Recent Books like “Outliers” and “Talent is Overrated” have described a 10,000 hour path of deliberate practice before mastery can be achieved in any field. We will spend one of those hours expanding on the 3x3 framework from last year’s Hero Conference to show how it is actually a pattern of patterns. Through the lens of the 3x3 we will segment performance for the most important object types and prioritize opportunities for various optimization techniques beyond bidding. Together we can refine of our advertising and data storytelling skills faster than our competitors and win the race to marketing mastery.
Recent Books like “Outliers” and “Talent is Overrated” have described a 10,000 hour path of deliberate practice before mastery can be achieved in any field. We will spend one of those hours expanding on the 3x3 framework from last year’s Hero Conference to show how it is actually a pattern of patterns. Through the lens of the 3x3 we will segment performance for the most important object types and prioritize opportunities for various optimization techniques beyond bidding. Together we can refine of our advertising skills faster than our competitors and win the race to marketing mastery.Chris Haleua - @chrishaleua – Adobe Product ManagerAd Testing in a Multi-Device WorldYour ad testing strategies should grow more complex as your accounts mature and more variables, such as devices, enter into the equations. You will learn how to create, test, and optimize your ads across various devices. . This information can be used for accounts of any size to ensure that your marketing continues to improve through proper ad testing.Brad Geddes - @bgtheory - Founder - CertifiedKnowledgePerfecting Landing PagesLanding pages are a critical part of every marketer’s toolbox. In order to create highly effective landing pages, marketers must understand the 10 key elements in the anatomy of a landing page and the role they play as part of a greater conversion optimization framework. Conversion rate optimization pioneer and world renown expert Bryan Eisenberg will teach you all about the anatomy of a landing page, a landing page framework and review the tools available. Do you know the critical issues that make people convert? Ultimately, it's about more than changing color or layout on your web pages. Bryan will demonstrate proven methods that will make an impact and increase conversion rates.Bryan Eisenberg - @TheGrok - Speaker, Digital Marketing Expert - Eisenberg Holdings, LLCHeroic PPC Trends and Techniques for Marketers and Data GeeksTechnology is changing the way users interact and data is changing how marketers make decisions. In today’s digital age marketers need to re-think how they’re segmenting customers and actually using “big data”. Hear techniques, identify unique patterns, predict the future and walk away with tools to make smarter decisions tomorrow.John Gagnon - @jmgagnon - Bing Advertising Evangelist - Microsoft
Even though my message focuses on marketing mastery, I freely admit that I have much to learn before I could even think of such a blod claim. Despite the many experts in this room, I bet there are fewer than five true marketing masters here. This opportunity to speak here has strengthened my desire to keep pushing along the path to mastery. So many other conferences are full of speakers who are just trying to pad their ego or sell you something. Your tweets, questions, and comments have all proven your desire to learn. That is why I came to this conference. You are partially right, but I am especially anxious that I and hopefully some of you carry this same passion for improvement into our cubes when we don't have each other or even ppcchat and twitter to keep us motivated. Otherwise This conference is just a very expensive field trip. We have this same difficult test Every time we finish a really good book. When the author is no longer organizing our thoughts into neat little chapters how do we transform that time invested from mere entertainment to applied education. In a recent seminar unattended for product management, they emphasized the concept of day four even though the actual conference only lasted three days. They taught that day four had to be driven by a specific plan that could not be replaced by notes from those four days. In short, I am giving you permission to space out. We all do it anyway around this time in a soapbox sermon. I am just inviting you to start making a specific plan for applying what you learned yesterday. If my voice does not turn into the intelligible trombone voice of adults in Charlie Brown, I will share my plan to see if there is anything you want to copy. Use the polling technology from summits to make the keynotes at your conference more interactive almost like a choose your own adventure presentation. Use the questions from the Summit survey to identify what the sequencing emphasis of my presentation should be. Kick this off by saying the speaker advice for your conference included 80 tip to act like everyone in the audience had just dropped by your office to ask a question about advertising. Reflect back on the questions that