2009: A Look Back

2009 was a fun year for us, and we hope, for you too. Here's a month by month breakdown of new features and significant launches from 2009, with links to the blog posts announcing or explaining them. And if you haven't yet, take a look at the Google Analytics YouTube channel, where you can see tons of tutorial videos on the new features.

A big thank you to our Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, who have helped advise us on our product roadmap and told us what you need to see in the product.

Get ready! 2010 should be even more exciting.

January

• Track Google Sites with Google Analytics

April

• The integration of AdSense and Google Analytics
• The public launch of the Google Analytics API
• Google Analytics IQ - an online course in web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools
  
  

May

• Integration with Google Ad Planner so that you can replace traffic estimates with directly measured Google Analytics data
• Pivoting and Secondary dimensions become available in your reports
• Share custom reports and advanced segments
• Track YouTube brand channels with Google Analytics

June

• Import your Google Analytics goals into AdWords
  
• New homepage and website for Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Desktop Wallpapers!
  
  


• International blogs in German, UK & Ireland, Spanish, French and Japanese

July

• Advanced Segments for Event Tracking

August

• Getting started guides for the API
• Number and reach of Authorized Consultants breaks 100 global partners, with a presence on every continent except Antarctica

September

• Event Tracking available via the API

October

• More goals and new goal types
  
  
• Expanded mobile reporting
• Advanced Table Filtering
  
  
• Unique Visitor metric added to Advanced Segmentation and Custom Reports
• Multiple Custom Variables
• Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report templates
• Analytics Intelligence reports and Custom Alerts

December

• New asynchronous tracking code
• Annotations allows you to easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened".
  
• Custom variables available in Advanced Segments and Custom Reports
• New tracking code setup wizard
  
  
• API new features, including support for Advanced Segments, more goals and goal types, and custom variables
• Urchin Software version 6.602 available in more languages

And, of course, we added the ability to post comments on our blog posts.

From our entire team, we hope that, wherever you are, you and yours had a safe New Year's Eve and are looking forward to a happy, healthy, productive and data-driven 2010!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Think2010: Series recap

We kicked off the Think2010 blog series 14 weeks ago with the idea of helping you prepare for the coming year by devoting one post each week to big-picture, forward-looking themes supported by actionable tips. Over the course of the series we've covered topics such as relevance, speed, experimentation and innovation. We've discussed the multiple roles that search can play, how to use data to better connect with customers, and the importance of staying focused on the fundamentals. We've also deliberately infused the series with perspectives from thought leaders both inside and outside of Google in order to give you a range of insights on the changing face of marketing. You can find a more in-depth version of this same conversation taking place on our Fast.Forward. YouTube channel.

As our series comes to a close this week and we prepare to usher in 2010, we'd like to thank you for reading and leave you with some parting thoughts. Here's what a diverse group of industry leaders have to say about the new marketing landscape and the vast opportunity that they believe lies ahead for 2010:

(click here to view video)

From the Think2010 team -- best wishes for a prosperous and successful 2010.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

Merry Christmas!

From the entire team at MarketMatch...we wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas!

Bruce Clapp

Top 10 Business Books of 2009

It’s that time of year when there are lists for everything. I guess it has something to do with the infamous “nice” list created by the guy who dresses in red, travels with reindeer, and lives in the North Pole. Since I call the business world home, the following is my list of the top ten business books for 2009 – all have great messages to share.

Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up
By John Baldoni, Leadership author/speaker and Harvard Business Publishing columnist
http://www.baldoniconsulting.com/index2.php

How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life
By Joanna Barsh, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and Leader of the McKinsey Centered Leadership Project
http://www.mckinsey.com/ideas/books/RemarkableWomen/index.asp

How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In
By Jim Collins, Co-Author of the bestselling classic, Built to Last, which has been translated into 29 languages, and teacher to senior executives and CEO’s
http://www.jimcollins.com/index.html

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience
By Carmine Gallo, BusinessWeek writer and communication coach for admired brands
http://carminegallo.com/books

Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
By Andy Sernovitz, professor and creator of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association
http://www.wordofmouthbook.com

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
By Ken Auletta, writer for The New Yorker Magazine and author of 11 books
http://www.kenauletta.com/index.html

Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business
By Erik Qualman, Global VP of Online Marketing for EF Education in Switzerland
http://socialnomics.net/about

The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
By Clara Shih, author, blogger, and entrepreneur
http://www.thefacebookera.com/home.php

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time
By Joel Comm, NY Times author and social media expert
http://twitterpower.com and http://www.joelcomm.com

Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World’s Most Powerful Consumers
By Bridget Brennan, CEO of Female Factor and speaker
http://www.thefemalefactor.com/intro.html

Is your glass half-full or half-empty?

