Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products

Posted: Mar 5, 2023 in Book Reviews, Marketing
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Another book by the SVPG made this a must-buy for me and it’s the only book that goes into detail about the new discipline of Product Marketing.

Product Marketing’s purpose is to drive product adoption by shaping marketing perception through strategic marketing activities that meet business goals, and this book gives a comprehensive overview of how product marketing fits within an organisation alongside other marketing roles and product management, as well having practical canvases and guides to help product marketing managers define a credible GTM strategy and execute on it.

For me since I’ve had a career in marketing previously, I didn’t find the book that interesting, but if someone’s a product marketer or wants to find out more about the role, this is a must-buy!

Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless

Posted: Jun 5, 2022 in Book Reviews, Marketing, Product Management
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This is by far the most dramatic book I’ve read on customer retention, but I really enjoyed it.

Even though the book is over 20 years old, the majority of content and principles are not only still relevant when it comes to customer service and customer experience for digital products, but also when collaborating with stakeholders as the book touches on the importance of telling people who have a problem to solve that you understand how they feel, empathising, listening…

I particularly enjoyed reading about Jeffrey Gitomer’s personal stories/learning experiences and the last chapter ‘Lessons you never learned in school (are the ones you need to succeed)’ is pure gold, full of practical tips on self-development which was totally unexpected.

“Satisfied customers will shop anyplace. Loyal customers will fight before they switch – and they proactively refer people to buy from you.”

“The CEO, or owner of your company does not pay you…the customer pays you.”

“No matter how much people pay, they expect a quality product. If you’re selling price and sacrificing quality, eventually you will lose the business to someone with opposite thinking.”

“The biggest reason that positive endings don’t happen is because employees are trained in policies and rules, rather than principles.”

“If you take ownership of the problems, you take ownership of the customer. If you let them go away, someone else is sure to take care of them that day – and for days beyond.”

On schooling..”I’m recommending we supplement the stuff that makes us excellent Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy players (Geography, Literature, History), for the information and lessons we could really use (Attitude, Goals, Responsibility).”

“If these characteristics of successful people seem so simple, how come they’re so difficult to master? Answer: your lack of personal self-discipline and a dedication to life-long learning.”

Product Management at the Centre of the Organisation

Posted: Sep 26, 2021 in Business, Guides, Marketing, Product Management
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Previously ‘Product Management’ as a function has been part of the tech or marketing department and it’s still a relatively new concept to have Product Management as a separate department in an organisation.

As a result, there are many common misconceptions that the main function of Product Management and the Product Manager/Owner is to define features themselves and work with tech to deliver them, making it somewhat frustrating when marketing, insights, commercial team or any other department outside of product make a request which takes up tech effort which could have otherwise been spent on pushing your own changes.

So if this is a misconception, what is the role of Product Management in the wider organisation?

Product Management as a function/department sits in the middle of the organisation where the Product Manager is a generalist who collaborates with the specialists across the business to help manage the product business and develop the product, which includes working with:

  • Technology / DevOps and Designers/UX to learn through experimentation and reach outcomes early and often by developing the product continuously
  • Marketing to grow the product
  • Customer support to help them provide an A* customer service
  • Legal / compliance team to ensure the product is compliant
  • PMO / Project Managers to support them on cross-cutting high-value initiatives
  • Commercial / Bus Dev to take advantage of opportunities
  • Data / Insights team to gain access to qual/quant data, learn and understand how you can use data better to deliver more effective outcomes
  • The C-suite especially CEO to understand the business goals and ensure your product goals aligns with them
  • Yourself, the market and customers to analyse qual/quant data to find out what problems there could be to solve

As a Product Manager, you may feel overwhelmed by a sudden bombardment of requests coming from certain departments all of a sudden for example marketing requests, and a positive way of looking at this is that these inputs are essentially all just product ideas and part of qual/quant data analysis to help improve the product/product business which as a Product Manager you need to manage.

You may also find that you are spending the majority of tech resources on marketing requests for months, which is absolutely fine, if this is the highest priority work – the importance of growing the product business should not be underestimated.

