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Think Mobile First Holiday 2013 Don't be fooled. Even if your mobile numbers aren't in double digits yet your e-commerce website is being influenced by mobile devices. Email is easy to curate on mobile devices. If your e-commerce website is like most then email marketing is among your most profitable (if not THE most profitable) channel. Friends who run a $100M e-com site report they are processing 25% top line sales via mobile (pads are the majority of their mobile sales), so $25M is being spent on their website via mobile. In one of my most recent "Scoops" I asked if we weren't all " app builders now ". This post shared 40 video tutorials on how to build apps. Today's post is about how to think "Mobile First" for success during Holiday 2013 by creating "Like Me" tribes supported with great mobile content marketing. Mobile Is Here Holiday 2013 is time to think like an app builder. How can your e-commerce team develop engaging, fu

If you think because reform and the ACA that marketing is just an unnecessary expense, and you don’t need to invest resources, then you may be in for a rude awakening. Healthcare is evolving from a provider-dominated market to a consumer-centric model and market. And that means how you have been marketing your healthcare organization won’t work in a semi-retail healthcare consumer-controlled market.   Here are the five areas to focus on to survive the new reality: 1.        Brand . Your healthcare brand will take more of a front and center stage in the new healthcare environment.   It’s not just the logo or how displayed.   It’s now about what your brand stands for, your brand promise and how you deliver on that each and every day in every encounter. Do you even know what your brand promise is? 2.        Price Transparency.   Here it comes, and people are asking questions forcing you to become accountable.   And the answer is not silence, and hoping all the price noise will go away

Why Christmas Happens Now Christmas for e-commerce merchants is happening right now. Christmas happens now because Google is setting their index. There is usually one BIG October Google surprise (to insure PPC payments go UP), but content that is winning now will probably keep on winning right through the holidays (and Vice Versa). Christmas is happening now because Internet marketing teams are looking hard at their numbers to figure out what is HOT and what is NOT. HOT products get special attention (and more inventory). NOT HOT products are moved to the "wait and see" or "not going to happen" areas (a lost limbo of a place). If that sounds like e-commerce is one big GUESS you aren't far off. What is or has been HOT so far is no guarantee of hotness in October - December. There are always 4Q surprises too. 4Q Surprises are products that weren't hot but got an Oprah mention or some other huge boost and suddenly became hot. E-commerce merchants can ONLY play

Our constantly connected world presents a great opportunity for marketers to be more effective and relevant to customers by optimizing for context -- device, location and time. Earlier this year, we launched enhanced campaigns to help advertisers take advantage of these new opportunities and manage their ad campaigns more effectively. Bid adjustments make it easy to raise or lower your bids based on user context. To help you optimize your bid adjustments, we're introducing bid adjustment reporting in Google Analytics, allowing you to analyze performance for each of your bid adjustments across devices, locations, and time of day. You can access the new report by going to Traffic Sources > Advertising >AdWords and clicking the Bid Adjustments link. With the new Bid Adjustments report, you can take advantage of the full range of visitor metrics available in Google Analytics to optimize your bid adjustments. This provides a window into your users’ behavior, allowing you to

Join Web Analytics Demystified, a Google Analytics Certified Partner at ACCELERATE , their annual conference, held this year in Columbus, Ohio. This event will take place on September 26, 2013. ACCELERATE is an opportunity to learn from the best in the industry in a concise and efficient format. Speakers from FedEx, Nestle Purina, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, Home Depot, many others will be sharing “Ten Tips in Twenty Minutes” on a wide range of digital analytics and marketing optimization topics. Topics at the 2013 event include analytics communication, mobile and social media analytics , tag management , turning around analytics implementations, big data, data integration, and much more.  Google’s own Krista Seiden will be speaking on “Ten Tips for Getting the Most out of Google’s Analytics Platforms.” Tips will include Krista’s practitioner viewpoint on best uses of Google Analytics dashboards, advanced segments, Content Experiments and Google Tag Manager. Tickets for ACCELERATE are on

