By Bret Giles, President of agencyside.

My wife is an avid watcher of Project Runway, so from time-to-time I sit down and catch an episode with her. Such was the case for a recent episode in which contestants formed two teams and competed as a team rather than at the individual level. From the get-go, the stakes were high. One team was largely comprised of the shining stars while the other called themselves the “Bad News Bears”. In the end, talent aside, it was the team dynamic that became the determining factor for the winning team.

The ragtag team worked well as a team, each creating a piece as part of a larger collection. As such, they captured the essence and style of each team member while achieving the greater team goal of a unified collection. Conversely, the team comprised of past stars chose to each craft a small part of multiple pieces, enabling them to create more pieces while maintaining color and design continuity. In the team meetings, they allowed a single voice to overshadow the input of others. This created a structured, cookie-cutter approach devoid of individual flair or mark. As such, they wound up with a collection that took on a “master-planned suburban community” vibe where everything looks the same and nothing stands out as particularly exceptional, controversial or unique.

Needless to say, the ragtag team won and with the win got me thinking. Contrary to popular posters, is there actually an “I” in “TEAM”? And if so, how do we as agency executives ensure when we put a team together that it works like the former, not the latter? In other words, isn’t it perfectly fine to want individual creativity and thinking aligned toward a common goal. Doesn’t it make sense to capture the unique abilities of each of your team members. And why are we wrong to want a finished product cohesive and well-thought yet with an identifiable stamp of individual contribution from each.

This is extremely important when you consider the alternative – mediocre strategy and creative that generates blah results all because the team took the “color” out of individual expertise and contribution, replacing it with mindless, homogenous group consensus.

I think we should start by looking at how we form teams in the first place. Often the most effective ones start with the least likely bedfellows. Media experts can contribute a great deal to a creative conversation; likewise, creatives have ideas that span well beyond messaging, look and feel. At the agency of which I’m a partner, our president recently assembled a team to update our employee manual and it started without a leader or anyone with specific HR experience. As such, the employees looked at the manual from an entirely different perspective, focusing on what needed to be in place for people to follow process and procedure rather than coming up with punitive measures for non-compliance that is generally associated with HR practices. Each of those employees contributed based on personal experience and each will be able to see individual contributions as the new manual is released.

I think it’s also important to create some productive tension within a team. If everyone always agrees or follows the opinion or edict of any one person, what’s the point of the team in the first place? A team without disagreement is a team that’s sure to give you exactly what you expect and not what you really need to stand out.

Finally, once you’ve got your team assembled, let members go off individually or in smaller groups of two to work on key parts. It’s OK for individuals to shine within a team and it’s OK for someone to outshine the rest, as long as in the end everyone comes together and acknowledges the contributions and successes of the team. This Project Runway episode proves a point: a team of passionate people, each with a desire to shine individually yet aligned to a team goal, will outperform a team with greater perceived skill yet whose individual efforts are only visible as part of the collective whole.

What do you think? What are the characteristics of the most jaw-dropping, change-your-life sort of team on which you’ve worked? Did it look like the stars or the bears?

By Leslie Jackson, Director of Client Insights at Sitewire.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should be a standard component of all digital marketing engagements. Whether you’re developing a fresh SEO marketing plan or coming up with ways to continually add value to ongoing campaigns, you want to be sure you have access to the right data.

Data. I’m not just talking about search engine ranking results – because rankings provide the least insight into the effectiveness of SEO tactics – but real data that demonstrates if ranking for specific phrases generates traffic and conversions to your client’s website.

There are three easy ways to get valuable data that can guide your SEO strategy for your clients:

1. Webmaster Tools
2. Analytics
3. Pay-Per-Click

Webmaster Tools. Google, Yahoo! and Bing offer Webmaster tools (Free) for any website owner to see how their sites are performing in the search engines. All it takes is the addition of one meta tag onto the Home page of the client’s site to verify ownership and you will gain access to information such as:
- Search engine crawler stats – when was the last time the search engines crawled the site, how many pages were successfully crawled and indexed – etc.
- Search Queries – what are the top keywords/queries used to get to your client’s site in the search engines
- Errors – what errors are the search engines running into that may prohibit successful search engine optimization/performance.
- Much more.

Google’s Webmaster Central is the most advance and incorporates more analytics data than the others – so if you must start somewhere, start here.