With lots of valuable input incoming at a frequent rate, as a Product Manager, it means that you need to be organised, proactive and utilise your emotional intelligence to ensure you get the most out of everyone and that you handle situations rationally. What will help you is:

  • Accepting and believing that you are one team working together to improve the product/product business
  • Having a tidy data-driven prioritised product backlog which anyone can access
    • This will make it easier to say why someone can’t have what they want now!
  • Presenting your product roadmap, successes and what’s up next to key stakeholders on a regular heartbeat, but also ensuring that stakeholders have access to real-time updates of the product roadmap. Aha.io is a great tool for this
  • Know your customers, market, product strategy, backlog and data, so you can be assertive and lean into tense situations – Managing Product = Managing Tension is a great book to help give you confidence to lean into tension

A Product Manager is accountable for the success of their product and therefore also needs to manage the product business, not just develop a product.

Steven Haines is a globally recognised expert in Product Management who has done incredible work professionalising Product Management. I’d recommend reading the below books of his:

The Product Manager’s Survival Guide
The Product Manager’s Desk Reference

As Haines says “The system of product management touches and influences all the organic supporting structures-all the business functions. Think of the human body; product management is in the circulatory system, the neural network, and, of course, the command and control center (the brain).”

Crossing the Chasm

Posted: Jan 1, 2021 in Book Reviews, Business, Marketing, Product Management
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Whilst I have minimal B2B product experience, this book by Geoffrey Moore gave good insight into the complexities and challenges of scaling high-tech products, as well as practical advice on how to avoid the various pitfalls when attempting.

Although the Crossing the Chasm model is B2B, I couldn’t help notice how many similarities there were to B2C when it comes to scaling a product to mainstream customers with a ‘whole product’ offering and targeting customer segments.

How important is competitor analysis?

Posted: Jul 17, 2018 in Business, Data, Marketing, Product Management
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CompetitorAnalysis

Whilst it’s important to keep an eye on what your competitors are up to, it certainly shouldn’t be in the bucket of tasks to obsess about and instead competitor analysis should be part and parcel of problem solving.

Whether research suggests a specific type of financial product should be launched, a specific mobile payment method is needed, refer a friend rebrand, registration flow optimised or customer support improvements, part of the discovery phase when looking at solutions should be analysing how other companies have solved the problem (including competitors), which would give a wide range of interesting ideas to consider.

It’s equally important to not simply copy what competitors do, but instead have a vision and ambition to deliver a next generation solution leapfrogging the competition.

An important time to analyse other companies approach to a solution especially competitors is their approach to new regulatory requirements, especially as some of the guidelines are so ambiguous and taking a risk approach to some regulatory requirements comes with potential consequences, but equally come with an avoidance of revenue loss and it’s important to remember that implementing regulatory requirements isn’t cheap not to mention the opportunity cost. An example is that if the likes of Vodafone, British Gas, PokerStars, Llyods or Apple have deployed a relatively high risk approach to certain regulations, then it’s safe to say that using their solutions as a guide would be sensible. If the regulation is industry specific then using the market leader could be a good base also.

If you’re one to obsess about competitors or tend to replicate what they do, the next time you have a big change to make or problem to solve, try ignoring that any competitors exist, ignore all current technical limitations giving the development teams a blank canvas to focus on solving the real clear problem at hand and you might be blown away at the creative thinking that the development teams and UX come up with, utilising the wide variety of new technology available which surpasses anything your competitors have got live or on their product roadmap.

Identifying your KPIs

Posted: Sep 28, 2016 in Business, Data, Marketing, Product Management
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Kpi

In order to prioritise effectively you need both the projected value and effort, but these aren’t always easy to come by. Projecting value can be particularly challenging if the data isn’t easily accessible which can have a knock on effect when analysing your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Ensuring that a product / feature have KPIs is beneficial for a few reasons including: Aiding prioritisation, celebrating success, feeding back on software development iterations and to feed into the general product vision and wider business goals.

Your KPIs don’t have to be a financial value (although a good attempt at projecting a monetary value should be made to aid ROI projections) or just one KPI, but they just need to be measurable, an indication of success and for them to be linked in someway to the overall business goals, so how can you identify what your KPIs are:

  • Incremental revenue – benchmarking on existing revenue volumes for the relevant feature in question. What do you anticipate increasing the revenue / ARPU by
  • How many customer queries are you hoping to reduce and how much does it cost per contact
  • Is it solving a common problem / request that high value players have been submitting
  • Will solving the problem increase website stability, reducing downtime for customers
  • Are you expecting to increase customer acquisition numbers / conversion rate
  • Will it increase retention rates – a measure of this is churn rate / drop off as well as LTV
  • Efficiency savings – by completing a piece of work could it increase team output / Velocity whether it be development or a marketing team
  • Feature traffic / usage – if conversions or direct revenue from the feature isn’t relevant then at a minimum having sessions, dwell time and value of customers using the feature can be used as a KPI

    Identifying your KPIs is one thing, but having the data available at your disposal on a self-service basis to cut, analyse and share is naturally fundamental, but once you have identified your KPIs and have access to the data, you can be confident that you’re well equipped to contribute to the Agile piece, but also your helping meet the wider business goals.

