[B2B] - Business To Business Reasearch...

Article Abstract

This article reviews five recent books: First Among Equals—How to Manage a Group of Professionals; Stakeholder Power; Defining Markets, Defining Moments; The Great Tween Buying Machine; and Customer-Centric Product Definition.

With spring in the air, it seems like a good time to clean off the old bookshelf, so here are quick-hit reviews of five of the more noteworthy books to cross my desk in the past several months.

First Among Equals - How to Manage a Group of Professionals, by Patrick McKenna and David Maister, isn't about research but could certainly come in handy to researchers or anyone in the business world who needs to lead a team of co-workers, whether it's on an ongoing or one-time basis. The book is comprehensive: the authors show how to define your role as a leader, how to deal with many types of people (the prima donna, the underperformer, etc.), how to clarify group goals, and how to measure the group's success. If you don't want to take your role as a leader seriously, don't bother picking this book up. But if you do, there's a lot to work with here.

Leadership of another kind is the focus of Stakeholder Power. To show other interested businesses how they might assume a corporate leadership role, authors Steven Walker and Jeffrey Marr of the Indianapolis research firm Walker Information take the reader inside a number of companies that have aligned their quest for corporate integrity with corporate success. Walker and Marr argue that by conducting business at every level with integrity and fostering and sustaining an image of good corporate citizenship, a motivated company can achieve the newest business-world Holy Grail: customer loyalty.

Two other books focus on market segmentation. Defining Markets, Defining Moments paints portraits of seven American generational cohorts (Depression-era, World War II, Postwar, Leading-Edge Baby Boomer, Trailing-Edge Baby Boomer, Generation X, and N Generation) by examining the cultural and historical experiences that have shaped each group's outlook. There's not too much new here - most of the advice on how to market to the different cohorts is (or should be!) of the common sense variety. Still, the book is an entertaining read and provides a solid overview of the American consumer, making it a good reference for marketers trying to bring a specific age group into focus.

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Selling to and understanding 8-12-year-olds is the subject of The Great Tween Buying Machine, a thorough look at one age group's fears, hopes, likes/dislikes, and media and consumption habits. The book's later chapters give battle-tested advice on how to reach tweens with advertising and marketing campaigns and how to develop new products.

Product development is the sole focus of our last book, Sheila Mello's Customer-Centric Product Definition. Mello, managing partner of Product Development Consulting, Inc., uses the phases of her firm's Market-Driven Product Definition methodology as a framework for showing readers how to truly incorporate the voice of the customer into their new product efforts. But Mello has avoided penning a book-length commercial and instead has packed 224 pages with advice on using the Kano method, establishing metrics, conducting customer visits, and seeing through the customer's eyes.

First Among Equals - How to Manage a Group of Professionals (288 pages, $26), by Patrick McKenna and David Maister, is published by The Free Press/Simon & Schuster, New York.

Stakeholder Power - A Winning Strategy for Building Stakeholder Commitment and Driving Corporate Growth (258 pages, $28), by Steven Walker and Jeffrey Marr, is published by Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Mass.

Defining Markets, Defining Moments - America's 7 Generational Cohorts, Their Shared Experiences, and Why Businesses Should Care (364 pages, $24.99), by Geoffrey Meredith and Charles Schewe, with Janice Karlovich, is published by Hungry Minds, New York.

The Great Tween Buying Machine - Marketing to Today's Tweens (224 pages, $47.50), by Dave Siegel, Tim Coffey, and Greg Livingston, is published by Paramount Market Publishing, Ithaca, N.Y.

Customer-Centric Product Definition - The Key to Great Product Development (224 pages, $34.95), by Sheila Mello, is published by Amacom, New York.

Tips For Bloggers To Gain Advantage

First things first: why blog? We all know that blogging is one of those things we should be doing, but if you don’t know why you may feel yourself lacking in the motivation department. The primary reason for a blog on your website is to keep the search engines happy (Google in particular). Fresh content will keep your website relevant and active, and will contribute to a higher search ranking. Reason number two is the image that your blog helps to create around your brand. If you provide valuable content, you can establish yourself as a credible go-to for information, and if people engage with you then your blog can also be a great place for building customer relationships. 

