Category: Customer Experience

Customer Experience

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Costco – Now Customer Listening?

In September, I made a post about my feelings about Costco (COST). In it I posted about some items they needed to restock and the need for a change in culture focused on customers.

Costco has now restocked one of these items, the Texas Garlic Toast (after dropping the high end product consumers rejected). I hope it is a sign that they are starting to focus on the customers needs and would like to encourage them to focus on the remaining concerns in my previous post in 2007. In addition, the Lincoln Park Chicago store needs faster register checkout.

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Google’s Mobile Ad Guidelines Page

I recently noticed that Google started a Mobile Ads guideline page. The following is of great interest to me:

“Follow proper grammar conventions.

You may use common text message abbreviations.”

I’d like to see some more detail about what is meant exactly by “You may use common text message abbreviations.”

The #1 result for “text message abbreviations” in Google currently has this web page. In a world where relevance is critical to click through and conversion rates, is an ad that has abbreviations that a viewer doesn’t understand certainly doesn’t meet the relevancy requirement as that viewer certainly won’t take action on an ad that he or she can not interpret. My preliminary thought is that this should allow the user to self select the type of mobile search marketing ad style that they are most comfortable with and this likely will have a strong correlation with the age of the user/ad viewer. But it also means that eventually you might need more than one style of mobile text ad, one with abbreviations and one without abbreviations. This is certainly an interesting area that I’m will likely see new standards and metrices over time.

What do you think the standards should be? I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts and discussion of this issue.

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Google Changing Monetization Strategy?

Robert Scoble had an interesting post on this issue. I’ve got to ask one question though Robert! In Naked Conversations, Robert talks about how you should point to your competitors and even talking positively about them.  How is a likely non-relevant ad on a map on your web site more of a threat than you saying “company x does well with blah-blah”? I don’t get the logic here, am I missing something?

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SES Chicago – Day 2 – Yahoo! Search Marketing Lunchtime Panel

John Slade speaks to an overflow crowd…

Says “Thank You!” to existing customers

Thanks people who have been early adopters

Web Publishers – everyone is a publisher in some way, even if they don’t think they are.

Consumer Context – Keep it in perspective

The Four Questions:
– How do I reach my desired audience?
– How can I effectively engage them?
– What mix of tactics should I use?
– How do I know its working?

Today’s offer model is a linear model, moves to multiple ad targets & calls to actions

Tip: Always get your keywords in your titles and descriptions.

Build calls to action: It’s a framework to continue

New Tools:
– Dynamic Account Structure
– Ad Testing
– Fast Ad Activation – building more automation and integrity checks into the process.
– Enhanced Geo-targeting
– Alerts – proactive keyword alerts to start shortly
– Share of Clicks and Forecasting
– Quality Index

Rank is determined by its bid and expected performance. Relevance is critical to preventing “ad blindness”

Five Reasons Marketers Should Be Exited:
– Improved user experience: intuitive, speed
– Faster impact and rewards for advertisers that optimize
– Focus efforts on what matters most to the marketer’s business
– Gives marketers the power create, test, and analyze campaigns like never before
– Leverage creative (missed the rest of the slide)

John stressed that one needs to be cognizant of thinking in new ways to get full advantage of the features of the new system.

Graham Harris…gives demonstration. Shows the automated keyword generator. This shows a huge change in magnitude that allows effective campaigns to be created by almost anyone.
Patrizio Spagnoletto speaks…

Upgrading Approach and Schedule:
– U.S. advertiser upgrades have begun
– Advertisers may chooser to upgrade post holidays
– Invitations will continue in stages to U.S. advertisers over the next several months

What to Expect
– Frequent Update
– Cheat sheet

Please look at the tutorials, customer solutions 1-866-YAHOO-98
It’s important to Yahoo! to make this house your home. We are successful when you are successful.

Question/Answer: Minimum bid for the US market is still $.10.

Question/Answer: Bulk submit is available.

International markets will occur sometime in 2007. John Slade said customer feedback was being sought on the best way to roll out.

How do you calculate relevance in a new ad? Dozens of factors drive us to a relevance to an ad, many of these come from Yahoo! search technologists. As data is available, this is factored in as well.

All in all, Yahoo! is demonstrating some positive attributes during this large conversion of platforms. These include a customer focus and taking the time to make a professional and transparent system migration that I believe will serve as a model in how to make a professional and non-disruptive migration. Stock analysts should look at the long term of what is occurring here.

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Advertising in Social Media

Gary Stein, ammomarketing.com

Why Social Media?
Three Wrong Reasons
Two Right Ones
(plus one bonus concepts)

– Obvious and Wrong Reason #1: That’s Where the People Are
– Minority of consumers read blogs, blog, podcast, have a Second Life avatar, etc.
– Most businesspeople are not tuned into Web 2.0

– Obvious and Wrong Reason #2: Consumers are in Control
– Nuthin’ new about consumer control
– Media owners have a right to their rights

– Obvious and Wrong Reason #3: The Mainstream Media is Kaput
– The best blog barely touches the reach of established players
– Blogs have big frequency, low reach

– Real Reason: The Channel is Unfair
– Private labels clog p the shelves
– Big box stores dictate rules
– Brands forced into direct ads and coupons

– Real Reason: Manufacturers Set the Ad Agenda
– Manufacturers drive branding

– The relationship mandate is Critical
– Manufactures need consumers to walk into the channel want their product and only their product

“Consumers are won when you meet them as equals”

– Consumer reviews are the silver bullet to ecommerce.

