It’s hard to change people’s orientation to think strategically, to define a plan with measurable objectives, then implement tactics and analyze the results. To help, I’ve been increasingly referring to a more holistic approach to digital marketing as a “digital ecosystem.” I think the analogy is fit. Here’s why.

In an ecosystem, nothing survives and thrives in isolation. Lions can only be king if they can eat smaller mammals that in turn eat vegetation. And that’s a gross oversimplification, as ecological networks are extremely complex (lions, after all, can also be eaten by vultures when they die).

Digital marketing is similarly complex. Search marketing may drive customers to a landing page where they complete an order. But if those customers have been exposed to a display ad in a premium environment, they will be far more likely to convert, thereby driving down your cost of acquisition. And if your website has a high search ranking, because you filled it with great content, your quality score will be higher, and therefore your cost per click (and, again, cost per acquisition) will be lower still.

I could go on, but I think you get the point: too many people pick a pet tactic and obsess over it. But digital marketing isn’t about having lots of pets in cages. It’s about cultivating an ecosystem of tactics united by a common strategy that delivers measurable results.

Image credit: fortherock

Here are a few reasons why, in my humble opinion, this is probably a bad idea:

• It hasn’t worked. Bottom line: nobody has demonstrated that this approach is effective, including The New York Times, despite reportedly spending $40 million. Does that mean it can’t work? No, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be a surefire solution.
• News isn’t scarce. Throughout the interview (listen for yourself), Godfrey keeps trying to recast Postmedia content as “premium.” Maybe. But the reality is, likely 99% of what Postmedia publishes, either in summary or long form, is available through other sources, or will be soon after it’s published and bloggers pick it up. What might be truly unique are opinion pieces by columnists, since those are tied to specific personalities, and each personality is scarce, as each only exists one time. But as Financial Post reporters certainly know, scarce things are worth more.
• Mobile isn’t a justification for a paywall. Godfrey talks a lot in the interview about the cost of supporting multiple mobile devices where consumers want to find news, and how people need to pay for that. Yes, there are costs for developing native applications for, say BlackBerry, Android and iOS. But (a) these costs are certainly low compared to the costs of printing and delivering physical newspapers, and many newspapers are still free (think commuter papers), and (b) HTML5 will increasingly make native apps unnecessary, meaning one mobile site for all devices.
• Only the market can decide what’s worth paying for. In the interview, Godfrey essentially says that people need to pay for news because it’s expensive to create. Would we accept such arguments for any other consumer good? Nope. Maybe for public goods, like healthcare, for which we’re taxed. But in the world of consumer goods, people vote with their wallets. Online news is only worth what people are willing to pay, either with their money (through subscriptions, etc.) or their attention (through looking at ads).

Now, all of this isn’t to say I don’t sympathize with publishers. The world changed on them with the internet, and nobody has entirely figured out the appropriate response. But I’m pretty sure it’s not paywalls, at least not for commodity content like news. Rather, I see much greater possibility in niche-focused aggregation, curation and personalization combined with brand extension (think books and shows) and sponsorship models that work with rather than against information’s desire to be free, such as models that increase in value with aggregation and distribution.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I’d rather be wrong trying something innovative than something with as dismal a track record as paywalls.

Is this something people want? Well, Zite had 120,000 downloads in its first week. Compare: The first issue of Popular Science released on iPad had 18,000 downloads with help from Apple promotion; Wired (often considered a pioneer of iPad magazines) reportedly had about 62,400 downloads of its app as of June 2010. (Its newsstand sales at the time were estimated at about 82,357.) And if that weren’t evidence enough that Zite resonated with consumers, the legal attention it received from the biggest of publishers alone suggests something disruptive is afoot. (And for what it’s worth, since downloading Zite I use it pretty much every day and have stopped using RSS feeds entirely.)

If it were simply a matter of free content versus $5 content, this story wouldn’t be half as interesting. But dismissing Zite’s success as just a victory of free content over paid is as shortsighted and wrong as was doing so for Napster. What I think Zite shows is how consumers prefer to consume digital content—and how publishers may need to adapt to embrace and profit from the trends of aggregation, curation and personalization.

Three key trends

Before digging into digital publishing strategies that address the trends, let’s look at each in a bit more detail:

Aggregation alone is not new. Since the earliest RSS readers, its been clear that many consumers prefer to get their information from a single destination. (Hell, forget RSS readers. Newspapers have long aggregated content from multiple sources—Reuters, AP, other newspapers.) Most (arguably all) successful online services aggregate something: Google aggregates content and makes it searchable; Facebook aggregates your friends; Twitter aggregates real-time information. What does seem to be new, or at least increasing rapidly, is aggregation of more traditional media. Services like Rdio and Spotify aggregate songs. Services like Hulu, Netflix and Apple TV aggregate television shows. And services like Zite aggregate magazine and newspaper content (among other things).