    Collaboration & positivity is fundamental

    Posted: Sep 6, 2016 in Business, Marketing, Product Management, Psychology
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    Positive and collaboration image

    Product Managers have a very broad range of responsibilities as they’re quite often seen to be the avenue to ensure not only that ‘things get done’ when it comes to product delivery, but also that the right things get done.

    The size of the business and location of departments can determine what you do day to day, for example a small company a product manager might see themselves fulfilling the role of a marketer, data analyst or developer team lead on top of their product management role, but in a larger organisation who typically handle all operations in-house might see themselves promoting the vision, providing context, prioritisation and collaborating with the different departments to get things done. Lastly you could be in the unfortunate position where you have the developers in one country, the marketers in another and further more the product management team in another country which makes collaboration all the more challenging.

    Product specialists are expected to be well rounded across a multitude of disciplines including KPIs / handling data, prioritisation (effort vs. value), customer service, UX, technical, marketing, Agile and of course product life cycle, but being a specialist in all these areas is unrealistic, so it’s fundamental to closely collaborate with all areas of the business in order to get to the right solution to customers within an acceptable time frame.

    Unlike a dictatorship, collaborating on what problems to solve is critical generating a positive atmosphere, so discussing the problem you’re hoping to solve and solutions openly and honestly with stakeholders and relevant business areas, enables you all to come to a decision together with the customer being at the heart of conversations which will result in delivering a far superior product / end result.

    This actually applies to the majority of roles, but collaboration alone is not enough and it’s equally important to be positive with a ‘can do’ attitude which will likely be absorbed across the ranks, resulting in your fellow colleagues who you rely on so much will rally behind you to fast track solutions to your customers.

    Letting the barriers down, lots of collaboration, positivity, understanding there’s no I in team, believing that you can’t do everything on your own and appreciating the support at your disposal will naturally put you on the right road to success.

    Effective product prioritisation

    Posted: Jul 27, 2016 in Business, Data, Marketing, Product Management
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    So many fantastic ideas from so many people to improve the product, but it’ll always be impossible to fulfil all desires in an acceptable time frame to stakeholders, making prioritisation not only challenging but extremely important.

    Communication, data, collaboration and determination can certainly make prioritisation all the more effective and smoother, so looking at these areas in more detail:

    Communication: Status of iteration, where do product requests/bugs sit in the pecking order, ETA on delivery, investment cost and the projected value of iterations held in a transparent way for stakeholders to pull the data when they want will help with the communication overhead and help maintain trust.

    Data: To ensure that high-value items are being worked on you need data to back up assumptions. It can be easy to flap and try to make a problem out to be bigger than it is to get it done, but there should always be some kind of data to back it up with examples being: incremental revenue which can be reverse-engineered from retention uplift rates or projected acquisition volume increases using LTV for example. Other ways of projecting value / determining scale of the problem are customer support queries or customer feedback, site loading times, efficiency in terms of £££ saving eg. Manhours/days or software costs etc.

    Collaboration: Discussing value and priority options openly with your colleagues will help you deliver a product in a more confident and focused way, as it’s not easy making the big decisions on prioritisation because what’s at the top or moves to the top means that the items below won’t be done now or perhaps anytime soon, so checking and agreeing on the focus/roadmap helps to give confidence to just get on with delivering a high quality & valuable product without having to worry about justifying a decision you’ve made alone every minute of the day. The final decision of course lands with the Product Manager who is accountable for the success of the product and prioritisation decisions, but getting feedback from stakeholders/colleagues in an inclusive way can yield even more positive outcomes.

    Determination: Prioritisation changes frequently if you work in an agile environment, so being positive and determined to deliver upcoming high priority / high effort iterations you’ve been discussing for months or even years helps to keep the focus on delivering the key product goals and provides reminders that it’s still on the agenda, no matter the level of incoming bombshells/distractions.

