Author: David Dalka

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Tim Sanders New Leadership Book Interview – Today We Are Rich

[tweetmeme] When I heard Tim Sanders was releasing a new leadership book called Today We Are Rich (Tyndale House Publishers), I immediately suggested an interview and he promptly sent me an unedited advance copy.

The book starts with an amazingly positive story about his childhood with his grandmother, then migrates to a dark memoir about a portion of Tim’s life before migrating back to how that first positive story can demonstrate a framework for a positive life filled with happiness, purpose and accomplishment. The book is a highly emotional and personal journey about Tim’s relationship with his grandmother Billye and the lessons that he learned from her, one that I personally found highly enjoyable and thought provoking. The following is my interview with Tim Sanders about Today We Are Rich.

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Today We Are Rich, Leadership book, Tim SandersThe opening heartwarming story of your now 95 year old grandmother Billye giving a stranger in need a needed chance that taught you important life lessons. Due to economic disruptions over the past decade, many people could appreciate such a chance. Is this one of the reasons you wrote this book now?

TIM SANDERS: I wrote the book in response to the fear I saw in people’s eyes in the Fall of 2008.  Everywhere I went, it was like 1991 or 2001 all over again: Boom, crash, uncertainty, scarcity-think.  I said to myself, “write your book on Abundance, tell Billye’s story!.”  Much like Napoleon Hill did in the 1930’s I felt compelled to write about how we must cultivate confidence from the inside so when things fall apart, we can be the Phoenix and not the fodder.

You discuss the subconscious mind as being larger than the conscious mind and how leveraging this can have positive impacts on our lives.  I see similar patterns in my research on leadership. Could you please explain your research and why the conscious mind has limited room to operate?

TIM SANDERS: As the to why, I’m sure one could say it’s God’s design while most would say is species specialization – we’d lose our minds if we were conscious of everything we’ve ever experienced all the time.  The research on the subconscious is vast, and stretches all the way back to the great William James.  We have limited person RAM (what you can hold in your active mind at one time), but much great drive space (our filed memories, which researchers say occupies the same space as the director of our central nervous system.)  If you read Claude Bristol or Maxwell Maltz, you get a much richer explanation.  If you’ve ever been stuck for a word, then recovered it later, you felt a rush of relief – that’s the connection between your ‘two minds.’

You talk about practicing your speaking in your hotel room looking at the mirror to activate your subconscious mind. You stated that this helps your performance. Please elaborate on how and why this works for you…

TIM SANDERS: When you face yourself, making eye to eye contact, the active mind connects with your below-the-surface consciousness – like two people staring each other down.  Try it next time you rehearse a talk or a pitch, you’ll see what I mean.  By combining a rehearsal with direct eye contact, I face my greatest critic: Me.  If I can convince myself, then I have more confidence to project to others when it’s go-time.

A few years ago I canceled my cable TV and became an Internet only household, learning new things reading books and spending more time with friends. It’s been a positive experience. You talk about removing negativity and seeking positive nutrients in the book, please explain why and how…

TIM SANDERS: First of all, good for you – that explains why your outlook is constructive and upbeat.  You feed your mind good stuff.  For your readers, I suggest they download the chapter and read it too – it’s really the foundation of my entire psyche (http://twar.com/free).  The idea is simple: You should be as judicious about what you put into your mind as what you put into your mouth.  Watch a bunch of cable, read gossip mags and hang out with negative people – and you’ll end up depressed and negative.  You cannot avoid it any more than you can successful multi-task complex creative projects.  You are only human.  Here’s the takeaway: Positive thinking is not a prescription, it’s an outcome.  You think positive because you load your mind up with good stuff.

Your son Anthony went through a phase where he considered quitting his job as a “Genius” at the Apple store where he gets to sell the Macbook, iPad, iPhone to celebrities in Los Angeles. You helped him rediscover his gratitude, how can we all best rekindle our gratitude muscle?

TIM SANDERS: It really depends on what you need to be grateful about.  For Anthony, he needed some perspective on Apple, removed from the grit and mire of his present experience.  So I took him to Staples, Home Depot and the DMV in a Scrooge like jobs of past, present and future.  Rocked his world and he’s still at Apple.  For some, it’s a daily requirement.  I suggest that when you first wake up, instead of jumping on line and letting the world punch you with data, you should spend a few minutes itemizing what people have recently done for you and why.  It’s a workout for your soul.