Top Tips for Blogging

1. Draw up a publishing schedule and stick to it. It’s a good idea to post regularly (weekly would probably suit most businesses). If you have time to write more than one blog post at a time the do. Write them and schedule them so they’re out the way.
2. Draw up a list of blog ideas that you can keep adding to when something comes to mind. You can then fit each topic into your blog schedule.
3. Have a look at the blogs of other businesses in your sector. You can learn a lot about what people respond to best and what goes ignored.
4. Get to know your audience. Find out what they’re interested in, what they need help with, and what would be useful for them.
5. Use relevant quotes, examples and studies to add further validity to your blog.
6. How to’s and tutorials are a great way of engaging people through useful content. Valuable ideas and information will help to establish you as a trusted authority in whatever you’re writing about, which in turn will help to generate leads.
7. Use keyword search terms when you write (not too many though) to optimise your blog and get it found more easily on search engines.
8. Ask people questions. This turns blogging into a dialogue rather than a monologue and makes it far more engaging.
9. Don’t be afraid to find your own voice. Write in a tone which suits your personality and that of your company.
10. Start an email list and send links to the blogs on your website (not excessively, or else people will get fed up with you).

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Many small businesses often fail to understand the purpose of a blog and how it is different from their corporate website. Many company blogs are just bland reproductions of the existing website. There is often no personality on display just a grey suit which uses an officious tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news that invites no interaction with the reader, which is probably the customer or supplier. With this in mind we’ve been thinking about what makes a good corporate blog. So, inevitably, here are our top ten tips for successful corporate blogs.

Set your guidelines

When creating a blog you must be able to define the value that it’s bringing to the reader. Choose a blog name and theme that fits well with your company’s expertise, but don’t be afraid to branch out into a larger space. Your blog should provide pertinent information for consumers interested in your area of business.
Once you’ve chosen an area to cover, create a set of editorial guidelines that your bloggers can follow. 

Dress down

If your website is the ‘suited and booted’ face of your company, then your blog is your Dress Down Friday look. A blog is a place to let down your corporate hair and get to know your customers. Think of it as a conversation between people, not between a brand and an audience. In order to have a conversation, you need two people – a blogger and a reader.
Give your corporate bloggers the freedom to be themselves. Encourage them to have their own personalities and writing styles. This type of diversity is more representative of your company than any monotonous tone that you could manufacture on your own.

Avoid PR and marketing

Might seem like strange advice coming from a company that specialises in public relations and marketing but the insight, knowledge and expertise that a blog can impart is far more useful than any PR pitch that you could post. Stay away from trying to selling and marketing – you can do that on your website or in deadwood media publications.

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Choose a blogging team

Not everyone can write – at least not in a manner that draws in the reader. More crucially, not everyone wants to write and many positively avoid it. So choose individuals that are knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would like to cover. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. We prefer the later – if the guidelines are clear you should trust the people your working with.

Outline your comment policy

Open up your blog for full feedback, you will get a variety of comments – positive, complimentary, hateful, and spam. Be prepared for everything and create a comment policy that your team can follow. Your policy could read like this:

Commenting on our blog

It is our policy to review all comments before publishing them, partly to reduce the possibility of spam comments and partly to ensure comments are in line with our ethics below:

• We will tell the truth. We will acknowledge and correct any mistakes promptly.
• We will not delete comments unless they are spam, off-topic, or defamatory.
• We will reply to comments when appropriate as promptly as possible.
• We will link to online references and original source materials directly.
• We will disagree with other opinions respectfully.

Take it on the chin

Many organisations run scared off social media in the belief that some people (and there will be some people) will just use it as an opportunity to say bad things about you. But they would probably be mean about your anyway whether it’s through social media or in a pub conversation.
Accept that you will have detractors but make a point of welcoming criticism and using it as an opportunity for providing feedback and improvement.

