Your Weekend Read

Your Weekend Read – “Definitive Guide to Marketing Metrics and Analytics”

by Jon Miller, VP of Marketing and co-founder

If you haven’t discovered Marketo and their free download library, what are you waiting for?! Excellent, useful and informative resources abound. Today’s pick for “Your Weekend Read” is just one of the many available through their website. This whitepaper skips the polite philosophizing on the ineffable, artistic and ultimately un-measurable value of Social Media and gets right to the point – that C-level executives care about numbers-driven results. Period. So, give them what they want: the hard metrics.

In today’s business world the oft-beleaguered marketing department is often fighting to justify its existence. Executives and boards see the sales department as the revenue generator and the marketing department as the cost leader when very often this perception is patently false. In today’s world consumers are awash in information and, being fully acclimated to the Social Web, they explore their options, learn about products, and seek out the opinions of their peer groups for everything from what sushi joint is best for a quick lunch to what their next automobile purchase should be.

It is increasingly becoming the role of the social marketer to do much of the “selling” before a consumer even contacts a sales representative. According to SiriusDecisions Inc, “70% of the buying process is now complete by the time a prospect is ready to engage with sales.” This is a powerful statistic to have on your side if you are a marketing professional. But isolated statistics and soft metrics (our Facebook Page gathered 1,000 new “Likes” this month!) will not woo the CFO.

“You can’t expect your organization to place value on something you’re unable to quantify.”

Fortunately in this day and age, we are awash in metrics and analytics tools. It has never been easier to provide accurate, timely data that drills down through many layers of specificity allowing marketing professionals a level of insight never before seen in our profession. But there is such a thing as too much. If you’re not smart, careful and mindful of the data you use, you can drown the executives in information.

Raw data by itself is meaningless. Throw too much of it at them at once and watch their eyes glaze over. Before you get to the good stuff you’ve already lost them. This is a step by step guide for establishing a complete yet concise ROI reporting strategy that focuses on the metrics that are important to the board and executive suite – from understanding why it is important, to fully implementing a robust Metrics & Analytics program in your marketing department. Along the way you will learn: how to plan for Marketing ROI, a framework for measurement, Revenue Analytics, program measurement, forecasting, dashboards; and finally the people (and corporate culture), process, and technology essential for successful, results-driven implementation.

Read through it once (it’s a quick 70 pages), print it out and read through it again, making notes along the way. And then USE it. Take it to work with you Monday morning and share it with the whole department. You will soon be able to cut through the noise of too much – and too confusing – information, zero in on what really matters, and learn how to communicate effectively with the executives. You may even get to the point where you’re no longer justifying your existence, and you get to do some actual work! In short, it helps Marketers talk like CEOs. Because CEOs seem to like that… Happy reading!

Your Weekend Read

Posted by Diane E. Curtis

Your Weekend Read

“The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers”

by Tom Standage

Living in the 21st century, with all the technological marvels that fit inside our pockets, it is often easy to forget those who came before us. But long before the Internet, people were communicating almost instantaneously across oceans and continents. Before match.com, they were falling in love over a wire. Before Facebook, they were reaching out to new people. Before Reddit, they were bashing their peers. Before twitter, they were trolling.

In this short (256 pp.), fun and informative volume Tom Standage, Digital Editor at The Economist, walks us through the Odyssey that was the invention, adoption and proliferation of the telegraph and its earliest adopters – our On-line Pioneers. From French abbe Jean-Antoine Nollet’s primitive experiments with wire conductivity and the distance electricity could travel, to Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of a non-spoken language to communicate via that wire, he takes us through the technological leaps and bounds that ultimately made the telegraph (and later all manner of telecommunications including the Internet) possible.

Standage demonstrates how this one simple invention brought the world closer together than at any time in human history either before or since. He discusses public policy and the U.S. Congressional debates on whether or not to fund the infrastructure for this technology. He addresses the societal concerns and foreign policy considerations that arose from this new-found ability to rapidly communicate internationally.

To call the telegraph “ground breaking” and “game changing” is an understatement. We owe so much of how we live our lives today to this amazing technology. We should know more about it. So this weekend unplug and go old school. Get back to your roots. Then tweet about it! And Monday morning you’ll have a great water cooler story to tell. Happy reading!

Your Weekend Read

Posted by Diane E. Curtis

Your Weekend Read

“Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind“

Edited by Jocelyn K. Glei | Foreword by Scott Belsky

The Digital Age in which we live offers us an unprecedented ability to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. Calendars on every electronic device, exercise tracking apps, project management software, cloud computing, social networking, even text messages and voicemails. We exist in a constant state of connectivity. For Creatives, and particularly for bookish, introverted Creatives (like me), this can be exhausting. And instead of being helpful or productive it can actually stifle our creativity by making us slaves to information. The mobility of today’s devices only serves to enable and feed that addiction. We are drowning in technology and the constant influx of information.

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” –Herbert Simon

In, “Manage Your Day-to-Day” Jocelyn K. Glei, Editor-in-Chief of 99U, brings us essays, Q&As, and personal accounts on time management, choosing technology wisely, using social media mindfully, and creating time & clearing space for creative pursuits. She taps the wisdom and experience of such thought leaders as Gretchen Rubin, Tony Schwartz, Scott Belsky, Linda Stone and James Victore; among many others. The book is an easy read – 232 pages, and graphically rich, it is broken down into 5 Sections and an Afterword: “Building a Rock Solid Routine,” “Finding Focus in a Distracted World,” “Taming Your Tools,” “Sharpening Your Creative Mind,” and “Coda: A Call to Action.” Each Section concludes with bullet-pointed summaries called “Key Takeaways.”

The book is meant to be read, but it is also meant to be used. So use it. Read it all the way through at least once, making notes and flagging essays or sections you find particularly helpful. Then, refer back to your favorites for added inspiration or refreshers whenever you feel yourself losing focus or becoming overwhelmed. If you are a Creative struggling with time management, focus, goal achievement and/or technology overload, do yourself a favor. Take a few hours this weekend to unplug – completely unplug. No, really. I mean it. And read this book. You’ll be glad you did.