Pete Box of Analytics

Measuring the effect of Social Media marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 12 May 2012 02:32:16 PDT

I will be in Tallinn on Friday, 1st of June, when Socialfest 2012 is kicking off. People at Altex kindly asked me to talk about how to measure the effect of social media marketing on your business? This is fascinating but also very challenging topic, because first you have to define social media and then marketing. If you think you know what marketing is, read this great article: Marketing is dead says Saatchi & Saatchi CEO.

I so agree what Kevin Roberts is saying about return on investment. Let’s face it: return on investment is a big fraud. ROI in social media is even a bigger joke. Maybe the right KPI is return on involvement or return on ecosystem? You simply can't measure everything in euros.

Albert Einstein said: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." This is so true, especially when it comes to social media marketing. However, your gut feeling or HIPPO (highest paid person's opinion) is not enough nowadays to get the resources needed. That’s why you need to measure social media marketing effects somehow.

As you know, with digital marketing you can get tons of data. Instead of reporting numbers, the most important thing is to know what matters and what is “nice to know”. Someone have to transform collected data into business insights for planning and decisions. That person is usually called an analyst. :)

Before analysis the crucial thing is to define your goals. There are numerous purposes in social media marketing that cannot be counted money wise. Please help me with my presentation and tell me how would you measure the effect of social media marketing on your business?

Boosting Marketing Analytics in Finland with Zeeland family

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 22:00:10 PST

After my resignation, it's a pleasure to say that I'm now responsible of developing analytics services at Zeeland, one of the biggest marketing communication companies in Finland. After all, it was an easy decision, although during the two and half months, when I was more or less a sportsman and a housewife, there was 15 new and different kind of opportunities!

At Zeeland, starting today, we are launching new marketing analytics service package and pricing model. At your discretion means that if you are not happy with the insights and results done by us, you don't have to pay for it. We are challenging CxOs to the next level of marketing - there shouldn't be no excuses anymore!

I'm sure there are lots of work when it comes to measuring offline and online advertising, multichannel customer experiences and point of sales. Stay tuned because there are some very good modern marketing stuff coming up. Contact me if you want some additional information about Zeeland's services. And feel free to connect me or the company in social media.

http://twitter.com/mertanen

http://twitter.com/zeelandgroup

http://fi.linkedin.com/in/petrimertanen
http://www.linkedin.com/company/zeeland

http://www.facebook.com/petrimertanen
http://www.facebook.com/ZeelandGroup

http://bit.ly/gplus_mertanen

http://bit.ly/gplus_zeeland

Let's get mobile!

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:58:14 PST

I participated one of the best seminars in a long time when IAB Finland arranged an event of mobile marketing couple weeks ago. There were couple of very good presentations and lots of good fact. You can see all these presentations (in Finnish) at Ruutu.fi. If you don't wish to see all photos and videos in this post, you can jump right into summary.

If you think about facts that Anders for example is presenting, you have to face it: you need to have a mobile service nowadays! Or at least, you should be planning it as we speak. Visibility in mobile channels may give you a competitive edge.

"Smartphones cover more thant 60 % out of all sold mobile phones."

I wrote about mobile convergence earlier this year and it is really happening. Mobile usage of Helsingin Sanomat has tripled in a year. In Netherlands, usage of mobile web has already overtaken the traditional web usage. In Finland there are more than a million mobile users and same amount of mobile searches per day. Visits in mobile services in general has doubled in a year and the growth is approximately 40 % per year. It's very likely that also mobile advertising will follow and start growing soon.
Global spent for mobile advertising was 2,3 billion euros in 2011 and the prediction is 14,4 billion euros in four years. Mobile advertising spent will grow from 0,5 % to 4 % in five years when it comes to advertisers' total media budget. When volumes are growing fast, you need to have a solid back end infrastructure. And of course, you need to think what kind of mobile services you are offering?

Consider multichannel publishing and whether to have mobile optimized website, hybrid or native mobile application. I guess the mobile optimized website or responsive design solution may be easier, but on the other hand, then you are losing some of the mobile device features such as camera and GPS. I know that planning is not an easy task but that's the beauty of mobile marketing.

Geo locations services are very important if you think about location targeted advertising or guiding people to your store. Of course, you should consider independent or third party technology, services and platforms like QR codes, Foursquare, Facebook and Layar.You can find some of these technologies from Gartner's hype trend below presented by Jarno from Aller Media.

You can see more and more QR codes nowadays and just a couple weeks ago Citymarket announced Facebook check-in deals in Finland. Still, I think the augmented reality is the coolest technology (although probably not the cheapest one) as you can see from the videos below. You can easily test it yourself when you get the Layar to your mobile device (from App Store, Android Market or Ovi Store etc.).

Fonecta is in Layar but they also launched a new smartphone application called Fonecta Caller. This (free?) application connects to Fonecta's database so you will always know who called you, and it will also get other contact details of the caller. You can filter certain callers and see offers from companies near you. If you wish to use an offer you can call to a company or get a discount code to your phone. This application can be very useful and I hope it stays free for end users. Check your mobile app store or Fonecta Caller's Facebook page during the upcoming couple of months.

And then back to analytics and summary. Here are couple of bullet points for you:

mobile usage is overtaking traditional web usage in couple of years
check from your web analytics system amount of mobile users and devices
what services and technologies you could already use?
are we able to do multichannel publishing?
should we create mobile site, hybrid solution or native application?
should we use mobile advertising?
how this can help our business, where is the money?
there are multiple amount of page views in mobile (power of touch screen)
click through rate (CTR) is multiple in mobile advertising
you can use geolocation and geo-targeting in advertising
you can guide mobile users to your offline store
you should measure cost per action (e.g. downloaded offers)
you should measure cost per customer acquisition (CPA)
you should measure return on investment (ROI) of mobile channel

Snoobi - the Finnish web analytics system

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 07:19:55 PST

Finnish web analytics vendor Snoobi has taken big steps forward when it comes to product and service development. I used to work more with the system years ago, when it still had some major drawbacks. The company has improved since then, developing an interesting business model combining software and services. I had a good chat with Mikko Seppä a couple of weeks ago about Snoobi Analytics’ version number 4 and possible future development. If you want to test it yourself, you can get a free 30-day trial via Snoobi.com. Here are my thoughts about Snoobi Analytics at the moment, many times benchmarked to Google Analytics. If don't have time to read the whole article, you can jump directly to executive summary.

