Metrics are fast becoming the B2B marketers new best friend. As we begin to take on responsibility for more of the sale funnel and ultimately revenue generation, our reliance on metrics increases. We need to learn a new language – one based upon return on investment and productivity. With metrics we can show the value of marketing, effectively manage our marketing investments, and ensure we’re putting our budget dollars in the best places  to drive business.

Today, there are countless methods to measuring marketing. Unfortunately, not all metrics are created equal.  For example, if driving web traffic is one of your key goals, you may focus on low cost, high volume sources of traffic. However, the audience you’re drawing to your web site may not fit your target audience and do little to actually drive business.  So which metrics should you be tracking? And how do you leverage this data for the best insight?

Picking the right metrics matters. Here are twelve metrics that can help ensure you’re choosing the best marketing investments for your business:

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Tags: b2b marketing, Cisco, Cisco partner marketing, marketing measurement, marketing metrics, metrics

As a follow-up to my last blog post, here is the Reader’s Digest version of how to create social media engagement.

Each step is a word:

Listen • Integrate • Share • Talk • Enable Talk • Nurture • Evaluate • Refine

If you have paid close attention, you’ve probably discovered that the first letter of each word put together spell the word LISTENER. Makes it easy to remember, right? It all starts and ends with listening!

LISTEN

If you don’t do anything else, just listen. If you’re new to social media, listen first, engage next. If you’ve been doing social for a while, keep listening. Always! Not just during your launch period or around your event. Listening can help you get an outside perspective on your company. It can help you gain real-time unfiltered feedback, uncover issues, pain points and new opportunities. It can also be used to gain an edge on your competition, and can even help you avoid or minimize a crisis situation. Hint: Read More »

Tags: best practices, customer, engagement, engaging, facebook, how to, KPIs, Listening, measurement, measuring, metrics, partner, slideshare, social media, strategy, twitter, youtube

 Thinking about the intersection of the internet and the store, the mash-up of retail’s virtual and physical worlds.

 And wondering if something as out-of-sight as the industry’s performance metrics will get in the way of progress.

 When e-commerce entered retail life in the mid-1990s, it was understandably regarded as just another channel of distribution – indeed, as just one more store.   With this perspective, the key performance metric was (and generally remains to this day) site revenue.  Conversion, another key metric, was defined as site transactions as a percent of site visits.

 This still makes sense – but at a narrow, misleading level, because e-commerce no longer defines the connected world for retail. 

 In this age of Google and Facebook,  the primary value today of the Internet to the shopper – and to your brand – is less about transactions, and more about search.  On the PC, on the tablet, on the mobile devices, amidst the aisles.

 The Internet – and the search function of the ever-mobile Internet – is now the front door of the entire brand. 

 In this past January, according to comScore, Americans conducted 18.6 billion total search queries (roughly 11.9 billion on Google alone).  That’s 81 searches per month for every one of the 231 million  Americans said to be  accessing the Internet on a regular basis.  Last year, the search market grew by 12% – the sum of a 4% increase in searchers, and 8% growth in searches per person.

 According to comScore’s February 2011 study, 58% of US consumers begin their shopping journey with search.   According to the Pew Research Center’s 2010 research, a typical day finds 21% of American adults searching for product information – up from 15% just three years earlier.

 Given that online transactions total just 7% of US annual retail revenue, much of that online search opens the door to a store-based transaction.

 Which suggests a new set of metrics to complement the old. 

 Do the math.  

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Tags: e-commerce, metrics, multi-channel, retail, retailing

By Steven Shepard, Contributing Columnist

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about evolution. Not the Darwinian type, nor even the evolution of business (such a common theme today among business strategists), but rather about the evolution of the market — and most specifically about the changing demands of the market as its choices become richer and more varied in the face of remarkable technological change.

Since 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid into his lap, causing him to call out to his colleague, “Come here Watson, I need you,” thus starting the communications revolution that would change the world (Watson unexpectedly heard Bell’s voice through the speaker on the device they had invented), telephone companies have prided themselves on the quality of the service they have offered to their customers.

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Tags: churn rate, customer centricity, ICT, internet, metrics, QoE, QoS, Service Provider, vni

As social and digital media continue to become a bigger focus for teams at Cisco, having a way to measure the impact and success of these initiatives is more important than ever.

• What resonates with our customers?
• Are we meeting our goals for specific audiences?
• How can we better refine our strategy and tactics?

Having this information is crucial to making decisions about how our social media investment fits in to the overall marketing mix. Read More »

Tags: framework, measurement, metrics, social media, Social Media Strategy