    If someone asks for something to be done urgently without providing any numbers representing the projected value or any element to give an idea of the scale of the problem you’re looking to solve, then asking why do it or what happens if we don’t do it in the next 12 months should help to quickly prompt the need to research more into the value.

    Projecting investment cost and taking time to dig into the projected value the product iteration will make collaboratively, will ensure that you’re delivering frequent value to customers internally and externally in a happy, fun and relaxed environment.

    Relationship between marketing and product development

    Posted: Jul 18, 2016 in Business, Marketing, Product Management
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    With marketing departments typically focusing on P&L / ROI of ad campaigns and product development on product quality, product feature enhancements / performance and customer UX, it’s easy for the two business areas to be fragmented which could make the end goal harder to reach.

    Ironically although the individual department goals for both are normally so separate and different, the most common problems they face can sometimes be solved by the other eg. Acquisition marketing unable to increase incremental volume because the CPA / ROI / ARPU of the additional media spend doesn’t look healthy, yet fixing some bugs around the product feature in question, a feature enhancement or a new product release is likely to contribute to the solution that allows a raft of new customers through the door efficiently. Vice versa, a new shiny product or feature where the target audience is so niche that acquisition marketing efficiency / volume is poor or it’s unlikely existing customers will benefit, then it’ll be an uphill struggle to make the product viable.

    Fortunately the majority of brands have both of these areas in-house so it does make optimising the relationships and responsibilities easier. Naturally one area cannot exist without the other even when you look at brands like Google and Facebook who have groundbreaking products, yet still require nicely crafted ad campaigns to generate incremental revenue.

    Product developers don’t bite and marketers don’t just care about ad campaign performance, so close collaboration which is vital can be achieved by letting down a shield and discussing problems openly and bravely, so that multiple solutions can be discussed and you never know, the problem you thought was a tough problem to solve, may not be so tough anymore.

    Again, close collaboration is key and potentially another way of aiding / fast tracking an improved relationship is by recruiting a marketer or two into the product development arena or vice versa.

    The two departments working collaboratively to solve problems could lead to some spectacular chemistry.

    The Brain Infographic (MediaMath’s Algorithm)

    Posted: Jun 16, 2014 in Data, Marketing
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    It’s powerful, flexible, customisable, saves thousands of man hours, provides valuable customer insights / behaviour and most importantly ensures that you get a healthy ROI if used in the right way.

    Meet The Brain: The Brain is MediaMath’s proprietary algorithm and ingests data (60 billion opportunities everyday to be exact) and decisions against that data.

    Their algorithm’s left-brain and right-brain work together to analyse large pools of impressions, looking at dozens of user and media variables, to determine which impressions will best meet an advertiser’s goal.The Brain values each impression based on its likelihood of driving an action, and bids accordingly.

    image

    Mobile apps are hurting Google.com

    Posted: Oct 31, 2013 in Marketing
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    Mobileapps

    Ebay, Skyscanner, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Slots by Jackpotjoy, Tesco, Linked In, Sky Sports, BBC News, Google Maps, Gmail, Candy Crush Saga and Capital FM are only a small selection of high quality mobile apps which consumers access on a daily basis or when they need to research.

    Before mobile apps existed consumers would typically search for flights, games, radio stations, gifts, news, groceries and sports results via Google generic search, but mobile apps have removed that step and now by simply touching your screen you can access exactly what you want without having to go to Google search.

    What does this mean for paid search generic ad spend? It would take a lot to dent the epic proportions of digital spend attributed to paid search, but it’s interesting how consumers are changing the way they search for products and services which in turn makes it harder / more expensive for marketers to acquire customers if they’re behind on product development.

    This is a stark warning to many brands that covering key areas of platform development is essential for business success. A prime example of this is with Skyscanner where over 5 million Android users have the native app on their phone, whereas Cheapflights who have predominantly owned the search space for flights still do not have an Android app out yet. When searching for a flight consumers only need one app and most have Skyscanner installed, so unless their CRM / product dev strategy falls apart then it’ll be incredibly hard to convince people to uninstall Skyscanner and then install another flight app and it’s clear that paid search will not help acquisition growth if flight generic search volumes on Google are decreasing.

