Analysis / Tools & Techniques — No comments
06
Aug 10

SEM for Longer Time-to-Convert Businesses: How to Stop the Bleeding

I’m always surprised that you don’t see more direct marketers hired into Web analytics roles — they’re expert in a number of skills such as predictive modeling, experimental design, and statistical analysis that really turn the Web analytics role into a strategic source of business revenue. Along those lines, I wanted to give an example of how a tried-and-true direct marketing technique — using regression modeling to predict how likely each user is to convert — can allow media buyers and SEM managers to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to determine which campaigns are winners and campaigns are losers.

Companies rely on pay-per-click and online ad buys to drive growth.  While buying clicks is easy, ensuring that individual campaigns are profitable – before significant losses have been incurred – presents a host of challenges to media buyers.  Continue reading →

Career / Entrepreneurship — 3 comments
01
Jul 10

How Non-Compete Agreements Really Work

Part of the ritual of starting a new job is signing all the paperwork: the acceptance letter, I-9, W-4, insurance forms, direct deposit.

Oh, and the non-compete and confidentiality agreements.

When we accept an offer for a new job, signing a non-compete agreement as a condition of employment seems like a footnote at the end of a long chapter… something that surely we don’t need to actually read.  Non-competes are ubiquitous – and, we assume, mostly harmless.  However, these agreements are so common (and so one-sided) that I wanted to spend a few minutes describing how they really work in practice. Continue reading →

Analysis / Entrepreneurship / Online Dating / Social Scripts — No comments
02
Apr 10

A Rationalist Responds to Godin’s Blog Post “Are You Rational?”

In his recent post Are You Rational?, Seth Godin makes a broad argument that nobody is rational all the time (true enough): that some decisions fall squarely within the domain of  rational methods (e.g., analyzing your Adwords click-thru rate) while other things are best approached irrationally: falling in love, appreciating music or wine, or generating ideas for new businesses and startups.  He goes on to say that “irrational passion is the key change agent of our economy.”  Simply put, he proposes that there are entire domains of human endeavor  that are better managed  with the  “gut” — a common belief and arguably a staple of American culture itself.

A great professor once told me, “If a good essay is one that’s fun to argue with, yours is a great essay.”  It’s in this spirit that I can’t resist offering a counterpoint to Godin.  My argument: that passion and irrationality are two different things.  Passion has place, but the time when it was OK to “go with your gut” is well behind us. Continue reading →

Analysis / Tools & Techniques — 4 comments
04
Dec 09

How to identify real trends in user behavior

There is a perennial question in Web analytics:  “Are the numbers up?”

Certain web metrics can be highly variable on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.  Daily Unique Visitors (UVs) and Daily Visits are just two examples of metrics that can change dramatically from one day to the next.  These big swings in day-to-day numbers can make it difficult for managers to tell whether their KPIs are really trending up or down.

Continue reading →

Career / Entrepreneurship — No comments
05
Nov 09

How to use LinkedIn to get a job and get ahead

LinkedIn is not just Monster.com 2.0… it represents an entirely different way of thinking about and managing your career progression.

Many of us (most of us?) begin a job search reactively in response to something — maybe we didn’t get that promotion, the culture changed, we’re not getting the training or support we want, or one of a thousand other reasons. But most of us put off changing jobs or even careers until we’ve reached a very high point of frustration.

What LinkedIn does is this: Continue reading →

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