot of marketing executives up at night.
Most advertisers rely on their analytics solutions to measure the effectiveness of their marketing channels. Typical analytics solutions use a “passive” tracking method that simply reads the referring URL data to determine the media sources. This type of tracking provides general information that is “good enough” to make general marketing decisions. It is similar to how surveys are conducted. The premise being you only need to measure a subset of the data to get a general idea of what the whole is doing. The challenge with good enough data is it never matches up with other internal or third-party data, making it difficult to rely wholly on the data from any of these sources. Discrepancies in data can be as high as 80%! When dealing with large marketing budgets, even a 10% discrepancy can be tough to stomach.
Read More →
About Radiating Thoughts
Impact Radius has a veteran team of performance-advertising experts who contribute to Radiating Thoughts—sharing articles, white papers, videos, insights, and impressions about the current industry and where it's heading.
Categories
© 2012 Impact Radius All Rights Reserved.