Since September of 2008, our industry has seen many changes. The concept of "too big to fail" was exposed as WAMU and Wachovia were forced to sell. Lehman Brothers shut their doors. Bear Sterns had to be rescued by JP Morgan, etc. etc.

Let's face it - the image of our industry has "really taken a hit." Every day you hear the term "main street vs wall street." The media portrays us as "fat cats." Like it or not, financial institutions will be blamed if the economy doesn't rebound quickly. The media will say that financial institutions aren't making the credit available necessary for the economy to rebound.

It would be so easy for all of us in the industry to get discouraged!

But as we all know, adversity creates opportunity!

For those of us that stay focused, work hard, stay positive, "think outside the box," etc. the opportunity it there.

2010 can be a great year for your organization!

Have a great Holiday Season!

Mike

Holiday Gift Idea: New Book By Avinash

You're going to put surveys in holiday gifts this year, right? Well, if you're as customer-centric as Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google, you just might. And next year's gifts will be even better.

Avinash has just published Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, also at http://tr.im/akweb. It looks to be a fantastic read by one of the foremost web analytics practitioners and teachers, who is seeing an undeniable evolution of web technologies and online trends, including social media, video, and mobile.

Now is a crucial time to make changes - or get started - and in his typically perceptive style, Avinash begins with a new definition of web analytics:

"Web Analytics 2.0 is: the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition, to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and potential customers have, which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline)."

From this framework, he explains how to do web analytics correctly, starting at the best place of all - choosing the right tools (aka, the beginning). As you read, pick any chapter, and you'll emerge an adept at an element of web analytics, from the basics of tracking your site, to analyzing visitor clickstream, to SEM and SEO.

But he goes way beyond this, discussing the practices of competitive analysis, website testing, surveys, using and tracking social media. And he even gives practical tips for working in the industry, including what statistics you might want to know. The book is written in Avinash's clear style, including charts and screenshots.

If you've ever had a conversation with Avinash, you know that you'll come away enriched about our industry and practice. I remember speaking with someone who reported to him at Intuit, who said that she learned more about web analytics in her first half hour one on one with Avinash than she had in her entire career before that.

For instance, we recently launched 20 goals, up from 4, per profile. Avinash has been speaking about the importance of tracking many goals, what he calls micro-conversions, for a while. Take a read to get an expert practitioner's view.

And on top of the incredible content in the book, Avinash is donating 100% of the proceeds from sales of the book to benefit The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya. To read more about the book from Avinash himself, take a look at the announcement on his blog.

Getting this book for yourself or your analyst will be giving a gift to your company. Think of Avinash as Santa Claus. (Avinash Claushik?!)

Happy holidays. :-)

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Search Based Keyword Tool: 1 Minute Guide

As the end of the year approaches, you may be thinking about how to drive more traffic to your AdWords campaigns and in turn, to your website.

Millions of people use Google each day to find products and services by searching on various keywords. This means that by including all keywords that are relevant to your product or service in your campaigns, you can ensure you can ensure that you will reach a greater set of potential customers. To help you do this, you can use the Search-based Keyword Tool to quickly identify relevant keywords which aren't yet included in your AdWords campaigns.



Our 1 minute guide will show you how the tool works, as well as how it's already helped one AdWords advertiser to increase sales.

Watch the video today, and you'll be ready to start using the Search-based Keyword Tool right away.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Coradiant/Urchin Analytics In A Box Launched

Urchin analytics software has a long tradition of integrating with other software/hardware platforms, and today we are pleased to announce the latest such collaboration: Coradiant's new Analytics In A Box (AIB). AIB is an appliance that sits behind your firewall, passively collecting web traffic data via a packet-sniffing technique. This gives you the option of reducing your reliance on page tags, as Coradiant's system collects traffic data in an independent way. Log file headaches are also gone for good, which will be music to the ears of any sysadmin!

