Originally published on

Having so many options in digital strategy and execution often means we falsely confuse the richness of a program or campaign with complexity, and in doing so lose the focus that will help us move our business goals forward. Simple in most things is usually better, and digital strategy is no exception. There is no badge of honor for including a ridiculous number of tactical elements nor does it make a program more effective. A highly fragmented digital strategy can make it more difficult to track, more expensive to maintain, more time consuming to optimize, and complicated to extract actionable insights. The rule of three is a good one in this instance. If a digital element does not satisfy one (or more) of these three primary goals then you should strongly question why it is included in your plan.

1. Selling something or moving the user closer to the sale.
2. Building something or creating future opportunities with that user including building trust or engagement and growing remarketing platforms.
3. Learning something, gaining insights, or testing an approach or hypothesis.

No. 1: Selling

Every brand or business is hoping to build toward a sale with their marketing or online marketing. Some just have faster and more direct routes. E-commerce businesses get minute-to-minute feedback and can use their digital campaigns and programs for many kinds of critical testing against a singular sales objective. Does this tweak create more revenue within my cost and profit parameters? Site conversion optimization, message testing, offer testing, landing page testing – the list is endless. The sales feedback for a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brand is delayed and obscured, but with deliberate planning can be just as important in meeting healthy sales goals. Business to business efforts may have longer sales cycles and different issues but they are building toward a sale as well. Depending on the vertical and the decision and buying process, the road to a sale might include stops for branding or awareness efforts, educational commitments, trial offers, or many other defined events. You can’t narrowly define sales as just the end point of the actual purchase. If your plans are moving your qualified audience toward a sale in a timely and cost-efficient manner then that is a good investment.

No. 2: Building

If you can’t convert the user immediately you need to concentrate on extending the thread of that contact into future opportunities – at least until you can determine they are no longer a prospect. If you do successfully motivate a conversion you still want to gain permissions for future contacts while you deliver a positive experience and capture whatever you can about that user or transaction that will make future contacts more productive for you and more relevant and comfortable for the user. Remarketing platforms like email lists and social communities give you permission and opportunity to continue the conversation. This creates future chances to convert, upsell, get a referral, or to learn something. Scale is important here as some opportunities only become such when they reach a certain depth of user base or data collection. If your email list is only a few hundred people you are not going to invest deeply in it, nor would the return be there if you did except under very unusual, niche situations. Social platforms also give you the added goal of moving consumers along an entirely different continuum culminating ideally in a brand or product advocate or evangelist that takes up your marketing for you. If your programs progressively deliver a better and more relevant experience for users then this is a good use of budget.

No. 3: Learning

Sometimes the best use of budget or resources is to learn something that helps you hone your approach or program for better results. Setting learning objectives should be as much a part of your planning process as any other goal. This requires a deliberate and funded effort and may require a change in corporate culture and process as very few organizations place the appropriate importance on learning activities. Think broadly about the questions you would love to have answered, prioritize them based on their potential impact on the business, and set aside the time and dollars to get your answers. Schedule your learning activities and manage them just like any other important effort so that they return timely and actionable insights that help move your business forward. If your programs get smarter over time and you have institutionalized the need for critical insights then you have invested wisely.

Have you overcomplicated your digital strategy?

Originally published on

Most of you reading this column and many millions of others have a Google+ account. According to the studies following social behaviors, the vast majority of the Google+ account holders are ignoring those accounts. Google is quick to crow about the size of the Google+ base but refuses to share any stats on actual usage as Danny Sullivan ably recapped in his recent column. ComScore confirmed the site’s lack of stickiness just this week in a report that shows declining average time on Google+ – down to a paltry 3.3 minutes per user in January 2012. So, if users don’t care about and don’t use Google+, then why should businesses?

SEO

No one but Google can accurately define how a Google+ page factors into the ranking algorithms for organic results but it appears to have some impact on your placement. That alone is enough reason for most businesses to at least launch a page, if maybe not enough reason to devote resources to supporting growth in Google+. Google is not presently indexing Facebook posts, but does index Google+ profiles and posts so that they are included in search results. This definitely gives an advantage to businesses looking for better marketing via Google. Also, people giving a +1 to content can improve Google ranking and show other users that the posts are valuable, whereas “liking” Facebook content does not have the same impact. And, when a company has a brand page on Google+ and users put that brand page into their circles, when that user searches the brands page links will show in their personal search queries.

