For local digital marketing enthusiasts in the BTV area, join me at the ThoughtFaucet headquarters on Wednesday, December 12th for Web Analytics Wednesday where @tylermachado will be presenting on MailChimp. This is not exclusively for a data crowd, but for anyone who wants to talk about marketing challenges with a network of smart people. These meetups are where I get a lot of my inspiration from. I hope to see you there!

I took my list to the mall on Saturday (to avoid the Friday crowd) and in the first store I went to I wasn’t able to find any of the items on my list. Where is the search bar in this store that tells me where to find these items?! A clerk told me that they did not have the inventory in the store which I had found online. In another store, I had found what I was looking for but I was surprised to see that the deal which was active online (Buy One Get One 50% Off) wasn’t anywhere to be found in the store.

I went home empty handed and did what I should’ve done in the first place: bought online. I don’t understand how Black Friday could possibly still be as big of an event as it has been with the convenience of e-commerce.

Update: After I published this post, I had called one of the stores I had purchased online with since I missed their promotional offer when I placed the order and forgot that I had a $10 discount. They didn’t ask for the discount code (so I could use it again) and my total order ended up being half, still eligible for free shipping from only a 5 minute call.

This isn’t a slam on all retail business, as I had an entirely different experience shopping with small local businesses  at the Shirt Factory Open House in Glens Falls, and in Burlington on Small Business Saturday. All the local vendors made the experience personable by greeting me, helping me find what I was looking for, and even letting me sample the products! I had posted on the Facebook page of one of the businesses asking for their store hours and received a prompt reply. Later, when I went to the store, they recognized my name, thanked me for liking their Facebook page, and even gave me a 15% discount!

In the future, I will only be shopping online for the convenience and local for the experience.

I stuffed all of the clothes in a trash bag because my first instinct was to throw it away so I didn’t have to deal with it. Instead wanted to recycle and give to others in need.

My first stop at a consignment shop which was fairly painless, it was a trendy place only looking for very specific things so they told me within seconds that they would give me $3 for a shirt. Without hesitation I said yes because I want to get rid of these clothes. I only wished that they would’ve taken more.

My second stop consignment shop which was more invasive. It was a humiliating experience to watch her size up my clothes and put them into different piles: Yes, No, Maybe. I watched her put every bit of my clothing in the No or Maybe pile. My feelings were hurt, these are the clothes that I wore, they are almost a part of me in a way and she tore me apart by driving a hard bargain. She rejected a few clothes because they had some cat hair. I understand the argument that the owner wants to be able to sell it without having to do the work of cleaning it, but honestly these clothes would’ve been in the trash and I am helping your business out by donating clothes to you at a fraction of their actual cost, JUST TAKE IT. She suggested I clean one of the jackets and bring it back tomorrow. After I received $7 for 5 items of good quality clothes, that might’ve covered the gas of driving there, I was not planning to come back tomorrow or ever.

After 2 hours and 20 miles I received a combined total of $11 for 6 items of like new name brand clothing. I drove to Goodwill to donate the rest which I guessed about a $65 contribution that I could deduct on my taxes. Definitely a better deal.

I’m not writing this rant to tear down local businesses, recommending that people do not recycle or use consignment shops. This was a limited experience I had, but I will never sell to a consignment shop again. Don’t let greed run your business, because YOU will lose in the long run (because some weirdo will blog about it).

Communication between businesses and customers was struggling with the rise of the web and e-commerce. Digital Marketing Strategists countered this by becoming more “social” by interacting with customers through social media, but is it really conversing?

I think back to the days of when AOL/AIM was the only source of communication I had with my friends outside of school. I would have up to 10 Instant Message conversations open and I remember my parents asking, “how are you having all of these conversations at once?”  I might’ve been engaged in one, if any, of the conversations. It was more about being informed.

These days users are getting their information in multiple ways (Skype, G-Talk, Chat) from multiple channels (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus) and in many different forums (Websites, Search Engines). If you are starting a conversation with your customers what is making your conversation stand out from the other 10 conversations that they are having at any given moment?

Google Analytics has been a free service since it was acquired by Google in 2005. This is a powerful tool to analyze your website’s data and optimize. Since it is it a heavily supported program, at first it seemed strange that Google would provide this FREE service. One of the most important lessons in marketing (and in life) is that nothing is free.

It made sense that Google provided Analytics for free since it couples well as an incentive to use their fully integrated advertising AdWords program. With your permission you can allow Google access to your data which gives them more insight on the internet to optimize their top priority product — their search engine.

For people like me, Google Analytics and AdWords is what keeps us in business. It creates third-party jobs and has inspired online marketing enthusiasts to start community events like Web Analytics Wednesday to understand the product. It also has made it easier for small businesses and big businesses to compete in the same market.

I understand the benefits of providing a paid analytics program. For one, other competitors allow their users to own their data. It also brings in value for a product that has always been free for users. Another reason is that Google Analytics does not provide formal support without Google AdWords. Earlier this year, Google announced customer support on Google Analytics for their AdWords customers. So far, they haven’t said that will change, but I worry that it might int he future.

But the announcement of Google Analytics Premium makes me nervous. I fear that those that those who can’t afford the Google Analytics Premium will fall behind. I’m concerned that Google Analytics Premium users will have first access to beta testing and that the free version will not have as many supported features or be as much of a priority to fix issues. This could give bigger businesses that can afford the unpublished flat rate of $150,000 annually a much bigger advantage over free users. It may also drive companies to go directly to Google instead of hiring those with analytics expertise… like myself.

