1. Shifting marketing dollars to performance-based channels – email, paid search, affiliates, & search engine optimization (SEO).  The latter wouldn’t require much of an incremental investment if people simply adhered to the principles of good copywriting & building structurally sound web sites.  SEO is not that simple, but those 2 sure cover a lot.
2. Realizing the rise in average cost-per-click on search engines was up higher than it should have been.
3. Considering investing in things that will improve conversion, user experience, & customer service.
4. Determining how to best reach customers on a more micro level (customized & more personal interactions)
5. Asking you to do more with less.

If none of this is going on, I would say you are either extremely lucky or in big trouble.  The former because you (& your client) are then, somehow, isolated from the current economic factors.  The latter because your client is considering bringing things in-house or are talking to other, cheaper, agencies.  Or it could be because you simply suck…I know a few agencies that fit that bill.

As a Friday bonus, I’ve included a translation of the above for the cynics…

1. The byproduct of performing your necessary due diligence.
2. Digging a bit deeper to understand the cause of rising costs.
3. What you should’ve been doing all along…how dare you treat your existing customers like commodities.
4. Building & maintaining loyalty in an increasingly competitive space.
5. What most like to call Doing Your Job.

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I have been buying my mom these hand-carved wooden Santas over the years (the past couple I actually haven’t because I forgot their name & couldn’t find them…more on that later) from Great American Collectibles.  This is the kind of kitschy stuff you see at the mall in places like Things Remembered.  Only Great American pays fine attention to detail & their variety of Santas is the best I’ve found.  It’s the one gift I know I will nail each time.  Buying is simple (as all online shopping should be) – browse through the collections by year, pick what you want, add it to your cart, & check out.  I received my confirmation email & then nothing else for a couple weeks.  After I contacted them via email, I received the following…

You most certainly cannot control spam filters.  However, you can ask recipients (in the order confirmation email) to add your email address to their trusted sender list or Address Book.  It’s also possible to monitor email blacklists & your email server &/or web site domain are not on them.  Perhaps you should contact someone (like me) to help you with growing your business on the intertubes.  You’re impossible to find in search (unless you search exactly for Great American Collectibles) & don’t seem to get the basics of online customer service.

There is nothing more frustrating than a failure to execute the fundamentals.  This becomes even more important in the face of difficult financial times (R.I.P. Circuit City).  You have to go out of your way to acquire new customers & retain existing.  Now is not the time to blame things you think are out of your control.

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Your next steps are to…

• Use your online analytics to identify which states (or larger geographical area) generate the most sales. 
• Combine sales & costs data.  Search engines can give you impression, cost, & click data by state.  Mesh these results & voila, you have yourself some nice, segmented data with which you can make educated business decisions.
• Make difficult decisions.  If you are a nationwide &/or an international retailer, you may need to cease advertising in retail trade areas.  This might not be wise since just about everyone uses search to find out, among other things, where your offline stores are.  Not everyone clicks on the natural search engine results.

Now that holiday shopping is in full swing, those year-over-year CPC increases are going to rise even more.  With the current state of the economy & many etailers cutting budgets in the face of decreased sales, your job as an online marketer is to help mitigate risk & add to the bottom line.  Many retailers are going all out with aggressive promotional strategies; this cuts into margins.  Smaller margins & increased customer acquisition costs do not go over well with senior management & investors.

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This starts with your boss & possibly his/her boss. When you don’t have direct channels to the top-level decision makers, it’s important to have your voice represented by someone who does.  If you’re afraid your boss is going to take credit for your work, it would be smart to talk to the person to whom your boss reports.  This is also good if your boss is an idiot or inept. 

Numbers make decisions very easy.  The more data you have to support your thinking, the better your odds at convincing your company to approve it become.  If you’re looking to increase site traffic, are your campaigns consistently driving more people to your site?  Do these visitors spend more time on the site than the average visitor?  Are they converting at a higher rate?  Have they signed up to receive emails from  you or are they looking at things like the store locator?