Promote your blog

Just as you would promote any other company initiative, get the word out about your blog. Share the URL on your website, social networks, business cards, e-mails, and advertisements.
Without promotion, building an audience can be difficult. Get behind the quality work that your team is putting into the blog and promote away.

Get social

Use share tools, such as Facebook, Twitter and Digg. Share tools allow your users to pass along your content and that’s a great way of creating brand ambassadors. Why not use a simple addthis button to make sharing easier. Also, integrate you blog into other social media platforms by creating profiles across social networks that your readers and customers are active on. Facebook and Twitter are a good start, and YouTube is a must for video-sharing.

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Monitor and Feedback

Make sure your web analytics tools are switched on. We generally integrate Google Analytics into any blog we are managing. This tells us how much traffic the blog is receiving, where it’s coming from, where the referral websites are and which posts are being read the most.
Armed with this data you can then tweak future posts to ensure that we are getting the tone and content right.

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Improve Your Home's Wi-Fi Signal With These Router Tips

A typical home's Wi-Fi signal can be improved in just a few minutes with some basic tweaks. For more improvements, look to your hardware -- routers, repeaters, and extenders. And be sure no ancient Wi-Fi devices are dragging down your network.



Upgrade to 5 GHz Wi-Fi

Most wireless routers out there are still operating on the decade-old 2.4 GHz frequency, while modern 802.11ac routers operate both on 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz. New devices compatible with 5 GHz automatically connect to the 5 GHz Wi-Fi, while your older devices can connect to the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi.

5 GHz is a less cluttered part of the spectrum. Most of your neighbors are likely still using 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, so there's less interference on 5 GHz. More importantly, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only offers three non-overlapping channels -- channels 1, 6, and 11. Meanwhile, 5 GHz Wi-Fi offers 23 channels, and none of them overlap. Older 2.4 GHz wireless devices like cordless telephones and baby monitors won't interfere with 5 GHz Wi-Fi, either.

The bottom line: Assuming you have 5 GHz-compatible devices, upgrade to an 802.11ac 5 GHz wireless router for less interference. Devices that support 5 GHz will get a boost, and 2.4 GHz devices will continue to function like they did before.

(Image: Keith Williamson)

Extend Your Coverage With a Repeater

Repeaters allow you to extend your Wi-Fi coverage. They are useful if you're trying to cover a large home -- or a home that has nooks and crannies where the signal doesn't reach. You can extend Wi-Fi to the farthest corners of your property with one or more repeaters.

Head to Amazon (or another store where networking equipment is sold) and search forwireless repeater or wireless range extender. Be sure to buy one compatible with your router -- so, if you're upgrading to an 802.11ac router, get a range extender that supports 802.11ac. It'll work even if it only supports an older standard, but it'll repeat traffic using that older, slower Wi-Fi standard.

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5 GHz is a less cluttered part of the spectrum. Most of your neighbors are likely still using 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, so there's less interference on 5 GHz. More importantly, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only offers three non-overlapping channels -- channels 1, 6, and 11. Meanwhile, 5 GHz Wi-Fi offers 23 channels, and none of them overlap. Older 2.4 GHz wireless devices like cordless telephones and baby monitors won't interfere with 5 GHz Wi-Fi, either.

The bottom line: Assuming you have 5 GHz-compatible devices, upgrade to an 802.11ac 5 GHz wireless router for less interference. Devices that support 5 GHz will get a boost, and 2.4 GHz devices will continue to function like they did before.

Get a More Powerful Antenna

Rather than using a repeater, you might purchase a stronger antenna for your router instead. A more powerful antenna can boost the range of your router's Wi-Fi signal, extending Wi-Fi coverage and improving all around-signal strength.

Check your router before buying an antenna. You'll need an antenna that's compatible with the connector on your router. Buying a pre-made antenna isn't the only way to go, though. There are all sorts of DIY antennas you could make out of everything from an old aluminum can to some tin foil.