actually have been asked at my cube recently and include Brenen Dykes question in preparation for shop.org where the statistics of ad testing were confusing and use that as a way to summarize every mono Mono icily post ever. Then focus on Camry Cowans questions to me from David right Nitschke's post about the appropriate number of keywords that should be in accounts and review the concept of the longtail versus the Whitetail. Continue to build on the 3 x 3 to see how Delta metrics could apply and how the framework could apply to analyzing audiences. Remind people how excited we used to be when we first started research mark by using the example of teaching a class at BYU for one day about search marketing and showing them how you could both perform very specific targeting while also getting very detailed feedback on how it performs and compare that to the way our channel is set up to provide feedback necessary for deliberate feedback better than any other channel. Show gratitude for the wisdom shared on PBS Chad official conversations or even conferences by using catchphrase have a question I got to wait for that then show the PBC chat archive stream caps and answer questions or make points through tweets through screenshot it from other people's check members. Maybe even display summaries of the last page in every chapter of Brad Gettys and Avinashkaushik a books. Throwing the joke that if you have to give a keynote and's musts dictates last-second ideas into your phone through voice transcription I've phones think that I finish Kaushik's box should be typed as having Oshkosh Xbox. Have a nice car six next books. Have a nice car six books. Have a nice Kaushik books. What is the name of the title was the greatest tweets you never retweeted. What if you broke up your presentation into four quarters of the football game with the halftime break and's short commercial breaks between the quarters. You could even have a countdown clock in scoreboard four points made by certain people in the audience that you owe for their wisdom. You could then treat the surveys and polls for topic sequence like offense event defensive coordinators calling downplays to the field. Explain you chose this format because like Ally you are a big Broncos fan and as far as you're concerned the Super Bowl never happen because when you got your butt kicked so that you passed out from pain this is just your chance to gauge last six for football until next week.
My First TweetsEnjoying working from home for a changeWriting my 50th text ad of the dayJust got certified as Google's newest advertising professionalFlying through the Google AdWords Learning CenterJust pulled my last all-nighter for schoolHopefully when I am a professional I'll stop procrastinatingGetting excited to start REAL LIFE with Omniture after graduationSitting in his last class...EVER!
Just like WalterRohrlStarting with 75k miles per yearRacing from 1968-1988
Survey of >1k marketers in North America
The world around is quickly becoming more complex We are uncertain what it means for our careers But we are up to the challenge In fact, many of us like the exciting dynamic nature of our industry We just need to help each other figure out how to keep learning
60% expect their role to change in the next year 40% want to reinvent themselves 14% know how to do that 30% are held back by personal skills 30% are held back by their organizations inability to adapt
Each year Adobe’s digital marketing index team does a report on “the best of the best”How do the top 20% of Adobe clients achieve better results?
We have done this report Year over Year so we can look at cohorts The best of the best from last year are not only getting better They are improving faster than anyone else We saw that there was a theme of maturity among these clients It is not just product expertise, or rockstar personnel, but also aligned process
Top advertising teams break down these capabilities into specific questions assess themselves regularly benchmark against competitors create a plan to improve fasterThis led to the Adobe Digital Marketing Assessment 40 questions built by the industry strategy team To help identify performance gapsover 500 companies have taken this over the past couple months we hope you give it a try as well will too
These themes either drive us or dive us nuts They either lift us or create drag
“In our account, 600k bids were changed in just 30 days. If we manually changed one bid per second it would have taken us weeks” iContext
Bi-directional integration for pulling Yandex data back into SiteCatalyst is targeted for February 2014
Combine manual and automated bid management to stay responsive and efficientFinally, remember to keep your hands on the wheel. Even though cruise control is a nice feature, it is up to you to decide whether locking it in at 80mph up a curvy canyon is a good idea.The concept of set it and forget it was from nineties infomercials. You are smarter than that.Let bid rules be an extension of your skills, not a replacement for them.Then you will be free to manually focus on the few keywords responsible for most of your performance.
