The Wow Factory Blog

The latest Bellwether survey published this week (13th July 2009) has found that for the second quarter in a row the rate of decline in marketing spend has eased, linked to an improvement in business confidence; with companies surveyed reporting that their financial prospects have improved for the first time since the first quarter of last year. Although the rate of decline remained severe for Q2, raising the risk of marketing spend falling in 2009 even more than in 2008, one-in-three companies reported that their financial prospects had improved compared to one-in-four reporting a deterioration.

Rory Sutherland, IPA President said "To anyone optimistically inclined, the April Bellwether seemed to signal the bottom of the market, and the new report suggests that the worst is over. Budget cutting for all marketing communications categories seems to be slowing and, while the economy is still tough, the balance of executives reporting improved prospects moved into positive territory for the first time since Q1 2008."

Spend was reduced for all categories of marketing in Q2, but at a slower rate of decline. Budgets for main media advertising and ‘all other’ (includes PR, event sponsorship and market research) were again hardest hit amongst those companies surveyed.

Jim Marshall, Chairman, Starcom stated: "The media world is still expecting and braced for a very tough six months but the indication that business and financial confidence is at last returning suggests there is certainly an argument for optimism, and that the prospects for 2010 look more positive."

Matt Simpson, Head of OMD Group Digital and Chairman of IPA Digital Media Group also commented stating: “The 'internet' and 'internet search' continue to gain a larger share of advertisers budget, despite overall budget levels decreasing. This is likely to be a reflection of increased confidence in the tracking and accountability of the channel.”
The Kent media economy continues to reflect this trend with digital marketing growing ever more relevant, this doesn’t mean that traditional routes are redundant though- the marketing mix is still as important as ever it was. Having a web presence on its own is no panacea, funnily enough people do still go to the shops, they do still have 1-2-1 relationships with suppliers both B2b and B2C and a well planned sales pitch still works!

Undoubtedly the world wide web has moved marketing communications forward for the better, but ignoring other routes to market is frankly daft. Through the line communications incorporating digital, text, advertising, data all tied in to a creative message enables the 1-2-1 relationship to be fostered and developed and are absolutely vital to long term marketing success.

Take the example of Britelite Windows the Maidstone based home improvement company, with an annual seven figure marketing spend this client has grown its revenue during the last 18 months by some 12% as a result of maintaining the budget, but by employing ever more creative routes to market, essentially Simon Bourn the marketing director at Britelite includes press, direct marketing, telesales, a well trained sales force, outdoor, exhibitions, point of sale in addition to a thought through search engine optimisation and pay per click campaign for his website. Simon says “we continue to use traditional routes to market in essence to drive traffic to our price engine within the web site. This has led to significant leads which we work hard to convert into actual sales”.

Simon Clubley is director of The Wow Factory the Kent based through the line full service agency, whose clients include Premier Foods, IPC trading systems and more than forty Kent based clients.
http://www.thewowfactory.co.uk 01233 713852

greenstone data solutions, the successful and fast growing database marketing bureau, has appointed Marco De Caprio as Commercial Director to oversee all aspects of its future strategic growth, client management and business development.

Since the company launched in 2003, greenstone has quickly established itself as a leading and respected database bureau. Offering data cleansing, database design, hosting and management, software development and customer insights services, greenstone boasts an enviable list of national and international clients.

De Caprio joins greenstone after leaving EDF Energy where he was Head of Home Services in the B2C division. At greenstone he will report to the company's Managing Director Jon Hinkley.

greenstone’s Jon Hinkley said of De Caprio’s appointment as Commercial Director, “having worked with Marco before we are very aware of the skills and drive that he brings to greenstone. This is a pivotal appointment for the company, and is crucial to our continued success. We are delighted to welcome Marco to the team.”

Marco’s experience with EDF Energy coupled with his time at NDL International, Claritas UK and Altwood Systems, means that he brings his wealth of experience to mainstream database marketing.

Innovative database bureau, greenstone data solutions, today announced record performance figures for 2008, despite the downturn in overall marketing spend.

The Maidstone based company, which was formed in 2003, achieved impressive processing figures on behalf of a range of FMCG, financial services, retail and marketing clients, delivering up to date data analysis on more than 20 billion records. This equates to an output of six billion records.

The record figures put greenstone ahead of many of its larger, more established competitors and secures its position as a leading name in the data solutions market.

Jon Hinkley, Managing Director of greenstone says, “We offer our clients a quality service at a competitive cost and it is this that has enabled us to continue to grow, despite a difficult market. Reaching such a high volume of records processed is testament to the hard work and expertise of our dedicated team and is all part of the subtle difference we provide our clients.”