If you are an analytics ninja, Snoobi has pretty much all the same tools and possibilities as other medium level web analytics systems. I'm not talking about Adobe (Omniture), IBM (Coremetrics) or Webtrends here, which are still more or less heavy weight suites. All the tracking data is in database, as usual. Using Snoobi’s decent API you can do integrations and use the data in other systems as part of your daily business.

If you are doing business to business, Snoobi offers very good lead reports. Basically, you get a list of organizations that visited your website, filtered and rated based on visitor behavior. This means you can create lead lists highlighting the most interesting and interested visitors. Snoobi’s integration with Asiakastieto means you can also pull out more information (such as revenue, business area etc.) and decision-maker data on the companies that have visited your website. Especially Finnish organizations have been covered very well thanks to Snoobi's work with IP identification. You can – and maybe you should – integrate Snoobi Analytics with the CRM used. Snoobi Analytics already offers integration applications for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.

Nowadays, you can create custom KPI reports where you can easily track changes in important metrics. You can also follow trend graphs and set up minimum and maximum goal limits + alerts for each metric. Snoobi Analytics’ eCommerce report will give you necessary information related to turnover and visitor value by source or keyword. It takes some time to define KPIs and build the reports that you need, but I guess that's pretty much the same process with every tool.

Snoobi is automatically tracking file downloads, email addresses and outgoing links. This is something that usually needs some configuration with Google Analytics. Snoobi also recognizes campaign tags done with the URL building tool for Google Analytics. There will probably be a Snoobi-specific URL tool for campaign tracking in the future. However, there are more important features in development.

Soon you will be able to create very clear dashboards and combine these with the new Command Center. The Command Center includes very nice features for turning data into always-vital actions. You can set up and share tasks with other users and create email notifications. You can link relevant metrics to tasks and make notes. With the Command Center, you can say goodbye to Basecamp or other similar and overlapping project management systems. In good hands, this is a very important part of a web analytics system, and hopefully it makes the data more actionable!

There is another interesting area of development: Facebook reports. Snoobi has stepped into the social media monitoring with these new features. Snoobi pulls the data from Facebook's API and brings relevant data, including Facebook page subscription information, geographical and demographics data, discussions and competitor benchmarks, from Facebook performance into the web analytics tool. With Snoobi Analytics, you can analyze the data from website, you can control your Google Adwords campaigns and monitor the quality of Facebook page conversations. Convenient? And with Snoobi Analytics, customers own the data! Maybe it's just matter of time when we will see same for Twitter (and the rest, e.g. LinkedIn and Google+)?

Alongside the launch of the new version of Snoobi Analytics, Snoobi announced new services. With Snoobi Care, you will gain constant development with a personal web analyst. If you don't want to outsource all, you can use Snoobi On Demand services when needed. If you are more hands-on analyst yourself, or have the dedicated people in your company, you can use Snoobi Education services to jumpstart your analytics and get more advanced training later on. There's also a very handy live customer chat in the tool, which is something included when you are using Snoobi Analytics or Services. If you really want to compete or build an analytics-driven culture, you need to have people in place to work with the data and create insights, information and knowledge for your organization.

Old customers of Snoobi got version number 4 automatically, and 25 other improvements during the year. Snoobi is nowadays HTML5-compliant so the system scales for smaller displays too. Still, I think usability is probably one of the key development areas in the future. The look and feel has improved in couple of years but the overall user experience with Snoobi has to be better in order to compete with bigger vendors.

Like other markets, Snoobi has lot of competition in the whole field of web analytics. But, on the other hand, if you are not willing to pay huge licence fees, take a deeper look at Snoobi Analytics. Depending on your needs and internal resources, you should evaluate and compare Snoobi, the product and services, as an option. It will be interesting to see how the combination of product development and expert services is working for customers. Several studies have shown that there are other things than the tool that make the difference to be successful with analytics or not. For companies outside of Fortune 500, Snoobi may be relevant option in terms of return on investment.

Me olemme media

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 06:30:53 PDT

This is my 100th blog post and for celebrating it, I'm writing it in Finnish (sorry for my international audience, try using the Google Translator). I will translate this blog post in English little bit later, if needed and possible.

Internet on muuttanut viestinnän, piste.
Jokainen meistä on oman elämän tähtireportteri. Elämän, johon sujuvasti sekoittuvat niin muut ihmiset kuin bränditkin. Noilla kirotuilla pienillä tietokoneilla, jotka kulkevat aina mukana, tuotamme uutta ja jaamme materiaalia päivittäin. Huonoja palvelukokemuksia tai kehnoja tuotteita eivät pelasta minkään valtakunnan viestintägurut. Valta on siirtynyt brändeiltä ja valtavirtamedialta asiakkaille...kaikille meille.

Me kaikki olemme osa mediaa.
Koska erilaista ja laadultaan vaihtelevaa sisältöä on paljon, myös lähdekritiikki kasvaa automaattisesti. Eri alojen asiantuntijat ovat klikkauksen päässä. Mikäli nykyinen, vai pitäisikö jo sanoa edesmennyt, valtavirtamedia haluaa pitää jonkinlaisen aseman, tulee heidän keskittyä määrän sijasta laatuun. Ja brändien tulee toimia kuin mediayhtiöiden.

Monimediatoimittaminen on mahdollista, jopa helppoa. Sen piti olla mahdollista jo yli kymmenen vuotta sitten. Muistan jutelleeni silloisen asiakkaan, Talentumin kanssa asiasta. Heidän tavoitteena tuolloin oli, että yksi toimittaja tekisi niin teksti, kuva kuin videoaineiston. Norjalainen DN teki sen jo lähes viisi vuotta sitten. Varmaan tämä muutos ei ole ammattiyhdistysväen mieleen, mutta trendi tulee olemaan siihen suuntaan, että yhä pienemmällä porukalla tuotetaan yhä enemmän sisältöä.