AIB uses a modified version of Urchin 6, in conjunction with Coradiant's complementary technologies to give you new ways to look at both your web traffic AND the performance of your site/server.

From Coradiant's press release:

"Analytics In A Box provides a comprehensive view into customer Web site interaction, and insights into online conversion outcomes. Analytics capabilities are substantially enhanced through access to a richer data model and customizable reporting solutions. A complete set of dashboards for executive consumption, as well as access to granular data allows deeper insights into marketing optimization, site performance, content optimization, conversion behavior and navigational analysis."

Please see Coradiant's site for more information.




Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Software Manager

Would you like a checking account with that pizza?

Would you like a checking account with that pizza?

This month I am traveling meeting with potential clients, visiting family for the holidays and catching up with old friends. After driving over 700 miles in three days, I was getting ready to relax in my hotel and watch the Indianapolis Colts continue their pursuit of perfection.

As you probably know, a football game isn't complete without pizza and your favorite beverage!

Thirty minutes before game time, I called Domino's delivery.

When the pizza arrived, stapled to the pizza box was a flyer from National City Bank. "Open up a National City Checking Account and get up to $300 - How's that for a bank statement." The flyer had all the qualifications and required legal disclosures.

The flyer was branch generic but included the "call to action" i.e. come to your nearest location or call a 800#. It had an expiration date, etc.

I don't know how many Domino's pizzas get delivered in a months time in the city of Indianapolis but I'm sure the number is substantial. The cost of the flyer was minimal and I'm not sure if a fee was paid to Domino's but the all in cost (excluding the $300 offer) was probably very reasonable.

Someone at National City really got creative when trying to grow their checking base.

I know it is a cliche but don't be afraid to "think outside the box" as you tackle your institutions growth challenges!

Have a great holiday season!

Mike

New resource for display advertisers on the Content Network

Over the last year and a half, we've made significant changes to the Google Content Network to deliver better performance for your campaigns and to simplify the process of serving ads across a range of websites. As we roll out more features, we want to make it easy for you to discover what best fits your needs. To this effect, we've just launched a new Content Network brand channel on YouTube.

The site is stockpiled with videos, links and downloads about the full suite of features and solutions on the Content Network. Structured into four key sections, you can learn about a number of different products we offer and how they can help you achieve your various advertising goals. You can also find case studies and research papers from various industries so that you can see what some of the most successful advertisers on the Content Network are doing.

Last but not the least, we've also introduced a new creative direction for our videos, adding a bit more color and fun. Enjoy the first 5 videos below, and let us know what you think by sharing your comments on YouTube.

(click here to view videos)

If you'd like to see more, you can always bookmark the playlist. Hope you find the new channel informative and fun!

[Note: this post is reprinted from the Google Agency Ad Solutions Blog]

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

API Python Client Library Updated

It's easier for developers to program in the languages they know, so we updated the Google Analytics API Python Client library with the just-launched API version 2 features. We also added reference examples for both the Account Feed and Data Feed. Now it's easier than ever to automate your analysis workflow using our API.

Taking The Library For a Spin

With the updated library, we thought it would be a great time to highlight the power of the new features. So we created a sample application to do just that. The application uses the new Python library to retrieve metrics for a series of segments. It then performs some calculations on the data and creates bar charts using the GChartWrapper package, an open source Python wrapper for the Google Charts API. Finally, it uses the Python Imaging Library to add a title and legend, and stitches all the charts together into a single image. We decided to release this application as open source so you can create visualizations with your own data.

Solving Business Problems

Since social media is all the rage, let's use this new application to help Avinash Kaushik, our Analytics Evangelist, measure "engagement" on his popular Occam's Razor blog. We also wanted to determine if the time he spends participating in social media sites is valuable and sends new readers to his blog.

First we created segments to pull all the referrals from Facebook and Twitter. Second, we chose five calculations and corresponding metrics to compare the performance of these two segments. We then compared the segments to each other and, for context, for all the visits to the site as a control.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, here are the results:

Let's Analyze

Some interesting observations become apparent.

• Far more visits originate from Twitter (3.6x) when compared to Facebook, perhaps not surprising given Avinash's Twitter followers (~16,120)
  
  
• Visitors from Twitter tend to be new visitors, a good thing, but they view fewer pages and spend significantly less time on the blog.
  


