Interviews

SES San Jose 2008: Interview with Michael Gray

July 28, 2008 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose is less than a month away and is always one of the biggest and most popular search marketing conferences all year. One of the speakers that will be featured at SES San Jose includes Michael Gray, President of Atlas Web Service. I had a chance to catch up with Michael to chat with him about a few of the topics he will be speaking on at SES San Jose, link building and SEO Rehab & Intervention – check out the interview below.

[Manoj]: Do you think the importance of links has changed in terms of the weight they carry in an SEO Strategy?

[Michael Gray]: Well I guess that depends on the time frame you’re looking at. Google’s “Florida” update was the most significant change to the way links were evaluated. At that point trust/authority became the most important quality in a link’s value. The tweak and make minor adjustment along the way but trust/authority is still the most important factor. IMHO they are placing to much weight on the trust factor which causes sites like Wikipedia to show up for more searches than it deserves too.

[Manoj]: We often hear about using link baiting as a strategy to attract more links, but is this a viable option for all types of businesses? What else can marketers do to attract links?

[Michael Gray]: IMHO spending time on link baiting and getting involved in social media is the most effective use of your time for link building. That said it’s much easier for some topics/websites than it is for others. It’s especially difficult for B2B websites or sites that have very little to do with consumers.

If you aren’t going to play the link bait angle the most reliable way of generating links is creating flagship quality that acts as a resource and is very linkable. Glossary’s, How to Guides are two examples.

[Manoj]: Why has PageRank lost it’s credibility over the years and do you think webmasters and marketers should play less attention to it?

[Michael Gray]: Pagerank isn’t useless, but it’s clearly broken, and nowhere near as useful as it used to be. Google has stated that in some circumstances they will actively go in and manually lower a sites page rank. This has a ripple effect on all sites “downstream”. The key is to understand it’s a quick down and dirty type metric. Use it in conjunction with Alexa and Compete, and when things don’t line up it’s probably a good idea to ignore the one that looks out of place.

[Manoj]: In your session: “SEO Rehab & Intervention” you guys will be touching on the topic of keyword density, How closely do search engines look at keyword density in their algorithms.

[Michael Gray]: Unless you are using an automated content creation tool, KWD density is a bizarre metric. You always want the KWD on the page but aiming for something like 6.8% density and 23.25% prominence ends up with a document that reads like a badly translated movie. When you have goals like that it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, it just doesn’t work and the quality of your copy will suffer because of it. I’d much rather have a quality piece of content than a mediocre one with a higher KWD density.

[Manoj]: What are you looking forward to the most at SES San Jose?

[Michael Gray]: I always try to attend one or two sessions that are about a subject I don’t normally deal with. It usually exposes me to some new ideas and things I may not have thought about before. No matter what level of SEO you are there’s always room to learn something.

Oh and did I mention the Google Dance? I actually got to spend some face time with some of the engineers on non search related products last time and made some suggestions for improvements.

Filed Under: Interviews, Search Engine Strategies, SES

Interview of Akin Arikan – Author of Multichannel Marketing

July 8, 2008 By Manoj Jasra 1 Comment

I recently had the chance to interview a well known analyst in our industry and the author of “Multichannel Marketing,” Akin Arikan. Multichannel Marketing was released this past April, and Akin’s focus was to help marketers understand how to fully leverage/measure the various forms of marketing. Below is a recap of my interview with Akin Arikan. You can purchase your own copy of the book here.

[Manoj]: Can you start by providing some insight into your motivations for writing the book: “Multichannel Marketing” and how you came across the concept?

[Akin Arikan]: This book hit me over the head and said: “Write me, dummy!” In my day to day work at Unica, I come in touch with marketers from both online and offline disciplines. This led to a couple of “doh” moments:

I would ask online vs. offline marketers how many are talking with their counterparts in the other world. But I would get only very few hand raisers.
Sometimes, I would hear web analysts get excited about newer methods (such as A/B testing) while learning from offline marketers that they have been doing the same thing for a very long time already but using different jargon (e.g. Champion-Challenger).
At other times, I would hear marketers from each camp use the same jargon (e.g. Life Time Value), but mean very different things.

So, a voice in the dark said to me: Hmmm…what if these guys shared the sophisticated methods that each has developed in their own confines? Some things that we think are difficult in one marketing discipline can be solved more easily (or better) by borrowing from another marketing discipline where the question has already been solved.

[Manoj]: How important is it for an organization (or an Analyst) to understand the different channels of marketing when making business decisions?

[Akin Arikan]: It is this key to unlocking the most anticipated marketing strategies today.