Tony Lawes, Director (Transactis Ltd), says, “Transactis moved the hosting and management of our UK wide transactional database systems to greenstone in 2005 for three key reasons: Firstly, accuracy of matching & deduplication is critical to Transactis’ business and in the tests we carried out, greenstone’s ASM matching technology was proven to outperform all the other matching software that we looked at. Secondly the technology and the database applications that they have developed for us, give us the flexibility we need to develop and grow our business quickly to match our clients’ needs. Thirdly, we like working with them; their knowledge of working with data is strong and they are always willing to look at how to bring additional benefits to our business. We are already recommending their services to our own clients.”

The IPA's Search Group update of its analysis of search brand terms reveals a continuing trend of declining Click Through Rates (CTR) on Google in paid search advertising but increasing for Cost Per Click (CPC). A consistent set of data, from January 2008 to March 2009, submitted by 12 agencies on 47 brands shows that average Click Through Rates have declined from around 40% to around 20%, whilst average Cost Per Click has increased from 6p to 29p.

“Says Rob Taylor, Search Director, BLM Quantum, “What we are seeing is a four-fold increase in brand CPCs in just over 12 months. This may be a reflection of the fact that brand terms are becoming more competitive in line with a decline in the economy. As search is so measurable, clients are beginning to realise that competitive bidding generates positive ROI, even though the quality score is against them and CPCs are high. It is important to remind clients to defend brand terms, but also to consider their competitive position as rivals may also be pitching to their customers at the same time.”

“It is also possible that SEM agencies are modifying their brand bidding strategy and chasing volume/efficiency rather than trying to net as many clicks as possible.”

Says Arjo Ghosh,“Search has and still is a very effective way of getting people who are looking for your brand to your site. The rising costs perhaps signify that we are becoming victims of our own success and that the market is just developing naturally and finding its point. The declining CTR challenges the notion that Google's trademark change was in order to benefit the user. To understand the full picture it would be good to see an analysis of user behaviour in paid and natural search to get a fuller understanding of what’s happening here. Data like this often poses more questions than it answers and we look forward to continue our engagement with Google on this.”

The IPA has commissioned a third TouchPoints survey from Ipsos MediaCT with a number of new additions. While the basic methodology will remain the same, the questionnaire and e-diary will be updated to reflect the media industry of 2009/2010 and will include word-of-mouth for the first time. The fieldwork for the survey will commence in September 2009 with the first data being available to subscribers in July 2010.

Says Lynne Robinson, IPA Research Director: “We are delighted to be able to commission TouchPoints3. The demand for this survey data shows that TouchPoints is fast becoming an essential part of the communications evaluation tool kit. We currently have nearly 60 companies subscribing to TouchPoints2 and expect this will increase with TouchPoints3. The new survey will provide us with some fascinating trend data. We will be able to directly show the changes in consumers’ lives and how they use an ever expanding range of communication channels dating from the 2005 boom into this current recession.”

This news was relayed to the 130 agency, advertiser and media owner attendees at the TouchPoints seminar last week who had gathered to hear a number of presentations on how current subscribers are using TP data alongside bespoke databases for new strategic brand insights.

Said Steve Williams, member of the IPA Media Futures Group and Chief Executive of OMD, “In this new world where consumers choose what they want, when they want and how they want it, if we do not understand the way in which they want to be reached then we’re doomed. TouchPoints give us this. It is the new benchmark in planning tools. The start point for the planning of any campaign. I would say: ignore it at your peril.”

Rich media—image zoom, 360-degree product views, alternate views, video merchandising—have been vital to the growth of online selling. By providing shoppers with detailed product images, these applications enable online merchants to overcome a key objection on the part of many consumers: that they cannot get a good idea of how the product will really look.

But by overlooking some rich-media best practice, you may not be reaping all the potential of the applications. Below are just some things to consider

* Be sure to make image enlargements large enough. we recommend that product images for zoom or enlargement be at least 2,000 x 2,000 pixels.

* Try to maintain consistent aspect ratios. The aspect ratio is the image width divided by the image height. “In order to gain the most benefit from automated software tools commonly used to create rich-media viewers, all images within a category should conform to the same aspect ratio.

* If you offer a product in multiple colours, provide images of the products in each colour option. In other words, if you offer a blouse in red, white, and blue, don’t simply show the blouse in red and include small swatches of the white and blue options; include alternative views of the blouse in each of the three hues. “Buyers are much more likely to purchase a product that they can see in its actual colour than one that only has a small swatch available for preview.”

* When possible, embed the rich-media viewer on the actual site paper rather than creating a pop-up window.

* Avoid having the solution provider’s logo appear as part of the rich-media display. Rather than have the vendor’s logo appear as a 360-degree image loads, for instance, customise the loading animation with your own branding.

* Consider preloading options. “Rich media can be bandwidth intensive if site settings are not managed appropriately, preload schemes can be created to ensure that media is downloaded to the buyer’s machine in an anticipatory fashion so that the user experience is fast, while also minimising the amount of transfer for unneeded files.”