I am very anxious to see how Google Analytics Premium will change the online marketing community. And I fear that the community will soon be divided in two: Those that can afford and those that can’t.

But Google is a Search Engine. Why would they compete with Facebook, a social media website?
Google has grown exponentially in less than 10 years starting as a search engine. They have expanded their business from a search engine into creating a browser, mobile OS, e-mail and more since their start. They provide a lot of free tools to compliment their other products like Google Analytics. This data tracks any user’s interaction with a website. Google is no longer just a search engine, they are in the data business. Google is a billion dollar company that makes a majority of their revenue from AdWords which is an advertising solution for businesses. They have created an advertising platform that has revolutionized the world of marketing and created jobs for marketeers like myself.

Facebook provides more personalized data; an opt-in of who you are and what you like. To tie in that type of information to your search history can provide more information about you, giving context and feedback to their search results for their customers (advertisers). Google released Google Plus in late June for beta testing and grew rapidly.

Although being one of those unique visitors in the beta testing, I saw all of the same posts:

When will everyone make the transition to Google Plus?

Remember Friendster? Not many people do, but it was one of the first popular social networking sites in 2002. MySpace launched shortly after (2004) where it grew more of a following including the users that transitioned from Friendster. A few years later Facebook was launched exclusively to certain universities (2004) and then eventually was rolled out to the public (2006). MySpace users became Facebook users.

In my opinion MySpace users transitioned to Facebook for a couple of reasons but the most important was that MySpace didn’t listen to their customers. They allowed music on user profiles that automatically played, so that anyone browsing had to frantically lower the volume if they were somewhere (like at work) where they didn’t want folks to know what they were viewing. Their advertisements were overbearing and they kept making changes to make the website “better” but in fact were changing the order of how their users interacted and used the social site.

Social Media can be exhausting! It’s inconvenient to check two places so eventually one Social Media site ends up “winning” the market share. Facebook launched a simpler way of sharing with friends and introduced a new way to interact with each other by providing tagging with photos. Facebook did something that noother Social Media sites were able to do. It was able to grow enough that everyone and their mother grandmother was on Facebook!

Google Plus offers more privacy on what we share (which is ironic since they are in the data business), the appeal to have all of your data in one place and refining search results on social media. Since, Facebook has made some changes to compete like adding social to their partnered search engine, Microsoft’s Bing. Google Plus may have introduced neat new features but overall it didn’t revolutionize anything. Every business needs to innovate and evolve to survive but it has to pay attention to the user/customer. In general, people do not enjoy change. I believe Facebook can keep the market share but they have to be much more careful than Google Plus right now with the features that they release to compete.

As we have learned from the short history of Social Media, that only happens when the previous platform makes the mistake of changing their UX (user experience) without listening to their customers. In general, I  Facebook (sorry I had to), but I have been disappointed with Facebook’s customer support and way of receiving feedback. I remember when Facebook had launched a major new change and there were Facebook groups popping up of users saying “bring old Facebook back!”, their help center and help discussions were rarely answered by qualified officials and when I finally found a number for Facebook I was redirected back to the help center. Out of curiosity to prove that, I called that number again today and got an option to connect with customer service. I have to say that I am impressed to see that they are improving in the right direction.

That is my long answer to my few friends (or is it circles?) on Google Plus. The short answer is that people make up Social Networking. If Facebook wants to stay in the game, they have to listen.

I have been attending Web Analytics Wednesday that occurs monthly for over a year now. It’s a great networking event and a time to discuss the industry with other online marketing professionals. There should be free drinks and snacks so please come and stop by after 6:30PM.

More details can be found here. Hope to see you there!

1. As a tool, which Google provides an abundance of resources at their Conversion University, and
2. How to interpret data.

To summarize:

After a month went by, I still had the impression that I needed to have a new shower head whether or not it’d be a magic one. I went to Lowes and looking at the multiple options for shower heads I couldn’t make a decision. I didn’t recognize any brands so I thought I would buy a rainfall shower head since my sister owns one. I saw two others that were like a rainfall but also had a removable handheld shower head. I took pictures with my smartphone and sent them to my sister to what her opinion was. She didn’t know which one I should buy either and ended up leaving not completing the purchase.

Even though this is a product that will reside in my bathroom that no one will see except for me, I needed to make the most informed decision to buy the best one. I went home and looked for reviews, other customer’s experiences to see if these handhelds were reliable, easy to install and practical to use.

In this process I realized that I was practicing the new concepts of purchasing behavior, ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth) and PrE-Commerce. To summarize, this is that after the consumer has the stimulus to want to purchase a product that they want to be informed before making that purchase by checking reviews, reading blogs and doing research. Purchases are much more informed, and there is a lot of opportunity to sway the decision of the end result of the purchase.

So let’s go through the process again:

• Stimulus – The impression that I had from the Magic Shower Head in the SkyMall magazine made me interested in a shower head.
• Influence – The conversations I had with friends on Facebook made me want a shower head.
• Word of Mouth – Not having brand recognition, I changed my opinion to wanting something that my sister has.
• Influence – I took pictures with my phone and send them to my sister for her approval.
• Research – I went online to look at reviews and price comparisons.