Marketing Accountability, for instance! How could you be accountable for your marketing results if you don’t measure conversions across all channels? Or, how can you be accountable if you claim credit for conversions online/offline that should really be credited to someone else’s work?

Dialog marketing is another case. How can marketers engage in a meaningful dialog with their customers when they keep missing parts of the conversation, namely the parts that happen on another channel?

[Manoj]: Please elaborate on the paradigm changes for Multichannel Analytics between Brand Marketers vs. Direct Marketers vs. Web Analysts.

[Akin Arikan]: Ah, a very fun question!

Let’s imagine what our online world would be like if it was more similar to the world that traditional brand marketers have to grapple with. Imagine that the banner ads that you can buy on the Internet a.) did not allow you to create any hyperlink from the banner to a web site, and b.) also didn’t allow setting cookies to track view-throughs later on. And, now, you are supposed to figure out whether these ad banners are paying off, and even whether they are more effective on the NY Times web site or on AOL. How would you go about it? You don’t know which buyers were exposed to your ads, how often, nor where.

Brand advertising analysts have found ways to do their job despite this uncertainty. Some of the methods they have invented are Marketing Mix Modeling, surveys, and panels.

Now, let’s imagine the Internet was more like direct marketing in the offline world. Say you have been put in charge of your company’s email program. But in this parallel world, you get charged $3 per email that you send out. Wow! Immediately you would start analyzing which customers/prospects are worth the $3 and which are not. That could lead you to sort your customers by things like their life time value, or their recency of interaction with you, etc. Immediately, you would think twice of blasting the same email to everyone. But you would carefully ponder what offer is most likely to resonate with each recipient.

This is why in direct marketing, and especially the variant that is called relationship marketing, there is something called “customer decisioning”. This is at the heart of the analytics here and all marketing is triggered from it. Unlike common practice in web analytics today, direct marketers analyze their customers even more than they analyze campaigns, creative, etc.

There is much more to say. But let me close by pointing out that email really is not “free” today. That is to say, every irrelevant marketing email that we get makes us yell “spam” and ignore future messages by the same marketer.

[Manoj]: Chapters 6 and 7 are heavily focused on the measurement and relationships of Offline/Online marketing – do organizations still have a difficult time understanding how to leverage these 2 mediums in parallel?

[Akin Arikan]: Very much so and at all levels. For example, how many web analysts are tracking offline conversions from online activity or vice versa?

But it isn’t just analysts who are still figuring this out. For instance, an insurance company launched a new product recently by concentrating 90% of their marketing spend on TV and displaying a phone number in their commercials for the audience to respond through. The marketers were unprepared however when they found that 40% of viewers instead responded by going online. Next time they will make sure to get the web site consistent with the TV commercials ahead of a launch.

[Manoj]: Is there any processes or best practices marketers can create to handle the new channels that show up in the future?

[Akin Arikan]: Most important process is to realize that customers don’t think of channels but only care about getting their task completed regardless through which channel.

Second most important is to make sure that marketers that are responsible for different channels coordinate with each other and ideally of course integrate their metrics as soon as feasible.

In my book I found it helpful to categorize channels into various types so that you can derive back whether techniques from online, direct, or brand marketing will be most helpful for integrating a new channel into the mix.

[Manoj]: What are the most important things that readers will understand after reading “Multichannel Marketing”

[Akin Arikan]: Haven’t we online and offline marketers often criticized each others metrics and felt a lot of mistrust? Well, after reading this book we will hopefully understand each others jargon and points of view better. This should be the beginning of a new partnership within the marketing team. Reunite what belongs together! Break down artificial separations between the online and offline.

Of course, the heart of the book is a reference for metrics and measurement across channels + how to use them for integrated marketing. But even if readers don’t implement cross-channel metrics right away, hopefully the book will leave them hungry to got get some pizza with their counterparts in the other marketing teams.

You know, if I was a smarter guy I would have asked the book publisher to attach some Pizza Hut coupons to the back cover.

space="3" />Akin is the author of Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success. He is also an evangelist at Unica Corporation, responsible for Unica’s web analytics and Internet marketing solutions. Akin has been working in the web analytics space over the last eight years now. Read Akin’s blog at http://multichannelmetrics.com/ or on CustomerThink where he is a member of the advisory board. Contact Info: AAriksan@Unica.com

Filed Under: Interviews, SEM, Web Analytics

Interview: Widemile CEO – Robert Bergquist

November 27, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

A little while back I got the chance to speak with Robert Bergquist, CEO of widemile (specializing in multivariate testing and optimization – based in Seattle). Widemile is recognized as one of the leaders in multivariate testing consultation and analysis therefore it was very interesting to get Robert’s insight on the company’s background and latest case studies.