Curation (at least, primarily human-powered curation) has long been considered an inferior approach to organizing all that aggregated content. The (more) algorithmic approach favored by companies like Google (with its PageRank search technology) has been preferred to the (more) manual approach favored by companies like Yahoo! (with its editor-curated directory). Algorithms won, right? Not so fast. Thanks in part to the rise of social media, and social ranking, human-powered curation has been outsourced to the crowd—and, importantly, your friends. And it turns out that your friends are harder to game, less likely to recommend spam, and more likely to know you well than many software algorithms. Hence services like Zite and Flipboard can use your social circle to curate piles of aggregated content and bring you more stuff of interest.

Personalization is one of those things every digital marketer (and many digital publishers) talk about, but few do well. Why? Because segmentation is hard work, and growing piles of data don’t make it easier without good (and often expensive) tools to help. (Example: It’s easier to segment a list of 10 email subscribers than 10,000.) Services like Pandora and tools like Facebook’s “Like” button have shown, however, that users will personalize themselves if you let them. Zite has taken that approach and applied it to magazine and newspaper content. And you can bet that personalized ads factor into their monetization strategy.

The result of these trends? Consumers get content aggregated into fewer and fewer outlets, and that content gets curated by the crowd and their social circle before being personalized by their implicit and explicit actions. It provides a better user experience, and the foundation for monetization by subscriptions (Rdio charges $4.99/month for unlimited songs on demand) and ads (Pandora reportedly made $90 million in the first quarter of 2011, and most users choose the free, ad-supported subscription).

Two paths for digital publishing

In the face of these trends, I see digital publishers choosing two broad approaches. Let’s call the first approach the Music Industry approach, since it’s reflective of how the industry went about fighting a similar battle for audio content: suing everyone, trying to convince the world that sharing files was equivalent to stealing cars, and generally fighting an increasingly futile battle against sweeping technological changes. The result? Tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, soon Google—are the dominant players in digital music, not the labels.

The second approach would, hopefully, be informed by this experience and embrace rather than fight the trends of aggregation, curation and personalization. At the very least, it would be open to experimentation with new models for publishing. What might such an approach look like? Here are some early thoughts:

• Work with (or become) the aggregators and personalizers. Sure, Zite strips ads from some publishers’ content to provide a better user experience. But imagine if, instead of sending a cease and desist order, those publishers approached Zite to discuss new revenue opportunities. One that screams at me is creating the Pandora or Rdio of newspaper and magazine articles, in which the aggregator collects a monthly fee (say, $9.99) and distributes it to publishers who make their content available in a user-friendly format, perhaps on a per-access basis. Publishers with large catalogues might consider aggregating their own content in such a way, and offering a monthly subscription package that includes all their publications. I think the bottom line here is that individual publications are the music albums of the publishing world: many (albeit not all) users are more interested in downloading singles. In this case, that means they prefer personalized articles from many publications over a subscription to a single publication.
• Develop sponsorship opportunities that increase in value with distribution and aggregation. See, for example, Mashable, an absolute master of sponsored editorial. Many of Mashable’s articles carry integrated sponsorship messages above and below the editorial content. For example, the “Spark of Genius” series sponsored by Microsoft. When this content is distributed through RSS readers or aggregators like Zite, it can increase rather than decrease advertising revenue opportunities. The more readers the content gets, no matter whether it’s on Mashable’s website, in RSS readers, or on Zite, the better it is for the sponsor. When all of this is done in a way that respects editorial integrity, everyone wins: readers get useful content in a format of their choosing, publishers get wider distribution, and advertisers get more eyeballs.
• Add curation in niches requiring expertise. Sure, I’ll trust my friends’ recommendations for, say, a restaurant. And maybe a movie. But I wouldn’t trust most of their recommendations for medical treatment. As James Surowiecki and others have pointed out, the crowd is often wiser than the individual, but some things still require expertise. So despite the curation that increasingly arises from social signals, we’ll still turn to experts for niche information. The deeper the niche, the more we need an expert curator. Find niches in your publication’s subject area and experts to curate them. If there’s a market for the niche, you can own it.

What might a publication look like that worked with these trends? First, I think it would focus on a deep niche, sacrificing broad coverage for a razor focus. Second, I think it would find the top experts in that niche and give them the task of curating specific subjects. Third, I think it would find sponsors for each of those subjects and establish sponsorships based on a distribution rather than impression basis. Fourth, I think it would do everything possible to get its content distributed far and wide, including making that content available to services like Zite, and even giving it away free under a Creative Commons license.