As advertisers do we really have our hands on the wheel? No search marketer's road is as simple and straight as a drag strip Nobody leaves cruise control set at 72 through in a winding canyon road Nobody can turn on a bid rule and walk away claiming that our job is done
Think about what bidding really isYou are just striving to control your positionGoogle gives you a gas and brake pedalThis is the type of racing that my father-in-law Terry didShow picture of him in his drag race carThis is significantly different from the type of racing my dad didWinding roads and sharp turns at high speedsShow rally car driver's feet and hands
Benefit Beyond BiddingApply the 3 x 3 framework from keyword bidding to other objectsThe framework becomes a pattern of patternsDrift off into the bottom rightPlace another grid on the cornerThe Golden triangle the top left cornershows which object types can be most influenced by this optimization technique
Overcome Competition Between the Spaces 3x3 segments are actionable but widely knownNow we need to read between the lines in 3 main gapsDelta between last, first, and even conversion attribution and assistsMax CPC bid and actual average CPCheadroomTime frame comparison two weeksthree monthsYoYGive examples of the types of keywords the fall into each of those spacesThe reasons why their actionable
Automation is not auto pilotIt does not replace youIt amplifies and assists you
Similar analogies:http://brandandmarket.com/marketing-is-like-whats-your-analogy/http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/yet-another-seo-analogy.htmlhttp://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/seo-is-like-insert-analogy-here.phpBMW M5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDuxWGHA-Z4&feature=youtu.beGas of Tank:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQokzT-bNM&list=FLvW6YC2nYfKTPbo93iYHJ0Q&index=1&feature=plpp_video
Ads are where the rubber meets the road. When you explain your job to grandpa, you show him a SERP. Ads are they only things they see. Notice the tool is called AdLens (not bid lens or portfolio lens)
Environmental (External) High consequencesReal danger and risk is relativeThreats do not always need to focus on physical survivalMust be willing to take intellectual, social, creative, and emotional risks Athletes risk injury or even deathLovers risk humiliating rejectionArtists risk scornful criticismWe must be willing to look foolish and fail faster to learn faster
Psychological (Internal) Clear goals (S.M.A.R.T.)Focus more on the first word than the secondDo not let the gravity of the goal pull you out of the now (last second choke)Clear focus in the present moment is all you need to winBreak tasks into small partsBalanced stimulation instead of overbearing stressChallenging yet manageableImmediate feedback (USE THE CONCEPT OF "DELIBERATE PRACTICE" AS THE MAIN EXAMPLE FOR FEEDBACK AND CHALLENGE)Instant awareness of cause and effectImprove in real time according to obvious truthInstead of searching for clues in extraneous noiseAction athletes get this from the laws of physicsWe can do this by tightening feedback loopsForget quarterly reviews. Think daily reviewsOtherwise, even the best will get worse over timeExample: Surgeons are the only physicians that improve over timeBecause if they mess up on the table someone immediately diesSHOW A PICTURE OF THE GAME "OPERATION"Challenge / skills ratioThe most important internal triggerEngage attention by balancing difficulty with abilityOtherwise fear swamps the system or ease lulls us to sleepDan Pink's “Goldilocks tasks” are not too hard and not too easy "Flow Channel"Balanced midpoint between boredom and anxietyHard enough to stretch but not snapIf we have done it before, we can do it againWe are slightly interested but not riveted until uncertainty is introducedUncertainty of pushing our own limits is our rocket ride to focus on the nowThe Stress/ Performance Bell Curvehttp://www.forbes.com/sites/travisbradberry/2014/02/06/how-successful-people-stay-calm/
Creative (Purpose) Pattern recognition (EMPHASIZE THE 3x3 HERE) Linking new ideas togetherRisk-taking Courageously bringing new ideas into the world Think differently by approaching problems from new angles Make creativity a value that is protected and a virtue that is rewarded The greatest athletes aren’t interested only in the greatest risks Physical risks are a by-product of a much deeper desire to take creative risks Don’t be fooled by the danger In action sports, creativity is always the point
I hear and I forgetI see and I rememberI do and I understandAs analysts, we like to think decisions are rational and driven by logic. However, neuroscientists have shown that emotion actually drives decisions, not logic. If facts and data are insufficient on their own, how can we tap into the emotional side of the brain? Stories are the key. As human beings, we HEAR statistics, but we FEEL stories. When neuroscientists studied the brain, only two areas of the brain associated with hearing were activated by statistics or data. However, when someone was absorbed in a story, it activated more parts of the brain. They didn’t just hear, they felt. We need to insert more stories into our data presentations.