Building on that, you are going to want to show your campaign’s visitors are converting on the site.  You will want to see if they are spending more per order than your site’s current average.  The more people you bring in to your customer retention pool, the better your chances for driving sustained, incremental revenue.  More sales proves that you have the ability to make more money for the company, making stockholders very happy.  See what you just did…the man appreciates that.

As long as you are making the decision for you company very easy, you stand a great chance of being heard.  Try to anticipate the questions they will ask after reviewing your analysis.  Whenever possible, you want to provide information directly to the source.  The side benefit of this is that you have gained great experience in presenting to the powers that be & establishing new connections.  Most successful people will tell you this is your foundation for success.

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This is all about opening up the lines of communication with the people responsible for managing & executing what makes your business go.  Consider them the gatekeepers of your success.  Marketing initiatives often take a back seat in the ecommerce world; projects aimed at improving site conversion, order attachment, cart abandonment, & navigation are more important than implementing tracking codes or producing banners for your campaigns. 

These things take time & resources & competitive pressures make timing & speed to market a crucial variable.  This is likely to cause a backlog of projects as most technology companies are constantly looking for good IT people.  A backlog plus limited manpower equals slim pickings for you, Marty Marketer.

So, how do you justify that request for a larger marketing budget?  You connect yourself with the right people, across the company, regardless of regional location.  We all can be more sophisticated with our marketing & relationship development/management, but too often get consumed within our own workload & don’t bother to actually meet & talk to people. 

Get familiar with the people I have listed below, especially if they’re in the same building or campus.  If they’re elsewhere schedule time when you travel to meet them.  Don’t travel?  Think of something that will get you out there.  Or beg; it doesn’t cost much for your company to provide airfare, hotel, & food/gas expenses compared the negative cost of failing or stale campaigns.

Merchandisers: Quite possibly the most important people as it relates to you driving incremental sales. 

• They know what sells & why & so do their vendors. 
• Seasonality, product launches, in-stock vs. out-of-stock are but a few things you need to be plugged into.

IT: These guys & gals cover a wide variety of things you need. 

• The product & web development folks will keep you up-to-date with upcoming site changes, enhancements, & functionality.  It’s important for you to be aware of new landing pages & URL changes to eliminate or minimize campaign downtime. 
• You know how your project got denied for implementation anytime within the next 4 months?  Besides escalating through your department, if you’re actually nice to these people, they might help push your projects through in half the time required or less. 
• And don’t forget your help desk people.  That one to two day turnaround to get your laptop, Treo, printer, or phone fixed can turn into mere hours.  Don’t forget to repay them for favors; food & alcohol go a long way.

Creative: Anything you are going to publish graphically online should look good. 

• If you want your media campaign to drive as much revenue as possible; you need to make sure what’s produced for you is legit. 
• It’s so easy, but too many online retailers fail miserably in this department.  It’s not because the personnel are bad; they just don’t have the right direction.  Help them & be clear about what you need.

Public Relations: Being on top of company announcements will allow you to create new campaigns or be prepared to react to news, whether it’s positive or negative. 

• Crisis & issues management is vastly underutilized in the online space. 
• Too many brands are not aware of what’s being said; by the time they figure it out, it’s too late.  You are key in eliminating or minimizing crap like this.

Customer Service: If you’re smart, you are monitoring the online chatter specific to your brand. 

• Whether positive or negative, feed it to customer service; they can facilitate things for customers & improve their experience or at least somewhat appease an irate customer.  We all know the damage one bad opinion with motivation to tell all can do.

Front Desk: From routing calls to them being one of the few people you see this often, they can make your life easier & more pleasant.

If you or someone you know is not listed here, but you feel they’re just as important, I would welcome the feedback.  As you can see, I am not opposed to communicating.