Mediat yhdistyvät.
Helsingin Sanomien ja Nelosen Uutisten yhdistyminen oli erinomainen ratkaisu ja selkeä osoitus median konvergenssistä. Parhaiten uuden-vanhan-sosiaalisen median kanssa ovat mielestäni onnistuneet MTV3 sekä YLE. Pahimmat väliinputoajat uusien mahdollisuuksien hyödyntämisessä ovat olleet sanoma- ja aikakausilehdet. Asiakkaat ovat valmiita maksamaan laadukkasta ja monimuotoisesta sisällöstä.

Mobiilikäyttö kasvaa kovaa vauhtia.
Toinen vaikuttava trendi on päätelaitteiden kirjon sekä mobiilikäytön kasvaminen. Natiivit mobiilisovellukset ovat kivoja, mutta kuinka monella yhtiöllä on oikeasti varaa ylläpitää ja päivittää iOS, Android ja Windows Phone sovelluksia? Sovelluksen kaltaiset, erikokoisille näytöille automaattisesti skaalautuvat ja selaimella toimivat (HTML5) mobiilipalvelut lienevät monelle julkaisujärjestelmälle sekä budjetille hyvä ratkaisu.

Sosiaalisuus on valinta ja asenne.
Monimuotoisen sisällön ja sosiaalisen median käyttäminen sekä ristiinlinkittäminen on monessa tapauksessa lapsen kengissä. Uniikin ja seurattavan URL-osoitteen tai QR-koodin sijoittaminen painettuun sanaan ei ole vaikeaa, vaan kysymys on enemmän asenteesta. Sama koskee sosiaalisen median käyttämistä. Uskalletaanko heittäytyä ystävien, tuttujen, yhteistyökumppaneiden ja asiakkaiden armoille?

Päätöstä helpottanee tieto, että ei brändi ole enää kenenkään omassa hallussa. Kuten Joonas Rokka Mainostorstaissa asian esitti: pitäisikö siirtyä brändin suojeluun enneminkuin brändin rakentamiseen tai hallintaan? Sosiaalisen median hyödyntäminen edellyttää kulttuurimuutosta. Todellista sitoutumista asialle. Muutos vaatii ylimmän johdon tuen eli päätöksiä. Halutaanko johtaa eristäytymällä norsunluutorniin vai riittääkö ymmärrys siihen, että 2010-luvulla asioita tehdään yhdessä?

Mittaaminen ja analysointi nousee erittäin tärkeäksi osa-alueeksi.
Mikäli sosiaalisuus on kolmas tarkasteltava trendi tässä kirjoituksessa niin monikanavainen mittaaminen ja analysointi on neljäs. Monimuotoinen sisältö, joka jaetaan monessa eri (sosiaalisessa) kanavassa ja eri päätelaitteille, aiheuttavat jonkinlaisia reaktioita. Näiden reaktioiden mittaaminen ja kokonaisuuden analysointi on haasteellista. Ne yhtiöt, jotka oppivat mittaamisen, analysoinnin ja testaamisen kulttuurin, ovat todennäköisemmin voittajia pitkässä juoksussa.

"Maailma muuttuu Eskoseni".
Summa summarum: pysytkö muutoksessa mukana eli oletko edelläkävijä vai perässähiihtäjä? Tiivistettynä tämän artikkelin teesit ovat:

Tuota monimuotoista sisältöä: tekstiä, kuvaa, videokuvaa, ääntä, esityksiä.
Jaa sisältö tehokkaasti eri kanaviin ja ympäri Internetiä, huomioi eri päätelaitteet.
Ole avoin ja sosiaalinen, heittäydy mukaan fiksusti.
Mittaa ja analysoi kaikki mitä teet. Kokeile uutta.

Valitettavasti en tässä kirjoituksessa pystynyt havainnollistamaan monimuotoista toimittajatyöskentelyä, mutta pysy mukana blogissa, lupaan käyttää kuva- ja videomateriaalia jatkossa entistä enemmän. Kuten aina, sana on vapaa vastaväitteille, kysymyksille ja kommenteille. :)

Are you wasting your money? Do you even know it?

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 04:49:01 PDT

During the last week and a half, I have been talking a lot about analytics business. Truth is that many companies are wasting their money and even worse, they don't even know about it. World has changed and still, marketing communication is in many cases the very same it has been for the last twenty years.

Marketing officers spend most of their budgets for TV or print campaigns. Only a fraction goes online in Finland. Good customer experiences cross channels are very rare. Survey says that top management doesn't know how the marketing communication, or should I say customer dialogue, should and could be measured.

I warmly welcome the upcoming downturn. In some cases it means that budgets are decreasing. In many cases it means that companies want to know what is the return for euros invested. Wise people are willing to learn how to measure and optimize customer behaviour across channels.

I can assure you that it's not an easy task. Measuring only one channel or the last click doesn't make you happy yet. It's a start but it doesn't give you the big picture. If your main key performance indicator is click through rate, then you know you got it all wrong.

Be brave, be creative! Design your cross channel campaigns with the best possible outcomes in mind. Create a smooth user experience towards the goal. Test different messages, channels and call to actions constantly. Step out from your comfort zone where you have done things the same way many times before.

Next time when you are ready to spend some money stop for a while. Make sure you have the right people for measuring and analyzing from the start. I bet it's worthwhile to move some money from advertising to analyzing. Please care about the return for your company whatever your goals may be. When you have clear goals, then it's easy to define the right metrics.

End of one era - looking for the future

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:45:51 PDT

I got a phone call one week ago. CEOs get that kind of phone call sometimes. Saying that your services are not needed anymore. In my case, it means that seven year's journey with Naviatech has ended (last year company changed its name to NXC Finland).