• On the other hand Facebook delivers an audience that is loyal. These visitors come back to the site more often and spend a significant time on the blog (compared to Twitter and all other visitors).
  

The bottom line? Even though social networking sites are all the rage, they actually contribute very little to Avinash's blog. If this blog were a company, it would be wise to ensure the time and effort put into driving traffic from social media is proportionate to the actual volume of traffic and goal conversions from those sites.

Hopefully this example shows how powerful our new features can be.

If you're interested in running this report against your own data, the application is free and open sourced. Additionally, we made it really easy to change the metrics, segments, calculations and all the other visual properties to power your own visualizations. Download it here and give it a whirl, we would love to hear your feedback.


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, The Google Analytics API Team

Happy Holidays!

The Google Analytics team would like to shout "THANK YOU!" to our users. We are so proud of the people using this product. It's a pleasure to be associated with you and build Google Analytics for you.

Through interactions with you at meetings, conferences, in online forums, in the press, and in comments on this blog, we've discovered an intelligent, innovative and engaging group of people who are at the forefront of a fledgling industry. We couldn't be happier to be a part of this ecosystem.

And we appreciate all the feedback. Please continue posting comments, and we'll chime in too when we can.

Happy holidays!

Posted by The Google Analytics Team

Multilingual Urchin 6.602 Now Available

Join us in welcoming Urchin 6.602 to the world, the long-awaited multilingual upgrade to our "run-it-yourself" web analytics package. This release adds support for all 11 of our supported languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Japanese, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), and Korean.

Read the complete Changelist for all the details, or visit our Download page to get the goods.

Urchin 6.602 also includes a bunch of significant new features, including:

• Enhanced LDAP integration (more protocols supported)
  


• 1-Click Installer -- no need for an "outboard" database anymore
  


• GeoDB user adjustments -- don't need the full GeoDB? Run fast & light with Urchin 6.602
  


• Updated compression utility -- allows data archives greater than 2GB
  


• Option to select which profiles (and their overview data) to display on users' default "home" screen (aka, roll-up report)
  
  
• Bing.com support (hooray!)
  


• ...and lots of bug fixes and documentation updates
  

Urchin 6.600, released in June 2009, was a major upgrade, so you may want to revisit that blog post for more info.

Urchin 6.602 is available now as a full-featured 30-day demo from our download servers and licenses can be purchased from any of our Authorized Consultants for US$2995. Check it out!

Urchin 6.6's built-in Keyword Generator Tool makes managing your campaigns a lot easier.

Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Software Manager

Perspective

A local credit union is saturating broadcast and full-page newspaper ads with the fact that they are "Giving back more than $4,000,000 to their membership."

Pretty darn impressive, huh?

Well, of their 183,000 members, that comes out to less than $22 per person - or 4 days worth of Mocha Lattes.

I guess the point is that we need to view everything in perspective.

How much has your institution lent to businesses and consumers this year? Even if it doesn't sound like much to your "banking" ear - it likely sounds like a fortune to your community.

Just some food for thought.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

Take care,

Eric

Think2010: Personalization and accountability

As part of our Fast.Forward. program, we've asked numerous industry leaders - from Google and beyond - about the online marketing trends they think will be significant in the year ahead. This week we'll talk about making your campaigns more personal by targeting mobile devices and increasing the accountability and sophistication of the metrics you use to evaluate your campaigns.

Penry Price, Google's VP of Global Agency and Industry Development, offers his thoughts on these topics.

To increase the personalization of your campaigns through mobile advertising, visit www.google.com/advertisers/mobile, and learn how to plan, target, create, and measure mobile ad campaigns with AdWords.

Whether it's robust reporting for media buys across platforms, or sophisticated-but-simple measurement tools like Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and YouTube Insight, you can commit in 2010 to "being greater with data." Get more information about these measurement and optimization tools here.

Visit www.youtube.com/fastforward, to stay engaged with the industry dialog and keep up with additional perspectives on successful marketing in 2010 and beyond.