That’s just a start, of course, and I’m by no means certain the model will work. But I’m pretty sure of one thing: fighting the trends, Music Industry style, will fail. And if you don’t believe it, ask yourself this: Would you rather by a month of unlimited songs on demand, from any artist, for $4.99 from Rdio, or a single album from a single artist from iTunes for twice that amount?

Adding extra data might seem daunting, but competitive intelligence analysis can be both cheap and easy if you use the right tools, and it’s an essential part of your online marketing strategy in an increasingly sophisticated digital marketplace.

What is competitive intelligence analysis?

In its simplest sense, competitive intelligence analysis is treating the web analytics data of your competition like it’s your own. And though it may be hard to imagine, much of the analytics data you use to optimize your own online efforts, from basic visitor counts to advanced engagement metrics, is available for your closest competitors, and most of it is completely free.

Why is it necessary?

Regardless of which analytics tool you use, traditional web analytics will always be a “silo,” meaning it exists in isolation. You might feel good about your online performance, and you might even see a steady increase every month. But until you understand how well your competitors are performing, as well as how they’re doing it and—most importantly—how it’s affecting you, you’ll never have a true sense of your online success and how it can be improved.

Where does the data come from?

Competitive intelligence data can come from any number of sources, including ISP providers (who maintain detailed records of every user’s online habits), opt-in panels (through which users agree to be monitored), toolbars (which keep tabs on unsuspecting searchers) and self-reported data (usually from sites that want their stats available to potential advertisers).

But no matter where your data comes from you should always be aware of two truths:

1. Every data source has sample biases. There’s no getting around them—all you can do is anticipate them and compare sources for the best picture possible.
2. No competitive intelligence data will ever be 100% accurate. And it doesn’t need to be. Your goal isn’t to pinpoint precise metrics—it’s simply to get a sense of how you hold up to the competition and what you can learn from their tactics.

Is a free tool enough?

If you’re working with a generous budget, you can’t go wrong with a paid tool like Hitwise or comScore, both of which offer incredibly deep competitive analytics insights. But for this post, we’ll look at mining some enterprise-level competitive intelligence using the following free tools, so you can focus your time and effort on analysis.

Alexa

Owned by Amazon, Alexa was one of the first big players in competitive intelligence. It collects data by encouraging users to download its toolbar and then capturing their data as they surf. Alexa is most famous for providing traffic-based website rankings, which were once an important consideration for advertisers deciding where to spend their budget. Think of Alexa as a popularity contest for websites.

Above is a simple example of what Alexa’s best known for. Search for stats on the Toronto Star website, and you’ll see that in terms of traffic, thestar.com generally ranks somewhere above 2,500.

That number is meaningless, of course, without context, so a ranking’s only real value lies in comparison. Throw the sites of The Globe and Mail (a competing Canadian newspaper at the national level) and the populist Toronto Sun into the mix, and you get a quick visual comparison of traffic to all three sites over the past three months.

When compared to The Globe and Mail, the Star’s site ranking suddenly doesn’t look so hot. And it would appear that no one in the digital department at either paper needs to worry about the Sun in the near future.

Alexa has taken steps to go beyond simple site rankings, and you can now access deeper insights, like a site’s percentage of search traffic, high-impact search queries, upstream and downstream visits, and even demographic information about visitors.

But as with any competitive intelligence tool—particularly the free ones—you have to consider the data’s source. And because Alexa’s data comes only from users who agree to download its toolbar, its measurements can be extremely skewed. The data also tends to be biased in favor of Windows and Internet Explorer users.

Overall, Alexa is a decent first step in comparing your site’s traffic to that of your competitors. But don’t expect any level precision, and don’t rely on it for deep analytics insights. The free tools discussed below will better serve those needs.

Compete

Whereas Alexa might be considered a dated tool with a suspect source of data, Compete is a hot up-and-comer with a lot to offer. It’s basically Alexa on steroids. And though its free version pales in comparison to the depth of insights its paid platform offers, its “hybrid” data, which comes from a wide range of both ISP providers and opt-in panels, is far more reliable.

Here’s a quick comparison of monthly visits between the Star, Globe and Mail, and Sun—this time using Compete’s free version.

The data doesn’t look too far off from Alexa’s website rankings, but switch to unique visitors, and you get a slightly different view of the Sun’s viability as an online competitor.

Compete also offers an overall rank metric, as well as deeper metrics, including page views, average stay, visits per person, pages per visit, attention and daily reach, which are available through its paid version.

So what’s the downside? Though it’s more accurate than Alexa and other sources, Compete’s free version is still extremely basic, and its measurements are always at least a month old. You also can’t dial down any deeper than three-month increments. And though the hybrid data allows for greater accuracy, it also means you never know exactly where the data is coming from, so you can’t anticipate and account for the sample biases that come with a particular source.