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The client is pissed & the agency is left to pick up the pieces internally while externally determining what is necessary to reassure the client that everything will be just dandy.  Usually, an amicable resolution can be reached.  Objectives & goals may need to be reset, strategy & tactics are adjusted &, consequently, the client gets what they need.

Waste of money…on both sides.  The agency eats the time they spend finding a resolution & will most likely credit the client for time spent on what did not work.  The client misses opportunities to build/promote their brand, drive more sales, respond to negative press in a timely manner, etc.

Over the next few weeks, I will delve into the bulleted topics below.  I feel there is a lot a client can do to set themselves & their agency up for success.  Yeah, I know this works both ways; read on.  This series will be mainly geared towards ecommerce (one of my specialties), but the astute reader will be able to draw parallels across the entire digital space. 

• Getting Yourself Connected – At least one person on your marketing team should have a reliable contact on the following teams: Merchandise, IT (web development, help desk, product development), Creative, PR, Customer Service, front desk (if for only the fact that you see this person more than most people you love)
• Aggregating & Analyzing Data – Become one with it; everyone above you has a background in concrete numbers & has planned & made decisions according to what the numbers tell them.  Think they’re wrong?  Prove it…with numbers.
• Internally Selling Upward – Both yourself & new ideas
• Effectively Leveraging Available Resources – We are all strapped for time; understanding how to get what you need when there is seemingly no help will set you apart from everyone else.
• Evaluating & Changing Process – There is nothing wrong with occasionally kicking the tires. 

The underlying theme is communication that enables client & agency to make informed decisions in the most efficient & effective manner possible.  It’s a lot of work, but this industry is not for the faint of heart.

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I did not coin this, but I wish I did because it is clever (thanks Matt). I think he was inspired by Logic + Emotion’s Top Ten Made Up Words of Web 3.0. If you’re not getting it; ROIrage is return-on-investment (ROI) combined with rage…get it? Kinda like ‘roid rage. Ok, maybe not so clever. BUT, it wonderfully illustrates a reaction, maybe more accurately a behavior, which is detrimental to the growth of interactive advertising. I’m not saying this medium’s growth will cease & begin to decline, but it is going to be more painful than it needs to be.

John Wanamaker once said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Well Mr. Wanamaker, God rest your soul, you would be a pig in shit in today’s digital advertising world. While it is still a challenge for any online business to reach all potential customers, the manner in which the cost to find & acquire them is measured has become more sophisticated. The importance of an immediate return-on-investment has reached dizzying new heights; I looked down once & almost threw up…& I am in no way scared of heights.

Seriously, I get it. Risk tolerance is low in these difficult economic times. With increased scrutiny & limited resources making everyone’s life a bit more stressful, I can empathize. It may feel like the weight of the digital world is resting on your shoulders. The good news is that it does not have to be so. The bad news is that, while you’re doing your best Atlas imitation, opportunities are flying by completely unnoticed.

You think you’re seeing the future, but you’re simply repeating the same routine. The insanity needs to end.

Have some faith. I love numbers; I could sit & play with data all day because it makes a lot of sense to me. This has given me some perspective in viewing victories in numbers alone. Don’t mistake a series of short-term gains as the pathway to long-term success. I swear we know what we’re doing & it will ultimately lead to fantastic gains for your business that will make you look like a freaking genius. You can thank us later; immediate gratification is not necessary. The chance to advance your brand through creative thinking, smart planning & beautiful execution is all we require.

Now if you will excuse me, I must return to spreadsheets & numbers. Pivot tables & projections, subtotals & sum functions; sowing the seeds of greatness.

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If the goal is to quell suspicions regarding the desire to cut agencies out of the picture, put the theory to practice. Call me a skeptic, but wouldn’t it make sense for Google to publicly announce it does not wish to disintermediate agencies? In terms of online innovation, Google is a leader & needs only to add a strategic component to its account management to become a direct competitor to interactive agencies.

While I agree that their acquisition of DoubleClick will lead to much-needed innovation in the interactive advertising industry, & should be good for everyone, I can’t help but wonder what else is behind Mr. Armstrong’s presentation. It seems part damage control, part pre-emptive.

