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Bridging commentary on the art & science of content; content marketing, branded content, native advertising and the analytics, attribution and intelligence that powers it.

Analytics

What does direct traffic mean?

You may have seen ‘Direct’ traffic in your web analytics and are wondering what that means. How can traffic be direct? Direct traffic originally meant, that someone had typed the URL into their browser. Thus visiting the page ‘directly’. This would also be the same for if someone bookmarked a URL.   However, often direct traffic means that your analytics system has been unable to detect the source of the traffic. So it is classified as direct traffic.  … Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to create high impact content

High impact content is targeted and focused on a particular use case or topic to a narrowly defined audience. It is impactful because this focus enables you to speak really clearly to the prospect. Analytics helps to see how impactful it is, be looking at things like scroll, engagement and attention on the content. To create high impact content, you need to: Define what the objective is Define the narrow audience What you want them to learn and to do… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to convert traffic from content into leads

The most straightforward way is to ask, ask customers reading content, to take a next step. To subscribe to your newsletter. To download a whitepaper. To explore the products. You need to ask and give them that step to turn them into leads!  That seems so silly, but are you asking them? Or are you asking them enough? Make sure that calls to action are in the flow of the content. As users would use your webpage. Buttons off… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to attribute MQLs to content marketing

Use a platform like Nudge. To track your content, and the next steps in the customer journey people take. This will help you find what content is driving MQLs, but also insights like time of day, traffic source, where they come form, on what device. So you can stitch together a customer profile, on how they are driving business value.  This typically involves, adding a piece of code to your content, maybe appending some data to click through URLs,… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to generate MQLS from content marketing?

Starting with the customer, and working through, at what stage do they become a marketing qualified lead is the place to start. What things do they need to know? What do they desire to do next? Where do they start? Then use content marketing, from further up in the journey, to support them qualifying themselves. You have to link the content, to that customer journey, and support it. You can’t just throw content at them, and go, yay. It takes… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How do you mitigate losses in media?

Losses in media is a fact of doing business. But the simple solution to mitigating potential losses is a robust measurement and analytics program. One that keeps the media accountable, linked to strategic objectives, and is independently measured. That way, anomalies can be identify, fraud can be caught early, and low performing media can be weeded out. Taking learnings from the measurement program and adapting contracts to suit is also crucial. To make sure media buys have make goods or… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to map the digital customer journey

This is a fantastic white boarding scenario, printing out and sticking up each part of the customer journey. Failing that, using presentation software can suffice. Just screenshooting and creating flow charts. Where possible, overlay relevant data at each step, number of people each reaches, the click through rates, attention, drop off, conversion etc. This helps to understand how well each component of the journey works. Many brands struggle with that, as they make it too complicated. This is an exercise,… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Analytics

How to convert data analytics to actionable metrics?

The best approach to this, is to sit down and map out the customer journey. Where they start from through to where they end up. Note down their behaviors, and show this in a bit of a flow chart. Its no easy challenge but rest assured most marketers have faced this and it is addressable. Then overlay that with the metrics you get at each step. This then, helps show how analytics is involved in the customer journey, whilst keeping… Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022
Commentary

First time CMOs

Edition #381First time CMOs are on the up, marketing is soup du jour and Substack.One big thingThe rate of first time CMOs is up 50% in the past 12 months. Curious.I’d been having a chat with a marketer, about how Peloton right now is a perfect opportunity for a CMO to cut their teeth. It’ll be challenging but they’ll learn a lot as they tackle the many challenges the business faces. So I wondered, has all the market activity created opportunities for new CMOs to break through?I looked at all the CMO announcements in the past 12 months. And then peeked their job history on LinkedIn, to see if they were a first time CMO. Using Nasdaq announcements as my source.It turns out, yes, in the past 12 months, 45% of the CMOs announced were first time CMOs as compared to 29% in the prior 12 months. An increase of 50%. Note a small sample size of 24.That’s refreshing to hear in some respect, bring in new blood, fresh perspectives. And there are new opportunities for new folks at the table. 45% of the CMOs named were female, and 55% of the first time CMOs were female.It’s a reminder, that change creates opportunity and enables people to move up. And that’s nice to see.That leads nicely into my other observation, it feels like marketing has got its mojo back, companies are leaning more into investing in marketing, view it as a strategic priority. And we heard this repeated at AdWeek.https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1582373403914182657?s=20&t=dCYHjVRlRABr1nbP9aah4AWhatever this back to work recovery is, its still messy and marketing has to work hard, with digital experiences, to bridge customers lifestyle. An anecdote I heard was, at the moment, weekend flights are still high in the US. Every weekend is like a holiday weekend, as people can come back on Monday, and remote work as they go. All of this makes it harder for brands to cut through, and with growth in margins, they have room to invest. Marketing is soup du jour.Are you seeing the same?Notable stories this weekPlease stop calling it the ‘newsletter economy’. The rise of the VC publisher. Branded content on Facebook Reels rolls out globally. Walmart launches new content creator platform. Who are the Twitter creators? Semafor woos advertisers with promises of depolarization. Will include content options for advertisers. How publishers became addicted to the traffic hit from news alerts. The next Sims game aims to be a “nest generation creative platform”. YouTube’s providing more creators with access to shoppable links. TikTok announced a new performance monitoring tool which will charge advertisers based on users attention and engagement. Everyone wants to sell your attention. Netflix announces their ad tiers, and previews what ads will look like. Continue reading

Ben Young
Ben Young
October 21, 2022