SEM

If you can create activity in your Google+ account you can leverage the borrowed endorsement of those users to improve paid search efforts. If you have 1,000 people in your circles, you can integrate your AdWords account with your Google+ account. For most brands, that is not an unreasonable threshold -if you devote time and resources to the effort, exactly what Google wants you to do. With that account linkage your +1 will show up on your ad results, lending, in theory, more credibility to the result and thereby increasing click-through rate and improving quality score – which in turn improves ROI. In order to take advantage of this not-yet-proven advantage you have to take a few steps for Google including linking Google+ from your brand or corporate site, linking from your Google+ page to your website, confirming the linkage in your AdWords setup, and getting your Google rep to confirm.

It’s not surprising that the two most compelling reasons to commit to a Google+ strategy are search related but there are other reasons as well.

Never Count Google Out of the Long Game

The web’s social elements are evolving quickly and are too important for Google to ignore. Google has the resources and smarts to redefine, respond, and react quickly to user needs until it gets it right. When it does, users will not only “upgrade” to Google+ but will begin to actually spend time in the layer, activating what is already a large installed base.

Google is unveiling a Google+ redesign that it hopes to draw users in with more functionality and more flexibility. The new Google+ “ribbon” will allow users to conveniently place and change out apps they frequently use. Some suggest that Google+ may be opening up to third-party app developers, which will increase functionality and motivate users to return. The redesign accommodates more and larger visual imagery and videos. It also highlights Hangouts, and makes invites to Hangouts more prominent – a smart move as this is arguably one of the few differentiated features that Google+ can claim among pure social platforms.

My company’s social media team noted an interesting paradox in that Google+ is important simply because it’s not Facebook and people who try it out often don’t stick around because of that. It’s different, but not different enough. Trying to shift a user base of 845 million active users (Facebook, December 2011) is a time consuming and costly task and Google+ may never see the mass adoption it’s looking for unless Google creates a truly compelling reason for the masses. Is integration with all the other Google offerings enough? Only time will tell.

People will continue to connect where their friends are. Right now that is Facebook and Facebook makes it near impossible to compete since it fairly quickly adopts the best features of the best channels by building: status updates, subscriptions à la Twitter; friend lists à la Google+; or buying: photo sharing à la Instagram. So Google+ is important because as of today, it reminds us just how much we still love Facebook.

How are you using Google+?

Originally published on

Request for proposal (RFP): The mere phrase makes some cringe. And while we all have somewhat different perspectives, there is some universality in the RFP experience that we share. And I regret to report that overall, it is not very good.

A general consensus among folks that I reached out to is that the RFP process is broken and does not align with the dynamics of our industry. It is an antiquated mechanism that supports laziness and suboptimal results.

However, very few have a solution or a fix. But there are a number of factors that we can agree on that make for either bad or good practices. And rather than just kvetch and complain, here are some guiding points to make things better.

Set the RFP goals

The very first and most essential step in developing a successful RFP effort is to define your goals. What is the purpose of the process? What are you looking to achieve? This will not only help you focus on your requirements, needs, and objectives, but will also drive the nature, form, and content of your RFP to help facilitate a successful outcome.

Not taking this first critical step can lead to a lack of good direction and information for responders. In order to evaluate an agency and get the most effective responses, you must know your own needs, establish criteria, and share relevant information. This is especially true in a transmedia world where the options are myriad — the best ideas and solutions cannot be determined without a certain level of insight. This happens due to a number of potential variables such as laziness, lack of expertise, or — in some cases — a misguided notion that leaving agencies in the dark will reap the best ideas, rates, and proposals. This is a huge fallacy and will not produce the best outcome for anyone. 

Responders will be evaluating the RFP as well. They will be assessing whether they can succeed not only in terms of their services and the fit, but also if the RFP equips them with the ability to respond effectively to demonstrate their capabilities. If your RFP does not provide the forum to do so, you can lose out on highly qualified candidates. How can you possibly evaluate if a responder can meet your needs if you don’t tell them what they are and give them relevant insight into your business? 