Kate took this pic This weekend had a little something for everyone, grown-ups and children alike. First, Josh and I took the kids to Union Park for day 2 of the  Pitchfork Musical Festival  on Saturday. It was decidedly for us versus for them, but after a lot of initial whining from Ada ("It's hot. It's loud. I hate this place."), they enjoyed their free ice cream and sunglasses. Ada rocked out to The Breeders with me and Zoe brushed up on bad words by wandering around, reading the t-shirts and rings for sale in the craft tent. ("There was the F-word and the S-word...")  Sunday, we tagged along to a kid show, seeing Shrek The Musical at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre at Navy Pier. And just as our children ultimately had a good time at Pitchfork, Josh and I enjoyed Shrek almost as much as Zoe and Ada. I hadn't seen the movie in many years, but this live stage performance brought it all back: the farting, burping ogre; his jive-talking donkey sidekick; t

No Livestrong After Lance In an excellent piece of reporting on CBS Sunday Morning it became clear what every cancer patient already knows - Livestrong needs to go away. As a cancer survivor Livestrong's continued existence is a lie, a lie to a community that shouldn't be lied to - the 14,000,000 people living with cancer in America, millions around the world an our friends and family. There seem to be two kinds of cancer charities. One is primarily concerned with self perpetuation the other wants to help cure cancer. Cancer patients know all about self perpetuation. We have to fight with everything we have to survive. The time when cancer patients need an organization whose main mission is marketing itself in an endless loop of meaningless self promotion is over. We need serious people willing to sacrifice and help cure cancer. The day we cure cancer is CLOSE.  To scam cancer patients would seem the lowest betrayal. That Livestrong was really a means to deflect negative PR fr

Content marketing is becoming a primary strategy to solve the challenges of massively scaling and diversifying marketing channels. But content does not naturally support both scale and diversity at the same time. The only thing that scales as endlessly and cost effectively as the digital world is data. As a result, data marketing is on the rise and will ultimately inherent the throne as the core strategy for modern marketing. What is data marketing? It's using interactive data to directly influence or add value to your prospects, customers, and partners. Think of it as content marketing without the editorial. Data marketing is already fueling the rapid growth of content marketing. The best pieces of content marketing are typically wrapped around a compelling piece of (static) data. The key is that stripped of editorial, data must become interactive and not only deliver personalized insights but capture and bring user input back.  Modern business solutions are increasingly deployed

Future of Web Design Triptych Without meaning to I created 3 Haiku Decks about the future of web design: Future of Web Design 1 : No More Boxes or Boundaries (embedded below) Future of Web Design 2: Mobile Ubiquitous Web Changes Everything (embedded below) Future of Web Design 3: Semantic Mobile Web Mean Brands are Context, Social is Confirmation and the only time that matters is an evolving NOW. Here is the snippet I just wrote on GPlus explaining Future of Web Design 3: *Future of Web Design 3: Semantic Web Is A Game*   Didn't want to unpack today. I also had an interesting conversation with  + Nikol Murphy  on Thursday. So a day of productive procrastination is happening (lol).     Nikol reminded me of an important truth. Google doesn't index websites they index web PAGES.  Subtle but important distinction to understand Web 3.0. Web 3.0 will be more WEB and less "website". Design will be a CSF (Critical Success Factor), but very different than what we think of as

The following was originally posted to the Analytics Japan blog . Google recommends responsive web design as a way of optimizing for smartphones and tablets. Responsive web design is a method of identifying the device based on the screen size and adjusting the design using CSS, while sharing one block of HTML across all devices. The concept has also been discussed on the Webmaster Central Blog so head over there for more details. This post will look at an example of using Google Analytics on a site enabled for responsive web design. The case involves a Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP), NRI Netcom , working on an overseas payment service website for their customer, Seven Bank. NRI Netcom installed Google Analytics for post-optimization data analysis to support Seven Bank's web publishing and marketing. The implementation enabled pages to be served to desktop PCs, smartphones and tablets using responsive web design, all from a single URL. They used page-level custom variab

