Home Wealth Project

Data Based Marketing The numerous ways to conduct digital marketing, combined with traditional media, can create an elaborate process to measure results. To make the hard work of analysis easier, try Data Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone In Marketing Should Know by Mark Jeffery. Jeffery, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, has provided the right starting points to discovering the value of a data-driven marketing campaign. The book is also an excellent primer for small businesses establishing a measurement platform. I picked up a copy from a local bookstore to review.

The introductory chapters explain the role metrics play, based on surveying 252 firms dedicating $53 billion to marketing. Examples like Circuit City’s failure – constantly running sales to draw customers despite thin retail margins – make effective punchlines, particularly with counterpoints such as competitor Best Buy spending its budget on branding and customer relationships.

“…few firms get marketing, and many do not. The result is that firms that get marketing have a competitive advantage and those that don’t struggle.”

The first opening chapters note why many companies are not analytic, outlining obstacles to data driven marketing and defining traditional marketing metrics. One typical excuse of B2B businesses – “We’re a B2B company and sell indirectly to customers. As a result we don’t know who our customers are.” In the best analytic traditions, Jefferies remind that improvement is possible without oversell:

“There is a frame work for developing a data-driven marketing strategy. You don’t need 100% of the data to get started.”

The next book segment outlines the 15 Metrics ballyhooed in the title. Five nonfinancial metrics are grouped, with the next 4 grouped to address return on investment. Chapter 6 is a particular favorite (All Customers are Not Equal: Metric #10 – Customer Lifetime Value). It includes a breakdown formula for determining the value of a customer segment, and has an example chart of a value-based direct mail marketing strategy. Chapter 7 rounds out the 15 with web analytics metrics such as bounce rate and cost per click.

These middle chapters, containing calculations and supporting material, sets Data Driven Marketing apart from other marketing books. Jeffery strikes a proper tone between presenting super-absorbent-dry textbook material and text dripping with useless generalities. Chapter 5 for example includes a spreadsheet template explanation to support a Return on Marketing Investment calculation. The discussions are advanced but also include charts that will help you envision campaigns more comprehensively.

The ending chapters return to broader ground, serving as a primer for today’s data management and broader operational concerns. There’s a nod to the ethics for collecting customer data.

“Marketers should clearly communicate the privacy policy both external and internal and how data will and will not be used.”

Examples also note how to demonstrate data to support your product branding. A great B2B instance occurred during OpenHack, a competition in which Microsoft showed how its servers faced 82,500 attacks, yet maintained 100% uptime. The competition was the genesis for an image changing campaign for Microsoft server, perceived as susceptible to hacking.

“IT professionals were given free training on how to secure Microsoft products within the enterprise, then their perception toward Microsoft products and security change very significantly and positively after the training.”

The formulas enhanced the book without reminding you of a bad study hall experience. There is an appendix for instructors, a nod towards classroom purposes. But recalling my grad school days, I can’t think of a better book that noted data, finance, and operations in a digestible package. Business owners who like to learn are in for a treat.

For building a business based on sound practices and beyond tips and hints, you will want to keep data driven marketing at your side. While it says Marketing on the cover, you will be hard pressed to find a more solid book that sets a marketing context against other operations in your business.

Data Driven Marketing Makes Branding Objectives Clear

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What Would Happen to Your Business If You Lost All of Your Online Data

Jan 6th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

What Would Happen to Your Business If You Lost All of Your Online Data

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

I know you’re backing up your hard drive and network data, right? You use Dropbox, Carbonite, MOZY, AmazonS3, or JustCloud. Or maybe you’re a Mac Time Machine junky. Either way, here’s hoping beyond hope you’re doing this regularly.

Of course, now that so many of us are moving stuff to the cloud, we’ve got an increasingly perplexing new issue.

How do we back up all that stuff that sits on someone else’s sever?

Do you remember a while back when a whole bunch of Gmail users woke up and found their email files wiped out? We can argue whether or not that’s a good thing, but I’m guessing there were some really important emails that went missing.

Okay, how about this one – you fire up your WordPress blog and discover that your low cost host has decided to go out of business and take your SQL database (otherwise know as you blog posts) with them. (I suppose this could happen to your really expensive web host too, but you get the idea.)