Who are you and what is your background?

I love helping companies with great innovations find success in the marketplace. I’ve tried to make a difference in this regard in several roles, not just as CEO, over the years. (See my bio below for the boring details.) The consistent thread has been spotting great ideas and talent – doing my best to help both succeed. With my background helping companies in media, broadcasting, software and advertising, the Widemile value proposition (higher returns from online ad spend!) was a natural fit. I started as an investor and advisor to the company. Eventually, I was asked to join full time and take the reins. I haven’t looked back since, nor had as much fun. I’m not sure how it fits within this narrative, but other “real life” jobs I’ve held in the distant past are tire builder and commercial Alaska salmon fisherman.

In his 25-year career running and counseling companies, Robert has served as CEO and President, as well as in other roles, to a variety online marketing and advertising, broadcasting and other technology-driven businesses. Prior to his current position, Robert ran an online collaboration applications provider which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He has held positions with Bankers Trust Company (now Deutsche Bank) and worked as a corporate attorney and partner advising companies on finance issues and corporate transactions. He has also provided consulting services to businesses, including Microsoft and venture funds. Robert is active in the Seattle technology community, including serving on Washington Technology Alliance committees and as past Chair and President of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Northwest. He holds a B.A. from Colorado College and the London School of Economics and a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. Robert serves on the Seattle Aquarium Society Board of Directors and is an advisor to Red Feather Development.

What is Widemile all about (i.e.: services, offerings)?

Widemile helps companies achieve dramatically better results from their online advertising – meaning higher customer conversion rates and more revenue. We have helped many companies, including The Weather Channel Interactive (http://www.weather.com/), Concur (http://www.concur.com/), SmartSheet.com (http://www.smartsheet.com/), Webex (http://www.webex.com/), Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/), Miva (http://www.miva.com/), and Telenav (http://www.telenav.com/), to name a few.We focus on delivering superior results to our clients by leveraging our own advanced multivariate testing and predictive analytics technology, along with an array of professional services, which includes full conversion marketing consulting, “conversion-focused” original creative development and MEC-certified Optimization Analyst project management. Our testing and optimization solutions can be applied to improve the performance of landing pages, microsites, sales funnels, registration pages or other key web pages with a visitor conversion goal – even if it’s just clicking through to the next page. All sources of traffic benefit, including paid and organic search, banner display ads, email, affiliate and direct.

What makes Widemile unique – What’s Widemile’s competitive advantage?

Again, we focus on results. We do what it takes to maximize our clients’ return on ad spend by testing, tuning and optimizing their high-value web pages to maximize customer conversion rates. We have found that great testing and analytics technology is just part of the success equation. Great conversion results also require expert marketing analysis (you have to understand the traffic, for instance), outstanding original creative and copy to communicate the value proposition in an effective way, and expert test design, set-up and interpretation. A simple testing tool alone will not deliver superior results. Our competitive advantage is superior results delivered using our proven testing methodology, original creative development and technology platform.

Can you talk a little bit about the level of knowledge surrounding A/B and Multivariate testing for SEM companies?

Most good SEM companies understand the importance of testing for superior results. However, they apply testing methodologies, such as A/B split testing, to the front-end the sales funnel to improve key word performance and optimize text ads. Some have begun to partner with web page and content testing companies like Widemile, Offermatica and Optimost in order to offer true multivariate testing of web pages as well. We almost always see an increase in the key word budget following a landing page optimization project where the traffic source is paid search – when returns on ad spend increase, most marketers will increase the spend.

At Emetrics you presented a multivariate testing case study for the Weather Channel – can you give some insight on what Widemile did and the results you noticed?

Widemile worked with The Weather Channel Interactive to optimize website customer acquisition for Notify!, a core subscription product that provides consumers with highly relevant and timely severe weather information. Launched in late 2002 as The Weather Channel’s first paid subscription product , Notify! provides consumers with highly relevant and timely severe weather information. The Weather Channel wanted to capitalize on the immense interest in weather information and the traffic provided by weather.com to capture new subscribers for the Notify! service. Initially, Notify!’s access to the massive traffic from the weather.com home page was leading to new subscribers, but conversion rates could be improved further. The landing pages had to quickly and clearly convey the unique selling proposition of the Notify! to weather.com consumers – sometimes in 8 seconds or less. The Weather Channel had done some optimization testing previously, but found the linear/sequential testing approach had limitations – namely timeliness and the identification of the most relevant factors that influence consumer behavior and conversion.