Bonus Concept: Brand Want Media, Agencies Want Brands
– 2007 Trend – owning the channel
– These are built on Web 2.0 principles
– Not real hit on media, since they will need traffic, as well as development of new channels (see Yahoo’s New Brand Universes)
Henry Copeland, CEO, Blogads

Asks for hand raising to prove Gary wrong.

Where publishers once ruled walled gardens, dictating news cycles and headlines…

Influentials now trade news and views in real-time swarms…

The best ads fit into blogs’ hyper-linked, news and views-rich conversations…bottom-up voices…

Subtle tweaks, does your ad make the reader want to ask questions.

We as marketers need to infiltrated the cocktail party. Put interesting creative in there.

 (note to self – download Henry’s example slides)
Bill Flitter, Pheedo

RSS to power marketing programs

(Extremely long case study – had a feel of a client push so I won’t capture it)

Social media campaigns have a gradual decline and longer tail due to residual traffic from search engines.
Marc Schiller, Electric Artists

Second Life concepts to be explained

What have changed since the bubble burst in 200?

1 in 8 couples married last year met online (McKinsey)

Today, the most successful companies connect their customers together

“Our goal with second life is to make it better than real life” Linden Lats, CEO and founder

1.6 million residents

Medan age is 33

50/50 male/female

3,000 entrepreneurs making $20,000 a year

Estimated $100 Million of transactions (2006)
People are making their living in Second Life

Content owners maintain ownership of their IP

 Aloft Hotel – useful in both prototyping and branding

Scion, MLB are launching now…

Provides ten rules for success in second life (should have left up slide longer)

Great thought provoking session with some points of view one degree away.

Tag: SESChicago2006

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Podcast and Audio Optimization

Amanda Wallington, Searching for Profit
Podcasting is more than time shifted media.

Optimizing is using only a few steps.

Do some front end homework:
– Make sure the name of your show is not already in use
– Not as easy to check as a domain name
– Get art radio
– Review iTunes categories for where you fit
– Be prepared to edit audio tags yourself for each audio file

Steps for success:
– Optimize the sound by Optimizing the ID3 Tags
– Optimize Your Podcast Landing Pages – show,  abstract, etc.
– Build accurate, effective RSS files
– Track and monitor your feeds
– Track and Monitor Submissions, watch for changes
Daron Babin, Webmaster Radio
Production Time
Cost of Production
Equipment (Recording, Compression, etc)
Encoding can be a pain
Analytics
Bandwith

They are listening…if you are compelling!

Lilsteners do not want to know your dietary strengths or weaknesses.

They don’t want to know about the dog needing be neutered.

Without someone who can handle load, then distribution will be an issue

Tools to Measure Growth – you need them

Become a Pioneer – transcribe everything, Leave no word unspoken…text equity.

Originality and passion equals downloads.

Get to your numbers. 
Rick Klau, VP Publisher Services, Feedburner

Not everyone uses iTunes
Metadata is essential for discovery

The subscription process blows

Get your feeds out there

Ping, ping, ping…

Feedburner now manages 70,000+ podcasts

Consumption is happening everywhere, not just iTunes

Directories – both publicity and consumption

– Create a feed…
– Add iTunes/Media RSS extensions (Smartcast)
– Show notes are criminally underused (60% find a higher traffic through show notes)
– Enable “Pingshot”
– Ensure Auto-delivery is enabled (important)

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SES Chicago 2006 – Day 1 – Ads in a Quality Score World

How do you do better in a quality score world?

Joshua Stylman, Reprise Media

– Quality score is determined by a number of factors
– Google Adwords =  CPC x CTR (more relevant copy)
– Why make these changes – control over #1 position
– 2005 – Black Box – CPC, CTR, Landing Page, Ad Copy, others that aren’t transparent
– CTR not a good proxy for relevance, irrelevant landing pages, etc.
– Example of dramatic lowering of CPC once ad had a quality score
– Unintended impacts – artificial CPC inflation, Engine define “quality”, changes affect quality score
– Death of bid management, not really.
– How do you solve for an equation that you don’t understand

Andrew Goodman, Zero Page Media

– Two quality scores – one affects minimum bid, the other affects ad rank
– “Other relevancy factors” – tightness of relationship keyword – ad – landing page
– Relevant ads, ad keyword are critical
– How it works – see the public guidelines, human codes used to train algorithm
– Principles for ad quality raters are derived from user feedback on a large scale
– Adbots crawls landing pages looking for ”markers” a formula will determine score
– QS  Ad Rank – CTR still key
– You can fix some of these issues – Advertiser (A sports training facility) using separate page to test response on different domain
– Don’t be foolish
– Cheesy Landing Pages + Deceptive Offers – “There is No Sanctuary”
– Try country variance

Jonathan Mendez, Otto Digital

– Strategic services arm of Offermatica
– What is relevance? Contextual relevance.
– Segmentation + Targeting = Relevance
– Engagment
– Ad needs to be relevant to the keyword and the landing page
– Geotargeting – important to news growth

Brian Boland, Microsoft

– Was there for the question and answer session – Google was invited to the panel but declined to participate

SESChicago2006