Posted by Emily Williams, Inside AdWords crew

New Google Analytics API Features

Over the past few months we've received a lot of great feedback from our developers about what they wanted to see in the Google Analytics API, and it included adding access to Google Analytics newest and most powerful features, such as advanced segments, custom variables and more. Today we want to let you know about improvements to the Google Analytics Data Export API, including the following highlights (all the details of this release can be found on our public changelog and public notify group):

Support for Advanced Segments

With advanced segmentation, you can look beyond your aggregated data and peer into the nuances of traffic and visitor activity on your site. For example, the average time on site for all visits could be 60 seconds, but when you segment by country, you might learn that average time on site of visits from Germany is over 2 minutes.

We've added two new ways to use advanced segments through the API:

1. Create them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query.
   


2. Use advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.
   

This video describes exactly what advanced segments do and how you can use them with the API.



Goal 5-20 and Configuration Data

With the recent Google Analytics launch enabling up to 20 goals, many of you asked for access to this valuable data. Good call! So now, you can access 48 new metrics around goal performance. We've also added all the goal configuration data, including name, type, and step names for each profile.

Take a look at this video describing how to work with goal configuration data in the API.



Custom Variables

Custom variables are powerful new ways to describe visitors, visits and pages within Google Analytics. In this new release, we've added 10 new dimensions to access custom variable data. In addition, every custom variable that you've used is now available through the Account Feed.

We've updated all our documentatation at http://code.google.com/apis/analytics. Please continue to give us feedback to improve our product through our public google group. We can't wait to see the new apps that come from developers using this data. We're hoping that you spend your holiday tinkering with it :-)

Enjoy!


Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

View from the top changes

Good morning everyone...

I have successfully returned from a fantastic trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!  I keynoted a forum on product development, management and innovation for a contingent of Asian bankers.  Great interaction and learning occurred along with the networking of bankers from across the Asian region.  I thoroughly enjoyed the forum and the experience.

When I was in Kuala Lumpur, I had to go to the Petronas Twin Towers...formerly the world's tallest buildings (now 3rd tallest) to take in the sights and the views.  Amazing!

I had two items imprinted on me during the trip.  The first simply reinforced that banking is widely similar across the world.  We all struggle with competition, managing rates is critical, and customer insight is mission critical to marketing success!

The 2nd has to do with the Petronas Towers and what they represent to me.  They represent mankind's focused efforts to be leaders and that the view DOES change from the top.  Translation?  When you focus on an outcome, get everyone on board, and have the insights necessary....you can overcome any obstacle, create great new innovations along the way, and have an amazing view from the top!

The translation to you this morning....sitting at your desk drinking some coffee...is quite simply....take on the tasks that seems daunting, but engage your entire organization for assistance and include your customer along the way.  They will paint the picture of success for you!

So, with December quickly fading and January 2010 quickly approaching, the time to think about new initiatives is now.  Think BIG, act BIG, and include your customers in a BIG way!

Cheers!

Bruce Clapp

Optimize your campaigns for mobile in time for the holidays

Shoppers increasingly use their smartphones to search the internet, and we typically see an increase in shopping-related queries on Android, iPhone and Palm WebOS devices during the holiday season.

(click for full size image)

Ensure that your online campaigns perform well on mobile devices with full internet browsers by viewing device statistics on your Campaign Summary, Ad Groups, or Keyword reports within AdWords. Just select the "Device" segment option under the “Filter and Views” drop down.

(click for full size image)

You can now compare clicks, impressions, CTR and other performance metrics for desktop vs. high-end mobile devices. Note that this data only dates back to June 3, 2009.

(click for full size image)

Now is the perfect time to optimize how you target consumers on-the-go. Here are a few best practices we think you'll find helpful:

• Create separate campaigns and ad groups for your ads that appear on mobile devices. This makes it easier to customize ads, keywords and bids to optimize performance.
• Put your call to action in a spot on your landing page that's easy to find. Keep in mind that it's a bit more difficult to navigate websites on a mobile device, so consider shortening your checkout process.
• Most mobile phones don't support flash, so make sure your landing page is written in HTML and contains little or no Flash.
  

We hope these tips help you create great campaigns both for desktops and mobile devices this holiday season.

Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew

A Year in the Multicultural World of Social Media Marketing

By Lee Vann, CEO of Captura Group and Felipe Korzenny, Ph.D. Director of the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication

Astronaut José Hernández, aka @Astro_Jose, tweets in both English and Spanish to 100,000 people who have been following his remarkable life from picking the fields as a child in northern California to outer space. It’s not hard for him to find followers these days.