Working with Widemile, The Weather Channel was able to identify traffic sources and consumer segments to understand key user demographics and conversion behavior. Widemile devised an action plan which refined the main value proposition, developed a brand new page based upon best practices, and then designed and executed the multivariate test on new design. Six page elements (factors) were tested, with up to 4 versions of each factor presented randomly to site visitors. For example, 4 versions of the main image were tested, as well as 4 versions of the “hero shot” image on the left hand side of the page. The image of Jim Cantore, on-air talent for The Weather Channel, was tested against other images of snowy or stormy weather conditions to assess which worked better. Widemile tested the equivalent of over 1000 possible webpage combinations for The Weather Channel, including Flash® animated image versions.

The results far exceeded its goals
and also delivered some unusual findings. The goal was to improve conversions by 30% over the previous Notify! landing page – any slight increase in conversion rates equaled a big increase in revenue due to the high levels of traffic. In fact, actual results improved results by more than 225% over the original control version. And, contrary to commonly held industry wisdom, the Flash version outperformed its static counterparts by a large margin.

Do you have any additional case studies that people can look at?

See the Smartsheet.com case study. Webinar available at http://www.widemile.com/company/case_studies.html

How Smartsheet.com maximized results and leveraged SEM investments through multivariate testing

Challenge: Smartsheet is an online provider of collaborative task management software and services. Using SEM extensively, Smartsheet.com successfully employs numerous keyword and text ad campaigns through the major search engines. Smartsheet.com, however, felt performance could improve further.

Solution: Smartsheet partnered with Widemile to strengthen the linkage between SEM and landing pages. Using multivariate testing and other optimization techniques, Widemile helped them to increase conversions and performance of the entire campaign. The top 5 Smartsheet.com landing pages, representing more than 50% of pay-per-click (PPC) traffic, were targeted for optimization. Widemile employed its proprietary multivariate testing technology and predictive analytics, original creative development and professional services to accelerate this process for optimal results. Widemile tested the equivalent of over 1000 possible page combinations during the 3-week optimization process.

ROI: The best-performing templates improved conversion rates by an average of 64% over the initial control versions. This translates into a dramatic improvement of 115% in conversion efficiency – capturing over twice the number of conversions for the same level of overall SEM investment!

Filed Under: Interviews, multivariate testing, Web Analytics

New Google Analytics Plus Insight from Brett Crosby

May 8, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Today Google is unveiling the latest version of its analytics software, Google Analytics. This new version of Google Analytics includes a brand new interface, email reporting, customizable dashboards, improved map displays, and plain language descriptions to make important information more accessible.

Furthermore I was able to score a great interview with the Senior Manager of Google Analytics, Brett Crosby. Listen to the audio below:

With this new version, users can experience greater visibility of important data, clarity of appearance and more intuitive navigation paths. Utilizing more features and improved metrics, Google Analytics summarizes data and statistics in plain language so that website owners can make more informed decisions. The tool incorporates score cards and summaries that distill information into key performance indicator summaries and pinpoint specific user details.

Here are some screenshots from the latest version of Google Analytics:

Filed Under: Industry News, Interviews, Web Analytics

Podcast: Salesforce.com's Sr. Director on Marketing in the Google Era

April 13, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Kraig Swensrud is the Sr. Director of Marketing Products at Salesforce.com. Recently he developed 7 best practices to help marketers adapt to “Marketing in the Google Era.” I was very fortunate in being able to talk to Kraig about his best practices, listen to the podcast here:

Here is the overview of my questions/topics during the converation with Kraig Swensrud:

I started by asking Kraig’s motivation’s for developing these best practices

1) Invest in your web properties: Are you referring to leveraging your business’s website to its full potential through the understanding of what’s happening on it?

2) The second tip is to Invest in Search Marketing and being in this Industry makes it a no brainer for me, yet not everyone takes advantage of it.

3) Tip 3 is to Make your Message Relevant. I can’t stress the importance of this practice with personalization in the forefront.

4) Create Landing Pages for Each Program is the next practice. Matching content to the intent of the user will definitely lead to stronger conversion rates.

5) Tip 5 is to Measure Everything, in Real Time. Can you explain the advantage of measuring real time versus measure yesterday’s data?

6) Use the Web for PR is tip 6 and in your PDF you discuss the power of Blogging and Syndication.

7) The Final tip is to engage your community and in a consumer driven market this concept becomes very important.