Ada, looking at your lean limbs and confident stance, it's clear you're growing up and ready for 1st grade. This year you became a more capable reader and excelled in your Montessori kindergarten. Just this summer you learned to ride a bike and aced the summer camp swim test, earning the coveted green wristband of freedom. My little thrill seeker, you'll jump at the chance to hurl yourself off the diving board, go down a water slide or ride a carnival roller coaster by yourself . You're also a ham. The only thing you like more than attending musicals is being in the spotlight yourself. You loved your dance and theatre classes at SCAW (Summer Community Arts Workshops), and you're forever sitting me down on the couch to watch an over-the-top performance in which you gleefully play all the roles--director, narrator, dancer and all the roles. And you're pretty good, too. You stayed in character for the overly long SCAW play, you recognize and sing along to pop and r

Time Appears To Be The Only Difference For more than ten years I was an e-commerce guy. I built my first website, FoundObjects.com (now RIP), in 1999. Found Objects, the specialty gift company I co-founded with Janet McKean, sold specialty gifts to museum stores around the world AND to consumers online. FoundOjects.com was one of the first B2C and B2B websites. I left ecom to work for Raleigh's leading software and web development agency Atlantic BT almost two years ago. After several years in B2B marketing I can only identify one difference in online marketing - TIME. The TIME Difference between B2B and B2C marketers may be a difference without a distinction. The sales cycle for most B2B websites stretches from weeks to years. Since many B2B websites are selling products or services with large price tags a longer "get to know you" phase is expected. If we were visionary about TIME even this B2B vs. B2C  difference disappears. B2C merchants make offers via email marketi

One of the most popular and powerful features in Google Analytics is Advanced Segmentation . It lets you isolate and analyze subsets of your traffic. You can select from predefined segments such as "Paid Traffic" and "Visits with Conversions" or create your own segments with a flexible, easy-to-use segment builder. Then, you can apply one or more of these segments to current or historical data, and even compare segment performance side by side in reports.   We’ve recently re-imagined segmentation to make it even easier for new Analytics users, yet also more powerful for seasoned analysts and marketers. Some of the key updated features include:  User segmentation Previously, advanced segments were based on visits. With the new segment, a new option is provided to create user segment. In a user segment, all visits of the users who fit the segment criterias will be selected (such as specific demographics or behaviors). It will be a useful technique when you need to per

Envisioning your role within a larger context opens up possibilities. "Marketing" is mostly an internal work categorization. So, why limit your vision to marketing's traditional box? The IBM Smarter Commerce conference is unique. It isn't really a marketing conference. Instead, marketing is placed within the context of the overall commercial supply chain – a view I support. Customers do not readily distinguish interactions from specific company departments.  IBM says that 74% of customers regard the post-purchase experience (such as retail fulfillment, or the cost of service in technology purchases) as critical in vendor selection. What possibilities open up when marketers with this broader supply-chain vision – and access to supply-chain data – start applying these tools to modern marketing? Here are a few insights I picked up from the early experts at the IBM Smarter Commerce conference. Marketing works better when delivered as a service. "Marketing should be

How often do you call in from an outside landline or cell phone, to your organization to experience what a patient, a family member or a healthcare consumer does when calling?   This isn't such a strange question.   We all go through the evaluation process, seek the system we believe will reduce our cost, improve response and service and enhance the experience. But you know, sometimes we make the system so complicated, that we forget why someone calls us. For this I have coined Mike's Law:   "The smaller the organization, easier to use is the automated answering solution. The larger the organization, the more complex and harder the automated answering solution is to navigate." Use is very different than navigate. One implies simplicity, the other complexity. Let me give you an example. In calling a local hospital when a family member was hospitalized, it was really very straight forward. Dial in, hear the message, dial the extension or room number if you know it, o