Google Trends for Websites

Though Google is a notorious data hoarder through its own widely used search and analytics platforms, it also collects third-party market research data and consumer opt-in panel data and makes much of it available through some incredibly powerful free tools, one of which is Google Trends for Websites.

Google Trends for Websites is an alternative to Compete that compares to Compete’s free version but still lacks the depth of insight of its paid version. Like Compete, Trends for Websites lets you compare your traffic to that of your competition, as shown below.

Even better, you can compare traffic trends across custom date ranges, including the last 30 days, and you can drill down to specific geographic regions to see who takes the cake in different areas.

But one of the biggest advantages of using Google Trends for Websites is the “Also visited” data, which lets you see which other sites your visitors are checking out, giving you a clear picture of who your true online competition is. Below, we can see that while the Star and Globe are often thought to be direct competitors in print, the Sun is actually a more proximate competitor in terms of online visitor behavior.

And the “Also searched for” data shows that, while some Star readers are also searching for “globe mail,” even more are searching for “toronto sun,” meaning the Sun is a bigger competitor in terms of brand-name search.

Google DoubleClick Ad Planner

Another powerful free tool from Google, DoubleClick Ad Planner aims to help online advertisers decide where their budget would best be spent. It offers basic traffic and daily unique visitor metrics similar to those found in Google Trends for Websites, but the real meat lies in its demographic and psychographic visitor data. Unfortunately, demographic data is currently available only in the States and the UK, but the graphs below show gender, education, age and income levels for US readers of the Star.

Psychographic data is available in Canada, however, and the following comparison shows the main interests of visitors to each site.

So if you were an advertiser looking to reach sports fans, the Sun might be a better bet. But if you were an online editor at the Star looking to steal Globe readers, you might think about increasing your business coverage. And, similarly, a digital marketer at the Star might run search campaigns aimed at upping the exposure of existing business coverage.

Google Insights for Search

So far, we’ve looked at competitive data for specific sites, but you should also go beyond measuring your competitors’ actual sites to get a sense of the larger search ecosystem. And the perfect competitive intelligence tool for this purpose is Google Insights for Search.

Above we see that, within Ontario, searches for the Star far exceed those for its competitors, and the Sun has outranked the globe in terms of brand-name searches for almost the entire past year.

When you dial down to “Regional interest,” however, you can see that the Globe has a tighter grip on Toronto than the Sun. And if the Star wants to increase its online readership throughout Ontario, it might do well to start with regionally targeted search-marketing campaigns for Barrie, Guelph, Burlington and St. Catharines, where the Globe is dominating the search market.

Another cool feature you’ll find in Insights for Search is the “Rising searches” data, which warns of up-and-coming competitors that your visitors are increasingly searching for. Based on the image above, it should be clear to anyone at the Star that they’re now competing not only in the print-to-online category but also with news outlets from other traditional media, as their visitors are also searching for online news from CNN and CBC.

Microsoft adCenter Labs

Not to be completely left in Google’s dust, Microsoft also offers some interesting competitive intelligence tools through its adCenter Labs. Perhaps the most useful tool, “Search Funnels,” lets you perform a basic search-funnel analysis on keywords related to your brand. Initially intended to be used as a keyword discovery tool (a purpose for which it’s still well suited), it also lets you learn what brands users search for before and after searching for your brand-related keywords.

Below we see that, according to Microsoft’s data, 13.52% of people who search for “torontosun” later query “torontostar” (as part of the clunky user experience, the two-word “toronto star” didn’t register), while only 5.72% of people who search for “globeandmail” do the same.

Similarly, we can see below that 15.16% of users who search for “torontostar” go on to search for “torontosun,” while “6.76% later search for “globeandmail.”

Since both the Star and Sun are Toronto-specific newspapers, the fact that they’re sharing searchers isn’t unexpected. But should the outgoing searches related to the Globe, National Post and CNN increase, the Star might consider ramping up its national and international coverage online in order to retain visitors.

The final analysis

If paid competitive intelligence tools aren’t in your budget, the free tools described above will put you on the path to some incredibly deep competitive analytics insights. But before you start spying, keep these five essential rules of competitive intelligence in mind:

• Go beyond rank: Tools like Alexa were once groundbreaking, but they’re now just a starting point. Don’t rest your site’s success on rank alone, and never consider rank in isolation. Its only use comes with comparison.
• Step outside of your silo: Monitoring your site’s web analytics isn’t even close to enough. The actions of your online competitors will always have drastic effects on your performance, and the only way to understand those effects is to analyze your competitors and respond accordingly.
• Beware of sample biases: Whether your competitive analytics tool uses data from ISP providers (Hitwise), opt-in panels (comScore) or toolbars (Alexa), there will always be a sample bias associated with the source. But by anticipating that bias, and by understanding that completely accurate competitive intelligence will never be possible, you’ll still get a useful picture of what’s working for your competitors and how it’s affecting you. You should also keep in mind that even hybrid data (Compete, Google and Microsoft tools) is flawed in that its inherent biases can’t be isolated.
• Surveil the search ecosystem: Tools like Google’s Trends for Websites and Insights for Search and Microsoft’s adCenter Labs Keyword Forecast and Search Funnels are valuable for so much more than keyword discovery. Use them to understand what your visitors are searching for and what other sites they’re visiting. If you’re like most businesses, you’ll be surprised to learn who your true competitors are on the web.

