Plushies in Action

Don’t get it?

Well, you’ll first have to watch Avinish Kaushik’s video – Measuring Micro and Macro Reactions.

In case you are wondering how a presentation on web analytics is going to be exciting, well I watched the video twice. Seriously. This guy is definitely worth 50 mins of your time, especially if you are a B2B (or B2C) marketer. What an excellent presenter!

Never knew web analytics could be fun, and simple too. Thanks to Avinash and Google.

My top 3 Avinash humour from the video:

1. The B2B people fundamentally believe that robots visit their website… and that’s why most B2B websites suck.

2. Bounce rate = I came, I puke, I left

3. Most people on the web do business as if they are having One Night Stands (reminded me of my previous blog entry on Sex and Social Media)

As a B2B marketer for 6 years, I am embarrassed to say that I’ve not been diligent with web analytics until recently. With our 2009 marketing objectives heavily focused on online initiatives, this video came in just in time. I’m learning that my next year’s web projects need to be more data-driven rather than faith-based, which previously had been the latter.

Now I can’t wait to get my hands on Avinash’s book titled Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.  Never in a million years would I have imagined that someday, I’ll be reading a book on web analytics (traditionally such books are my best bed time stories, they put me to sleep).

According to reviews on Amazon, his book is Accessible and Marketing Driven. That’s good, exactly what I’m looking for. But it’s over 400 pages!!! It sounds worse than a marathon to me, with a 50/50 chance of survival. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes.

Avinash’s book is available in Singapore at major bookstores.

The sick rat is a marketer, and that marketer is me. Being unwell recently had resulted in my lack of blog entries for almost 2 weeks. Definitely a cardinal sin for a new blogger.

Even a wordless picture-only post proved to be a challenge, as the trusty home NAS crashed!

Anyway, I am looking forward to a virus free serious blogging Sunday!

It’s that time of the year again to start thinking about Marketing plans and budgets for 2009. Just on budgets, B2B Marketing Budgets – Data from SiriusDecisions shows statistics on how B2B marketers are allocating their marketing budgets. Although it’s probably US figures, it’s quite accurate when comparing it with my spendings here in Singapore.

According to the stats, trade shows contributed to the largest spend in lead generation budgets. (For me, trade shows spending rank just slightly below Email marketing). It’s not surprising at all, considering the high 4 to 5 digits cost of a regular booth or table top, and not to mention the even more expensive silver/gold/platinum sponsorship packages.

B2B marketers still see trade shows as a necessary evil: For brand awareness, building a database, or lead generation. But most of the time these shows cannot pay for themselves, let alone generate positive ROI.

Having said that, the game is not over. The secret to trade show success is to think END-TO-END INTEGRATION. Don’t participate in a trade show as a standalone activity. The show itself is just a part of it, consider pre-show and post-show promotion.

Here’s some examples of what you can do for pre-show and post-show promotion:

- Host pre-event and post-event webinars
- Organise online contests and quizzes
- Communicate to your base. Send out special invites to clients and prospects
- Publish your participation through existing business communication like your website or newsletters
- Offer special product/service packages to attendees
- Complement with any other upcoming or on-going campaigns or product announcements

You will also need to do some math by calculating estimated costs per potential qualified contact. And don’t forget your At-Show strategies.

To find out more, download Ruth P. Stevens’ webinar recording on Exhibiting for Bottom Line Results.

So there you go. Your 2 days trade show has become a 3 months campaign. But it’s worth it. Like what Tim Gunn on Project Runway says… “MAKE IT WORK!”