In one portion of the book you state that “Book readers are leaders. Many of the most successful executives that I know are voracious readers of books.” Is it the books or is it more the personal attribute of being a naturally curious lifelong learner that is the primary driver of your opinion?

TIM SANDERS: Book readers dive in deeper to subjects than article or headline munchers.  There’s a high barrier to entry, though, as most non-fiction and business books are quite dry in comparison to other media or entertainment options.  Those that read six to ten relevant books a year are much more future-proof than the grazers of the world.  They talk about more interesting things and riff more than people that only know what everyone else knows.

You discussed eighteenth century philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, the author of The Social Contract,  who stated “Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.” You then discussed how promises should deliver results just like a business. Are you suggesting that not enough people are taking their promises as seriously as they should?

TIM SANDERS: Yes, we have little or no discipline about our promise making.  If we spent our money like we issued promises, we’d likely go broke!  I’ve learned to always measure my ability to deliver before I make the promise and not later, when it’s time to make excuses or apologies.  This is important, though, because research we did for the Likeability Factor revealed that you are judged as a person of integrity by the little promises you keep or don’t keep.  So protect your integrity, when you lose that in the eyes of others, you’ll lose it on the inside to.

One thing that fascinated me while reading Today We Are Rich is how you so clearly told stories that were decades old! How in the world did you do recall them so vividly?

TIM SANDERS: That’s one gift I’ve had all along – I can recollect experiences though meditation, reflection and discussions with families and friends.  And I also think I was blessed too during this writing process with some much needed flow and inspiration.

The book closes with a story of you making an extra effort to complete a task and how your schoolmates showed appreciation – even when you weren’t expecting it! What should we learn from this event?

TIM SANDERS: When you finish what you start, especially when it’s hard or fruitless, you’ll turn your scoffers into supporters.  I believe people are inherently loving, kind and generous.  You can trigger that with grit and determination.

The January, 1984, Annual of Psychoanalysis, vol. XII/XIII, Jerome A. Winer, Thomas Jobe, and Carlton Ferrono, “Toward a psychoanalytic theory of the charismatic relationship.” It discusses how great struggle builds foundations for charismatic leaders to emerge. Please discuss why you think this might be true and how people can best leverage that using Today We Are Rich?

TIM SANDERS: Great struggles provide a foundation for a strong contrast in your narrative – like a great song posses the ‘whisper to a scream’ dynamic.  If you’ve never had low lows, how can you truly illustrate soaring highs?

If Carol Bartz was removed as Yahoo! CEO and the board of directors called you to explore having you be the next CEO, what would you think about replying to the gesture and what would your first action be?

TIM SANDERS: A decade ago, I wanted that job.  Loved Yahoo! so much I thought I could-must-should do it.  But today, I know that I’m not the person for that job.  It’s really hard, the P&L is massive and Google is quite a foe to catch up with or overtake.

Be sure to go out and buy Tim Sanders new book Today We Are Rich, it was  joy to experience and has opens thinking about

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Earthquake User Generated Content : Lessons for Digital Marketing Strategy

[tweetmeme] Last month I watched the coverage of the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake with amazement. When looking over the list of major earthquakes since 2005, it was the first with heavy damage to occur in a wealthy nation with lots of digital devices since the dawn of Youtube and user generated content(UGC) ability to share on social media sites. The video below shows a person in their living room taken video during the actual earthquake itself, at the time I remember thinking that is the first user generated content video I’d seen during an actual earthquake.

This month, one of the largest earthquakes in the modern history of the world took place in Japan. As you may know, Japan is one of the highest penetration rates of digital camera and digital phones in the world. Since most of the areas affected by the earthquake are without power and without Internet and mobile connections this content is going to ever so slowly trickle out instead of hitting instantly. It will likely become a torrent of video over time. This amazing video of the tsunami was obtained by Russia Today:

Many more of these videos will show the massive magnitude of this event in Japan and the insignificance of our species when compared to the forces of nature.

OK, what does this have to do with digital marketing strategy? Everything.

– Marketing Department Organizational Structures Are Still Aligned to the Pre-Internet Era – budgets, the position spec of the CMO, marketing channel management, lack of understanding of the need to change communication formats. Embrace UGC, rather than resisting it.