    Although platform development is crucial, it’s not just a case of releasing an app, it’s a case of building a high quality app in line with customer demand.

    This could explain the below trends for Google brand searches as a result of virality / WOM. Data is worldwide:

    Skyscanner

    skyscanner

    Cheapflights

    cheapflights

    888poker

    888poker

    PKR

    pkr

    Are your competitors retargeting your customers?

    Posted: Sep 12, 2013 in Business, Data, Marketing
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    computer-thief

    Can we place a pixel across your whole site and we’ll give you free customer insights? Can we place a pixel on each stage of the user journey so that we can optimise towards all site traffic data?

    These are two very common questions which originated from traditional ad networks and still lives on even though technology has evolved.

    If you ask a marketer if they could target anyone in the world with advertising with no restrictions, it would no doubt be their competitors customers.

    I am fortunate enough to have bought display remarketing campaigns targeting competitor customers in the past. This was when I worked across the largest hotel chain in the UK at an ad agency via an ad network. That level of targeting, special offer creative and high frequency reaped rewards as you’d expect.

    Marketers spend £millions a year on advertising and driving quality traffic can be expensive, so the last thing they want is a competitor just simply remarketing all of their users who visit their site either through FBX or display.

    Fortunately this can be avoided if marketing deploys a strict policy that they only allow media pixels to fire on an attributed basis, yes some partners might say that they’d need all data to optimise but when you weigh up value vs. risk, it’s simply not worth it. Optimising on attributed traffic only is good enough for third party ad partners.

    On the analysis front eg. Google Analytics, Click Tale, Quantcast etc. it’s a case of applying a bit of logic, experience and research so then when deploying tracking / pixels on site, your data will not be sold in a data exchange or given to a competitor for remarketing. When it comes to big blue chip companies like Facebook, Adobe and Google, there’s no need to hesitate about data security because if it gets out that they’re selling your data then it would be disastrous for them. Whereas the likes of Quantcast who are very well known for giving you FREE customer insights just for placing a pixel across your whole site, is one of those cases where big red warning lights should appear because in this world nothing is really for free and the likes of Qantcast make money from using your data.

    Having a strict cookie / tracking policy is safe and advisable but by not having one could cause your market share to decrease as your competitors steal your customers.

    You don’t walk across a busy road without looking in either direction so think twice before implementing code on your site.

    Digital agency star chart [infographic]

    Posted: Sep 11, 2013 in Marketing
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    Ever wondered what the digital agency market looks like from space?

    Well Neil’s Recruitment did and as a result they built the below infographic:

    ”Digital

    A trading desk alone is not enough

    Posted: Sep 10, 2013 in Business, Marketing, Product Management
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    Not enough

    Scenario: Revenue has been declining for years and the CEO is pointing the finger at acquisition marketing to grow business. Planners are very familiar with this scenario.

    I wrote an article recently that all programmatic buying should be in-house, but if a brand is expecting that this alone will solve a decline in revenue, then they need to wake up and smell the coffee.

    With ad spend over £15bn / year in the UK alone, this brings a lot of hungry salesman to your door insisting that their product is the best and that you should invest, which puts pressure on CEO’s and CMO’s to potentially waste a lot of money testing out the same option over and over again or testing out an option which only has a 1% chance of working to key KPIs. Also accepting a post-view window across their display buys as default because they’ve been constantly told that ‘the flashy banners are driving all organics’ is something which gets banded around often. With that amount of ad spend floating about also brings an opportunity for large sums of money to change hands under desks without the brand (if it’s an agency) or without the investors finding out.

    Just because there is more hype than ever when it comes to advertising eg. programmatic buying, DSP’s and trading desks, it doesn’t mean that focus and investment should divert away from other core business areas. Many CEO’s feel that obsessing about acquisition marketing is the way forward because of the simplicity of delivering an ad which a potential customer can click on in conjunction with hundreds of salesman saying that this is the answer, but for those who are keen to work backwards – finding out why high value customers are leaving feeding this back into dev and marketing, developing products across all devices, looking at CRM and key promotions are the ones who will survive and therefore be able to afford a significantly higher CPA than competitors, giving the trading desk plenty of ad options which competitors cannot afford to buy.

