Widget: What do you mean by that?

As widgets -- those little chunks of code that allow "page-within-a-page" interaction on a website -- become more popular on the web, I foresee confusion.

The word "widget" has always been used as a placeholder for a type of product in business textbooks and off-the-cuff examples. But now that it's being used as the name of an actual marketing tool, will textbook makers and business school professors stop using the word? A professor saying "Acme Corporation makes widgets" can now have a whole new meaning. Is the professor trying to say Acme is simply manufacturing a generic product that isn't relevant to the conversation at hand, or is Acme an online development firm that specializes in producing interactive bits of code?

Disorganized marketing data is as good as no data at all

As marketers, we play in big pools of data every day. We're renting lists, sorting and filtering databases of leads, and going through mounds of statistics to look for trends. That's great -- when the data is accurate, filtered and tagged properly, and the way it should be.

But do we take for granted that our data is good? This can be very dangerous. If you're renting a list and the list vendor hasn't done a good job of verifying the data and organizing it properly, you could end up reaching a lot of people you didn't want to reach.

Here's a great example. The other day I read a press release by Jigsaw, a site that's a cross between a list broker and a social network. (In case you're not familiar with Jigsaw, you can essentially buy, sell, and trade business contact information. It's billed as a great resource for sales professionals who need a constant stream of accurate leads.) Jigsaw's press release announced that it will begin providing all its company data -- company names, addresses, industry, number of employees, etc. -- for free. The hook, of course, is that you still need to pay for contact info for particular people within those companies. You can also license this data for use in your own applications, on your own website, etc.

This caught my eye because the media property I work for, IndustryWeek, is always looking for new ways to provide useful and relevant information to our manufacturing executive audience. I thought a licensing deal with Jigsaw might be worth looking into, if we could help connect manufacturing decision-makers with information about companies they need to know.

So I started digging deeper. I went to Jigsaw's Open Data Initiative pages, to a list of pre-defined filters they've already developed for the data. I was pleased to see a category and several sub-categories for manufacturing, which is exactly what I was looking for. So I decided to check it out. I clicked on the "Aerospace & Defense" sub-category, and the first few company names looked appealing. These all look like companies that are in the aerospace or defense business.

But then I scrolled down the page. I started noticing something disturbing. There were a lot of listings for martial arts studios. Wait a second: martial arts studios aren't manufacturers! It took a few seconds before I figured out what was happening. Their filter must be finding the word "defense" in the listings for karate studios, which of course is getting matched up with "aerospace and defense."

I thought maybe I just picked a fluke category, and most of the data here is good. So I tried the next sub-industry filter in the list, "Automobiles, Boats and Motor Vehicles." Again, the first few seemed good. But then I started seeing listings for "Funday Eco-Tours" and "Go Fish Charters." Again, these companies might be associated with boats, but they have nothing to do with manufacturing.

I'm saying this not to fault Jigsaw. I've played around with their site in the past, and I found it to be pretty good. The business model makes sense, although I can't say anything for the accuracy of the information because I've never checked it out personally. My larger point is that when you're given a data source, you should always ask questions like:

• How was this data collected?
• How were the filters/groupings/categories applied? For example, for a magazine circulation form, I'd ask if individual respondents put themselves into an industry grouping, if the publisher added the grouping based on the name of the company, or if it was done some other way.
• How fresh is the data?
• Was there any human intervention in the data collection process? In other words, did an expert review responses for plausibility? If it's numerical data, was it scrubbed to remove outliers?
  

As the world becomes more dependent on databases, we hear an increasing number of horror stories about data gone wrong (the TSA's "Do Not Fly" list comes to mind, where some people have been mistakenly placed on the list and go through a huge ordeal every time they need to board a plane). Don't let your marketing program become a victim of bad or improperly used data.

What's the best day and time for a webcast?

Here's an interesting question blogger Ken Molay is asking. What day of the week is best for a webcast? And what's the best time of day?

He's doing a survey to collect data, because as he notes, conducting tests on this sort of thing would be difficult. I completely agree that gathering hard data from tests would be tough, but I think most producers of frequent webcasts could get a pretty good hunch for which days and times pull well, just knowing some of the variables that are in play (like how popular the topic of each event is likely to be). On the survey front, I also worry about whether people's actions of actually attending webcasts at certain times will follow their responses, because quite often, what people *say* they'll do is quite different from what they actually do. But it should be an interesting survey nonetheless, and it's probably better than the hunches all webcast producers are operating on right now.

In July 2007, webcast vendor ON24 did an interesting study that looked at a lot of different data points with key webcast trends. They examined things like months of the year for webcasts, plus which days of the week are best for registration. But they didn't dive into the attendance question based on day of the week or time of day. (Here's a link to a press release about that ON24 report, with a contact name on how to request a copy of the PDF. I couldn't find a direct link to the report PDF anywhere, probably because ON24 wants your name first so they can sell you something. But hey, ON24 is the best webcast vendor out there as far as I'm concerned, so let them sell you!)

Here's my contribution to conventional wisdom on best times for a webcast...

Last October, IndustryWeek did 12 webcasts in two days. We called it the "Operational Excellence Online LIVE" web conference. Sessions started at 11am, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, and 4pm Eastern on each day (a Wednesday and Thursday). The target audience was manufacturing management. The majority of our audience is based in the Eastern and Central time zones, although there are still quite a few manufacturers in Mountain or Pacific. Overseas audience is generally around 5%.

