BoostStrapping

Can you spell "Digital Marketing" without "Measurement"? Apparently so...

New McKinsey research demonstrates lack of understanding around metrics. 

Ok, ok - so I know you really can spell "Digital Marketing" without "Measurement", sure, but the great conundrum remains: if digital marketing is reputedly the most measureable form of marketing, then why is it so hard to quantify? 

We've written about the challenges in quantifying digital marketing before here on BoostStrapping but a new McKinsey digital advertising survey of 340 senior marketing executives around the world shows that it may time some time before digital marketing can truly be quantifiable.  "The rapid growith of online advertising hides a serious challenge: the digital word has developed faster than the tools needed to measure it." 

Some key points:

• 91% of the survey respondents say that their companies are advertising online.
• Over half of those surveyed indicated that their companies will maintain this spending at current levels or even to increase it. 
• 55% of respondents are cutting expenditures on traditional media in order to increase funding for their online efforts.  

Some key "OMG" points:

• 43% of respondents don't measure impact of digital marketing. 
• 80% of respondents say that their companies use qualitatitve measure -  i.e. subjective judgements - or simply do what they did last year. 
• Under 50% of respondents use even the most basic of metrics - the click through rate.  
• Only 30% of respondents consider the offline impact of online marketing.  This is especially disconcerting since we've reported here on BoostStrapping before that  offline  sales are directly related to online touchpoints.

These points demonstrate that this great divide in spending versus results will come to a head in 2009.  These symptoms reflect a key root problem: no one knows what they're measuring or even why they measure.  This inconsistency makes the data irrelevant because its not meaningful. 

Our solution: The Marketing Scorecard. 

TO BE CONTINUED...

eBoost Consulting Recognized at SDBJ Awards

eBoost Consulting was recognized last week at the San Diego Business Journal Family-Owned & Closely-Held Business Awards.  We were proud to be a finalist in the Small Business category, it was an honor to be in the conversation with some of our cities finest businesses.  eBoost Consultants were out in force for the evening and I’d like to give a shot out to all who came out for the event: Organic Johnny, Quick & Dirty, The Rainmaker, E-Sauce, Fizzle, MC Lite and Geakerson.   I’d like to thank all our clients, vendors, partners, and friends in the community who have helped us grow over the years, you are the hero’s that make our success possible.

 

I've recieved several emails that there was a write up in the print publication on us which we'd like to see but do not have a copy.  If you read this and have a copy please save it for us to check out and drinks are on me next time we go out!

 

~Micha

Posted @ the eBoost Innovation Center

 

The Family-Owned & Closely-Held Business Awards program was presented by the San Diego State University- Entrepreneurial Management Center and the University of San Diego's Family Business Forum along with diamond sponsors ESET, Mass Mutual Financial Group, RSM McGladrey and San Diego National Bank; and bronze sponsor Douglas Wilson Co.'s. 

Why don't you just tell me what you want?

Google adds searching by voice to iPhone software. 

Image from Peter DaSilva, for The New York Times

In a move that will surely strike fear in the hearts of SEO purists, Google has officially added sophisticated voice recognition technology to the company's search software for the Apple iPhone.  The NYTimes wrote a superb piece on it, you can read it here. 

In Typical Google Fashion...

Voice recognition is nothing particularly new - both Microsoft and Yahoo has introduced their own platforms, Microsoft TellMe and Yahoo's oneSearch, respectively.  But why this is significant to users is that Google's technology builds on the limitations of the other platforms.  Google's sizable advantage in search over its competitors affords it the competitive advantage in increasing its accuracy of both 1) interpreting queries and 2) retrieving data. 

What this means to SEO?

Well, nothing, really.  Sure, there will be inaccuracies in interpreting queries at first which will be to the frustration of the end-user.  However, this scenario is similar with search on the desktop or laptop.  For instance, anyone can relate to the situation where the first query you run on Google doesn't give you the results you expected.  So what did you do?  Refine the query, right?  I anticipate this same user behavior to be more readily accepted as time goes on.  Sure, queries and results will be more accurate as both user behavior and information retrieval get better.  But the missing ingredient to this is how user expectations will normalize over time to get to a sweet spot - the same as if you were searching on your desktop. 

Looking forward to this new trend of search and seeing how it improves business objectives.