Without agencies involved, Google has an opportunity to exert more influence. There is a lot more to gain, monetarily, without an agency as the intermediary.

I have seen, first-hand, instances of Google attempting to deal directly with clients. Generally, I do not have a problem with this; as long as the agency is brought into the contact loop at the beginning, clients & vendors can talk as often as they like…as long as goals are clear. What piques my curiosity is why they do not initially contact the agency. I would assume they have client & agency databases with specific info linking an agency’s billing, contact info, & client list. Account managers & reps who are in contact with a client or agency at least somewhat regularly…I know these guys & gals exist. Yes, clients play a roll in this, too, but I understand their position which most of the time is them, in water, with their head just above it.

At the end of the day, this is nothing new; vendors have always been trying to deal directly with clients. Yet it seems a bit more sensitive when a big, successful company like Google is the aggressor. Are we over-sensitive or appropriately acknowledging a rising competitor?

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A retreat in this direction, particularly in this economic climate, can diminish marketing’s perceived value and programs suffer. The consequences of this begin with decreasing allocation of resources (staff, budget, technological support). The Marketing team is charged with accomplishing more with less, lending to more time spent being reactionary and too tactical. It’s a seemingly inescapable loop that is doomed to repeat itself unless goals, objectives, roles, and responsibilities are clearly defined.

Much of the discourse is caused by a lack of mutually understood vernacular and misaligned expectations in relation to the representation of metrics. We speak about interactive as being accountable and measurable. CFOs and other finance types take an interest but rather than digest the numbers as marketing insights; they take them literally as financial reporting. CMOs, V.P.’s of Marketing who need the buy-in from financial types to get their budgets get excited thinking they are satisfying their needs for accountability. However, metrics tied to ROI such as view-throughs and other interactive marketing measures, accepted and understood by interactive marketers create dissension and divide between the ranks.

The situation is often unnecessarily adversarial from the start. Similar to many struggling relationships, the majority of discord is due to an inability to effectively communicate. While sharing the same goals, neither party fully understands what the objectives are and how to best measure the results. The solution sounds easy; the steps necessary to get there are not. There is a matter of education and patience that is vital to closing the gap. Quantifying and measuring the value of interactive programs and investments should help get everyone on the same page. At the core of the issue is how we view, interpret, communicate and react to data.

An inability to establish goals for metrics and monitor key performance indicators can cause paralysis by analysis; too much data and no focus. We have a plethora of data at our disposal, but not too many have figured out what, exactly, to do with it. Everyone wants to know how to integrate their data and analyze the business across channels. Not many have the solution for aggregating, analyzing, and digesting combined online and offline data in a timely and actionable manner. This is an industry-wide challenge and I’m assuming whoever can establish predictive models, by retail category, will become a very rich person.

Until you are able to identify true incremental sales through online media, social networking, and mobile, increased focus will remain on direct sales drivers like paid search and email. The perception exists that campaign data does not evenly measure and compare performance across all digital channels. It’s not that online marketing’s reported impact is completely discounted, but due to difficulties in comparing metrics across channels, the decision makers will remain skeptical in varying degrees.

Simply stated, if the sales and cost don’t add up to an acceptable return on investment, you are not getting the budget you requested. Learn to speak the language necessary to influence key stakeholders within the organization and motivate decision makers. Recommendations, ideas, etc. do not resonate if they are without goals, objectives, strategy and a plan underpinned with solid execution. The better able you are to tie an investment to incremental sales at or below the desired ROI; the more successful you will be at gaining necessary traction within the company. The better you can communicate how certain programs contribute and support overall sales and other measurable value to the business objective the more you will be able to drive value that will contribute over time. We have all become inpatient because we can measure a return from a sale in a click; but “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, “Patience is a virtue” and other old clichés apply in the new measurable world of digital marketing.

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