I was in the company almost since day one, first as a sales director and then as a CEO. The company has had a steady growth although the business has changed a lot. Last year was the only one ending with negative profit, but otherwise the company has very good financial situation and it has the Strongest in Finland certificate.

First of all, I want to thank all those people in my team who have put up with me all these years! :) Sometimes we have had tough times but still, we have always managed to work our way through. I want to thank our customers and partners during these years as well. Thank you!

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to say goodbye officially, but I hope that this message will reach you. I have had a priviledge to work with you in many different projects regarding to websites, mobile services, search and newsletter marketing, web analytics and social media.

I'm pretty sure that I will concentrate and specialize even more on measuring and analyzing marketing as a whole. I mean some day in the future. Now it's time to take a breath and relax a bit. Let's see what the future holds, I'm a free man! =)

Survey results: Challenges of measuring Internet marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 07:54:56 PDT

I was speaking at Internet Marketing Conference this week in Helsinki. My presentation was about challenges of measuring Internet marketing. I did a small survey (in Finnish) before my presentation to get real opinions on this matter. Below you can see the results of this survey. Click any bar to see the percentages of each challenge.

This survey is based on the six key sectors of analytics maturity model by Stéphane Hamel (although I added couple points of my own). You can use his self assessment tool in order to evaluate your analytics maturity. Feel free to comment on these results or the challenges you may have.

Photos from eMetrics Stockholm 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 08:08:48 PDT

Presenting a case study at eMetrics Stockholm

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 02:05:28 PDT

Only one week before eMetrics Stockholm kicks off on Monday, September 19th. This is one of the best digital marketing and optimization events in Nordic. If you want to sign up, use discount code NXC2011 and get -15 % off from conference and combo passes. The event is arranged together with SMX so there are plenty of chances to learn new stuff and network with peers and pioneers. There are two Wednesdays that week because Web Analytics Wednesday will take place at München Brewery on Monday evening.

I will be moderating the track two on Monday and presenting a case study on the very same track next day. Because this case is about women's clothing, Lennart suggested that I should wear a dress during the presentation. :) We'll see about that. And more interesting things regarding to Atelier Goldner Schnitt - online store for women's clothing. I started working with the Finnish subsidiary in April 2009.

Since May 2009, sales of online store grew 75 % in two years! And this was already a mature market. Hope I can reveal the process and tactics in my presentation as much as I would like to. Working with a part of an international corporation may not be always the easiest task. But some of the challenges are very much the same in smaller companies as well. I will share the presentation through this blog later on.

Hope to see you in Stockholm - it will be nice to meet all dear colleagues again!

Hanging out after eZ Conference in London

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:03:40 PDT

I accidentally got into my first podcast ever last Friday, during my vacation. I saw a hangout invitation in Google+ and first I thought that Tony is just testing this feature. Well, it wasn't like that and suddenly (after we got kids out of my home office) I was in the middle of their eZ Future recording session, hosted by Tony Wood and Manpreet Dhesi.

Although I just woke up and had only one cup of coffee, we started doing the show. First of all, it was very cool to test the hangout feature and boy, I can tell you that this is rocking the world in the future on how we meet people online.

Secondly, it was nice to see a studio of Vision With Technology and how they pulled through the recording session. If you are interested about eZ Conference in London, you can find the full review at share.ez.no.

To listen this podcast you can click the red logo on top right corner and download m4a file directly or get it from iTunes. If you like to fast forward and only listen the talk regarding to web analytics, it's found starting around 21".

I know that my English is not that smooth always so feel free to comment and ask me a question if something is bothering you. Read my last blog post about Google+ and remember to vote Helsinki-Tallinn for next year! :) For now, back to holidays..

Google+ is a just one piece in Google's puzzle

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 11:00:05 PDT

Google+ is not competing with Facebook. Of course, Google people has been doing benchmarking, but Google+ is just one piece in Google's big picture, their strategy in the long run. Google is known of its search engine, but where comes the money from? Advertising and apps.

Google+ will collect users very fast and the one reason is that they already have these users. Probably they have hundreds of millions different users in their service portfolio. When people are completing their profiles, Google can offer new demographic targeting methods for advertisers.

I guess it's just a matter of time when we are seeing ads in Google+. At least we will see company profiles later on and that's for sure. So, in the future, advertisers can target their adds for example to Google+ users who are married women, between 30-40 years, living in a certain city, interested in certain things (Sparks). Like Facebook does.

I wonder if Google is able to use this information and integrate it with other data they have? That's an interesting question. In addition, if you are sharing your location either from your mobile device or browser, you can target advertising to people near a certain place. This feature is already integrated in Android application to Google's local business solution.

Your company's address information integrates with Google Maps. In Google's local business center you can create special offer coupons and Google offers are launching now in the US. Suddenly, Google Maps has already social features like star ratings, reviews and photo uploads. With Android app you can check-in like with Foursquare. Maybe Google+ app is within Android OS in the near future.

"Google is using G+ and other products to serve more sophisticated advertising solutions."

For companies, Google offers several other useful services. From advertising and optimizing point of view, there are Adwords, Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools and Website Optimizer, just to name few. These are more or less integrated with each other nowadays, creating a powerful toolset to reach the target audience and optimize your (online) business. When company profiles and ads are getting in to Google+, I'm convinced that analytics will follow very soon.

Let's get Google's recommendations into this mess. Google brought its own like button called +1. Today, you can see these +1 recommendations in Google+, natural search results and paid ads in search results. My recommendations is that you get that button to your website as well. May be, some day, these recommendations are part of Google's search algorithm...or recommendations are affecting on the CPC prices.

Why you should change from Facebook or Twitter to Google+?

Answer is simple for heavy users: you don't have to. People who are in Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. will use Google+ as a part of social media. Still, I bet that all of these social media platforms will have hard time with Google+ in the long run. But beware: Google+ has some really cool features.

