Josh Kenzer's Archive
May
29
While 2007 newspaper advertising revenue dropped 9.4% – the biggest plunge in 50 years (source), internet advertising gained an incredible 26% (source). The total revenue for newspapers still dwarfs internet ($42 billion compared to $21 billion) but with 25% gains year over year, it’s still a matter of time before internet catches up. How did other media types do?
- Cable advertising was up 11% (source)
- Local broadcast TV advertising was down 4.4% (source)
- Radio advertising was down 2% (source)
- Outdoor advertising was up 7% (source)
- Magazine advertising was up 6% (source)
More and more advertisers are migrating to the mediums that can target by niche. This is reflected in the growth of internet, cable, and magazine.
Posted in Advertising, Service Industry, Web & SEO
May
7
It’s darn near impossible to build a website today without needing to integrate it with some kind of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. From Siebel to Salesforce.com to custom in-house solutions, CRMs have migrated from enterprises down to businesses of all sizes. The website and the CRM system need to share critical pieces of data in order to allow customers to maintain their own profile, while also giving internal teams the ability to provide the best customer experience available.
Because Application Programming Interfaces (API) have become so prevalent, keeping these two parties talking is doable. An API is like providing software with a phone that can receive calls to tell software to exchange data or execute commands.
The problems with APIs is they usually just sit there waiting for someone to call. Just because two separate programs have phones doesn’t mean they can call each other. One program has to learn – or be programmed – to dial the other. It also needs to know what data and commands to send over the line in order to receive back the proper response. It’s one of natures most fundamental processes.
What this means to the business is you are going to be changing code on either a sophisticated web application, or on an even more complex CRM system. In turn, this means developer costs, quality control testing and potential bugs can be introduced into one or more of these systems. Think of it as, Websites are from Mars and CRM systems are from Venus.
Enter data replication. Think of data replication as software’s match making friend. Data replication has a little black book of phone numbers and the notes on how to speak the other’s language. However, in this relationship, data replication doesn’t just setup the call and walk away. No, he sticks around logging the results, interpreting the responses and making sure no fights break out over who said what or who’s not being attentive to the other’s needs.
Sure, now every time the two pieces of software need to get together, data replication has to be there…in the middle…on a schedule. Awkward. But neither party is trying to be changed. Neither has to bend to the will of the other. No compromises. And if anything does go wrong, everyone can look at data replication to see how, when and where.
Now for the cheesy classified ad for data replication services, “Sound like a relationship you looking to create? Visit our Data Replication Engine page to learn how data replication can get your software together.”
Posted in CRM, Email, Technology, Web & SEO
Apr
9
For all those waiting for a new version of the Quick Post Plugin, it’s coming. My plugin makes extensive use of the jQuery JavaScript library. With the release 2.5, Wordpress uses jQuery extensively. So I am rewriting my usage to use the packaged libraries, there by keeping the code cleaner and less redundant.
Plus, one of the most requested features is the ability to upload images. Since the new WP uses an instance of TinyMCE that supports media libraries, I’m hoping to use that code to simultaneously update TinyMCE and provide this much needed feature. Plus, I’d love to have the full screen mode in my plugin. So the new version of Quick Post will not be backwards compatible, sorry.
What all this means is a pretty extensive refactoring of code. I’m working on it, but it will take a little bit of time. Thanks for your patience.
Posted in Blog, Social, Web & SEO
Apr
2
In my roles with Twelve Horses over the last 8 years, I’ve been involved in a lot of client strategy meetings. These meetings are usually about achieving some specific goal online and the tactics and technologies we can use to make this a reality.
When I first started as a bright eyed ambitious developer in 2000, most of the time I was pushing hard on automating this or integrating that. Since the commercial web arguably started as a marketing endeavor, most these conversations ended with the VP or Director of marketing looking at me cross eyed as the talk turned back to target audiences, focus groups and the 4 P’s of marketing (In case you’re wondering: Product, Pricing, Promotion, and Placement). This wasn’t all bad since my degree was in advertising and this conversation came as natural as the technical ones.
In 2003, talk turned to outbound marketing via email. In the previous 3 years, the coolest apps we could get marketers to agree to fund were those around customer acquisition (read: can I have your email address please?). Now after a few years, they had CSVs, databases, and sometimes Outlook Address books full of customers’ and prospects’ email addresses. Outbound marketing became very hot.
By 2005, more and more savvy marketers were coming to us saying things like, “yeah but my contacts are stored over here” or “can you connect to our CRM?” Obviously, internal IT projects had been launched and marketers were now endowed with the secrets that player tracking systems in casinos had known for years. Information technology could store more valuable consumer information than just email addresses.
2006 was the first year customers started to ask us about search engine optimization (SEO) – prior to that, it had always been us bringing it up. For marketers, search engines dictated how successful you could be online.
2007 was all about blogging and social networking. Discussions like, “I want to have a two way dialog with my customers and prospects” or “I want to go to where they hang out online.” Also, these techniques didn’t hurt SEO either.
My prediction (and what I’ve seen in the first quarter) for 2008, VIDEO! Broadband now proliferates the homes the way you used to have to go to work to get. Video online is becoming more compelling than that found on your TV. Anyone can create and publish it, and it’s surprisingly engaging. Video use cases have just started to scratch the surface of what we’ll see by the end of this year.
I would love to hear how your experiences with the web have changed from the prospective of a web developer, marketing person, or innocent bystander. Please comment below. I’m sure you can fill in many changes I didn’t describe above.
-Josh
Posted in Blog, Current Affairs, Email, Marketing, Reno-Tahoe, Web & SEO