And one last illustration to strike a little more fear. You fire up Basecamp in hopes of finding that critical contract your client signed and uploaded only to find a blank project folder. (Basecamp is an awesome product and I’m sure this would never happen, but what if it did?)

See, we’ve come to depend on all these tools, services and stuff that we routinely and perhaps a bit naively imagine will always work, sync and be safe.

I believe we all need to start looking into some redundancy in our backing up. You could make a case for having an external drive and Dropbox or Dropbox and Mozy for your regular backups, but the real gap may be in backing up all those services.

Here are couple services that are designed to help you do just that.

Backupify – allows you to create regular backups of all your social media updates, email, calendars, Google docs, and photo sharing sites. They even have a plan that’s made for Google Apps for Domains users.

CloudHQ – If you’re already a Basecamp, Dropbox and Google Docs user you’re going to this CloudHQ was built just for you. This service syncs and backs up all your Basecamp data, backs up most of your cloud data to Dropbox and really enhances collaboration using Google docs with Basecamp syncing.

BackupBuddy – It’s just a really good practice to routinely backup your WordPress blog. BackupBuddy is a plugin that can be set to make automatic backups to S3 or even Dropbox. I use Rackspace for hosting and they have a cloud backup tool as well.

I know this just one more thing to worry about, but once you set it up and automate it, it’s actually one less thing to worry about!

View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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Only You Can Prevent a Data Breach

Nov 1st

We hear horror stories about how corporations’ computer systems or financial data are hacked into, leaving quite a mess to clean up. Unfortunately, as a small business owner, you’re not immune to data breaches, reports PropertyCasualty360. The sad fact is, many of the virtual attacks can be prevented, but only 27 percent of small businesses actually test their data security, Newtek Business Services data shows.

Waiting until after an attack is a poor time to decide you need a firewall!

Verizon issues an annual data breach investigation report. In this year’s report, we were amazed to find out that 96 percent of breaches were avoidable through simple or intermediate controls. These aren’t highly complex technical attacks, and they’re certainly ones that can be prevented.

Where It’s Happening

Chris Porter, principal on Verizon’s risk team, shared a few real-life scenarios with us (company names removed) as examples of small businesses that are suffering from data breaches.

One small restaurant in New York City was attacked by an organized crime external hacker, resulting in its customers’ credit card data being compromised. By installing customized malware, the attacker could capture keystrokes or card-swipes on the point-of-sale terminals, getting access to debit and credit cards. The software also collected the stolen credit card numbers. The restaurant found out about the breach when its bank notified the restaurant that it had been flagged for fraud.

How This Could Have Been Prevented: Porter says that preventing this type of data breach is fairly simple:

“Companies should ensure there is a firewall in place that protects remote services to only the IT management firm’s network. Change all default and attributable passwords to something more complex and not easily guessable.“

If an employee leaves the company, change passwords they had access to. And if you outsource point-of-sale management, make sure the firm you work with has controls in place to prevent breaching.

Even small banks aren’t immune to attacks. A credit union in California was attacked via email, leading to an intrusion. Porter says they’ve seen Excel or PDF attachments on emails that appear to be from UPS. These emails ask the recipient to verify package delivery, but instead install malware on the computer where the email is opened. Malware can steal credentials to bank accounts and get access to sensitive information. The unauthorized banking transactions caused by the hack were discovered the next day by an employee.

How This Could Have Been Prevented: Email is tricky, especially if you’re used to getting emails from people you don’t know. Instruct your staff not to open attachments or click links if they’re unsure of the origin.

Porter also says:

“It is advisable to have the workstation used for banking or wire transfers on a segregated network. If this is not possible, make sure that the system isn’t used for regular Web browsing or social networking.”

Are You Protected Against a Data Breach?

The advice for businesses is pretty clear cut. You should back up your data often. Use anti-virus protection on your PC. Install a firewall. Change passwords regularly. But often this sort of thing slips through the cracks for overcommitted small business owners. And the fact that most of us don’t have an IT department means that often, anything security-related is not high priority.

But waiting until after the fact to beef up your virtual security may be too late; data breaches can bring stress, headaches and unwanted publicity to your company. Do you really want to be known as the company that doesn’t value its customers’ information enough to protect it?