Google: http://www.google.com/webmaster
Yahoo!: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com
Bing: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

Analytics. If your client’s website is not already set up on an analytics platform – or even if they are – setting up Google’s free analytics package for the website is a quick, easy and free way to get immediate insight into what phrases search engine users are using to get to the client’s website and what behaviors occur once they arrive – takes the information from Google’s Webmaster Central several layers deeper. Of all the analytics tools available, Google Analytics is one of the simplest tools to get the information you need to take action for your client without having an advanced degree.

You can also set up Google Analytics to provide conversion funnel data, the feature is free with the rest of the analytics information, but is not automatically set up – however like the rest of the tools within the toolset, is relatively simple to set.

Pay-Per-Click. Setting up a PPC campaign within Google prior to developing the SEO strategy is a quick and easy way to determine how users are searching for your client’s product and service so that you aren’t entering your organic keyword research and optimization strategy blind.

With all this data – the ultimate goal is to gain deeper understanding into what targeted customers are doing to get to your client’s site and formulating the search engine strategies around data obtained.

Leslie Jackson is currently the Director of Client Insights for Sitewire. Leslie has nearly seven years of experience planning and executing upon digital marketing initiatives for Sitewire’s key clients.

By Mike Swan, Director of Search Marketing Strategy, Liberty Interactive Marketing.

If you have spent any time in the Paid Search world, either managing your own campaigns or campaigns for clients you have undoubtedly been asked the dreaded question of “Why Aren’t My Ads Showing?” How you answer will either build credibility or cause everything you say from that point forward to be second guessed and questioned.

There are several main factors that influence ad delivery. This list is not exhaustive, but it will give you what you need to formulate an answer to the question.

1. Campaign structure – Remember you are paying per click, and generally have some sort of budget limitation. For example, let’s say you have a keyword with an average cost per click of $1 and a daily account budget of $100. This means you will receive 100 clicks per day on average. Because the paid search venues must stay within a narrow range of your budget your ad frequency will be directly related to your click through rate. If you have an average click through rate of 10% it will take 1,000 impressions to exhaust your budget. So if there is search volume of 5,000 per day for your keyword, your ad will show 20% of the time. Now consider if you have 50 to 100 keywords in your campaign all sharing the same $100 budget.
2. Quality Score is technically Google nomenclature, but all search venues have a method for determining something similar. Intended to be the great equalizer this determines what position your ad will show and at what cost relative to the other advertisers. This is what prevents us from buying our way into top placement for more competitive terms. Higher Quality Score means higher positioning, lower cost per click, and often greater frequency – all good things. The factors that affect Quality Score are well documented, but basically if you aren’t relevant, have poor ad copy or you have some technical issues with your landing page you aren’t showing.
3. Age of Campaign – New campaigns can start off slow while the search venue is getting an understanding of the click through and user behavior relative to the account. This generally takes a few days depending on the size of the account. Larger accounts will take longer since there are more variables to assess. If you have a large account with a small budget, good luck. Better to start small and expand from there as the campaign picks up steam. See #1 for reasoning on this.

If you have a mature account that is losing visibility it may be time to reconfigure, redesign, or reassess to find another approach. Hopefully, you have some sort of ongoing optimization involving testing of campaigns elements in place so this won’t happen. Always watch for loss in visibility after an uncalculated major change in landing page design, site redesign or if you see your average cost per click increase substantially. Remember that even with an unlimited budget your ads still wouldn’t show for every search. That is just the way it is. Google offers a tool to help diagnose certain problems related to ad visibility in the impression share component of its reports. This can tell you how much visibility your campaign is missing based on budget limitations or quality score. Share with your client at your own risk.

Once you have used this information to answer the question at hand in some intelligent manner, tell your client to stop searching for their ads and let you do your job. Every impression that doesn’t get clicked is detrimental to the account in some way. So Googling keywords every day to see if the ads are showing is costing money, even if you never click on a single one.

Mr. Swan brings a tremendous amount of analytical knowledge and experience to his position as Director of Search Marketing Strategy at Liberty Interactive Marketing where he is tasked with Paid and Organic search strategy and implementation. His online experience dates back to 1998 when he worked for an investment firm in Silicon Valley specializing in Internet property and infrastructure ventures.

Overview
8seconds is a multivariate testing tool for email campaigns. The tool allows email marketers to test subject line and images within HTML emails to find out what combination of elements produces the best result.

 
How It Works
1. Marketers must define their test with a campaign. 8 seconds allows for split or multivariate testing. Subject lines and images can be altered for testing purposes. The images tested could be headlines, product graphics, promotions, calls to action, buttons, etc.

2. Upload your assets to 8 seconds and the tool will provide a snippet of HTML code in return.

3. Place the code snippet(s) into your HTML email. The code will reference the different assets uploaded to the 8seconds server.