Plus 11 tips on monetising your website:

* Toot your own horn. “If your company has received recognition from the media, proudly let your first-time visitors know by displaying the recognisable icons on your landing page.”

* Don’t include a link to the page that your visitors are on. For instance, on the widgets category landing page, remove the link to the widgets landing page from your listing of category pages.

* Show visitors where they’ve been. “Change the colour of visited text links so the user doesn’t accidentally visit a page he or she has already been to. While some web designers dislike giving up this design preference, it will greatly help orient your site visitors. In addition, show a history of product pages that have been recently viewed. This will allow browsers to easily return to a product they were interested in.”

* Make sure that your logo links to your home page. Okay, this one is both basic and obvious, but enough companies don’t do it to make its inclusion here worthwhile.

* Include results for non-product sections of your site in your search functionality. A significant portion of online shoppers use search as their main navigational tool, even when they are seeking returns information, a privacy policy, and the like. Analyse your site logs to see what nonproduct terms people are searching for, and be sure to program your on-site search to provide the appropriate results.

* Show the user’s previous search query in the search box. “After a user performs a search, populate the search form field with the exact query the customer entered. This will allow them to realise if they made a typo when searching.”

* Make product images as well as text clickable.

* Indicate products that are nearly sold out. “In order to create a sense of urgency, show some type of indicator when a product is close to being sold out. This will likely increase the chances of the customer taking action now.”

* Offer links to a PDF of the product manuals. Providing an uncertain shopper with this information could help close the sale.

* Hide the site’s standard (top and side) navigation bars once a customer has started the checkout process. You don’t want anything to distract them from completing their purchase.

* Do more with your thank-you page than simply thank the customer. “Surprisingly, many ecommerce sites waste the thank you or receipt page by making it a dead end.” Instead, include on it a feedback survey, information on how the customer can track his order, a refer-a-friend form, or some other type of engagement.

It depends on the value of the improvement that can be achieved by applying
predictive analysis techniques, on the how well customer purchase behaviour
for what the company sells/offers can be predicted and on the data available
to drive any analysis work undertaken.

The availability of data - in particular the availability of well populated,
multiple variables (of releavence) is absolutely critical in creating models
that will work. If the right data for modeling is available, predictive
analysis can have a real value as it will help the client to better identify
who best to contact, with what offers and can help improve the timing of
offers made to potential / existing customers.

Knowing if or when a customer is most likely to re-purchase or buy
additional products and using this to drive timely, relevant communication
to the customer should increase sales and bring added benefits (such as
discouraging customers from looking elsewhere). However, modeling should
always be combined with common (business) sense; for example if a model
tells you to offer a new combi-boiler to a particular group of customers,
but it's the middle of July, you might be better waiting to communicate the
offer a few months later.


Is it necessary to understand something about the sophisticated modelling
techniques that are used, like logistic regression and CHAID? Do they need
at least some knowledge of statistics?

Some knowledge of statistics is useful and some level of understanding as to
what the software that you are using is actually doing is key - for
complicated analysis it is therefore almost always best to get help from a
specialist. More important than understanding the statistics or the software
itself however is a solid understanding of the data you are using. And most
important of all is how to combine understanding of the statistics, the
software and the data to best interpret the results of the analysis - this
is why best results in our experience are achieved when the specialist and
the client work closely together.

For example, analysis results can sometimes be self-fulfilling - i.e. you
might find the results of analytical work simply reporting back activity
that you have undertaken in the past - thus for example if a company heavily
promoted a specific product at a specific time in the past and the analysis
shows that this product should be promoted again, are the results really
showing this or are they simply showing up the fact that the product was
heavily promoted in the past. What's been happening in the 'real world'
always needs to be considered alongside the analytics, as some things may
not always be as remarkable or important as analysis results alone might
show.


Can any marketer create useful models on their desktop? Or are they better
advised to leave it to the experts?

Some useful analysis can be undertaken using readily available desktop
software, providing the user knows how to prepare the data for analysis
(which is usually around 80% of the actual 'modelling work' involved).
Where an expert will really show their worth is in the preparation and
selection of the data, using the right technique(s) for the particular
project and in determining how initial analysis results are best adapted or
re-run to generate the most valuable learnings. Simply relying on desktop
software alone to give you the answers first time can result in expensive
and painful mistakes being made. As most marketers are not analysis
specialists, it is generally a good idea to have an expert do the actual
data preparation and analysis work, but to do the interpretation of the
results together.

This article is posted by Simon Clubley on behalf of blog contributer Renee Hopmans.

For more information on Customer Modelling and Predictive Analytics please contact Simon Clubley at The Wow Factory. 01233 713852 | wow@thewowfactory.co.uk