Decommission Wireless B Devices

If you have any devices still using 802.11b Wi-Fi, they're slowing down everything. Wireless B was the first successful Wi-Fi standard, and it debuted in early 2000. It was replaced by 802.11g in 2003.

Modern routers are still compatible with these old 802.11b devices, but they have to function in a sort of compatibility mode when 802.11b devices are connected. This slows down the Wi-Fi connection for every device on your network a bit. If you have any old devices still using 802.11b, it's time to replace them. Modern Wi-Fi standards don't have this problem -- you can connect an 802.11g device to an 802.11n network and it'll function at wireless G speeds, but not slow down those wireless N devices. Check your oldest Wi-Fi-enabled devices and ensure they support 802.11g at a minimum.

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New Project Promotes Shared Open Wi-Fi with Tips and How-Tos

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and a coalition of nine other groups launched the Open Wireless Movement today–a new project to promote a landscape of shared, wireless Internet.

The Open Wireless Movement site at openwireless.org gives users of all kinds technological and legal information around opening up a wireless network, including how-to guides and responses to common myths. The site includes specialized information for households, small businesses, developers, and Internet Service Providers. The Open Wireless Movement coalition is also working to develop router technology making it easier for people to open their networks without losing quality of Internet access or compromising security.

“We envision a world where sharing one’s Internet connection is the norm,” said EFF Activist Adi Kamdar. “A world of open wireless would encourage privacy, promote innovation, and largely benefit the public good. And everyone–users, businesses, developers, and Internet service providers–can get involved.”

The Open Wireless Coalition consists of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Internet Archive, NYCwireless, the Open Garden Foundation, OpenITP, the Open Spectrum Alliance, the Open Technology Institute, and the Personal Telco Project.

How to Track Your Marketing Campaigns in Google Analytics

On the Shopify blog we discuss a lot of different ways to increase sales. Whether it's Facebook ads, Google Adwords, email marketing, guest blogging or product reviews, there are a lot of different methods to market your store and products. However, marketing only represents half of the equation. The second half, and arguably the most important, is tracking your efforts. Without proper tracking and analysis, you'll always just be guessing the true success of your campaigns.

In this post, we're going to look at how to track your campaigns in Google Analytics so you'll know what's working, what isn't, and how to make the most of your time and marketing budget. 

Read on to find out how. 

Tracking Campaigns in Google Analytics

Before you continue, you'll need to have Google Analytics set up and connected to your store. To learn more about setting up Google Analytics for your ecommerce store, click here. 

Let's say you have several bloggers lined up to post sponsored reviews for your product launch. How could you track each of the campaigns to see which one was most effective, as well as which one was least effective? This is important information that can help you decide if you should pay for further sponsored posts in the future. This is where link tracking, also known as UTM Parameters comes into play. 

What Are UTM Parameters?

So what exactly are UTM Parameters? UTM is an acronym for Urchin Tracking Module and is the format Google uses to track URL's. The name Urchin itself comes from Google's early days (2004) when they acquired the company Urchin, which was later turned into Google Analytics. 

UTM Parameters are simply small pieces of information that can be added to the end of any URL that gives Google more information about that particular link. 

You've likely seen them before. A link with a simple UTM Parameter might look something like this: 

http://www.website.com/?utm_source=emailcampaign

The part after the question mark is a UTM Parameter. When someone clicks on that link, Google Analytics for that particular website will read and record that parameter information.

The UTM Parameters

There are five UTM parameters that can be used for tracking various pieces of information in Google Analytics, three are required and two that are optional. Let's look at each one to understand more:

Required Parameters

• Campaign Source (utm_source) – This is generally used to describe the website or main source in which the link will be placed. For example, for example the name of the website displaying your ads or if you're using the link in an email newsletter, you may use "newsletter". 
• Campaign Medium (utm_medium) – Medium is used to describe the marketing activity. For example, you may want to call this "ppc" if you're using this for a pay-per-click campaign or "review" if you're using the link to track traffic from a product review on a blogger's site. 
• Campaign Name (utm_campaign) – Campaign refers to the overall campaign you're running. For example, it could refer to a product launch, a summer campaign or a particular sale. 