 


 
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Magic Number Seven is your weekly recap of seven stories affecting digital agency business and service opportunities.

1. Smartphone Stats & Pending Takeover
Econsultancy has highlighted a study by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications about the rapid adoption of smartphones. Just some of findings from the study: 1) smartphone shipments will exceed shipments of PCs by 2012, 2) 99% of mobile phones will be data-capable devices by 2011, and 3) over 80% of retailers do not have m-commerce capabilities.

What this means to agencies: Agencies have most likely had clients ask them about how they should be playing in the mobile space. From SMS to mobile sites, there are several options all depending upon business type, campaign strategy and budget. For more clarification on how best to use mobile technology in your marketing campaigns, check our latest mobile marketing infographic.

2. Social Media Study: Loyalty Gets More Budget
The Direct Marketing Association and a loyalty marketing organization called, Colloquy, teamed up to produce a study on how marketers are spending dollars in social media. They polled respondents to learn about average social media spends for loyalty campaigns ($88,000), brand awareness programs ($53,000) and customer acquisition campaigns ($30,000). However, a small percentage of budget is allocated to social media according to those surveyed.

What this means to agencies: When pitching new business or growing accounts organically where the aim is to sell social media, agencies can focus on “traditional loyalty principles, but with new techniques” according to DMA researchers. Given the low budget allocations, expect to help get clients rolling and provide strategic guidance. It may make more sense for clients to actually do the day to day campaign management on their own.

The rest of the content is available for Gold members only. Get more information on agencyside membership

By Fred von Graf, PMP of Web3Mavens, LLC

I recently took a trip to Sweden and in a Tim Ferris 4 hour workweek style my company (Web3Mavens, LLC) continued to operate. Customers continue to be serviced, and employees knew what to do. This was in large part thanks to processes we established as a company early on. What do I mean by this? Well it all starts when new customers go through our intake process. Based on the customer’s needs we are able to strike a balance between reusing existing solutions and the more human intensive custom solutions.

As a company we are a conglomeration of the years of experience that we bring to the table. And the way that we can optimize this experience for our customers is by striking a balance between custom solutions and repurposing past solutions. So very much like building something with LEGOs there are times when you follow the instructions (procedures) and then there are times when you’re building purely based on your experience. By establishing procedures for each customer and using the templates you’ve established over time as a company, you will be able to achieve the greatest margins and provide far more efficient service to customers.

Now I’m not insinuating that establishing procedures or using a template based approach is the right answer for every customer, some will demand a very customized hands on approach. It is however, in my experience, the right approach for 80% or more of the customers; holding true to Pareto’s 80/20 principle. If you’ve ever worked around UNIX based computer users you probably heard the saying, ‘If you’re going to do it more than once, script it’. This often holds true in digital marketing as well. Grow your internal toolbox, and you grow your value as a company, as long as you have the exceptional talent and creativity to support it.

Beyond the obvious benefits of streamlining internal processes, there are additional benefits as well. As many of you know decision makers within companies often make marketing or social media decisions with very little or no data backing them. By utilizing this approach of establishing procedures, we automatically incorporate measurement into the process, which promotes a data driven decision making process. At the end of the day we are a data driven company, and enjoy have customers that are data driven or at least appreciative of the data as well.

I can hear you saying, that’s great Fred now how do I actually implement this? Well that is where it gets complex, because it really depends on what services and expertise you have in-house. Start by considering what services or offerings you provide to multiple customers. Are there similarities between these offerings and if so can they be moved to a template? If you haven’t already gone through your services and created templates where appropriate, a white board heavy Post-it-note laden map day may be in order.

Some examples of areas where we have templates internally are:
- Email campaigns
- Social presence & monitoring
- Link building
- Lead generations
- Landing page creation and optimization
- PPC Campaigns
- SEO optimization
- BLOG creations and management
- Affiliate marketing
- Training / Education
- Business Contracts / Partnership agreements

What are some areas that you can see in your agency that would benefit from the creations of procedures and the use of templates?

If you take the time up front to develop the processes and repeatable templates your payoff will be much greater, and the overall stress of running your business will be greatly reduced. If you have any questions with regard to creating processes around your service offerings feel free to reach out and I will help in any way I can.

So ask yourself, are you using processes to help improve your margins and ultimately get customers greater return from your services? Have you created an environment where you can step away for a week and things continue to operate efficiently?