Since there were lots of variables with these 12 sessions -- 12 different sets of speakers, 12 sponsors who did differing amounts of promotion for the event to their current customer/prospect base, 12 different topics of varying interest to the IndustryWeek audience -- it's hard to draw scientific conclusions. But in terms of attendee percentage, we can make some pretty good guesses.

We found that the first session (Wednesday at 11am ET) had the best attendance percentage. There were several others that had comparable numbers that were just shy of the first session's numbers, so I'm sure that's not statistically valid.

We also found that the 4pm session each day was by far the weakest in terms of attendee percentage compared to other sessions that day. This is despite the fact that both 4pm sessions had particularly good speakers and particularly interesting topics that are normally "hot button" sort of subjects for our audience. (We survey the audience after each session and ask them to rate each speaker, and out of 24 speakers for the 12 sessions, the speakers for the 4pm sessions were rated as the #1, #2, #4, and #8 presenters for the entire conference.) Good content, good speakers, poor turnout.

We had similar results for the 4pm sessions during our December 2006 multi-session online conference. Those two sessions underperformed from an attendance % standpoint as well.

As a result of these pretty convincing results, we've eliminated the 4pm time slot from future multi-session online conferences. We'll see how the numbers change in the future. Perhaps the 4pm time was too late for manufacturers, since a lot of manufacturing companies start and end their days earlier?

How much time do you spend fighting fires each day?

Today was a jam-packed day at the IW Best Plants Conference. (See yesterday's post for more). I heard a number of interesting presentations about how manufacturing companies can implement continuous improvement in their facilities. A lot of the challenges and solutions discussed today were of course specific to manufacturing, but there are some things that digital marketers can learn from too -- no matter what industry you're in.

During a session called "How to Create a Continuous Improvement Culture," David Rowland from Milliken & Company (one of the world's largest textile companies) talked about "firefighting" and how it's often a significant portion of an employee's day. How many "fires" are you putting out each day and how many crises are you solving, versus doing your normal job?

David said that the typical person in a typical company spends about 40% of their time on daily operations (the "normal" part of their job), and 60% trying to solve unexpected problems and put out various "fires." Milliken & Co. actually did a study a while back where it examined how its managers were using their time, and the numbers were amazingly close to this 40%/60% ratio.

However, he pointed out that the best companies -- like Toyota -- only spend 20% of their time on daily operations and 20% firefighting. So where do they spend the other 60%? Continuous improvement. They make their processes better. They find ways to reduce waste. They standardize routine decisions.

So how does this apply to online marketing? Well, just like the people in manufacturing operations, we can put processes into place that eliminate variability and waste. Whether it's a report your team puts together for management, a process for distributing leads to sales, etc., implement a plan to standardize these types of activities. As David said during his presentation, "People love their jobs when they need to make fewer decisions. They don't need to make many decisions when you have good processes in place."

But here's the tough part: no process is ever finished. Once you have the process in place, always look for ways to make it better, like Toyota does with its famed Toyota Production System in the manufacturing world.

As digital marketers, there are plenty of things we do that can't be standardized. But I think we underestimate the number of standard tasks we complete each day -- and you can apply continuous improvement principles to most of these. Standard practices will reduce the amount of time you spend "firefighting" and give you more time for the big, difficult, custom tasks you perform.

What marketers can learn by looking at a manufacturing plant

I'm at the IndustryWeek Best Plants Conference this week. More than 600 manufacturing leaders have gathered in Milwaukee to learn best practices from experts and their peers. Plant tours are one of the key components of the conference, so manufacturers can see other plants' operations and learn from them. Today I was the IW representative who captained the Miller brewing plant tour.

How much can an eMarketer learn from a manufacturing operation like Miller's? Two things came to mind as I went through the tour:

1. Digital marketers should follow the example of manufacturing companies that post their key metrics and list of improvement initiatives for all to see. On the Miller tour today, we went into the room where teams gather for 20 minutes before each shift starts. The front of the room is covered with at least three dozen graphs -- colorful, filled in with magic marker -- that show their key performance indicators and how each shift performed over the past month. They post info about productivity, safety, attendance, etc. There's also a couple whiteboards that enumerate specific tasks they need to undertake, maintenance issues that need to be addressed, and problems that need to be solved.
   
   We need to do the same thing as marketers. Too often we keep our numbers buried in a spreadsheet. Even if your metrics report gets emailed to the relevant people and they read it today, the numbers are quickly forgotten tomorrow. Try posting a board in a prominent place in your office that shows your key metrics and how you're performing against them. Reports and spreadsheets that aren't posted don't cut it...because they're too easy to hide and too easy to forget about.
   
   
2. You need to have a passion for what you do. We didn't get to see a ton of employees -- maybe a dozen over the course of the three and a half hour tour. But the employees we saw were obviously passionate about the 150 year tradition of Miller and its mission to produce great beer efficiently. I could see it in their eyes and I could hear it in their voices.
   
   When's the last time you felt passionate about an electronic marketing campaign? Sometimes we get caught up in the daily grind -- churning out one project after another -- that we forget what it's all about. I know I'm often guilty of that.
   
   Dig a little deeper. Make the extra effort. Spend the time to do a great job on the little details. Remember what attracted you to this business in the first place. And once you've finished -- when you've produced a campaign or materials that are really first rate -- kick back and crack open a cold one...just like they'd do at Miller.