Effective RFPs typically reflect the strategy, short- and long-term business objectives, and outline requirements, while providing detailed insight so responders can offer matching perspectives. This also includes a budget, or at least some level of budget parameters.

To a responder, an RFP that does not include a budget indicates that you are not prepared to invest in the effort, not experienced enough to effectively evaluate the responses, or the budget is not there and you are fishing. If you cannot provide some budget guidance — along with outlining your objectives and how you are going to measure success — then you will never come to a clear, optimal decision regarding a solid partner for your business. Furthermore, if a respondent is working with a budget, they can more effectively align their ideas and solutions to your objectives to maximize your budget. Don’t you want a partner who can do that?

As to the structure of the RFP, that depends greatly on your needs. Things like scoring, closed versus open questions, presentations, and so forth will flow from your criteria, goals, requirements, and purpose. But the investment upfront to determine this is essential. Some of the better RFPs break down questions into sections and give a weighting to each section. This requires some real thinking into requirements.

If you don’t know what you are looking for, what you need, what your criteria are for good partners or resources, and you are not prepared to invest a level of time, thought, and resources into the effort, then you are not ready to put out an RFP.

Plan and proceed with respect

There are some horrific stories about the lack of respect for the time, effort, and cost involved to respond to an RFP. And this is not sour grapes, nor is it new or unique to the digital industry. In some ways, the complicated, fragmented media market as well as the economy have added additional pressure and stress to make the dynamics here even worse. Responding to RFPs is an investment of time and resources. Depending on the nature of the RFP, it can cost an agency thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars in hard and soft costs to respond. If you are issuing an RFP, you must respect that. 

You can demonstrate that respect in a number of ways beginning with balancing your “skin in the game.” A good, effective RFP and process requires a significant amount of time and commitment to develop and manage. More often than not there is an imbalance where the burden falls more on the responder. So, while the position of power is clearly on the buyer side, not investing the appropriate amount of time upfront and during the process communicates a lack of respect not only to the responder, but also for the needs of your own business.

Along the same lines, you should respect how much time it takes to respond with intelligent, creative solutions. There have been RFPs where we were asked to respond to dynamic challenges in four days.

And while it is rare, there are times where a responder receives a stipend for their time and effort in responding to an RFP. This happened at Netplus once. And while we didn’t win the business, this gesture demonstrated a respect for the value, time, and resources we brought to the effort. It also reflected that this was an effort that was important to the company and that they were willing to invest themselves as well.

If you expect responders to bend over backwards to earn your business, you should bend over backwards to get the best outcome for your business.

An effective RFP must come from a place of mutual respect for a successful outcome.

Work more closely with procurement

More and more procurement is involved in the RFP process. Ok, almost all the time. It can be of varying degrees, but more often than not they are not equipped to evaluate agencies. Somehow, someway, we must find the means to partner more with procurement — their needs reflect the needs of the business as well. Their goals and your needs should be aligned and integrated to serve the overall business objectives. And there may be some necessary education as to the nature of your specific needs to help empower them to be more effective to help you determine the right resource.

While the guiding points above are some things that you can do to help improve the RFP process, there are some industry movements afoot as well. Brian Morrisey recently wrote about a number of current efforts on the media side of the business looking to re-align the RFP practice. According to Morrisey, “Nextmark wants to turn it on its head. The idea behind its ‘request for consideration’ is rather than sending out RFPs to dozens of publishers, media planners would simply post the specifics of the campaign (budget, campaign dates, target audience) to a site that would match it to likely publisher candidates.” What was particularly interesting was that Morrisey noted that Nextmark is looking to balance the burden a bit and is planning to charge publishers from $50 to $75 to submit proposals.

So, while there might be heightened awareness of the problems, the solutions are not readily apparent or directionally agreed upon. What is clear is that there are things we can do as individuals and organizations to improve the overall experience and outcome. What have you done to help effect a successful RFP? Are you ready to make a positive difference? 