That’s it. You now have the tools and knowledge to start spying on your competitors with no investment beyond your own time and energy. And if you decide to purchase a paid tool in the future, your experience with free tools will help you understand exactly what metrics—and which data sources—offer the greatest return on investment.

He could see the opportunity to market online. It was 2003. Birenbaum had just become co-owner and director of Camp Walden, a successful and well-loved overnight camp founded in 1970. He knew the competition was weak on the web. There’s a myth in the summer camp industry, says Birenbaum, that “traditional” camps must be traditional in business as well, including with marketing. Camps would typically just put out a brochure with some images—maybe create a video with slides set to soft music—and ensure calls were greeted by a soothing female voice. That was camp marketing. Traditional.

“There was a disconnect for me,” says Birenbaum. He was watching innovation in every other industry, and personally using Google to research his consumer needs. “Why not camp?” he asked. So over the next few years, he built a website with a content management system (in an industry where online forms were, until recently, quite novel); registered on online directories; advertised through Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!; started using Flickr, YouTube and Facebook; and optimized for search rank. “I think we were using the term ‘SEO’ before anyone in camping,” he says.

And that’s about when we entered the picture. In 2008, I was visiting Birenbaum’s camp summer home, a gorgeous log cabin nestled in the woods near Bancroft, Ontario. Upon hearing about his digital marketing, I made what I thought a fairly innocuous comment: that I would rather have 100 visitors to my website and one customer than 1,000,000 visitors and no customers. “It was a paradigm shift,” he says. “I was completely focused on ranking.”

Ultimately, that shift led to the reconstruction of Walden’s digital marketing over two years, from unstructured play to an orchestrated system that’s produced over 1,055 online leads (as of May 12) in 2010 alone. “There’s no question that we are overwhelmed with a whole new volume of leads,” says Birenbaum. “We used to put ads in the paper and never get a call. The biggest problem now is just trying to keep up with these leads. But I’d rather have that problem than have nobody on the phone.”

Here’s how he developed such a desirable problem.

“We used to order enough brochures for 10 years”

It began with the mundane: an audit of Walden’s digital marketing. Whereas many camp directors avoided digital marketing, Birenbaum dove in and, to his credit, embraced it. But camp staff rosters typically don’t include business analysts. So Birenbaum’s enthusiasm meant a lot of marketing, but much unmeasured. After the paradigm shift, he worked with us to review his marketing spend, and to ensure that future spend would be measurable. Using Google Analytics (left) and, eventually, Salesforce, we determined where he got the best return on investment. This ultimately led to cancelling several online initiatives, including some camp directory listings that Walden’s web analytics suggested drove little engaged traffic.

With some detailed analysis in hand, Birenbaum could now organize Walden’s digital marketing strategically. This involved aligning tactics to a sales funnel—to generate awareness, heighten interest, encourage consideration, acquire campers, extend relationships, and encourage advocacy. For example, Walden had embraced SEO and earned a high search ranking. But its search results didn’t effectively funnel traffic to a conversion, such as submitting a request for a brochure. Also, most of Walden’s engaged organic search traffic came from brand-based searches for “camp walden.” That led us to recommend a more focused search marketing campaign driving traffic for relevant non-brand searches like “summer camp” to distinct, conversion-focused landing pages. (A service that, with Birenbaum’s encouragement, we packaged up into what we now call “Search + Convert.”)

Strategy planned, it was time to implement. Working backwards, Walden implemented Salesforce as an integrated customer relationship management system into which all leads were funnelled, and from which Birenbaum could send auto-response messages to ensure leads received prompt attention. With Salesforce in place, leads could be tracked back to their originating source, providing Walden with ongoing data on where to invest marketing dollars. The conversion-focused landing pages (sample at right) were written, designed and developed to address parents’ concerns and encourage those unaware of Walden’s existence to request an information package.