– Executive Leadership Teams Are Not Actively Managing Marketing Budgets – The commoditization of content and creative due to globalization, Apple computers, digital cameras and the creation of sites like 99designs.com create opportunities for management teams to significantly change business results. The portfolio of marketing channels is not naturally efficient. It requires highly specialized skills to optimize properly. These opportunities can only be realized when these assets are managed to the the proper business result objectives instead of branding measurement objectives that were appropriate in the 20th century.

My your preferred higher power bless the people of Japan during this difficult time. I only wish that the great coverage that the Los Angeles Times was doing about the earthquake and tsunami right now was just as focused, just as strong on the tsunami of change affecting the world of business gradually everyday across the world. The majority of the world has yet to see the drivers of the damage and are not properly responding to realign to new realities.

The time to act is now!

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Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google : Aaron Goldman Book Blog Tour

I’ve known Aaron Goldman since 2006 and he stands out as someone who has made himself accessible and friendly in the search engine community. Every few months we share a conversations about what we are both up to and aspire to, it is always fun. Aaron has encouraged me to continue evangelizing my message about the strategic and structural changes in marketing and how they will continue to profoundly impact business results and economic distribution realities – whether businesses chose to engage in them or not. It will impact them positively or adversely based on their course of action or inaction.  For that continued encouragement, I’d like to take a minute to thank Aaron right here and it’s a great honor to be the first stop on this blog tour for his new book “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned From Google” (McGraw Hill 2010).

In the introduction, you discuss how many have a love and hate relationship with Google – at the same time. What it is about Google that allows these emotions to exist mutually at the same time?

Aaron Goldman: Well, I wouldn’t call it a love/hate so much as a love/fear.

I love using Google as a searcher and as marketer. As a searcher, Google helps me find what I’m looking for. And, as a marketer, Google helps me get new customers.

But I’m definitely afraid of Google too. As a searcher, I’m afraid it of what it could do with my data. And as a marketer, I’m also afraid of what it could do with my data but even more afraid that it may one day change its algorithm and leave me out in the cold.

I think it’s general human nature to fear the things we love the most. Once we become reliant on something or someone, we fear that it one day may be taken away.

You discussed relevancy and intent in the book at a few junctures. How do you like to explain these issues to people and why are these concepts challenging for people to understand?

Aaron Goldman: It’s difficult because, by its very definition, relevancy is relative. What’s relevant to you may not be to me. Too many marketers make the mistake of thinking that what matters to them also matters to their target customers.

From a Google perspective, relevancy is the key to search. If Google’s search results aren’t relevant to each individual searcher, he or she will stop using it. That’s why Google looks to collect and keep so much data. It needs to personalize the results to make them more relevant.

For marketers, it’s critical to give off signals of relevancy if you want high rankings on Google. This includes content geared towards specific search queries as well as links from relevant websites.

As for intent. I really think it’s the reason search marketing works so well. People come to Google with the intent of finding something. And, often, that’s something to buy. It’s one of the few places in media where people raise their hands and specifically ask for products, services, etc. It’s the whole pull vs. push thing.

You mentioned how AOL values content differently than most organizations and how Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation, owner of The Wall Street Journal or Fox News accuses Google of stealing content. As content channels become infinite, isn’t media monopoly power also changing and/or even declining?

Aaron Goldman: The point I was making with content is that there are certain topics that are highly commercial and others that are not. What I mean by commercial is that the people consuming the content are in a commercial mindset — they’re thinking about buying something.

For publishers, commercial content is the easiest to monetize. Advertisers want to be wherever there are people thinking about buying stuff. AOL has done a good job of creating content on highly commercial topics — think travel or financial services — that it can sell ads against.

The Wall Street Journal and Fox News are too busy covering the “news.” And news is tough to monetize. People consuming news are not in a commercial mindset and are not open to advertising messages.

All that said, you make a good point that it’s tougher to wield monopoly power as channels become infinite and distribution is spread across the long tail. These days anybody can start a blog or Twitter account and “report” news. And people tend to trust their friends more than the media.

You interlaced a bunch of URLs in the book. This is an interesting experiment. What is your hope for it?

