Business intelligence (BI) is a system of goals, processes, and software applications that lead to better business decisions. Growing your business requires the development of a BI system that helps you manage and optimize organizational, departmental, and individual performances.
In the era of “big data“, business are generating loads of data. Attempting to sift through all this information and gain insight into your business performance can often lead to an overwhelming sense of confusion. A business that properly manages its data, however, can leverage this information glut into a powerful decision making tool. An important way to accomplish this goal is through business intelligence.
Remember that you cannot simply rely on a tool like Google Analytics to support your BI needs. Analytics should certainly make up a part of your overall BI structure. However, there are important pieces of information that analytics cannot provide. For those cases (which we demonstrate later in this post), you must incorporate a BI solution to drive improvements in your business.
Without a BI system, your business is like a jigsaw puzzle, only you don’t have the box with the full picture on it and you don’t know how many pieces are missing. If you are a high level decision maker, not having that big picture in place can have serious consequences. If your company is experiencing negative trends in any segment of the business, you want to be able to make quick, informed decisions that reverse those trends.
In order to make good decisions, you need consolidated, up to date data. Further, you want data that can be easily visualized without having to pore over hundreds of spreadsheets. A well thought out business intelligence strategy fulfills these needs.
Business requirements vs. IT requirements
Michael Smith is a member of the IBM Business Analytics market strategy team. During a Focus Event about business intelligence, he stated that one of the key questions to ask before implementing a BI solution is “What information do I need to make my business run better?” Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under business intelligence, E-commerce business strategy
There is an old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” As a vendor of digital content, are you fully engaged with the affiliate community and the opportunities it offers?
With an ever-growing menu of industry trade shows and conferences to choose from, it is difficult for vendors of digital content to choose the industry events that will add the most value to their business. From the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to the ad:tech convention in London, the options available to digital vendors seem endless.
One outstanding event that we recommend is the Affiliate Summit conference.
Affiliate Summit bills itself as “the premier affiliate marketing conference”, and with almost 4,000 attendees and 300+ exhibitors, it is hard to disagree. There is a winter event held in Las Vegas in January and a summer event held in New York City in August, so this conference offers people interested in affiliate marketing a great opportunity to discuss popular topics and exchange new ideas and strategies.
The summit agenda for Affiliate Summit East last month included 3 full days of educational sessions, exhibit halls, and evening events. Don’t discount the evening events. ShareASale sponsored an “Under the Stars Party Barn Dance” and there was also an “Affiliate Kareoke” event where people were able to let loose, be themselves and strengthen relationships in an informal setting.
As evidenced by the chart below, vendors, merchants, networks, and agencies are all in attendance, so nearly any business that sells products online can find value at this show.
Source: Affiliate Summit
Mark Nykoliuk is an Affiliate and Partner Manager at ZeoBIT, a company that develops professional software for Windows and Mac operating systems. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under affiliate summit, industry trade show, networking
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns have quickly become a preferred advertising strategy for companies across the world. Since you are paying for directed traffic, you need to carefully consider the content of the landing page linked to your PPC campaign. As providers of digital content, you can increase your PPC conversion rates by avoiding the following pitfalls when designing your landing pages:
Pitfall #1: Using Your Home Page As The Landing Page
Many new marketers simply send paid search traffic straight to the home page of their website. The problem with this practice is that it assumes your visitors will automatically know where to go to get what they are searching for. But when a searcher types a keyword or phrase into a search engine, they are looking for an immediate solution and people will bounce out of your site if they do not see that solution in less than three seconds. By directing them to your home page, you are wasting precious time in successfully converting a searcher into a buyer.
If you would like your prospects to remain on the landing page, the content needs to closely resemble the ad they clicked on. Not only will this increase the likelihood that the visitor will convert, but it will also increase your Google Quality Score. Google values relevance between the keyword, the ad and the landing page, and they will reward you with a lower cost-per-click (CPC).
Pitfall #2: Giving Your Visitor Too Many Choices
Minimize main navigation, footer links and other distractions on your landing page. Based on the keywords used in your PPC, you know exactly what the user is seeking; additional navigation can distract the visitor from your message.
In most cases, a PPC landing page shouldn’t have a link to your Facebook page. This is a great way to get visitors to login to Facebook to ‘like’ a video of kittens, but it will likely distract them from buying your product. After all, conversions are the ultimate goal of the PPC campaign. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under conversion optimization, landing page, PPC, sem
