mThink

Persistent climate change concerns, volatile energy prices and a growing awareness of technological advancement in energy are leading consumers across the globe to reconsider their role in the electric power value chain. Likewise, substantial increases in utility infrastructure investment are likely due to global demands for climate change mitigation; the need to support aging networks and generation plants; and proliferation of government stimulus plans for weakened economies.

We all want to be new school and know the latest hit song (via iTunes). I wouldn’t know what that was without looking it up because what I pay attention to the most are things I already love. While I’d like to be cutting edge, the songs that run through my head are more like “The Way We Were,” if I’m feeling melancholy; “Sweet Home Alabama,” if I feel good; or Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” if I feel, you know, sassy.

It can sometimes be difficult to determine whether your company is ready to implement “Marketing Operations.” As described in “7 Deadly Sins” (also in this chapter), Marketing Operations (MO) is an emerging discipline with the potential to significantly increase performance and accountability in complex marketing organizations. It leverages a strong front-end infrastructure to reinforce marketing strategy and back-end programs and tactics.

Busy corporate marketing groups can be so focused on tactics and firefighting, they jeopardize their marketing investment. Overreacting to events, tackling symptoms rather than underlying fundamental problems and jumping to please the boss can prove fatal. Crippled marketing efforts can leave promising companies in the dust or, at least, handicapped at the starting gate.

In 2004, when I wrote my first book, Web Analytics Demystified: a Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business, I started it with the following definition:

Web analytics is the assessment of a variety of data, including Web traffic, Web-based transactions, Web server performance, usability studies, user submitted information and related sources to help create a generalized understanding of the visitor experience online.

Marketers don’t need to change the way they think. They just need new digital marketing technology and measures that conform to the way they think. Thankfully, while the old model for measuring the return on investment (ROI) from digital advertising falls short, a new model is gaining momentum.

Digital marketing continues to incur an enormous amount of growth. The proliferation of new digital channels, compelling websites and countless new opportunities makes it difficult for marketers to keep pace – and even more challenging for marketers to reach and engage their audience.

When you think of lead generation, do you think of:

Web 2.0 is a phenomenon whose predominate features are composed of a high level of user or community participation combined with leading-edge technical features, such as AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Research indicates that more and more corporate sites are blindly rushing to jump on the bandwagon by implementing Web 2.0 technology, often leading to plummeting traffic and loss of visitors.

How to detect and avoid these traps? This paper will cover the challenges and propose solutions that could save or restore your online presence.

Overview

Since June 2005, when Google unveiled its plans to make personalization the default setting for Google Accounts, and continuing through April 2007, when Google integrated its vertical search properties (e.g., video, maps, image, news, blogs) into Universal Search, the search blogs have been abuzz with doomsday prophecies about the impending death of search engine optimization (SEO).