… unless you know how to do it yourself, and you’re willing to go do it.
The comment, “oh that’s easy,” has been a point of frustration for me since I started my career. I’ve heard it stated emphatically about features and tasks related to software development, web design, and web marketing projects.
What the client or manager usually means is: “The way I see it in my head, it’ll be easy for the user to use, so it must be easy to develop or execute.” What the project manager or software engineer typically says to themselves is, “it’s so easy, but you couldn’t pull it off in a million years - *cough*.”
I had a conversation with a friend yesterday that prompted me to start doing some research about the size and skill-set of web marketing teams. She started by telling me, “I’ve been told I’m responsible for the SEO, PPC, and Web Analytics Reporting for 15 dynamic (constantly changing) websites.”
To which I replied, “how big is your team?”
… “No team - just me.”
Then it went from bad to worse. She went on to describe the interactions she has with her higher-ups that include the frequent, “Why aren’t we already doing that? [insert idea they just read about in the WSJ] - It’s easy.”
In both in-house and client-consultant relationships, these types of interactions lead to frustration on both sides. Clients and managers will rattle off demand after demand in each meeting, and employees and consultants will try to deal with an ever-growing list of half-baked demands that will never get met.
At Awecomm, we have procedures that handle this type of interaction. Our project managers control the pipeline of current projects both internal and client-related, and provide time estimates for new task and project requests. If something needs to be escalated, something else has to get bumped. It’s a pretty transparent process, and it works really well.
If you (the Awecomm manager or salesperson) don’t like the time estimate that was generated by the team (the PM, developers, designers, and marketers) … well then you should try to go do it yourself! (READ: We trust our team) .
Don’t think for a second that I’m writing this out of some sort of bitterness for clients. I LOVE my clients. They push us to try new things and execute fast, and we push them to try new things and interact with us quickly. But without the proper framework to manage tasks and projects, things get wacky.
So where does this leave us?
I’m looking to put together some data about what in-house web marketing teams look like. How many websites is the team responsible for? How many people are on the team? What is the responsibility of the team (SEO, PPC, Reporting, Development, Design)? What is the nature of the websites (static, frequent updates, constantly updated, user-generated)?
I’m hoping that the research will lead us to some understanding of the bandwidth required (the hours-of-labor kind, not the bits-and bytes-kind) as it relates to keeping a site healthy and optimized.
So if you work for an in-house web marketing team, or your company has an in-house team, leave a comment and let tell me about the size of the team (you can be anonymous if you want). I’ll put a formal survey together shortly, and link it here as well so we can come up with some slightly more “scientific” results.
If this is something you can relate to, help out by spreading the link! I’ll post the findings here in a follow-up post and hopefully we can all benefit from them.
It’s hard to believe that we’ve been at it for this long, but it’s true. Awecomm celebrated its 10th birthday at Fuse Lounge in Rochester, Michigan on November 5th, 2009.
Thank you to everyone who showed up to celebrate with us! I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.
If you’re not a fan of the videos at TED.com: Ideas Worth Spreading, I’d be willing to bet that it’s just because no one has introduced you to the site yet.
Yesterday, Ted’s ideas spread to Detroit as some of the area’s top thinkers gathered at Lawrence Tech University for a day of compelling discussions about technology, energy, entrepreneurship, and other current challenges.
The first conversation that I had when I arrived at the conference I believe to be very representative of what everyone there was feeling. The man in front of me in line at the registration desk turned around, introduced himself, and asked, “So … what are your expectations?”
Anyone that’s been a long-time fan of TED.com knows that the expectations are high. When I watch a TED video online, it tends to introduce a number of new ways of thinking about the topic. On a very positive note, I can honestly say that many of the presenters at TEDx Detroit had the same impact on me.
Technology
I’ve seen Richard Sheridan from Menlo Innovations speak on a number of occasions, but this was hands-down his best presentation. Richard spoke about design issues, and specifically how they relate to software design. He opened with a wonderful example: “Have you ever walked up to a door and pushed on it, only to discover that it’s a ‘Pull’ door?” That is BAD DESIGN. His presentation went on to explain a number of examples where studying natural human behavior in the workplace can lead to better software interface design. I agree wholeheartedly with Rich in his argument that we don’t spend enough time incorporating user observation into the design process.