    If all of the below areas work together to achieve a common goal then the long term consequence of this will be shown in bottom line results and staff retention rates in a positive way:

    Capture

    It was really nice to read Marco Bertozzi’s article the other day where he used a personal example to demonstrate that spending money on advertising isn’t the only way of generating revenue and growth.

    Don’t ignore customer feedback

    Posted: Aug 20, 2013 in Business, Data, Marketing
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    Listen

    You have a eureka moment and you start building out the infrastructure for product, website and staff.

    The product flies off the shelves and life is good. Customers are happy, customers are spending on your site and you’re living the dream.

    As the business expands it produces more risk to ‘issues’ across key business areas which effect customers such as product stability, CRM / customer service and product development especially when linked to different platforms. As time goes on, competitors pop up trying to attack your weak points offering a viable alternative and the ideal solution would be to have had long term business strategies in place to cover all areas which could be at risk of those ‘issues’ appearing, resulting in customers not having a good reason to go anywhere else.

    Many businesses only have short term strategies which apply temporary fixes and patches resulting in those ‘issues’ appearing in full view to customers.

    The 21st century has brought customer opinions and voices which are not only expressed across the globe but also across all channels especially social media and forums instantly within seconds to millions, so no longer does a customer have to write a letter to complain or stay on the phone for hours, customers are now in the driving seat not the brand.

    Those businesses who closely monitor, analyse and engage with their customer feedback especially their high value customers will avoid getting annihilated, emmbaresed and shown up in front of millions as well as having to pay high acquisition costs to convince new customers that they have changed.

    Brands need to stop thinking that they know better and start believing the classic saying that ‘the customer is always right’. Yes, not every single customer is right and you don’t need to add every piece of feedback to the business agenda, but apply logic to constructive feedback and where a clear trend appears apply it to the relevant business area.

    Not only are your high value customers willing to give you an abundance of ideas on how to improve, but you only have to give a tiny gift away to get vital feedback to improve business, which in turn once implemented will give you an abundance of organic new customers compared to the expense of having to use ad budget to acquire those new customers.

    On a similar note, it’s also not acceptable to put a product on the shelf when based on customer feedback post launch is clealy unfinished. A brand should never be in this situation, especially with so many tools available which would give you the feedback you need in order to build the ultimate product which meets demand prior to launch.

    So when you’re lying on the beach seeing the cash flow, you need to remember that if you don’t listen and look after your customers, you can lose them significantly quicker and in greater volume than you can aquire new ones and that is certainly not what investors like to see.

    Google.com change, SEO’s change

    Posted: Aug 15, 2013 in Business, Marketing
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    seo_sign

    For decades purchasing more back links in high volume and on-site content has been top of the agenda for agencies.

    Things have changed as Google focuses more on bespoke popular content for the individual which is reflected in their algorithm.

    Rather than agencies finding the most effective illegitimate way of manipulating Google’s algorithm, they are now forced to work closer than ever in a more genuine way with brands / content marketers in order to achieve higher rankings in the SERPs focusing on:

    • META details – title tag will always remain a crucial part of rankings.
    • On-site content incl. homepage and sections.
    • Creating and supporting a forum which will help domain authority.
    • Social plugins especially G+ across the whole site.
    • Quality link building through PR’s.
    • Blog strategy – working closely with bloggers.
    • Adopting an omni-channel strategy / responsive web design.
    • Site speed across all devices.
    • Minimising use of flash or any other un-friendly search media.

    For years the channel has had to remain in the ‘unknown’ as agencies couldn’t communicate the illegitimate practices, but it’s good to see that the natural / organic search channel can finally sit side by side with other marketing channels.

    I’m sure there are plenty of further algorithmic updates from Google in the pipeline to reward those who are genuine and the industry will embrace these with open arms.

    Definition of ‘Programmatic’ and ‘Trading Desk’

    Posted: Aug 9, 2013 in Business, Marketing
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    dictnry

    Programmatic

    When a process is automated and self-service is the definition of programmatic.

    When looking at programmatic buying, this would include: paid search, Facebook marketplace and FBX, affiliates, display RTB, online video RTB and any other biddable media / RTB buy.
    Trading Desk

    A team of ‘programmatic planners / buyers’ is the definition of a trading desk.

    Most agencies claim they have a ‘trading desk’ yet run paid search, affiliates and Facebook marketplace in different buildings to their RTB buys, in which case they should be called a managed service DSP or ad network.