Aaron Goldman: I wanted to make the experience of reading the book more dynamic. Rather than just read cover to cover, my hope is that people will read a chapter and then go to the web to learn more about specific topics covered and interact with other people reading that same part of the book.

With static print, it’s tough to keep content fresh — especially in the world of marketing and Google when changes are happening every day. By including the URLs, I have a way to share new developments.

The URLs also helped keep me from going off on tangents or going too deep on topics that many readers may not care about. For example, rather than recap an entire thesis that David Berkowitz wrote about “Jewhavioral Targeting” in my chapter about “Letting the Data Decide,” I just cover it in a sentence or two and include a link.

There’s a few people in the book that were mentioned considerably more than others, how did you pick the contributors, quotes and subtopics?

Aaron Goldman: Along the same lines as the URLs, I knew it was important to include a wide variety of perspectives on the lessons learned from Google. No-one wants to read 300+ pages of what Aaron Goldman thinks about marketing. But people do (I hope) want to read 300+ pages of what some of the brightest minds in the industry learned from Google as curated by Aaron Goldman.

I interviewed over 100 marketing big wigs in the course of preparing my manuscript ranging from agency types to Google employees to researchers to university professors. The ones who are mentioned more frequently are the ones that gave me insights that were the most compelling, controversial, quotable or all of the above.

The book is part history, part teacher and part tour guide…who is the intended audience?

Aaron Goldman: This book was written for anyone who has a stake in marketing. It covers all areas of marketing — advertising, PR, promotions, media, product development, etc.

And it’s written for people like me who have very short attention spans. The copy is quick and punchy. And there’s lots of fun wordplay. I put the “pun” in punchy.

It doesn’t matter if you work for a small business or Fortune 500 company, the lessons in my book are applicable to your business. In each of my 20 chapters, I share a lesson, discuss how Google puts it into play, cover mini-case studies of marketers that exemplify it, and then walk through an exercise for the reader to relate the lesson to his or her business.

This book will also make great fodder for search engine marketing pros looking to broaden their horizons or understand how their skills can be leveraged across other channels.

What knowledge do you want people to take away from the book?

Aaron Goldman: First and foremost, I want people to take away specific tactics that they can apply to their business immediately. If you read the entire book and don’t find a single thing you can do to grow your business right away, then I will personally refund your money.

That said, I also want to give people a framework for thinking about the future of marketing. I spend quite a bit of time throughout the book — and especially in the last chapter on “future-proofing” — discussing what the marketing world will look like 10 years from now and what Google’s role might be within it.

If nothing else, I hope people will find my book entertaining and enjoy getting a peek under the hood of one of the most fascinating (and profitable) companies in the modern era.
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I wish Aaron the best of luck with his book and look forward to learning from his experiences as I continue to explore my book author aspirations in the future. The constant mutual learning from all of the wonderful people I meet in the digital marketing space as I speak and consult around the world is special and hard to fully describe! Looking forward to seeing the other scheduled stops on the GoogleyLessons blog tour!

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Interview: David Meerman Scott On Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead

As you likely already know, David Meerman Scott and I have a lot in common. We both  started our careers in the bond market  and spent considerable time organizing and marketing financial market data to various audiences. Who knew we also shared a passion for music? David Meerman Scott actually maintains a database of the 308 different bands that he has seen live.

In association with Brian Halligan, David now releases Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead (Wiley 2010). The book gives a refreshing look at concepts you’ve seen in his previous books, explaining how David believes using the techniques of the Grateful Dead companies can learn to market, engage and build passionate fan bases. The book interlaces ideas from the offline world and show how to use them online today. Yet this vast opportunity remains hidden to most. They talk about the book in this video:

How did you conceive of the Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead’s concept and map the chapters to effortlessly flow to the reader?

David Meerman Scott: The book’s concept was really conceived out of our love for the Grateful Dead and their music. We were fans and at the same time were eager to write about the Grateful Dead because we identified many lessons in what the band has been doing over more than 40 years that are applicable today. These lessons are an important tool for helping to understand the new marketing environments in a language and with examples that are familiar to all.

You showed several examples of how the Grateful Dead treated their customers with care and respect (page 82). It seems like a simple concept. Why is treating customers with care and respect so hard to do in most companies?