Fred is a managing partner with Web3Mavens, LLC. a company specializing in helping businesses use new technologies and media techniques to maximize returns. He melds his executive, people and project management background with 15 years of enterprise technology experience and a passion for social media to deliver real and attainable actions and strategies for businesses, organizations and individuals to use in engaging their communities and building stronger relationships. Fred is also founder of SocialMediaAZ.org, an event for social media professionals in Arizona.

By Bret Giles, President of agencyside.

Is it just me who finds it nearly incomprehensible the state of print media? These should-be harbingers of content monetization have allowed their world to crumble around them with nary a battle cry. Newspapers are generally in a nosedive because they still can’t sell anything other than a display or classified ad inked to newsprint. Magazines aren’t immune to the mess either, even though their content tends to be highly exclusive and more targeted. If print media reps still sell ads to keep presses running rather than selling content in ways their readers want to engage with it, how do we as agencies ensure we’re getting the most for our clients?

As agencies, we are navigating media planning and buying in a rather disrupted content landscape and need to rely on our own expertise in making shrewd buys. According to the NAA, newspapers still generate 89 percent of their revenue from printed ads, only 11 percent from their online presence. Yet within the last decade, local newspaper circulation has plummeted while newspaper website interactions have grown to nearly 2.5 billion minutes a month. Newspaper reps are still selling paper when they should be selling content. They are doing anything possible to persuade you to place that ad in newsprint, sweetening the pot by throwing in some impressions online as a value-add.

And those impressions they give you online are undoubtedly ROS banner ads, worth little more than the free offer they extended. For many, their entire inventory, offline and online, is comprised of ad units that don’t work for all but the oldest of demographics. Fewer and fewer people interact with the print ads. Likewise, the banner ads won’t work because they’re offering units native to a lean-back, print reading experience rather than a lean-forward, interactive one.

This is not a philosophical debate of free content versus paid content. It is, instead, a discussion of what’s for sale. Print reps think it’s the paper real estate or a virtual facsimile thereof. I think this is absolutely preposterous and is the type of shortsighted management that put this medium into trouble. These institutions have what content people want, much of it exclusive. Package that content so that it is appealing to consumers and to brands, thereby extending compensation for the value of your content, not the value of the paper real estate. And by the way, it’s not likely that will be manifested in the same way it has been for the past 100 years. Things change and content distribution must change too.

So enough with my rant. On to my suggestion for agency media planners and buyers. Don’t get caught up in this sales trap. Challenge your print, newspaper and magazine website sales reps to come up with something unique, something that takes the inherent tremendous value of their content and marries it with your need to connect a brand with consumers.

What do you think? Got any great ideas to share on how a more “traditional” media can morph into the content contender it should be … before it’s too late.

Overview
Jigsaw is a large contact database consisting of over 22 million business contacts. Over 36,000 contacts are added and edited on a daily basis by a user base of over 1 million.

How It Works
Users can create an account with some simple contact information. There is no fee to create an account.

Immediately, you can start searching for likely contacts that match your sales target within organizations with whom your agency would like to work.

Jigsaw utilizes a crowd-sourcing model that allows users to update contacts for credit. Credit points can be redeemed in exchange for access to additional contact information available within the database. Enterprise accounts are available that provide full access to contacts

Key Features / Benefits
Search for Contacts / Companies Search by title, department, company location, industry, annual revenue and more selects.

Add Contacts / Companies to Your Account Upload contacts into Jigsaw to earn points. Enter them one at a time or submit a CSV file. For every contact you add that is not already in the Jigsaw database, you earn 5 points that you can redeem to access additional contacts in the database (1 contact = 5 points). Companies can also be added to the database. Add your own company for an additional link back to your agency website.

Buy Contacts Several plans are available to help you access contacts quickly without providing a list from your personal contact database. Purchase contacts as part of an ongoing plan or as a single transaction. Export to Salesforce As a premium feature, you can export your purchased or earned contacts into your Salesforce account. Contacts can always be exported into a CSV file which then can be uploaded to Salesforce. Other CRM/database partners include AIRS and Oracle.

Premium Data Tools Jigsaw offers sales organizations other tools to keep records clean and up-to-date. If your agency is simply looking to build a sales contact list complete with corporate email address and phone number, Jigsaw offers this as a separate product. Additionally, teams can organize work flow and tasks with Jigsaw to allow groups of sales people and marketers to work more efficiently without double work.

Pricing In addition to free plans that require participation and sharing of your own contact list, Jigsaw does offer some paid plans (see below) and enterprise solutions to help you build a sound list of prospects.

How Agencies Can Use Your agency business development team can utilize Jigsaw in a number of ways.

1. Build out a list of qualified prospects at companies that you would like to call clients. Get full contact information for prospects (not just email or phone).