Optional Parameters

• Campaign Term (utm_term) – Campaign Term is used for tracking particular keywords if you're running an Adwords campaign.
• Campaign Content (utm_content) – This parameter is helpful if you're split testing ads. In this case you could track each ad to see which was most effective for driving traffic. 

Building Your Own Trackable URL's

All you have to do to track campaigns automatically is use Google’s Campaign URL Builder tool to create a trackable URL. This tool makes it really easy to build your URL's with all the relevant information. All you have to do is enter the URL you want to track, along with the parameters to track.

Once you click submit, Google will give you your trackable URL. It will look something like this: 

www.yoursite.com/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2014%20summer%20sale

Once you have the URL, you can copy it and use it for your marketing campaigns to begin tracking. 

Best Practices Creating Trackable URL's

Since the reports for the links are your own, there's really no wrong way to create your tracked URL's, however, there are are few suggestions that will help:

• Consider a standard naming convention upfront. Because each URL's will have multiple parameters, things can get messy and difficult to read later unless you adopt a similar style upfront for naming everything.
• Keep in mind that anyone clicking on the link will be able to see the parameters names so don't write anything you wouldn't want your customers to see. 
• Parameters should all be written in lowercase letters. 
• Because the URL's tend to be long, you can always consider using a link shortener service likebit.ly to make them shorter.
• Only create parameters that are necessary.

Viewing Your Campaign Reports

The URL's you create will automatically be tracked by Google Analytics as they're clicked on throughout the web. Google (and other analytics software) will record all the parameters from each link and present it to you in a handy report. 

Keep in mind that sometimes it can take up to 24 hours for Google to receive and record data, so if you don't see clicks showing up right away, just be patient. 

To view the information on how your campaigns are preforming, login to your Google Analyticsaccount and on the left hand menu, click on Acquisition reports:

 

Then click on Campaigns:  

 

In this report, you'll have a list of all of the campaigns you've tracked. You can click on each campaign to view more information on traffic as well as information on any sales resulting from each campaign, provided you have ecommerce tracking turned on in Google Analytics.

As with any traffic source, you can view the metrics most important to you including sales, goals, bounce rate, page views etc., to determine which elements are the most effective for your campaigns.

Note: Campaigns will only show up in your Google Analytics Campaign reports if the links are clicked on.

When Should You Use UTM Parameters?

UTM Parameters are an easy way to track performance of a wide variety of online marketing initiatives. Some marketing activities you may want to track include: 

• Guest Blog Posts - You keep hearing that content is king and that you should be guest blogging on other websites within your niche. But how effective are your guest blog posts? Try using a trackable URL in your next guest blog post to find out exactly how much traffic and sales your posts are driving. 
• Social - You spend countless hours building your Facebook fan page and Twitter account, but how many people are clicking on the link in your profile to check out your store? Furthermore, are those people buying from you? A trackable link in your social profiles can help you uncover the true return-on-investment of all your hard work. 
• Email - It takes time to come up with great campaigns and crafting the perfect email to send out to your customers. Advanced email marketing programs can help you track sales from your emails but using a trackable URL in your emails is a quick and easy way to know which emails are working and which aren't. 
• Features - One of the best ways to get lots of traffic and sales is by getting featured by bloggers, Instagrammers, media publications and YouTubers with a large following. Make sure to give them a trackable URL to discover exactly who drives the most qualified traffic to your store. 
• Banner Ads - Using a trackable URL for banner ads will not only help you understand the effectiveness of your campaign but also will allow you to easily track the success of each variation of banner to see which one performs the best. 

Besides the above examples, you can really use link tracking anywhere you can share a link and want to know more about who's clicking on it. 