I accidentally jumped into a podcasting session this morning via Google+. It was held by Vision with Technology (Tony Wood and Manpreet Dhesi) and it was done with Google+ Hangout. Very cool experiment and definitely useful for businesses. Group chat called Huddle is also nice and easy to use with people in your circles and even with mobile app.

Relationships in Google+ circles are not to both directions how it's in Facebook. You can follow people like in Twitter just by adding them into one of your circles. They can follow you but they don't have to. These circles are very useful when you don't want to bother your business contacts about family news and so on.

For photo editing and sharing I have been using Picasa many years now and I really like how it's integrated with Google+. Especially how it's showing the photo stream and albums inside the Google+. The Android app is uploading all photos to Google+ automatically so they are already in there, if I want share photos. For videos there is probably some Youtube technology behind and I'm quite confident that we will see more integrations to Google Apps (calendar = events, docs).

For now it seems that Google Apps is not supporting Profiles and therefor Google+. This is a challenge that Google has to fix and the other one being multiple profiles / Google accounts (business/personal). Anyway, Google has a huge potential to up-sell and cross-sell Google Apps with Google+ and even Android OS.

To wrap this up I ask the question: do you still think Google is competing with Facebook? I think Google is competing with lots of other companies at the same time, including Twitter, 4sq, Skype, Microsoft...Let me know your thoughts about this?

QR codes combine traditional and mobile marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 15 May 2011 02:16:52 PDT

The future is mobile, there's no doubt about it. The question is not anymore how do we get people to our website. Challenges for marketers are more complex than that nowadays. People are carrying small computers with them all the time so the first question is how do we reach these people? During the last decade volume of print and outdoor advertising has been decreasing and digital marketing has been the king. Some predictions are saying that use of mobile web will outscore traditional desktop web usage in 2-3 years...Now it's good time to think which kind of mobile services you're offering.

"Mobile channel will boost traditional marketing again."

People in cities are on the move all day long. They receive hundreds of advertising messages in the street, in magazines and newspapers - in bus, train or plain. This trend raises many questions to solve. How do you use these opportunities to get their attention? What is the call to action? How do you want them to engage with your brand? How do you measure if the message has been right? How do you handle the content between mobile sites or applications and your website?

Today advertisers are using company domain names in TV, radio, outdoor and print ads. Most of the ads are missing a good concept and clear call to action. Therefor the overall user experience is poor. What other options you have? Use unique URLs and measure them! I recently heard a radio ad by Shining Center and converted to their website.

Because the company and domain name is in English, they wisely used Finnish domain lasintummennus.fi in radio with call to action. Unfortunately it seems that they are not measuring this unique domain name, although it would be very easy to do. When redirecting unique URLs you simply ad tracking code for your web analytics system. Then you know exactly how many people reacted to your ad.

How about mobile users? When done properly, your online service should identify if people are accessing the site with mobile device. The content should be served and displayed in mobile phone or tablet friendly format to visitors. With mobile phones you can add cool location based (GPS) maps and directions, plus unique numbers or discount codes to measure instant conversions to phone channel or physical point of sales. Like in web, you should always plan and measure the final goal of the visit.

"QR codes are hyperlinks of the physical world."

Another option is ever increasing Quick Response code. Much under appreciated QR codes will brake through also in Europe, sooner or later. I wrote an article about QR codes and cross-channel measuring two years ago. Since then I have seen just couple of attempts in Finland to use the code. I guess we would need a major media company or brand to start using the codes and raising the awareness. This video is an excellent example how you can program, teach and use the QR codes (don't mind about Swedish speak).

You can use QR codes in newspapers, magazines, business cards, brochures, outdoor ads, stores, presentations, TV, website, social media, mobile sites and applications...the possibilities are almost endless. QR codes offer amazing possibilities for concept design! You can program QR codes so they include:

discount codes
downloadable contact information
calendar events
link to mobile applications
predefined phone numbers, text messages or emails
link to videos, maps, websites or mobile sites (with tracking code!)

To summarize this post: mobile channel is hot, start using it - traditional marketing is back, combine it your web & mobile strategy - plan goals and the user experience, measure cross-channel actions!
Check out couple of examples of QR codes from the presentation below (page 14).

View more presentations from mertanen

Recap, photos and videos - WAA Finland goes to Sanoma

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 14 May 2011 08:02:21 PDT

If you missed our last event called "WAA Finland goes to Sanoma", from here you can get almost all content of the event. I mean the official content - the unofficial part ended up with singing in karaoke bar. It's almost like a tradition for some of us. =) Below you can check out photos from the event. Feel free to explore my public gallery as well.

All presentations were recorded and uploaded to WAA Finland Youtube channel. These are in HD format and because of the camera, presentations are unfortunately in two or three parts. I hope you like them anyway. All presentations are also available in Slideshare if you want to see or download them.

We arranged a voting about behavioural targeting with Emer Kirrane. Emer hosted a Web Analytics Wednesday at the very same time than we did in Helsinki. We connected via Skype during the event, had a short chat and people in Budapest were able to see the crowd in Helsinki. That was something new and fun! Feel free to contact me if you are interested about WAA membership or working for the WAA Finland.

Next Web Analytics event in Helsinki - WAA Finland goes to Sanoma

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 03:14:11 PDT

There are only few seats left for the next web analytics event in Helsinki. Check out details of this free event, sign up now and be there when WAA Finland goes to Sanoma in one week, on Wednesday March 30. We are having excellent speakers including Anders Stenbäck, Michael Dlugosch and Pekka Koskinen.

We will also have an interesting experiment during the event when we get live connection with Web Analytics Wednesday Budapest - happening at same time. We will have a short talk about WAA Code of Ethics with Emer Kirrane, manager at Yahoo! Web Analytics. We will have a vote regarding to ethics and behavioral advertising. Behavioral Display Advertising is when a visitor sees ads on a website based on their behavior on other 3rd party websites.

Question is: Behavioral Display Advertising doesn't appear to break any element of the WAA Code of Ethics but is it an ethical technique? Do you find this smart business practice or a bit creepy? Should it be named as an unethical practice by the WAA?” You can also follow the discussion in Twitter with hashtag #flashwaw.