David Meerman Scott: I think doing it involves more work and some companies mistakenly think there is an advantage to new customer churn instead of building a loyal fan base. Companies need to understand there really isn’t any difference between a B2B or B2C company, at the end of the day you are still selling to people.  The more people feel valued by companies and personally connected to them, the more the company’s fan base will grow and the bottom line will prosper as well.

Read more: http://socialmediab2b.com/2010/03/b2b-roi-david-meerman-scott-sxsw/#ixzz0wTALaTed

You discuss bootleg recordings and the freemium model extensively in the book. What are your views on how this is emerging in the corporate world and the potential future paths?

David Meerman Scott:   The idea of giving away something for free to anybody who wants it and then providing a paid upgrade to a premium version is becoming increasingly common with products and services that have no distribution costs. The challenge in the upgrade model is to give away something that is considered valuable and something that people will use regularly and become familiar with.

This strategy won’t work when you provides something for free that only has limited value. So for example a free software application with a feature set that is so crippled as to be of limited use will not sell more software.

Back when I had a music site, it was amazing to see that the artists that were heavily involved in defining the direction of the promotion of the band almost always outperformed the ones done by handlers promoting exclusively by the old rules and channels. How can companies best adapt and capture the opportunities this presents?

David Meerman Scott: If we look at this in terms of promotion the best things companies can do is make it easy to spread their content. And let the marketplace spread your content for you. The goal is to spread the word about your product or service in the marketplace. If you have a remarkable idea, you will attract bloggers and social media users in your marketplace that will help you propel your idea without spending lots of money on PR and advertising. The Grateful Dead lesson is that making it easy for our audience to spread our content makes our product “known” in the marketplace.

When you met the senior bond trader at Madison Square Garden in the 1980’s, the book states (page 76) “It’s sort of like a secret society, a shared interest in something that others in the office don’t know about.” Why didn’t everyone in that office become Deadheads? What can be done to make sure search marketing, social media and the new rules of marketing don’t get limited to “secret society” status?

David Meerman Scott: The Grateful Dead was never mainstream. They only had one top ten song in 45 years. As in every niche market, I wouldn’t expect everyone to be a fan.

However, search marketing, social media, new rules of marketing have no way of being limited to a “secret society” status, because every major media outlet, online blogs and sites all use these tools ubiquitously. The real question companies need to be asking is “Are we using these tools to benefit our customers, grow fans and engage in real dialogue,” if the answer is no, the company or its product is the one that will stay secret.

Really enjoyed your discussion of the strategy shift at Dropbox(page 40). Your discussion of how some tactics that work in an existing market can utterly fail in new markets is a highly misunderstood area for both entrepreneurs and existing companies alike. Why is this concept so challenging to understand?

David Meerman Scott: I think it’s not all that challenging to understand, the challenge lies in companies being willing to experiment and step outside of the channels that have been too long traversed and no longer work. Too often companies get comfortable with how they have always done something. So even when it’s no longer working, it’s hard to stop doing it. The key to changing this is to be open-minded about how to market your products and be willing to experiment in your market.  You’ll never know what might succeed if you’re not willing to try new things.

What techniques do you like use to convert raving fans of new marketing tactics that often conflict with previous belief systems?

David Meerman Scott: My job is to write these books and speak about all the successes that companies have when they put these new marketing tactics to use. I’m a journalist as well as a marketing strategist and I spend a lot of time blogging about all the right things and some not so great things that companies are doing with these tools. The best way to convert people to using them is to reveal to them how the can successfully apply them and what benefit will come from that application.

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Jim Sterne On His Book Social Media Metrics

Jim Sterne is a unique person in the interactive space. He cares not only about the multitude of marketing strategies, measurement and tactics, but the success of the people. Jim has been helpful to me in ways that are too long to list here and has cared more about the status of certain issues in my life well beyond the level that is required. Let me publicly say “Thank you!”

Jim Sterne on Social Media Metrics

Jim has written many books and is the founder of the eMetrics conference, the leading web analytics conference. Recently, Jim released the book “Social Media Metrics” with a foreword written by David Meerman Scott. The book provides a useful framework for considering how one should consider measuring social media and other forms of emerging media. Jim graciously agreed to do an interview with me and what resulted is below!

How did your extensive history in metrics and measurement influence your approach to this book on this new medium?