    Only when an agency has all programmatic buying under one team and one ‘head of’ can they truly call themselves a trading desk and have the ability to run a trading desk as it should be done.

    All programmatic buying should be in-house

    Posted: Aug 6, 2013 in Business, Data, Marketing
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    In house

    Ad agencies have offered huge value for advertisers for decades and continue to do so. This will never change.

    The key benefits of outsourcing the media planning and buying function to ad agencies include the likes of: global negotiating power, specialist contacts for sponsorship deals, cross client learnings, cross channel integration, deal with the hassle and admin and it’s someone for the CMO or CEO to blame if the business isn’t hitting key targets.

    With programmatic buying (Paid Search, Social Media, Display RTB, Online Video, Mobile and Affiliates) becoming the bulk of digital Marketing, the majority of these benefits no longer applies therefore it doesn’t make sense and can be classed as lazy if a brand wasn’t to even consider taking all programmatic buying in-house.

    Although rightfully CEO’s obsess about growth, also ‘wastage’ and efficiency across the business needs to be reviewed often.

    Let’s look at the pros and cons for taking all programmatic buying in-house:
    Pros

    • New digital media team would be sitting next to all other marketing areas eg. CRM, creative, content, web design, product managers.
    • Close to business KPI’s and budgets so they can be extremely reactive.
    • No hidden margins in bid platforms.
    • Can often get cheaper adserving and bid platform rates.
    • Team become specialists in the business sector / vertical.
    • 100% of time and focus will be given to the one client.
    • Learnings and data won’t be shared with other clients with no chance of leakage to competitors.
    • Can turn around new campaigns significantly quicker.
    • 24 hour contact.
    • Will always have the time to stay ahead of the game.
    • Work closely with the data team / in-house DMP optimising on real KPI’s such as revenue / LTV / ARPU.
    • Can openly recommend business requirements to CEO in order to get things done quickly and grow the business.
    • No hidden agendas – everyone aiming for the same goal.
    • Other internal departments can be educated about what role the media buy has on business goals.

    Cons

    • Can take six months to recruit team, train grads and setup systems and data integrations.
    • Ad agency would have to make more effort to integrate offlline and online brand with internal programmatic team.
    • The CEO might ignore team recommendations of key requirements needed to improve marketing.
    • CMO would need to find someone who has +5 years experience in programmatic buying across all channels to head up the team and train the grads.

    There are certainly plenty of pros and if you’re wondering how to kick things off, speak to some of the recruitment agencies below who will be able to provide an abundance off free advice:

    Neil’ Recruitment

    Digital Bubble

    Digital Marketing Transit Map

    Posted: Aug 5, 2013 in Business, Marketing
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    image

    Custom attribution models are key

    Posted: Jul 25, 2013 in Data, Marketing
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    You’ve spent months working with the data team setting up all of the marketing data feeds for the DMP and now it’s a case of setting the briefs for multi and custom attribution models.

    Last click attribution is typically default and the most common. It’s not wrong to only stick to one and if there’s no motivation to work with others, then last click isn’t a bad choice to stick to.

    Viewing multi custom attribution models gives you insight into the campaigns which are getting undervalued by contributing more higher up the funnel than lower for example. Off the back of the data, you can then increase targets / goals / CPA accordingly for the relevent campaigns / media buys.

    The benefit of using custom attribution models is that you can amend certain exposures / campaigns in order for the output to make more sense in an actionable way eg. remove all banner impressions which did not get viewed, remove brand search clicks, remove remarketing impressions etc.

    Firstly the data team will need to setup the 5 key out of the box attribution models:

      • Last interaction
      • Linear
      • First interaction
      • Time decay
      • Position based

      Once built out, within your visulisation tool there should be options to customise the data further eg. remove banners which weren’t in view, remove brand search, remarketing and CRM campaigns which will leave you with insight into the real performance of your prospecting campaigns across different attribution models.

      Google have been attempting attribution modelling over the past few years via DFA. They unfortunately still have a couple of bugs making the tool unusable, but they are still further ahead than any other third party attempting custom attribution modelling on a self sevice basis.

      It will always be difficult for third party companies to successfully deal with attribution because attribution models should be built using the data from the in house DMP, which includes back end customer / revenue / LTV data.

      In order to understand how all of your ad campaigns are really performing and what role they fully play, viewing performance data across multi custom attribution models is key.

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