After the official program we will tune up for networking in Sports Pub Chelsea right next to Sanoma building. You can use this Quick Response code to save the event in your mobile phone's calendar. I will write more about QR codes in the near future. In the meanwhile you can read my guest post about QR codes and download a reader if you don't have one.

See you soon in Helsinki and greetings from sunny Barcelona! :)

Social Media training - How to do Social Media right?

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:59:14 PST

Couple weeks ago I did a social media training with a small group of people coming from different organizations. This kind of social training, or should I say workshop, can be insightful and lots of fun. If you have been listening presentations in seminars and conferences, but still don't know where to start, this hands-on training is perfect for you. Before you create a Facebook page and start publishing just something about your company, you should educate your executives and the whole staff.

If you're saying that our company doesn't exist in social media - think twice! People are probably talking about your organization and products & services related to your business, already in social media.
Start using Google Alerts, Whitevector, Radian6, Statsit or whatever tool to listen what people are talking in world wide web. Now, don't get mad if you are not getting the feedback you would like. Remember, this is a chance to develop your company. Be careful: gather data from different sources and analyze your whole web presence! One very simple tip: put share buttons to your website with AddThis.com and integrate the analytics part with Google Analytics.

Analyzing part is the most important one in order to improve your (online) business. If you don't have time or knowledge to do that...well, that's our business and we are glad to help. You can contact me through these channels any time. Analysis is the ground where you start planning. When you start planning how to use social media, bring (marketing) communications of your organization on the table. Someone in your company must know what is the public information you are publishing to the world - when you are doing it and who's doing it.

What kind of public information you may already own? How you can get more material from your community? That's your company people, customers, partners, friends etc. In this point you should know what are the possible social media platforms / services or channels, like I use to say. This conversation prism by Brian Solis is super to get the whole picture of social media channels.

Then comes the hardest part. When you plan something, whether it's a campaign, your website or social media, start with the purpose and goals. What are we trying to gain and why? There are plenty of chances how you can engage with people and benefit from it. You can recruit, you can do product & service development and first of all: you can help people (to buy). Know your point and then it's quite easy to define the right key performance indicators. Macro goals can be e.g. number of applicants to certain position or number of new ideas. Micro goals are e.g. number of people who liked or shared the new position or number of new conversations or posts in services forum.

Now you should have an idea how to measure social media right and that is, against your goals / purpose. When you do the previous task you should be able to tell who are the people in your organization which should especially be involved in social media. But beware: in order to get full benefit, get as much people involved as you can. And remember: benefits won't come over night - you should have a long and consistent plan to do things over a timeline (a year perhaps).

You know how to monitor and measure social media, you know what material you will publish and you have a plan and people to do that. (this is called management). Go on and execute that plan! : ) I know, I know...it's not that easy and there may be some holes in your way. But hey, this is what the leadership is. Don't work alone! Start training executives and leading top down - I'm sure it will pay you back.

If you liked this post, please do me a favor and share this to your colleague or your boss. Like always, feel free to comment. Be social and write down your thoughts. If you want to attend to this social media training, you can get a discount code from me.

Taking my part of guessing Nokia Microsoft marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 02:56:29 PST

My first reaction was "WTF Elop"! I have thought this Nokia Microsoft marriage couple of days now. I have read very good blog posts as well. Yes, I have found out that I don't follow the mainstream media that much anymore. And just because the content is poor. The real experts are the one who have worked in Nokia or with Symbian and MeeGo.

Picture by Ismashphone.com

Anyway, Stephen Elop wasn't the man who decided alone that Nokia is going for Windows 7 mobile. These kind of big strategic decisions usually take long time and Mr. Elop just came in. Nokia's board has been investigating this marriage a year or so. Maybe he knew about it, maybe not. His letter about Nokia's bad strategy is something you don't do without board knowing about it so that was probably part of Nokia's media game.

I'm Google guy for sure. My new Android phone has never crashed in a month and I'm very pleased of using it. Nokia is not competing with Google in the future. Google is a software company and Nokia will be more or less a device manufacturer. Apple is creating very nice devices, but it has own platform so it's mixed company with software and devices. All these enterprises have, and they will have huge ecosystems.

My guess is that all these companies will have space in the markets. I'm not guessing any market shares because it's easy to count sold phones but how on earth you're calculating market share of Google? Innovation and product development of the company is creating whole new markets every year...

It's very hard to manage these kind of ecosystems. The best you can do is listen and engage with the ecosystem. It's very interesting to see how Symbian and Meego communities are evolving in the future. There will be plenty of knowledge for new start-ups when Nokia is letting people go. What I don't understand is why government should involve with this in anyway?

Here's just couple of my thoughts that needed to be written down. Feel free to comment and agree or disagree. Let's see if the blue screen in coming... : )

Photo by Worsttech.com

Key Performance Indicators to Any Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 04:13:51 PST

Here is some of my notes regarding to Key Performance Indicators. I did a Search Engine Optimization training / workshop in Oslo last week with one of our customers. You can, and maybe you should, use this kind of measuring with any advertising? Below you can also see a picture of Key Performance Indicators report we had in SEA LIFE Helsinki case.

First eZ Publish user event in Finland

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:24:39 PST

Unfortunately I won't be in Nice this time when international eZ winter conference kicks off next week. I'm sure you will have a great event and especially weekend in Alps. Elina and Denis will be representing NXC, at least during the community and parter day. I would like to hear your thoughts and comments so keep on tweeting. The week after eZ conference I will be in Oslo meeting our Norwegian team, eZ people and Affecto Norway.

On Wednesday, 9th of February, we are arranging first eZ Publish user event in Finland.
If you have eZ Publish in your organization, or your just interested about it, you are warmly welcome. First of all this is a networking event so we have relaxed program with long breaks and possibility to have a chat after the presentations. We will start the day with breakfast and greetings from Nice.