Here is the link to Kraig’s webinar on the 7 best practices: Webinar Slides

Also see the Sales Force Marketing Blog

Filed Under: Industry News, Interviews, Podcast

Compete Releases New Features

April 2, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Compete (of Compete Inc) is set to release 2 new reporting additions to their competitive analysis tools suite. Known as “Attention” and “Velocity” these features will be free of cost to all users.

I was able to get first hand insight on this new release through an interview with CTO/Co-Founder, David Cancel.

Listen to the Interview:

Here are the questions I posed to David Cancel during our chat:

- Can you give everyone some background on Compete Inc and Compete.com?
- What are the new features that are going to be added to Compete?
- When will these features be publicly available?
- Can this type of reporting be found anywhere else?
- What can Compete offer that someone like HitWise/Alexa can’t?
- Compete.com data and reporting is better used for sites with large amounts of traffic, are sites with 20,000 page views or less a month not your target demographic or is this something you guys plan on improving?
- Why are you making this available for free? Is there a premium, paid version of this product as well?
- How often do you plan on providing new features and reports for Compete?

Here are some screenshots of the newest reports:

Attention: The total time spent on a domain as a percentage of the total time spent online by all US visitors

Velocity: Used to determine the relative growth of a domain. Effective in determining the impact of planned/unplanned campaigns, events, releases, etc…

Filed Under: Industry News, Interviews

Interview – Compete Inc co-Founder David Cancel

March 27, 2007 By Manoj Jasra Leave a Comment

Late last week I had the pleasure of catching up with Compete, Inc’s CTO and co-Founder, David Cancel. During this time I had the opportunity to chat with David about the history of Compete Inc and got some insightful background on their product Compete.com. Here’s how it went:

Tell me about yourself and how CompeteInc.com got started?

I’m the CTO and co-Founder of Compete, Inc. We started the company 6yrs ago right after the bubble meltdown (Oct. 2000). Before founding Compete, I was the founding CTO of BuyerZone.com, part of the founding team of Lycos.com‘s internal labs group and Chief Software Architect and part of the founding team at Bolt.com. That’s sums up the last 11yrs for me. The idea for Compete came from Bill Gross (idealab) who was also an angel investor. For the last 6 yrs we’ve been focused on a few verticals (automotive, financial services, wireless and travel). Our product is usually bought by brand managers, CMOs or CEOs within these industries. We launched Compete.com this past November.

Can you talk a little bit about a few of your clients in some of your target verticals?

In autos we work with almost every car company that sells vehicles in the US. In wireless we work with all the US carriers and some of the MVNOs and manufacturers. In financial services we work with banks, credit card companies, insurance and home loan companies. And more recently we’ve been doing a lot of work w/ the top 3 search engines. That gives you some idea of the type of customers we’re working for. Some specific names that I can release publicly are Yahoo, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, Subaru, Hyundai and MSN.

How are CompeteInc.com and Compete.com related?

CompeteInc.com is our corporate site and represents what we’ve been doing for the last 6 yrs. Compete.com is something that we released 4 months ago and is where our free tools (Snapshot), blog, etc live. Compete.com is meant to be our public/consumer facing site.

Who is the target market for Compete.com?

Our snapshot product is aimed at SEOs, online marketers and anyone who wants access to free premium metrics. Compete.com started out as an experiment for which we didn’t have any real expectations. What we’ve found so far is that we have a lot of Venture Capitalists, SEOs / online marketers and startups using it.

What value can users get out of Compete SnapShot and Compete Search?

Compete SnapShot is giving people premium metrics like unique visitor projects, sessions, time spent for free for the first time ever. In the next couple of months you’ll see us releasing more detailed and timely data (daily) and more metrics. This will be the type of data that you would have to pay for today, think (Hitwise, Nielsen, Comscore, etc). My goal is to make this type of data freely available and open to everyone.

Who are Compete.com‘s competitors and what advantages does Compete.com offer over its competitors?

Not sure really. On the free side I guess it would be Alexa and possibly Quantcast. I don’t really see them as competitors as what we are and will be giving away is more analogous to what you would pay Hitwise, Nielsen, Comscore, etc for. The work that our CompeteInc.com customers pay us for is not audience measurement type work so we don’t really compete with any of the above companies in our verticals.

Can we expect to see any new enhancements or new offerings from Compete.com?

We have a major release coming out on April 2nd. I would love to announce that release on your podcast show if you were up for it. Just so you know I will be debuting these new features on the ScobleShow on April 2nd but that will probably not air for several weeks as he’s pretty backlogged with video waiting to be edited. Let me know if you’re up for that.

I hope to set this podcast up with David so stay tuned!

Filed Under: Interviews