Jim Sterne: Like my previous books, I wanted this one to be for people in the trenches, doing the work as well as the executives they work for. A bit of theory, a healthy dose of strategy and a lot of practical tid bits on how to tell if this stuff is working. I wanted to avoid being one of those experts who is full of sounds and furry delivering thought-provoking sound bites, but no practical knowledge. So all of what I know about measuring online success is included in “Social Media Metrics” as the background. The basics are all there and the rest is delivered almost parenthetically.

What are the biggest hurdles to effective creation and usage of social media metrics?

Jim Sterne: Buy in. Not just upper management comprehension and dedication and not just troop level activity, but actual investment. This stuff requires new jobs with new jobs descriptions to be populated. “What? You mean I have to hire people to do things I’ve never had to hire people to do before??” Yes. That’s a major commitment and faces the same hurdles as when we tried to hire a webmaster, an email manager and a web analyst.

In a recent article, I discussed the tendency for people to lock onto the hot metric – Technorati link counts, RSS subscribers or most currently Twitter followers. How can marketing leaders and web analysts change this dynamic?

Jim Sterne: Once you understand that hard and fast numbers are not hard and fast, you begin to look for the trends and the meaning inside the numbers. That’s great that you got a million people following you an Twitter, but does it make any difference to the bottom line? It’s great that you advertised your shop floor cleaning solution to tens millions of Oprah fan on TV but do any of those viewers have any connection to buying your product? Are your Twitter followers more likely to buy your goods or services? The latest hot metric about the latest, shiniest new tech may be fun, but is it actionable??

If you were asked by a CMO to quickly define social media metrics for a company, what are the questions you’d want to ask and issues you’d want to address?

Jim Sterne: What are your business goals?

What processes and people do you have in place to oversee and manage those goals?

How are they compensated?

What does social media marketing success look like to you?

How much detail do you need to monitor the social media conversation?

What percent of your decision makers know what social media is and why it’s important?

And so forth.

Will mobile social media complicate all of this, simplify it or too early to tell?

Jim Sterne: It will complicate things while we’re getting a handle on it and then simplify things as we come out the other end. We may end up with standards and benchmarks before we’re done. Then, these public, attitudinal metrics can be correlated with direct attitudinal metrics (surveys) and behavioral data and we end up with a really rich, actionable dataset.

Did your views of social media change as you wrote the book and researched the topic? If so, how?

Jim Sterne: My views about how far along we are were established during the research for the book. My optimism that tools and techniques will get better and that there actually are companies that get it out there improved. There are some really bright people who are doing some really impressive things. It’s a joy to learn from them.

After the last emtrics you wrote “I believe the message we have been beaming at the C-Suite is getting a hearing and the resources are about to be significant rather than symbolic.” Could you eloborate on this more please…

Jim Sterne: I’m seeing more and more senior executives dedicating more and more budget and resources to marketing accountability. I’m seeing more top level managers asking better questions about trends rather than numbers and looking for insights rather than benchmarks. That gives me hope.

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This concludes the interview with Jim Sterne and I hope you found the strategic information valuable. What else does it make you wish to discuss about this topic?

Here are some other recent interviews and thoughts about (and by) Jim Sterne:

Mixpanel – Analytics for Startup

Book Review

Jim on  why you should not buy this book! 😉

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Pat LaPointe of Marketing NPV Marketing Strategy Enagement : BMA 2010

When I first saw the schedule for the 2010 BMA conference, I immediately noticed that Pat LaPointe from Marketing NPV was on the schedule. Was immediately excited about that as I had not seen him speak before but had heard many positive things.

For those of you who don’t know Pat LaPointe, his bio on his website states the following:

Pat LaPointe – Managing Partner

At MarketingNPV, Pat LaPointe directs the development of client solutions for CMOs in the areas of skills, structure, processes, and tools to improve marketing measurement through greater alignment and accountability. His book Marketing by the Dashboard Light: How to Get More Insight, Foresight, and Accountability from Your Marketing Investments is a pioneering work on the topic of marketing dashboard development.

Prior to launching MarketingNPV in 2003, Pat was an equity partner and senior vice president at Frequency Marketing Inc., a consulting and software company known for design and operation of large-scale customer retention and loyalty programs. Pat also directed the operation of a marketing department at Bell Atlantic (now Verizon), creating and implementing customer acquisition and development programs for both B2B and consumer markets. He started his career in advertising in the Y&R network and at Ketchum, where he managed large client portfolios in all aspects of marketing strategy and communications.