Tuomo Syvänperä will be talking about email marketing and he is showing our newsletter application. Our latest endorsement, Chief Analytics Officer Kari Taura will show how to measure and test email marketing. I'm sure he will be a guest author in this blog sooner or later. Jaakko Kallio will be speaking about mobile marketing in general and especially iPhone / iPad applications. I will wrap up with a presentation of multichannel publishing.

I think we have very interesting day coming up. Check out the program (in Finnish) and sign up. Feel free to spread the word. : )

iPad rocks - we are living the mobile convergence

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 00:27:05 PST

First of all, I wish you very prosperous New Year 2011! During the holidays I had more time to explore the iPad, and so did my kids.

"It's the overall user experience that I value the most in iPad."

As I'm writing this post, my oldest daughter, five year old Mona is watching Winx videos in YouTube with the iPad. It's amazing to see how they somehow learn to use the device, just in seconds.

There is definitely a market for tablet devices. I think Apple has proven that already with their iPad sales record. As a business user, sometimes I need my laptop, but sometimes I'm quite comfortable traveling and handling meetings with an iPad or even a smart phone. This is possible because we have most of our applications online (Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Jira, Netvisor), so basically I just need a browser to access almost all necessary tools.

"The worst thing you can do is to put the same content, in same format to this new channel."

Many media companies are probably testing and planning iPad applications as we speak. If you think that this is a new sales channel for a newspaper or magazine, you are getting it wrong! iPad is more interactive than just a passive broadcasting channel (compare computer + Internet vs. TV or radio). Here are my thoughts what to think before rushing your "application" into the App Store.

You can ask easily couple of modest questions from yourself regarding to cross-media or cross-channel concept: what kind of content we have and what kind of content we could have? How do we publish this content? What content we publish in each channel? Are consumers ready to pay for extra content? What is our subscription and ad revenue model? Above, you can see that CNN has an interactive iPad application with videos and reader comments.

"Media companies in Finland struggle with cross-linking and creating rich content to different channels."

I guess media companies have challenges with their strategy and editorial staff rather than technical issues. I'm not saying that technical issues don't matter at all. I'm saying that for the long run, you should first think how to create and collect different kind of content including text, pictures and videos.

"Is the old staff ready to learn new tricks and produce wider variety of content or should we kick them out?

And hire younger people with up-to-date skills? When it comes to technical things, of course, you should be able to answer these questions: where do we store the content in the first place? How do we publish it to different channels (web, mobile web, print, iPhone / iPad or other native mobile applications)?

Which content we publish to each channels? How do we update the content for each channel? What kind of functionality we have in each channel? What is the best and most cost efficient workflow we can have? How much we are doing manual moving of content (copy-paste) between the systems?

"Media companies lack the final understanding of social media in Finland."

It seems that tabloid kind of titles and quantity rule over quality. I have lost an interest towards mainstream media because of this. I'm finding much better content through blogs etc. There may be just a few editors who really engage with their audience via different social networks. We have seen social media guidelines from media companies, but I think they mostly suck. Instead of general guidelines, the old school gang needs hands on training. Below you can see CBC sports editor Scott Oake and how to connect TV and Twitter.

iPad is a great gadget but it can be even better with good applications. And I mean real applications not a look-a-like newspapers and magazines. You should think the iPad application as a website. One big question is: should we build a mobile site or native applications? Do you know how many people is using your website with mobile device? With Google Analytics, you can easily check it out through Visitors > Mobile > Mobile devices report.

If you want better statistics from your mobile website you need to add server side tracking code of Google Analytics. If you want any usage stats from your iPhone or iPad application then you need to read this Google Analytics instruction. In addition to web analytics data, try to get qualitative data from users as well. Ask the early adopters how they feel about service and what they would like to improve.

I hope that Meego will fight with iOS and Android stuff in the future, but in the meanwhile I look forward to seeing new cool iPad Apps...also from Finland.

Thoughts about so called digital and social media marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:50:48 PST

This is probably the most general post I have written to my blog ever. However, this needed to be written out because I'm wondering these things in my daily work with partners and customers. Overall, I think we are living very interesting times dear reader. Communication is going through a transformation, no matter from which point you are thinking about it or which research you are referring to. So is marketing communication. Do you agree?

"Marketing doesn't equal as advertising."

Many people are talking about marketing, but they are really talking about different forms of advertising. Even if you are talking about marketing communication, still you are forgetting couple of P´s of marketing. There is no reason to speak about digital marketing because...

"Everything is digital and we are living in digital world every day."

It's a huge risk if your company is relying just for non-digital communication. As you know, there is a huge hype on so called social media. There are as many experts as there are users. Companies are establishing Facebook pages like they were putting up websites in 90s. "We kind of have to do it because everyone are doing so." Not!

"Social media doesn't equal as Facebook."

Instead of term "social media" we could use "Internet marketing". Internet marketing hints that you have a connections but with new devices and native applications (iPhone, iPad, Symbian, Android) it may be hard to say when you are "connected" or "online". With all this new technology, platforms and services, people need constant education to keep themselves up to date.

"Before you buy services from experts or consultants, you need to know what you are buying."

First, I suggest that you buy training, books - go to events, network and study online. This is a very good tip because I have been training concepts, content management, newsletters, social media, open source, web analytics and search marketing for years. : ) I give you few real life examples so you know what I'm talking about here. Would you buy 2 million Facebook ad impressions for 750 € or learn how to plan and target Facebook advertising?

Would you buy "Google Maps advertising" for 200 € or would you add your company information to Google Places in 5 minutes if I send you a link? Would you buy search engine optimization service or learn what you need to do content and link building wise to help search engine visibility in the long run? Would you buy a crappy marketing register or learn how to grow own, quality database for newsletter promotions etc.? Would you buy thousands of clicks or learn how to know which channels are converting visitors into actions that are relevant to our business?

I hope you got my point. Learn the new technology, platforms, services, software and companies that may help your business. What ever you are doing, you should define a strategy = make a plan. A strategy, in other words a plan, doesn't have to be a 50 page long ultimate document, but it should include the most important thing: business goal(s)!