Work to train your staff to be diligent when opening email, and to review transactions and files for potential tampering or fraud. Encrypt any sensitive data to make it harder to hack. Make sure you’re on top of changing passwords when employees (especially those who hold a grudge) leave your team.

Just an ounce of prevention now can save you a pound of hurt later.

Only You Can Prevent a Data Breach

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The 10 Percent Rule for Backing Up Your Data

Sep 22nd

2 comments

Everyone wants their data to be protected, but not everyone puts in the legwork required to ensure their data is safe. Most people take the “set it and forget it” approach when really they should be following the 10 percent rule.

Set It and Forget It
There are three common mistakes that businesses make when backing up their data:

1. No testing: When businesses back up their data, many assume their data is there, faithfully waiting for them in the same condition in which it was left. The truth is backup is not a flawless process. Glitches occur and hardware fails. The only way to make sure that data is intact and that all systems are go is to routinely test the data you’re backing up. When you test your data, not only do you have peace of mind, but you also have the opportunity to catch a problem before it becomes a disaster.

2. No planning: No one thinks that a disaster is going to happen to them, but the reality is that unforeseen events do take place. A lot of businesses back their data up, but they spend little time thinking about the recovery process. The first step is to think about the recovery and work backwards from there.

3. Backing everything up: Not all data is created equal. If your house were on fire, would you run in to save a ballpoint pen? No, you would run in to make sure no one was in the house. It’s the same thing with data. If disaster strikes, you want to make sure you can access the most critical data immediately.

OK, so now you know what to avoid when protecting your data. What can and should you be doing? First, you must understand the 10 percent rule.

What is the 10 percent rule?
Only 10 percent of your data is critical.

That’s right. That means that 90 percent of your company data is mostly static. Does that mean that you don’t need to protect that 90 percent? Not at all. It means that you should prioritize. As noted above, not all data is created equal. If your systems encounter a widespread failure, you want to have a plan in place that recovers the most essential information right away. That way, business downtime is reduced. If you don’t prioritize your data, you’ll waste your time recovering non-critical data and your downtime could be much, much longer.

So what exactly does critical mean?
Critical varies from organization to organization, but if a file does not change within a certain amount of time, it should be moved into a retention vault. Only changing data should be considered critical.

While all data is arguably important, organizations need a structured or tiered approach to ensure critical applications and systems are operational first. Once these systems are running and accessible, the static, non-critical files can be restored.

The 10 Percent Rule for Backing Up Your Data

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2,500 Online Data Entry Jobs

Sep 19th

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Online Auction

Over 2,500 data entry companies. Homeworkers need!
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Sep 9th

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The shower of data

Sep 2nd

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

When I was a kid at summer camp, a letter was as precious as gold (or perhaps candy). If you got five letters in a week, you were rich. Most of the time, we stood by the mailroom, plaintively waiting to see if there was some sort of message from the outside world–only to walk away disappointed.

Back home, missing a TV show was out of the question. If you didn’t see this episode of Mannix or Batman, it was likely you’d never get a chance, ever again.

And so we came to treat incoming data as precious. A lost email was a calamity. Reading everything in your RSS feed was essential. What if I miss something?

A new generation, one that grew up with a data surplus, is coming along. To this cohort, it’s no big deal to miss a tweet or ten, to delete a blog from your reader or to not return a text or even a voice mail. The new standard for a vacation email is, “When I get back, I’m going to delete all the email in my box, so if it’s important, please re-send it next week.”

This is what always happens when something goes from scarce to surplus. First we bathe in it, then we waste it.

View full post on Seth’s Blog

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The shower of data

Sep 2nd

Posted by Home Wealth Project in Marketing Tips

Back home, missing a TV show was out of the question. If you didn’t see this episode of Mannix or Batman, it was likely you’d never get a chance, ever again.

And so we came to treat incoming data as precious. A lost email was a calamity. Reading everything in your RSS feed was essential. What if I miss something?

This is what always happens when something goes from scarce to surplus. First we bathe in it, then we waste it.

View full post on Seth’s Blog

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Protecting Your Data: An Introduction

Aug 30th

Data is exploding (not literally, although we’ll cover that, too). The amount of data that organizations are storing has grown exponentially in the last 10 years. According to Gartner research director April Adams, data capacity on average in enterprises is growing at 40 percent to 60 percent year over year. Some of this information is stored locally but, increasingly, data is stored in the cloud.