Austin is weird… and proud of it Hero Conference is different… and we love it So let’s take a different attitude for a momentI am going to take off my product manager / keynote speaker / big corporate mask Hopefully I can trade you my honesty for your trust Why are we really here?My company is a sponsor so some of you are wondering whether I am here to SELL or TEACH You have escaped your cubicle or basement office so some might assume you are here to REST or LEARN These are the same questions or agency clients and online customers silently ask themselves about us everydayFor an hour, let’s prove we are here to teach each other and learn from each other IF YOU REALLY MEAN THIS, YOU WILL NEED TO ALLOW THEM TO TEACH YOU YOU COULD DO THIS THROUGH HAND-RAISING, TWITTER Q&A, or SUMMIT SURVEYSAs team mates, we could admit to each other that our world sometimes feels like a race If you were a friend stopping by my desk we could confess that we are lose that race when we try to keep up on our own The goal of this presentation is to help you win the race to marketing mastery by showing ways to build trust with 4 main groups
I hear and I forgetI see and I rememberI do and I understandAs analysts, we like to think decisions are rational and driven by logic. However, neuroscientists have shown that emotion actually drives decisions, not logic. If facts and data are insufficient on their own, how can we tap into the emotional side of the brain? Stories are the key. As human beings, we HEAR statistics, but we FEEL stories. When neuroscientists studied the brain, only two areas of the brain associated with hearing were activated by statistics or data. However, when someone was absorbed in a story, it activated more parts of the brain. They didn’t just hear, they felt. We need to insert more stories into our data presentations.
Stories help to make our analyses and insights more understandable, more engaging, more memorable, more persuasive, and more viral. This guy here with the double fist pump will take the story and share it with his entire team.
During today’s presentation, I’m going to dig a little deeper into why we need to use stories when sharing data. I’m then going to discuss how you can structure your data stories. Then I’m going to walk through some tips on how to use data visualizations effectively.
I like this quote from the author, Philip Pullman. I think we often underestimate how much stories are a part of our lives.
If you think about it, we are immersed in stories. We read them. We watch them on TV and at the theater. We become a part of the story in video games. We share stories at work with our colleagues, and we even teach our children using stories. When we go to sleep, our brains stays up all night telling itself more stories. Even when we’re awake, we daydream and ponder more stories. We’re truly wired for stories.
When we lead with facts and data, our audience’s shields come up like in Star Trek. They are critical and skeptical like my experience as an intern.
However, when data points are packaged up within a story, something interesting happens. Our shields or intellectual guard comes down. Our audience becomes absorbed in the story and they enter a storylistening trance where they are less likely to nitpick on details. Stories represent a powerful, persuasive vehicle for transmitting ideas to our audiences.
There are three keys to data storytelling. First, you need data or insights. I’m going to assume everyone in the room knows how to analyze their data and find interesting data points. I’m going to focus on the narrative and visuals. When you have the right data, right narrative, and right visuals you have story power that will influence decisions and drive action.