Before jumping in to Facebook, Twitter etc. or before creating a iPhone or iPad application think these: are we trying to sell more, save costs or both? How we are going to do that and how to measure that? What is the schedule, what are the tasks that need to be done and what are the resources (people, companies, software or channels involved)?

"Most campaigns fail because planning phase is not very well executed."

I'm sure that many people are struggling with many questions regarding to communication solutions. Should we use social media and how? Should we have a mobile website or should we create a native application and for which operating systems? Should we still use print and how can we help production of print products?

What are customer contact points / channels and which are the point of sales? Should we establish a web shop and how do we measure sales between channels? How do we manage content in each channels and what are the best and most cost efficient systems we are using?

Many tough and excellent questions. And probably many more. That's why you need to learn. When you know more, you can ask the relevant questions from your expert or potential partner and you won't probably make a bad decision. It will cost a lot money if you choose wrong person, wrong software or wrong partner. Here are three simple rules to follow in order to make success:

Measure your current activities against goals
Plan your next online service, campaign or activity based on the insights you have got from measurement
Execute the new plan
Start all over

Is it simple? What are your experiences? Throw in your comment - feel free to disagree. Join into a conversation - tell us what's your pain point at the moment? Show me your social side - ask a question! Want to meet me or ask if we can sell more or save costs: send me an email. Try Quick Response code below and get my contact information to your phone. You can download a reader to your phone from Upcode or Beetagg.

My presentation and notes from NXC seminar this week in Helsinki

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:38:56 PDT

Below you can check out my presentation from NXC seminar we had this week in Helsinki. The event was mainly about multichannel publishing with eZ Publish. My topic was quite challenging, at least very interesting: "What social media, search engine optimization and web analytics got to do with multichannel publishing".

We got plenty of good feedback for the whole seminar and once I'm done with our Youtube channel, you can see videos of all presentations. Here are my key points regarding to my speaking and like always, you can send me an email and ask a question.

You can optimize details but keep in mind big picture: optimize your business (= money). That's why we are learning all this stuff and why everyone will listen to us.
Web analytics is not just tracking your website. Keep in mind wider perspective and measure social media, offline advertising and point of sales. Measure mobile / phone channel as well.
Social media needs planning, do not establish a Facebook page just because others are doing so (there is a training course coming up from NXC).
You should use social media with search engine optimization also in mind.

My presentation and photos from IMC Helsinki available

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:07:11 PST

View more presentations from mertanen.

Multi-channel publishing requires multi-channel measurement

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:57:56 PDT

About a month ago, just before my summer vacation I was in the eZ Conference in Berlin. Although this time I was speaking about search engine optimization, the main topic in the conference was multi-channel publishing. The highlighted key issues being mobile publishing and applications. Usage of mobile web and applications is growing fast, there's no doubt about it. Tony White summarizes the development very well:

"In the last couple of years first newspapers disappeared from hotel lobbies, airports etc. Now smart phones and other mobile devices have replaced laptops."

You yourself can easily see this trend for yourself anywhere when you are traveling and I guess there's plenty of research data of the topic as well. TV and web are merging with these new LED-Internet kind of TVs or should I say displays. If you are interested about this topic, maybe you should read my TV advertising and web analytics researc h. eZ Systems puts this multi-channel publishing into its slogan: any content - from any source - delivered to any channel.

Overall, what does this mean for publishers and companies? First, very easy thing you can do is to find out how many visitors are actually browsing your website with mobile device at the moment. In Google Analytics you check out how many visits you got from each mobile operating system by country. Below you can see that 4,21 % of my blog visitors in June came to the site using a mobile device, quite naturally most of them were from Finland and little bit surprisingly iPhone was the most used device. You can also see iPad visitors coming in already in June.

I hope your company stats has much more volume than my blog but this is very good place to start. You can always conduct a little poll or survey for your current customers. Ask how many of them would use mobile devices if there would be mobile optimized website or a native mobile application? If you're using Google Analytics, maybe you should read more about how to tune it for mobile tracking or how to measure native mobile applications.

So, for some good reason you decided that you should have a mobile service for your visitors. Next important questions are: how do you recognize these mobile users? Do you automatically serve them with mobile service from which they can easily jump to full website if they want? How do you create, update, publish and measure mobile content? Basically is your content management system ready for mobile publishing or would you like to integrate your CMS with a native mobile application?

Unfortunately these are not the only questions you may have. Do you still need printed material or are you using outdoor print promotions or TV advertising? How do you plan your visitor journey and user experience across different channels? How do you measure these crossing points? Or would you like to drive visitors to physical point of sales / services instead of digital channels? Multi-channel strategy is not easy but it's doable!

I like this new concept of Berlin TV tower because you don't have to queue anymore (which improves my customer experience). You can buy your ticket from an ATM downstairs and use either SMS or quick response code to receive an information SMS back to your phone with your personal time of access up to TV tower. How convenient. I have written about using Quick Response code and I'm still wondering why companies are not using it? QR code is easy to create, program and measure. All you have to do is plan a nice cross-channel concept... : )

In order to measure print channel you need to use either QR codes or you can use vanity URLs. But do you use same or similar content in print and web? How can you help production of print and how do you automate QR codes or vanity URLs? Back to CMS: does your content management system have features that ease up production of printed material? You can integrate eZ Publish with third party desktop publishing systems like Adobe Indesign. Actually you can integrate eZ Publish with other important enterprise applications as well. It is not wrong to state that:

"We will move more and more from content management to business application integration and publishing!"

Perhaps in the future you have to set a different kind of criteria for your content management system as well as your conceptual / technical / analytical partner who will get the big picture.

As usual, I welcome any comments you may have and of course, if you want to have a private chat, feel free to email me. Or you can just relax and check out these photos from eZ Conference 2010 in Berlin. : )

Search Engine Optimization - my presentation at eZ Conference in Berlin

noreply@blogger.com (Petri Mertanen) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 02:11:04 PST