The majority of online Americans now visit social networking sites, and Hispanics and other minorities continue to visit them more than Non-Hispanic whites, according to the 2009 Multicultural Marketing Study by the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at Florida State University, DMS Research, and Captura Group.

The study also reveals that social media usage among Hispanics and other minorities continues to grow by double digits with Facebook and MySpace leading the way. What’s more, smaller social networking sites such as Hi5, Black Planet, Twitter and LinkedIn have strong appeal with certain ethnic groups.

Most online Americans visit social networking sites at least twice a month

In the past year, we found that usage of social networks across ethnic segments has grown exponentially. Marketers take note: most Americans now use social networking sites and use them as increasingly important means for communication and information.

Although ethnic minorities are still more likely to visit social networking sites when compared to Non-Hispanic Whites, the gap has closed considerably as social networking has become more popular.

Most ethnic segments now prefer Facebook over MySpace

In 2008 we found that MySpace held a firm lead over Facebook. Today, the tables have turned and Facebook has become more popular among all of the ethnic groups that we analyzed with the exception of Spanish-Preferring Hispanics.

Social media preferences are beginning to fragment among minorities

When considering a social media strategy, marketers should take note that ethnic groups have preferences between social networking sites. Consider the case of Hi5, a social media site with a strong presence in Latin America. Its success in the southern hemisphere has made it extremely popular with Spanish-Preferring Hispanics in the U.S. who want to connect with family members back home.

Today, Hi5 competes with both Facebook and MySpace among Spanish-Preferring Hispanics (29.1 percent usage versus 36 percent and 41 percent, respectively).

These findings are important because as social networking has become ubiquitous, specialized sites have become viable options for advertisers looking to target ethnic audiences.

Asian Americans are twice as likely to use LinkedIn and Twitter

The 2009 study also included the usage of LinkedIn and Twitter. We found that both sites are still emerging and most popular among Asian Americans. We attribute the popularity of LinkedIn and Twitter among Asian Americans to higher income levels and technology adoption.

More social media growth expected for 2010

In the past year, usage of social networking websites has exploded among all ethnic groups and we expect this trend to continue. While preferences of certain social networking sites might change over time, social media promises to remain relevant for all ethnic groups.

People such as José Hernández can expect many more followers.

For marketers, the sky should also be the limit

Be Like A Running Store

One of the best things that we can do as financial marketers is to bring retail principles into our discipline.

Take my running store for example. I'm a loyal shopper of Up And Running not because they have the best price or widest selection ... I shop there because they are specialists. They are experts in a field that matters to me.

Unlike the large chain sporting goods stores, my running shop asks me questions about how I run and where I run. They don't shove a shoe in front of me based on price - but instead measure up my foot and how my arches react to the running motion, they focus on my gait and pronation then RECOMMEND the shoe that's best for ME.

Best of all, they care about me after I've bought the shoe. I go to the store regularly for running groups. They ADVISE me on how to train for marathons or how to avoid recurring stress fractures. This, most of all, is why I'm loyal and willing to pay a few bucks more for my gear.

With our current economy, consumers are looking now, more than ever, for an expert to help them with their financial issues. And let's face it, you open more mortgages and auto loans, and deal with personal finance more in one day than any of your customers will have to concern themselves with in their entire lives!

You are the expert that they crave.

So, how do you demonstrate that you are a specialist, just like my running shop?

• Know Their Run – Do your customers need a one-time “quick fix” like a home improvement loan or are they in it for the financial marathon? Ask questions and keep a customer log.

• Size ‘em Up – Like each shoe fits each runner differently, so does each financial product. Instead of analyzing their gait and feet, ask them basic questions about how they will use the product and their goals. What are they using now? What have they used in the past? What features did they love? What would they change? What do they ultimately want to achieve (lower payments, faster pay off, security, faster retirement)?

• Be Their Coach – You and your staff are the experts! Coach your customers and they will entrust more to you.

Take are,

Eric

Update your skills - take the Google Advertising Fundamentals exam

As part of our ongoing efforts to improve training materials and the Google Advertising Professionals program we have updated the certification exam and learning center.