Before I get into how you should structure your data stories, I want to cover five ways that you can derail your story power. First, you need to know your audience and what’s important to them. If you don’t know your audience you’re already in trouble.We need to remove analytics or statistical jargon that prevent our audience from fully understanding our key points. That means no R-squared or eVar references.We need to be selective about what we share. We often provide too much detail for two reasons. First, we often feel obligated to substantiate or defend every insight. While we should be prepared to answer questions, most audiences are going to trust our expertise. Second, we feel a need to explain our analysis process or steps. Most audiences won’t care about what process we went through to arrive at our conclusions. As data experts, we can also make the mistake of leaving out valuable context. It can be difficult for us to NOT KNOW what we know. It’s the curse of knowledge. Our audience hasn’t examined the data forwards and backwards like we have, and they may not draw the same conclusions without the right context. In addition, we need to be careful we have all of the necessary context for our analysis. We don’t want the audience to surprise with a key piece of information we didn’t know about.Lastly, we can spend too much time presenting our ideas and not allow adequate time for discussion. An analyst I knew delivered a great presentation, but he didn’t budget any time for discussion among the key stakeholders when he was done. To his dismay, he watched all of the hard-to-schedule executives leave the meeting without any discussion on what to do next. Opportunity missed. Don’t go overboard with substantiating everything or explaining your analytical process or steps (showing your work)
We have a number of different types of stories at our disposal. You are the director of your data story. You control the camera angles and the content of your narrative. You could chose to share a relevant anecdote from personal experience. Stories can also come from historical figures, current events, or pop culture. These stories are non-fiction or based on real experiences. You could also use tales such as fables, parables, urban legends, film, and literature. These stories are fictional. Alternatively, you can also use analogies and metaphors like what I’ve done here with this director analogy.You don’t need to come up with overly complex stories. Sometimes all you may need is a single word, short phrase, or sentence. Many words, names, or places are loaded with meaning already. Let’s try this out – Enron, Edward Snowden, tiger blood.
Once you have your data and aha moment, you need to figure out an appropriate story angle. I thought it would be helpful to run through some simple examples. You discover an issue isn’t as serious as everyone initially thought. Your company is crying about spilt milk, and there are more serious problems to address.A favorable strategic partnership is coming to an end, and your forecast data indicates the picnic will be over.While a lot of effort has gone into building a successful marketing program, you’ve discovered a fundamental problem with how offers are created. There’s a crack in the foundation that needs to be fixed. You reflect fondly on your old tape cassette mixes, but acknowledge digital playlists are much better. It’s time to upgrade your outdated, home-grown CMS system.Your company has reached a crossroad with its mobile marketing efforts. Do we invest in native apps or not? Each will take us down a very different path.You’ve discovered a hiccup between steps in your firm’s online application process. You share how a triathlete needs to make a smooth transition between stages to be successful.A new competitor has emerged or a broken process is getting in the way of your success. You need to rally around defeating the villain. Finally, your digital marketing team has made significant improvements. However, there are still some more things to do in order to achieve the annual targets. It’s time to reach higher. These are only a handful of examples to demonstrate what’s possible. The more personal or unexpected your stories are, the more memorable they will be.
Data is cold, distant, and impersonal. We need to find the faces behind the numbers.
We need to humanize our data so our audience can relate to it. Characters are an essential element of stories. The question is who is your data story’s hero?
Because we focus on marketing data, we have a distinct advantage over business analysts who analyze data for manufacturing, operations, or other backend systems. Our data measures the behaviors and attitudes of real people. We have lots of heroes hiding in our digital data. We just need to bring them to life. I’d like to share some tips on how you do this.
The first step is to identify where your analysis intersects with a certain set of people. What pool, group, or segment of people are you focusing on? Are they mobile app users? Are they first-time visitors to your website? Are they loyal customers?Next, you need to determine which customer traits are important to your message. Some details are essential to your message. For example, when they came to the site, what content they consumed, where they’re from, what they purchased, and what preferences they have. It’s important to note some details are not essential to your message but will be important to creating a memorable character. Once you have an approximate profile of your character, you search for stock photos that can bring that character to life by giving them a face. In some cases, you might need more than one image of a character. As you can see here, I have a number of photos of the same model. Using these photos I can introduce the character, show his frustration, how he’s perplexed, and show how he likes the new solution.After finding the right image, you can build out a persona for your hero that will enable you to create a richer story. In addition to your digital analytics data, I’d recommend drawing upon qualitative sources such as surveys and social data to create a more engaging persona. Now you want to put your audience in the shoes of your hero. Walk them through the online journey that your customers experience. While pathing flow reports can be helpful, I’d recommend using screenshots of actual web pages or app states. The digital content should be familiar to your audience, but experiencing it through the eyes of a customer or visitor will be eye opening for them.