Then came the fun part: testing. From day one, Birenbaum has been a supporter of continuously testing and optimizing Walden’s digital marketing, with the goal of improving lead quantity and quality while reducing cost-per-lead. (A math whiz, he was on his way to medical school before falling in love with the world of camping.) In year one, Birenbaum worked with us to test 20 landing page variations and, of many things, learned that video of the camp was essential to success. Continuous testing would teach much that we might never suspect. For example, who would think that the ad headline “Summer Camp for Kids 7-16″ could so outperform the slightly less-specific variation “Summer Camps for Kids?” (Its click-through rate is 160% better, 1.88% to 1.18%.)

As with the meaningful results paradigm, the optimization paradigm has also changed Birenbaum’s overall business approach. He used to think that he could create the best camp experiences while sitting in a room with his staff and designing the “optimal” solution. Now he says, “Let’s test it and see.” For example, with sailing. “Why don’t you just try a bunch of things and then measure people’s ability to sail?” he asks. Such an attitude isn’t common in the world of traditional summer camps. “We used to order enough brochures for 10 years,” says Birenbaum. “We had a professional writer from the states come up to camp. He knew. He was an expert.”

“Marketing is a means, not an end”

Now, everything Walden does is colored by Birenbaum’s need for results and optimization. Which has made him a tough sell for magazine ad space. “I offer a deal,” he says. “Whatever they’re charging, I ask them to give it for free, but say I’ll pay double if the ad gets me one camper.” Typically—despite cost-per-click being an entrenched online formula, and cost-per-lead growing in acceptance—that’s a nonstarter. “They say, ‘Ha ha, you’re so funny. I can’t do that.’” Even though, Birenbaum says, they’ve just told him that he’ll get five campers because the ad has prominent placement, or will be in a publication with a huge subscriber base. “That’s part of the paradigm shift,” he says. “I used to think, ‘How many people read this?’ I would judge marketing opportunities based on things like appearance, subscriber base and competition.”

That’s not to say Birenbaum doesn’t still have his marketing challenges. The profile of leads they’re getting now is, by definition, quite different from those they get through other channels. “Our system is shocked a bit by the newness of the leads that are coming in,” he says. To address this, they’re trying to apply the testing philosophy to inbound phone conversations. To date, their overall approach seems to be working, with camp at nearly 90% capacity for 2010.

That’s made Birenbaum a believer and, dare I say, a bit of an evangelist. “I do give this advice often,” he says. “Would you rather have a million hits on your website or 10 strong leads?” His other advice? Try not to get distracted with things that appear to be strong marketing. “Focus on your goal,” he says. “Marketing is a means, not an end.” The “marketing is an end” myth, Birenbaum explains, is a belief that things like a high Google ranking or an attractive website are somehow important accomplishments. “This is an easy addiction that in this day and age business owners can get into,” he says. “The advice I have is to focus a lot of effort on marketing, but to recognize that it’s really only the means to help you build a relationship with your clients.”

Getting Things Done by David Allen.

If this surprises you, stop reading now.

If you think vacation reading should consist of Dan Brown and Maeve Binchy—well, we can’t help you.

But if the beach image doesn’t surprise you—if, like us, you think about business and technology and personal effectiveness all the time—then this post is for you.

With a slightly sympathetic nod to kill-joy high school teachers everywhere, we’ve put together a list of books we think you need to read this summer. We chose them because they’ve helped us become better digital marketers (although many of them aren’t actually about digital marketing at all).

Most are new favorites, but a couple are classics that we’ve been pushing on friends, family and clients for years.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

We’ve written and talked about this book so much that we’re continually surprised when people haven’t read it. Simply put, it’s a comprehensive look at the psychological factors that compel us all to act in certain ways—and if you’re in the business of trying to influence behavior yourself, it’s an absolutely invaluable resource.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath

Another book we endlessly and annoyingly press on everyone we meet, Made to Stick outlines what makes an idea “sticky”—that is, memorable to the point of becoming a virtually universal cultural reference. Heard the urban legend about the tarantula eggs in the gum? That’s a sticky idea—and by studying how other ideas have become sticky, Chip and Dan Heath show you the way to make your own efforts that much more memorable.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

A must-read if you want to understand the emerging digital economy and how to make money by giving stuff away. This book is foundational to understanding the web and e-business—as much if not more so than Anderson’s previous effort The Long Tail.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta

An in-depth account of Google that positions the company as the symbol and, in many ways, natural outgrowth of the internet’s impact on publishing and advertising. Media companies can blame Google for their declining revenue—but not only is that blame misplaced, it prevents them from understanding the internet’s disruptive potential and how it might be unleashed in future.