We've created a new Google Advertising Fundamentals exam designed to be more rigorous and strategy-oriented. Our teams have developed the new curriculum and exam to equip you with useful, relevant training to manage AdWords campaigns.

We've noted some questions since we introduced the new exam so we wanted to tell you a little bit more:

• We're testing a wider range of knowledge and the passing score is higher than the previous exam - 85% vs 75% on the previous test.
• You can access the new exam through your Google Advertising Professionals account. Navigate to the My Exams tab where you can pick up your candidate ID to use on the testing site and follow the links to either the Learning Center or the Exam Testing Site.
• The new exam is currently only available in English, but will be released in 20 additional languages in January.

Our goal was to bring the materials and exam up to date to ensure they cover all current products and best practices to help run and manage AdWords campaigns. We'll be introducing new advanced exams in 2010, so you may hear about some of them being tested now. At this time, however, you only need to hold a valid passing score in the previous exam or, if you're new to the program, the new Advertising Fundamentals exam.

Congratulations to those of you who've taken and passed the new exams and good luck to all test takers.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

Think2010: The need for speed

In our Think2010 post a couple weeks ago, we noted how important experimentation will be in the coming year to help you optimize your campaign for the best possible ROI. A very closely-related tenet is the commitment to speed. There is great access to information and insights, and that information is now available faster than ever. This means that marketers who are nimble, work quickly, and iterate as they go will often be the ones who succeed.

A few ways to commit to speed in 2010:

* Set up custom Google Alerts to monitor news, blogs, videos and other coverage of topics related to your brand and its marketplace.
* Regularly mine Insights for Search to see trends as they're emerging for your brand or category -- and quickly create a plan to act on the opportunities you discover.
* Use Display Ad Builder to create display, rich media, and video ads in minutes by incorporating your own text, images, and logo into one of our professionally designed templates.
* Use Website Optimizer to quickly test variations of your landing page to see which works best -- then implement the winning version to maximize performance.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew

Holiday Bonus: More Great Features

We all love the holiday season, and so now, here are a few reasons to love it even more! A few weeks ago, we announced a set of powerful, flexible, and intelligent features. Today, at SES Chicago, Phil Mui announced additional features that build on these same themes to make your life as an analyst easier. We hope you'll enjoy them.

Annotations

Do you ever wonder about an inexplicable change in your traffic? Or forget exactly when you launched something, or who was responsible? After scratching your head, did you have to chase down different departments in your company or go digging through old emails to get an answer?

For instance:

• Was that dip in traffic because the servers went down?
• When did the new display ads campaign launch?
• Who's responsible for the checkout page redesign and when did it go live?

Running around asking everyone from marketing, IT, and product doesn't scale. More and more large companies are using Google Analytics, so we wanted to cut down on the mileage you need to cover to account for everything that happens to your website and online marketing.

This week, the wild goose chase is over -- you can now easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened" with the launch of Annotations in Google Analytics.

Annotations allows any user with access to a Google Analytics profile to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph. Building upon the concept of bringing Intelligence to data, Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all. A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations.



Taking its usefulness even further: Annotations can become your central repository, or logbook, for all online marketing and website design actions within your business. So even if you have multiple marketing teams, agencies, or webmasters, or if you have employee churn or other disruptions, you can always see which events may have caused conversions to increase or decrease. No wonder this has been one of the top requested features in Analytics for such a long time!

Note: Annotations is rolling out a bit slower than planned due to the holidays. New features within Google Analytics are launched on a phased roll out due to the volume of accounts, and the demands of testing as we activate the new feature. Usually this process takes from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the feature. Annotations is being activated to an additional 10% of accounts each week and will be pushed live to all accounts by mid January.

Custom Variables Now Available In Advanced Segments

Custom Variables provide you the power and flexibility to customize Google Analytics and collect the unique site usage data most important to your business. In Google Analytics, not only are you able to define multiple custom variables, each custom variable is a name-value pair and can be assigned one of 3 scopes: page, session, or visitor. Each custom variable name and each value is an arbitrary string defined by you pertinent to your business needs.