Pat is an MBA graduate of Stern School at NYU and holds a B.Comm. from McGill University in Montreal.

Gary Slack introduced Pat as someone who helps CMOs and CFOs in the Fortune 100 better measure their marketing. Pat started his talk by telling a funny and likely inappropriate joke. Happy to retell it privately.

So how do you measure engagement?
Some engagement methods have more traction and have better acceptance.

Traditional Problems In Measuring Engagement:
See a stimulus > Think/Feel Differently (Research) > Buy Something (Pray for correlation)

Behaviorist’s View of Engagement – Referrals lead people towards purchase funnel:
Challenges#1: Engagement is not Linear – these things do not follow an order. Awareness, Consideration, Preference, Purchase, Retention, Repurchase
Challenge #2: Interaction Effects are Very Real – there is a basket mix effect – last touch versus complex reality
Challenge #3: Value isn’t always transactional (Me: more and more I’m not sure this is the case)
Forrester’s 4 I’s Engagement Model: Involvement, Interaction, Intimacy, Influence

Eric Peterson’s engagement calculator provides brand impression, engagement metrics.

New definition – Pre-transaction, then purchase
Pre-transaction screening – the scores are linked to what we think will create value
Pre-transactions can be either positive or negative and scoring models can be created to create useful measurement of marketing activities across multiple channels.

Marketing Effectiveness = change (direction * velocity) t+1 vs expectations (Me: What if the expectations are highly flawed?)

Measuring engagement in 4 simple steps
1) What does your business objectives (hint: awareness is not an objective)
– What are your hypothesis about the behavioral pathways?
– How are you attempting to influence them?
– Ask “So what?”

2) Create a methodical testing process:
– Break the big problems down into smaller component parts
– Use experiments to test your hypothesis

3) Look for leading indicators of eventual purchase behavior
– Use analytics to verify how these audiences drive customer behavior
– Important Protect and Defend the Credibility Chain

4) Develop and refine drivers to leverage drivers

If you follow these actions you can make a credibility chain!

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Speaking at SMX Toronto April 8th & April 9th

It is my pleasure to announce that I’m speaking at SMX Toronto 2010 on April 8th and April 9th. I’m quite pleased to participate in the following two sessions:
Bring in the Love: Organizational Readiness and the Collaborative Work Environment
For many organizations there’s a natural tension between the product group, IT and the marketing teams. These groups are often located in different areas, they answer to different managers and performance is based on different objectives. To achieve search marketing success, collaboration across these groups is essential. The moderator for this session is Alan K’necht, a web analytics consultant, he’s been a great communicator about the session. As you know, one of my greatest passions is the effective use of search marketing in business organizations! Yet creating this reality is hard due to challenges with lack of understanding of search marketing’s strategic impact on the organization and the challenges to effective execution. I’d like to thank Chris Sherman for suggesting to Andrea Hadley that I move to this panel from the concurrent link building session across the hall.

Personalized Search – Times they are a Changing…Yeah, but when?Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all appear to be experimenting with “personalized search”, an algorithm for serving up search results that considers an individual’s interests, search history and browsing patterns. In this session, SEM experts will discuss the impact of personalized search today and tomorrow on both paid and organic website visibility results.
I’ll be moderating this session with Shari Thurow and Rob Garner doing the primary presentations. Look forward to creating a conversation around t

Is personalized search really about a better user experience? Why do I see results for Wheeling, West Virginia when I’m searching for Wheeling, Illinois a few short miles away with a term like Wheeling pizza? Or is it just a scheme to obfusgate SEO communication to maximize paid search revenue at Google? Time will tell, but early evidence hasn’t favored the user experience question.

torontohotels.ca, a discount Toronto hotels site was helpful in booking my trip. I’ll be staying at the Best Western Primrose, a downtown Toronto hotel a few blocks down the street from the SMX venue, it appears to be the best combination of free wifi, location and features for the price

I’d like to thank Andrea Hadley, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman for this invitation to speak at SMX, I really appreciate participating in Search Marketing Expo! Should be great fun and mutual learning as always.