Crush It!: Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

If you’re like us, you’ve already built your career around something you’re truly passionate about. But if you haven’t, Gary Vaynerchuk shows how anyone can take their passion and turn it into a viable career. He also delivers both high-level and platform-specific strategy and analysis, allowing you to take advantage of the current business environment while preparing to succeed as it changes and evolves.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

The founders of 37 Signals write a no-nonsense rethinking of how to successfully start and run a business as well as an examination of the ways that new companies are disrupting traditional business practices and making an impact.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

Lanier presents a discussion of the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design, as well as a warning that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

This summary of the work of Amartya Sen, an Indian-born Nobel laureate, focuses on economic reasoning and the elements and measurement of human well-being.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial Systems—and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Sorkin offers a fly-on-the-wall account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting fallout.

There you have it—a list that will set you up nicely for a summer of good reading.

(Oh, and that guy reading Getting Things Done on the beach? I didn’t make that up. That was Simon last February on a beach in Cuba, the day before his wedding.)

Do you have any invaluable books you’d like to share? Leave a comment with your recommendations.

Trust me, I’m as skeptical as anyone when it comes to social media. But that makes me even more attuned to seeing it done right. And here, I also saw it done right before my eyes, as Cafe Novo is about 20 steps from where I live. When it began its metamorphosis from an abandoned restaurant, I saw the kraft paper signs on which Elizabeth and Sadie drew pictures and encouraged people to follow their story on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. And I did.

Since it opened, I’ve been a regular. So Elizabeth and Sadie were kind enough to endure me asking about their success. Just how did two women with—in their own words—”little to no”  digital marketing background use social media so effectively? Here’s what we can all learn from them:

Be passionate and personal

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this point: passion is infectious. In fact, I’d argue that passion is the most viral of all viral marketing. Elizabeth and Sadie exude passion, and the cafe reflects it. They serve organic and fair-trade drinks, and homemade baked goods, with an emphasis on vegan and gluten-free items. Why? Because it reflects their beliefs, with Sadie being a vegan and Elizabeth gluten-free. ”We want to keep it simple and make damn good coffee, tea and treats,” says Elizabeth. Their passion comes through in their tweets and blog posts. Takeaway: passion and personality matter. Not everyone will like the owners’ style. For those people, there’s a Tim Hortons or a Starbucks nearby. But people who resonate with Elizabeth and Sadie’s passion will be loyal customers.

Be engaging and interactive (online and off)

When Elizabeth (right) and Sadie (left)  found their cafe space and moved in, they covered the windows with kraft paper, wrote their names and a blurb about their favorite drinks, and encouraged people to follow them on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. Then they asked people questions—such as about their best and worst cafe experiences—and put their suggestions into practice. “Most effective was engaging people,” says Elizabeth, with tactics that also included giving away free samples, and alerting followers on Twitter and Facebook to those samples as well as freshly baked goods. (Example tweet: “SPECIAL TREAT ALERT !!!! Chocolate brownie truffles just put out – folks I’m ready to close the cafe and just eat these all afternoon they are so ridiculously good. Come get some!”) “If you think it’s too trivial to post about, it’s probably not,” says Elizabeth. “Also, most important, reply to people! If they comment, email you or otherwise engage you, talk back!” Takeaway: don’t lecture people; have a conversation.

Don’t worry about inexperience

Elizabeth and Sadie didn’t take courses in social media or read books on the subject. And they’re by no means technophiles (I endured Christmas music one morning as they’re apparently, and endearingly, more adept with Twitter than iTunes playlists). Elizabeth started the blog to keep her family in the loop, and was encouraged by a mommy-blogger cousin to get on Twitter.  ”She gave me the nudge to get Twitter going,” says Elizabeth, “telling me to just tweet what I was thinking, doing, etc., in regards to the cafe.” Sadie took charge of Facebook and ran with it. “Our only real plan was to keep everyone interested as much as possible by telling our story and keeping it personal,” says Elizabeth. Takeaway: just do it. Speed of implementation is important, and if you’re inept with the technology, be open and honest as it may actually endear you further to your audience. “Admitting you don’t know something and want others’ advice is a pretty great way to connect with people through social media that you wouldn’t otherwise have access too,” says Elizabeth. “And go all out! Be real, and people will appreciate it.”

Just one week in, that approach has already given Cafe Novo a massive following. ”For sure our opening was hugely impacted by what we’d been up to online ,” says Elizabeth. “One in three customers would come in saying, ‘I’ve been following your blog!’ or ‘I was the one who commented on your Facebook post about such and such!’”

And there’s no sign that initial success is wearing off.  ”So far today I’ve had three people come in and say, ‘I hear you have great muffins—any left?’” says Elizabeth. “All from two or three days of me posting on Facebook and Twitter what muffins are coming out of the oven in the mornings.”

Which reminds me: I’m hungry. Time to head for the cafe.

Images by Amanda Faig for BlogTO.com. Images published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 (Canada) license.

Unfortunately, creating UTM-coded links can be a pain. Google offers a URL builder to help, but it’s limited to one URL at a time. Sometimes you need to create batches of URLs. And sometimes you need to circulate those batches for review.