2. Create a “hit list” of companies within a particular vertical you wish to serve. Identify key players and bypass gatekeepers.

3. Prepare for new business pitches or RFP responses to understand more about the people that may be in the room.

4. Verify contact information and leads you may have found on other sources such as LinkedIn.

5. Conduct recruiting exercises to find out who works for your competitors and those you may like to talk to when building out your team.

Magic Number Seven is your weekly recap of seven stories affecting digital agency business and service opportunities.

1. Behavioral Targeting a Good Deal for Publishers
As you may have heard, behavioral targeting has received rave reviews from savvy digital marketers looking to target niche audiences. However, advertisers are not the only ones benefitting from this targeting technology. Publishers, too, are reaping the rewards. According to a recent study by DM2PRO and AudienceScience, 72% of publishers surveyed report that they used some type of audience targeting other than contextual. High CPMs, better performance, easier sales to advertisers and more advertisers were listed as reasons for publisher approval.

What this means to agencies: Two out of three vested parties give behavioral targeting thumbs up (advertisers and publishers). The only group not to fully embrace it consists of those being targeted. Privacy remains a concern, and it seems the audience would at least prefer to have the opportunity to opt-in to behavioral monitoring and ad serving. Despite studies that indicate privacy is not a concern for savvy Internet users, the behavioral targeting practice’s days of receiving heat from privacy groups are far from over. Agencies and online media buyers should enjoy the merits of behavioral targeting now, but be prepared and flexible for changes in the future.

2. What You Can Expect from iTV
The usually quiet Google has promoted its Google TV. Now Apple will also unveil a new set-top box that runs on the Apple iOS. A few things you can expect from iTV include a market place for television applications, integration with big name content producers, sharing functionality for assets like photos, videos and messages, and the ability to control your television experience from the iPad.

What this means to agencies: Apple and Google typically don’t build out life-changing products and experiences without thinking how to monetize them. Agencies and advertisers should begin to think about incorporating content development and advertising opportunities for interactive television into client marketing plans and budgets as soon as 2011.

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By Andrew Freeman, Media Planner at Sitewire.

One of the biggest worries that I hear from agencies that are moving into digital display buying is that they do not have enough experience and/or time to research media placements. Properly researching a Media Plan can be a very time consuming activity, especially when there are millions of websites out there from which to choose, not to mention the myriad of ad networks and targeting options that are available. Andrea Beltran previously wrote several excellent posts on how to use research tools that are currently available in order to help you save time on this. I would like to propose an additional solution to this problem.

Try to leverage outside partners to help you with the Media Plan research.

There are many companies out there that specialize in Media Planning and Media Buying, so why not try to leverage their expertise in order to provide your clients with the best possible Media Plan at the best possible rate?

While there are several opportunities to partner with many reputable media organizations, one such company that I have recently worked with is Media Network Inc (MNI). I went to them and gave them my requirements for a Media Plan. They used their extensive experience and research tools and came back to me with an excellent document that could help me create a good plan and give sound rationale as to why I would recommend or not recommend utilizing a particular Website, network or targeting option. The reasoning for approaching them to complete this research was that my work schedule would not allow me to devote the time required to this project.

Obviously, MNI are not doing this for free. They are hoping that if you do go ahead with the Media Plan that you will place this Media with them. This is where their Media Buying expertise comes in to play. Because of their experience and buying power, it is likely that they could provide you with a Media Plan that if not cheaper, would certainly be close to what you would pay if you negotiated all of the placements yourself.

As with anything there is a downside to this, you need to be careful that the partner you are using does not promote only their products. That is why I would recommend trying to find somebody that is network- and site-agnostic. I would also recommend finding a company that doesn’t pre-buy inventory. That way they are less likely to try and sell you inventory that they have already purchased.

My ultimate recommendation is to eventually do this research yourself, however, in the mean time, leverage the resources that are available and learn from them. Please stay tuned for additional recommendations on how to build a sound display buying practice.

Hailing from Hull, England (Not Australia or New Zealand ), Andrew currently works for Sitewire, he is a Media Planner and works closely with clients to drive ROI and solve business problems. Known internally as the “Display and Retargeting Guru,” Andrew negotiates excellent media buys, continually working to add value to client campaigns. While working with Display Media, Andrew is Google Adwords certified and continues to manage PPC campaigns for several big clients, ensuring that the digital campaigns meet and exceed stated goals. In addition to contributing to the Agencyside blog, his musings can also be read at www.Strategicality.com and sometimes at www.sitewire.net/blog/.