When In Doubt, Track Everything 

If you're unsure where to start, begin with tracking something small, like a Facebook post. As you learn more about tracking URL's you'll eventually want to track everything. Remember, the more you track, the more information you have to understand on what's working, allowing you to put more time and energy into maximizing those campaigns, while minimizing the time and energy you put towards ineffective campaigns.

5 Reasons Your Consumer Insights Teams Should Adopt A Single Online Qual Research Platform

In my history as both a brand manager and market research consultant I’ve witnessed the adoption of technology for conducting marketing research studies grow at an amazing pace. From mobile activities and video capture to collages and social media exercises, there are no lack of tools and options in the marketplace. While online tools are truly changing the way we engage with consumers to develop insights in real-time, in places we could never reach them before, this technological revolution is also creating a few challenging issues for brands and market research organizations:

• Many of the current tools are just one-offs with limited capabilities. This might mean you have to aggregate activities and data from multiple sources to create a single report. It’s inefficient.
• Many brand teams or internal marketing people are not using the same platforms. Those that rely on using outside consultants use the tools that a particular research consultant may recommend. You could have a dozen teams using a dozen different tools. That creates a lot of organizational inconsistency including activity types, analytics, and reporting…and no standardization.

Here are 5 good reasons why your brands or company should adoptone online research platform across your entire organization.

1. Consistent Expectations
Developing and standardizing online qualitative testing methods using a single platform across your organization creates consistent expectations. If you do a lot of concept testing or segment humanization these approaches will always be structurally similar or identical to your previous studies. Your team/clients will know what to expect and you will develop a comfort level amongst the users of the analysis.

2. Standardized Activities
By using a single platform and standardized activities such as collages, perceptual maps, video inter-activity and social media tools your teams will have a set of approaches that are accepted across the organization. Over time this will give your company the ability to establish benchmarks for comparative purposes.

3. Customized Methods and Approaches
Many times, custom methods are required for concept testing, copy testing and idea generation. By adopting a single comprehensive platform you will have the ability to create new methods and approaches customized specifically for your organization that you can execute over and over across brands and divisions within your company.

4. Faster In-field Execution and Consistent Reporting
Having pre-built methods/approaches will save you time (and $) in getting in and out of the field quickly. Your study data and all of your methods should be stored in your own private, secure library for as long as you want it stored. Over time this library will evolve into “Big Data” – a repository that can be mined in aggregate should you wish to explore the historical data in total at some point in time.

5. Platform Familiarity Leads to Better Insights
Familiarity with a single environment and its analytic tools will allow the entire organization to become adept at using the observation filters to see respondent data in just about any data cut imaginable – at the activity level, segments, respondents, specific key questions, demographics, and more. Not only will your analysts be able to master the data mining for better insights but they will also have tools to help them build consistently dynamic reports.

Why Aha! Should Be Your One Online Qualitative Research Platform

Aha! is the next generation of online qual technology that is well-suited for large brands and companies. The tools are highly intuitive and incredibly easy to master so you can create consistent execution across you organization without re-inventing the wheel each time. The comprehensive suite of pre-built activities allows you to create studies quickly and efficiently. You can customize your methods and preferences so the entire organization is benefiting from standard approaches, whatever the research objectives might be. Entire studies, activities, and individual components from previous studies can also be replicated and deployed with the click of a mouse. We can take your current methods/approaches and replicate them on our platform quickly and easily, and add some of our proprietary components to make them even better.

Aha’s comprehensive suite of interactive activities and methods includes:

• Storytelling
• Image + Text Collage Builder
• Innovative Video Upload Tools
• Webcam Integration
• Concept Testing Methods

• In Home Use Test Approaches
• Mobile App for In-Moment
• Quant Components
• Social Media Activities
• Robust Analytics

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Our experienced team provides study design, project management, recruiting and analytic consulting, plus hands-on training and tech support. We can also train/support your many in-house or contract consultants to educate them on the technology and support them from beginning to end.

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