Tom Capper says, “Customer loyalty is one of the strongest assets a business can have, and one that any can aim to improve. However, improvement requires iteration and testing, and iteration and testing require measurement.Traditionally, customer loyalty has been measured using customer surveys. The Net Promoter Score, for example, is based on the question (on a scale of one to ten) “How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague?”. Regularly monitoring metrics like this with any accuracy is going to get expensive (and/or annoying... [...]

Stefanie Flaxman says, “What does a rough draft of a blog post have in common with all the other blog posts by all the other content creators in your niche?Too much.I’m sure you’re aware that there are countless other writers musing about the same ideas you are, and in similar ways.The goal of a typical first draft is to transform your scattered thoughts into a cohesive article that explains a topic to your target audience. But why should readers choose your content over another writer’s work?”.How to Spot the Weakest Part of Your Blog Post‘Copyblogger’ Blog [...]

John Tackett says, “Getting a lift from your testing efforts can be satisfying and rewarding.Not to mention, increases in conversion have changed the fortunes of entire enterprises and the careers of the marketers who advocated testing.But is a lift truly a lift, or is it simply a false positive resulting from natural variation?In this MarketingExperiments Blog post, I wanted to share an excellent example of using A/A testing (and yes, you are reading that correctly) from Emily Emmer, Senior Interactive Marketing Manager, Extra Space Storage, presented at Web Optimization Summit 2014”.Online... [...]

This is a reminder for Business 2 Community’ webinar on Social Media for Lead Generation.Business 2 Community is hosting a webinar with Jonathan Moody & Satya Krishnaswamy on Wednesday, July 9 at 2.00 pm ET. The topic of the webinar is “How To Leverage Social Channels For Lead Generation”.The ‘Business 2 Community’ team says, “Pyramid Analytics is a leading provider of business analytics solutions and winner of 2014 CIO Big Data award. Jon Moody, their director of marketing embarked on a mission to attribute revenue to social efforts and move away from vanity... [...]

Allison Kent-Smith says, “Social media as a practice is nearly a decade old. But for many of us, this job skill is a fairly new requirement.So how do you learn more about social media for your current or future job? Where do you go to learn more? What do you need to know?It’s challenging. Most experts have gained social media skills on the job. So if you’re lucky enough to land a job that requires social media understanding, that’s great. If not, then you remain at a distinct disadvantage.The journey to social media literacy is not obtained through personal use. Although daily interactions... [...]

Dan Shewan says, “In September of last year, when Google Hummingbird was officially announced, Matt Cutts said that it would affect 90% of all searches, albeit in a subtle way. Considering that Google handles more than 3.5 billion searches every day, this means Google Hummingbird affects more than 3.15 billion of them.Not exactly an inconsequential update”.How Google Hummingbird Changed the Future of SearchBusiness2Community.com [...]

David Moth says, “Google rolled out its latest Panda 4.0 algorithm update in May, which was again aimed at clamping down on sites with low-quality or thin content.Once the dust had settled it seemed that press release sites had taken a kicking, with reports that PRWeb, PR Newswire, Business Wire and PRLog lost 60% to 85% of their search visibility over night.This isn’t the first time that newswires have been targeted by a Panda update, and in summer 2013 we wrote about Google’s new rules aimed at punishing unnatural link schemes, which made specific reference to press releases”.Does... [...]

Paul Gustafson says, “Dan Miller, a professor of material culture at University College London, caused quite a stir at the end of 2013 when he said Facebook was “basically dead and buried” for 16-18-year-olds in the UK. So when we recently facilitated a series of focus groups in the US with 16-30-year-old males on the topic of their social media habits, we were interested to see how they would respond to “Is Facebook still cool?”Almost universally, participants responded with a “No.” But does Facebook need to be cool to be valuable to marketers? And if... [...]

Kevin Webster says, “Knowing the source of your web traffic — organic search, paid search, social media, direct — is important. But taking a look at what your visitors are actually doing and accomplishing on your website is also key.Studying traffic flow can indicate a few potential problems in website navigation or marketing messages, as well as point out what your website is doing well. Google Analytics provides a tool in the Behavior section that can help you visualize the intent of your web visitors, and determine where visitors are dropping out of your goal funnels”.Google Analytics:... [...]

Sam Kusinitz says, “Lifetime Value (LTV) is one of those metrics that keeps your CEO up a night. It’s the estimated revenue that a customer will generate during the entire span of their relationship with your company. It takes into account not only the initial purchase, but also how much a customer is likely to spend in the future as they purchase more products and services from you.By understanding how much revenue each new customer will generate, you gain valuable insight into how to properly set your marketing budget and how much you should be spending on customer acquisition... [...]