Entrepreneurship
Dan Izzo from Bizdom U gave a though-provoking talk on Turning Dreamers into Doers. Although I think that’s a pretty tough challenge to face (motivating people to act), especially in a 20 minute presentation, he made a number of good points about innovation. His most pointed comment being: “If your business idea is the answer, then what is the f$#@ing question?” The next time you have the next great idea, spend time talking to people about the challenge that they face, and be sure that your solution is actually mated to their problem.
Inspiration & Creativity
In her TED presentation, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love discusses the creative process, and explores the demands that we put on creative thinkers (the possibility of never creating anything great, and the even greater challenges that come with actually creating something incredible).
Art
I believe one of the only standing ovations of the day went to Blair after he performed his poem Detroit (While I Was Away), and it was definitely much-deserved.
| TEDxDetroit video: Poet D Blair performs ‘Detroit (while I was away)’ |
Advertising
Rory Sutherland presents one of the funniest TED videos that I’ve seen so far as he explores the differences between actual “real” value, and perceived value. If you’ve read Predictably Irrational, you’ll definitely want to watch this.
Would I Attend Another TEDx
On the drive home I thought back to the first conversation of the day; had it met my expectations? The short answer is that I would definitely go to another TEDx. The long answer is a bit more involved.
For me, TED is always about taking in a new, thought-provoking perspective on a topic, and the online videos fill that need perfectly. When I think about how I pull them into my life, they are effective because 1) I can watch them whenever I want, and 2) I can skip to the next one if a video turns out to be boring.
I’ve spoken to a few people about the idea of collaboration at the TEDx conferences. I didn’t experience a whole lot of it (the physical layout of the auditorium didn’t lend itself terribly well to round-table discussions), and I didn’t really expect to. Most of the useful conference-type collaboration that I’ve been involved with have been with a number of people who are all experts on the same subject, throwing ideas around (e.g. a CIO conference).
I think there are both obvious benefits and challenges that would come along with a group of people with very different backgrounds digging deep into a wide array of topics. It might be worth exploring these types of round-table discussions at future TEDx events (I’m sure some light discussions happened at the after-party, but that’s not the same as a deep exploration of a topic).
All-in-all the event was a great experience. Kudos to Charlie Wollborg, Derek Mehraban, Catherine Juon, Jennifer Wright, and Terry Bean for putting it all together.
The conference had a definite undertone that could probably be described as something like: Do whatever it takes to get Detroit back on its feet. One quote that I absolutely love stuck in my head that I think sums it all up:
Hell, there are no rules here - we’re trying to accomplish something!
- Thomas Edison
While the WSJ announced today that interactive advertisers are falling victim to internet advertising fraud in which they’re paying for impressions that don’t actually happen, those of us in the search marketing space are fighting our own battle.
I’ve written before about the inability of advertisers to control what websites their advertisements are displayed on when using the Yahoo Search Marketing platform. In this post I’ll substantiate it with some real-life examples of websites that are part of Yahoo’s “network.”
Why would Yahoo restrict advertisers in this way?
The answer is simple: inventory.
Yahoo can artificially inflate the number of impressions and clicks that they deliver (and charge advertisers for) by displaying advertisers’ ads on sites like this:
It’s true that Yahoo Search Marketing allows advertisers to manually enter domains that they explicitly don’t want their ads to appear on, but attempting to find every website that your ad appears on, and entering into Yahoo’s interface would take years (not to mention they restrict the number of sites you can list).
So how does this affect the performance of an online advertising campaign? For one of our clients, traffic from Yahoo search converts at 44% (44 out of every 100 website visitors buys/converts). Traffic from Yahoo’s “network” converts at 16%.
In this example, this means that if we chose to advertise on Yahoo (something that’s becoming increasingly harder to justify), 64% of our money is spent buying quality traffic, and the remaining 36% is wasted because Yahoo chooses to display our ads on arbitrage websites like the ones displayed above.
Why not just let advertisers disable the “network” and buy quality search traffic?
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