I’m going to run through six tips for creating better data visualizations. First you need the right dataThen you choose the right visualization(s)You then calibrate visuals to your message, which can be the tricky partNext you remove unnecessary noise from your visualizationsHighlight what’s important in your chartsLastly, make it as easy as possible to consume your data visualizations
In this chart, I’m showing how both revenue and visits are rising. However, I want to highlight the fact that there’s a discrepancy between the growth rates of the two metrics. Visits are outpacing revenue growth. It’s hard to see in this visualization because I don’t have the right data to show the relationship.
However, once you bring in the right metric—revenue per visit—your audience quickly sees what’s going on. You also need to anticipate what context your audience will need to fully understand what’s happening. In this case, it could be a year-over-year or cross-BU data for the same metric.
In the mid-eighties, a study was done to evaluate people’s perception of different graphical methods. Some were more effective for accurate comparisons and while others were only useful for generic comparisons. The most effective graphical methods for accurate comparisons were 2D bar charts or dot plots that shared the same scale. Even if the scales weren’t aligned, they were still more effective than other graphical approaches. These graphical methods were followed by length, direction, angle, area, volume, curvature, shading, and color hue. If we look at pie charts which are a mix of angle and area, we now understand why they aren’t that useful for comparisons.
If I asked you to tell me which social network is bigger, what would you guess? It’s funny how we need to percentages to help the chart communicate more effectively. However, if we look at a bar chart without percentages, we can quickly discern which social network is larger. We simply add the percentages to tell an even clearer story.
Let me use a recent example where I was at a presentation given by a market research company. The presenter shared data on how users’ preferences for accessing web content was shifting. Each slide revealed the relative shares of each major device type during the past three years and then disappeared. When I got to the last slide, I could compare across the different devices in the most recent year, but I couldn’t look back across the years to see how individual device shares evolved over time.
I wished I could have viewed the individual device types this way so I could see the changes across the years. Make sure your visualizations are calibrated to your message. You don’t want to give your audience the right data but the wrong slice or view of it.
Often people want to trend more than one item on a line chart. It becomes hard to pinpoint what’s going on with a particular item. As a general rule of thumb, you should use no more than four lines or use a panel chart
If you eliminate the noise and focus on only four lines, it’s easier for the audience to see the dip in Article B.
Alternatively, you could use a panel chart to compare the different articles and more easily spot similarities or differences.
Despite their deficiencies, pie and donut charts aren’t going away. When you use them, you should remove the noise from them. A rule of thumb is to use no more than five slices. In this case, I’ve combined the bottom six products into an aggregated slice, which I can breakout if needed.
Using color I can highlight a particular data point. If both visualizations are about the same item, then I should use the same color. As rule of thumb I should use color changes strategically to signify changes in the information.
By default, Excel is always going to give you a legend. Whenever possible you should try to use direct labels. It removes the need to look back-and-forth between the items and the legend.
Breaking up tables and horizontal bar charts with horizontal lines between sets of 3-5 items helps users to more easily read and interpret the data. Finally, use descriptive titles rather than generic labels. I could have named this chart, “Countries by average time spent.” Instead I decided to describe what’s really important about the chart.
Data visualizations should never force an audience to memorize, organize, or calculate numbers in their heads. Our job as data storytellers is to provide everything they need to discover the insights on their own or pan for their own gold.
Does every data insight need to be packaged up with a story? No. If it’s low value in nature or it’s an expected or simple insight, you won’t need to formulate a story. However, if it’s high value and potentially disruptive or complex, then you’re entering the story zone. Not surprising, my Lands’ End insight fell into this region. Because I didn’t properly prepare and package up the insight in a story, I got the reaction I got from the VP. Learn from my experience, and be a better data storyteller.
How will you change your performance by planning your people, process, and productAccording to the lessons you have learned at HeroConf?Expand the 3x3 to other objectsPerformance segmentation on adsPrioritization of query mining opportunitiesPreparation for GSC & RLSA migrations