Originally published on

We all know about the rising tide of tablet purchases fueled by the recent release of the Apple iPad 3 and the multichannel surfing behaviors that consumers display now that they’re armed with a portable, convenient consumption device. It appears to be a bigger and more transformative shift than just the consumer world of surfing, chatting, and shopping, though. Tablets are also changing the business world.

A January study by IDG documented the rise of tablet devices in the workplace with some astounding stats. This global study found, in part “A relatively high proportion of professionals in North America say that they ‘always’ use their iPad for web browsing (87%), work communication (67%) and personal communication (63%). Fewer North American respondents find themselves using their iPad as a substitute for TV and DVD players than in other regions.”

While this seems pretty self-evident – get more tablets in the hands of people and they will begin to use them more often – where I started to take notice was in my own behavior in the workplace. The convenience, speed, and portability of the tablet have forever transformed my desk and workplace habits and those of my colleagues as well in significant ways.

Speedy boot allows for productivity in small-time windows. First thing in the morning I load up my email on my tablet, delete 50 percent, then mark the ones that I need to respond to while I wait (and wait and wait) for my laptop to finish booting up. My laptop is brand-spanking-new with power and speed to spare, but it’s also weighed down with all the software and other productivity tools that make it my go-to power tool for business use. But the complement of the tablet increases my efficiency. Its speed makes it easy to use those precious minutes productively.

Ultimate portability. While I rarely took my laptop from office to office or conference room to conference room, I carry the tablet to meetings and presentations for quick reference or note-taking. The difference in size and weight even from my ultra-thin laptop is significant. I easily slip the tablet in my stack of files or portfolio and it doesn’t create a cumbersome addition. The battery power allows me to run it off and on all day, as needed, while the laptop wouldn’t unless I constantly put it into sleep mode then turned it back on.

Covers most business uses. While I wouldn’t give up my laptop if I expected to be gone for more than a night or two or if I had any significant document creation or analytics to perform, with the right apps, the tablet does a nice job of communication, review, and limited editing of business documents during a quick trip out of town. It’s absolutely freeing to travel so light, and the tablet is the perfect conference device to support email or IM check-ins with the office, note-taking during sessions, video-chatting, and other conference needs.

Desktop third screen. Many of us are already using two monitor screens and sometimes a third one comes in handy, especially one you can pass around.

Small meeting presentation alternative to projectors. If you’re meeting with one or two people or perhaps are meeting over coffee, lunch, or drinks, the tablet provides the perfect way to deliver impactful information in a compact space. No need to bring a laptop and no projector to set up.

My suspicion and my personal experience is that tablet usage steals from both smartphone usage and laptop or desktop usage and has pushed more of the population into multitasking mode. Were I a heavy gamer or videophile, it might be a slightly different shift for me, but no less transformative in my business day. The lack of Flash in the predominant iPad does impose some restrictions on browsing and video consumption, but consumers certainly seem willing to make that tradeoff.

As more tablets and especially as more iPads make it into the workplace as a tool, there are implications for digital marketers.

• Business app developers have a whole new frontier open to them and the bar is set pretty low in most categories. Good productivity and work apps get word of mouth at warp speed as tablet-toting businesspeople seek ways to improve their tablet productivity at work and on the road.
• Personal browsing and buying are an accepted or at least tolerated part of the workday in most work environments. If more people are on tablets during the workday, then your consumer targeting during work hours better include that population and your mobile experience better be optimized to meet consumer expectations.
• Brush up on your HTML5. Your Flash programming, while wondrous, is being viewed by a shrinking percentage of your target audience.
• Be ready for requests for tablet purchases over laptops in your office from tablet-conditioned workers. Will that work for your purposes? What do you give up? Is this an added device or a true replacement?
• Do the tablets represent any networking or security challenges in a networked and vulnerable business environment? Does the portability inevitably lead to lost or stolen devices, possibly packed with sensitive information? Are you cloud-ready to back up critical documents produced or saved in a tablet?

Businesspeople are consumers too, and behaviors first encountered at home bleed into the business day and get incorporated into new business behaviors at a very rapid clip. The tablet shift into the work world is already here. Are you ready?