When we announced Multiple Custom Variables in October, the only way to view metrics on these Custom Variables then was to open the standard "Custom Variables" report in the Visitors section. This week, a user can create an advanced segmentation based on any key, value, as well as key-value combination of all Custom Variables. In other words, if you've created a Custom Variable such as "Logged In Member", you can also create an advanced segment based on that variable and see it across all of your reports.

The ability to create visit segments based on Custom Variables is critical in maximizing the full potential of Custom Variables. Users can now slice and dice their metrics by decorating their site traffic with the appropriate key-value pairs.

Custom Variables Available In Custom Reports

You can also create Custom Reports with any of the key or value dimensions associated with any Custom Variable. Now, you can see how a segment defined by Custom Variables behaves along any of the metrics available in Google Analytics.

New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard

One of the more daunting tasks in setting up analytics on any site is to manually configure the tracking code for specialized situations, such as multiple subdomains, cross-domain tracking, mobile web tracking, PHP sites, campaign tagging, etc.

Well, fear no more. When you create a profile, you'll notice a new tracking code setup wizard in Google Analytics. This wizard automatically generates the appropriate tracking code according to the setup options specified by you.

New Version of The Analytics API

Later this week, there will be a separate announcement about a set of very exciting features to our Analytics API. Here's a little preview: Support for Advanced Segmentation will now be available through the API.

In addition, new data dimensions and metrics will be made available, including those in our recently announced features.

Enjoy -- and happy holidays from the Google Analytics team!


Posted by Jeff Gillis and Phil Mui, Google Analytics Team

Starbucks to run world's biggest Facebook ad campaign to date

Starbucks to run world's biggest Facebook ad campaign to date (Brand Republic)

SES Chicago Next Week

Come to the windy city next week and catch Google Analytics' fearless Senior Product Manager Phil Mui in action at the Search Engine Strategies Chicago conference. Phil will be presenting at two sessions on Monday at SES:

• MUST SEE: What's New and Exciting with Google Analytics - Monday at 12:45pm at the networking lunch which we're sponsoring. He'll cover the latest feature launch, AND - he might announce some new features. You never know with Phil. We really hope you can make this session - you'll want to share it with your friends, literally (hint, hint). We're not saying anything more.
  
  
• Phil will also participate in a panel called How to Turn Your Web Analytics Into a Money-Making Machine along with Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne, founder of the Web Analytics Association and the eMetrics conference.

Also, the AdWords team will be there in force, presenting the Google Ads Factory Tour, a series of sessions designed to give advertisers practical tips they can use immediately to improve search and display performance. They'll also be holding a session on AdWords Optimization Tools as well as on The Next Generation of AdWords Bidding: Conversion Optimizer. Read more at the AdWords blog post, and register for SES here.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Does Your Institution Make Outbound Sales Calls?

Community Banks and Credit Unions are catching on to what their larger competitors have known for some time.

Customers and prospects really do respond to being called at home!

The word "telemarketing" has really taken on a bad connotation over the years. The reason being that the message that might be interrupting our dinner wasn't relevant. For example, have you ever received a call from a aluminum siding company even though you live in a brick house? A lot of telemarketers use random digit dialing meaning they randomly call your number. They know nothing about you, your lifestyle, your wants, your needs, etc. They are simply "pushing product."

This horrible experience with telemarketers is why your staff is so reluctant to make outbound calls!

But what we do is different!

We analyze our customers relationship. We know what products they have purchased from us, how long they have been a customer, what types of balances they maintain, etc. We know a lot about our customers and we take the time to craft a relevant message.

When we call, it is to act as our customers financial advisor. Our message is that we can help them save money, make money, etc. i.e. reach their financial goals.

When we focus on prospects, we typically use segmentation, propensity to purchase data, etc. so that we can craft the same relevant message.

If you are having difficulty getting your staff to make outbound calls, make sure they understand the difference between "telemarketing" and "consultative selling."

If outbound calling is new to your organization, "walk before you run." Provide the proper training and set achievable goals.

Once your staff has a couple of successful calls, momentum will build within your organization. Your balance sheet and income statement will quickly reflect their efforts. In addition, customer satisfaction scores will rise. In many cases, you will convert customers to advocates (or unpaid sales people) that will tell their family, friends, etc. about how well your instituion met their needs.

Have a great holiday season!

Enjoy family and friends, recharge yourself and get "fired up" to tackle the new year!

Mike