Having recently helped a client with that, I modified the spreadsheet we built for them and decided to make it available here. So if you need to create batches of UTM-coded URLs for Google Analytics:

Download this Excel spreadsheet: Google Analytics URL Builder for Multiple Links

Hospitals In-Common Laboratory (HICL) is a private, not-for-profit corporation that has worked in partnership with Ontario hospitals since 1967.

HICL is Canada’s largest and oldest provider of referred-out medical laboratory services, specializing in complex testing and providing support to academic and industry-sponsored clinical tests. Through its referral network, HICL provides more than 500 medical laboratory procedures.

HICL now occupies a market with stiff competition from for-profit labs such as Gamma Dynacare and Lifelabs. In order to differentiate itself from its competition online and appeal to prospective clients, HICL needed to address the following challenges:

• The website, while functional, was outdated and poorly organized, resulting in regular calls to customer service and obscuring HICL’s long-established credibility
• HICL’s function and its key benefits—experienced staff, leading-edge lab technology, high quality testing and commitment to patient safety—were not expressed clearly through the site design
• HICL’s non-profit status—its key differentiator—was poorly explained
• Without analytics installed on the site, HICL was unable to tell which parts of the website were performing well and which needed to be optimized

HICL Website Before Redesign

Solution

As the first phase in a multi-phase website overhaul project, HICL engaged us to undertake a basic site redesign and install Google Analytics. (Content optimization and other site improvements are to follow in future projects.)

Specifically, we:

• Conducted an audit of HICL’s website pages, reference manuals and online database
• Consulted with key stakeholders to determine priority information and frequently accessed documents
• Streamlined the site’s information architecture, making key information easier to find by combining pages into logical sections and highlighting more resources on first- and second-level pages
• Redesigned and updated the site design to reflect a warm, inviting and professional tone
• Installed Google Analytics to track key pages, database use and reference downloads
• Implemented a regular reporting/recommendation schedule to synthesize Google analytics data and provide strategic implementation suggestions

Results

Since engaging Commune in late 2009, the HICL website has undergone many upgrades.

HICL Website After Redesign

Specific results from these improvements include:

• Improved usability

  The new site features easier access to key company information and the potential to add increased website functionality in the future.

• Renewed focus on HICL’s test database

  This key tool for users (and an important selling point for prospective clients) has received increased attention, and plans are now underway to make it more user-friendly. Google Analytics data revealed that many users were receiving an “Unavailable” result when searching for tests, prompting HICL to work on improving its test search capabilities.

• A more contemporary design

  Colour schemes, typefaces and images were all updated, giving HICL a contemporary face that more closely mirrors industry norms.

• Greater understanding of visitor interaction with website

  The ability to track visitor behavior and performance of key pages—right down to the most searched-for lab tests—has given HICL data it can use to launch further improvements to its offering.

1. Improve one-to-many management of client analytics accounts. Google AdWords (in which we do search engine marketing management) makes it easy to manage multiple client accounts. Google Analytics, less so. What would be ideal is one master client-management account for which all associated users could manage all child accounts. Additionally, cross-account reporting could be enabled at the client-management account level.
2. Facilitate easier sharing of custom reports and advanced segments with all users of a profile. Currently, the only way to share custom reports and advanced segments is by sending other profile users a link, which they must click to install a custom report or segment into their Google Analytics instance. This becomes quite cumbersome when you have even a few reports, segments and users. What would be ideal is the ability to share reports and segments with all profile users the way you can share goals, filters and other profile-level configurations.
3. Allow an unlimited number of custom reports to have the same name. Granted, this might cause some problems under the current sharing model, but I find it frustrating that you can’t create a report with the same name, but different features, in multiple profiles. I understand some of the thinking here. A report called, say, “Top Content by Location” might apply in every profile. But once you start configuring reports around, say, goals, all bets are off unless two profiles have the same goals. For example, if a report shows “Top Content by Whitepaper Download,” and the download refers specifically to a goal 1 configured in the profile, then the report is useless in other profiles unless they also have a whitepaper download configured for the same goal. However, they might have a whitepaper download configured for goal 2. Yet under the current model, it wouldn’t be possible to name another custom report “Top Content by Whitepaper Download.”

I fear that this has now become a rant, largely because a tiny percentage of Google Analytics users will even understand what I’m talking about, and I haven’t quite provided the description or graphics necessary to broaden accessibility.

But the bottom line is this: if Google is serious about creating an ecosystem of analytics consultants (and it appears to be quite interested), we need more features to facilitate the kind of work that entails. Beginning with some improved sharing features.

Unless I’m completely off the mark here. Anyone have suggestions for addressing these challenges (besides, of course, lobbying Google)?