More data and more ways of storing that information may mean more confusion for small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to protect themselves. The purpose of this post is to explain what you can do to safeguard your data, to advise against bad practices, and to debunk myths about data backup and the cloud.

So what’s the first thing you should do to protect your data? I’ll give you one guess. Wrong. It’s not back up your data. The first thing you need to do is determine what data should be backed up and in what order it should be recovered. Let me guess: You think that all of your data should be backed up, because it’s all important, right? But, guess what, in the event of systemic data failure, treating all your data equally will hamstring your efforts to restore your systems and get your business up and running in a timely manner.

Here is a disclaimer: This all depends on how much data you’re storing. If you’re an on-the-go entrepreneur working from a single laptop, you can quite easily back up all your data. Most businesses, however, should prioritize data in their data backup and recovery planning.

Now, let’s say you’ve culled the critical data from the noncritical data (I’ll explain what this means and how to do this this in greater detail in my next post, “The 10 Percent Rule.”) Now what do you do? You back up your data, which, of course, is at the crux of what this entire series is all about. Over the course of the series, I’ll provide you with practical tips on how to back up, I’ll troubleshoot specific problems and I’ll offer case studies, but the underlying credo will always be the same: Take an active role in safeguarding your data. It’s the lifeblood of any business.

Backing up is not a one-time deal. It’s a consistent, interactive effort, whereby you test elements and adjust according to results. It may sound like a lot of work, but you’ll thank me in the end. After all, 100 percent of businesses experience some form of data failure at one point or another. Will you be prepared when it happens to you?

Protecting Your Data: An Introduction

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The Data, the Magic and the Words

Aug 22nd

We tell a story in everything that we do. For example, our checkbooks tell the story of how and where we spend our time. Do you frequent the same local restaurant every Friday night?

Your paper trail tells a story if you know how to read it. It’s no different in business. Your potential and current clients are telling you a story in the data that you collect on them. But do you know how to read it and what to do with what you see?

What does the data say?

In “How to Use Client Data to Attain Your Goals,” John Mariotti mentions “the four formulas to capitalize on knowledge” including the power of organized data. John says that it’s important to “organize [data] in ways that direct decision-making.”

The raw data that you collect isn’t the same thing as information. If you neglect to turn the numbers into something that you understand, you can’t develop strategy from it. Besides, it’s the lessons from the data that makes it relevant, not the data itself.

At least that’s how I see it.

What do your clients want?

Magic is the power of apparently influencing the course of events by using mysterious or supernatural forces. In business, the magic seems to come when you understand what your clients want and how to give it to them in a meaningful way. This can seem mysterious to some who don’t know what to do with the data they have. And it’s untouchable to others who ignore the research altogether.

In “How to Use Market Research to Develop Customer-Centered Offerings,” Ivana Taylor gives a different take on the use of surveys as a form of market research. She gives five tips on “how to turn your customer list into a valuable asset.” These tips will work if we work them, but the truth is the average small business owner tends to burn out when it comes to collecting data so that they can measure their impact and plan their futures. In fact, it’s common for small business owners to “shoot from the hip” and see what works—but that type of “research” doesn’t always work out.

If the goal is a better solution for our clients, then research is the beginning. But the magic is in how we use what we learn. Market research takes effort, but it matters. In fact, Ivana says “market research…gets customers involved in designing their own product and service experience.” And giving people what they really want is good for business. But you can’t know the market’s demand without doing the research.

What do you need to say?

Once you know what the data says and what your (potential) clients want, it’s up to you to communicate a message that connects and draws them in. In “The 3 Rules of Crafting an Effective Sales Letter,” Diane Helbig breaks down “the three rules of content.” She says, “An effective sales letter is designed to help you get an appointment, an opportunity to engage the prospect in a conversation about their business and their needs.”

The sales letter (and Diane gives some great and practical advice) works well for service-based companies including writers, speakers and all kinds of consultants. But it also works for product-based companies that intend to:

sell in bulk or
become a supplier at a new event or
form a partnership with a complementing but a noncompeting product.

At the end of the day, once you know what your public wants, it still boils down to what you say and how you say it. The right words can bring paying clients. Put the data and the words together–and magic results.