The Underrated Role of Analytics in Dental and Medical Marketing

role of analytics in dental and medical marketing

Starting a new business can be incredibly difficult and this is especially true in the dental and medical fields where the competition is so intense. Providing great care for your patients is not the only thing that matters when you are trying to build a successful dental or medical practice. You could be the greatest doctor or dentist in the world and your practice will still fail if the general public does not know you exist.

Therefore, you must also you do everything in your power to promote your practice to let people know who you are and what you can offer them. You will be out of business quickly if you fail to do this. So what is the most effective way to market a new medical or dental practice online using the tools that are currently available? While there are several answers to this question, there is no doubt that analytics are an essential source of information to market your business. Let’s analyze the underrated role of analytics in dental and medical marketing.

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Who’s Looking at Your Product Page?

looking at product page

You could have the best product in the world but if no one is looking at it, what’s the point? This is a reality that you have to face if you want to make it as a business entrepreneur. Between brainstorming the product and actually creating it, it’s easy to forget that you actually need eyes on your product to sell it.

A lot of “marketing gurus” like to talk about the value of a press release, but is your new product really a hot news item? If you’re honest with yourself, the answer is most likely “no.” Not to worry! You can still drive traffic to your product with a small budget of time and money.

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Web Analytics that Stand Out from the Crowd

web analytics

Launched in August 2010 by Edo Cohen and Ran Margalist, Seevolution aims to provide single platofrm to manage your site’s real-time analytics, click maps, and eye tracking. While other web analytic shops focus on a specific feature (e.g. CrazyEgg only provides with heatmap-related features), the Los Angeles-based company aims to provide a one-stop solution so that you don’t have to any other site.

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iPerceptions: Internet Business Model Analysis

Welcome back, today we are analyzing the Internet Business Model from the leader in web attitudinal web analytics, the Canadian firm iPerceptions.

Here at idaconcpts, I have mentioned how their 4Q service can make the Internet a less scary place.

In this post I’m going to analyze iPerceptions Business Model.

Microsoft Word
First, a little bit about the company history of iPerceptions:

iPerceptions (TSX: IPE) is a provider of web-focused Voice of Customer analytics.  Founded in 2000, iPerceptions focuses on a goal of “improving and optimizing websites by tapping into the feedback of real customers in the context of actual online experiences.”   Its mission is to revolutionize web analytics by fully democratizing the voice of the online customer. The vision of the company is to have customers speak for themselves and to ensure that they are heard at the highest decision making levels.  iPerceptions focuses not on “what” customers do on the web, but “why” they do things on the web.   It helps its customers understand who is going to their websites, the reasons for going, and how satisfied they are with completing their goals.  The company provides innovative ways of tracking customer behavior and translating that information into usable strategic support that can companies can use to optimize their Internet channel.

Many knowledgeable and well-known technological leaders that bring experience and innovation to the company form iPerceptions’ management team and advisory board.  These people include Jerry Tarasofsky (President, CEO), Stephen Berns (CIO), Jonathan Levitt (VP, Marketing), and Avinash Kaushik (author of Occam’s Razor).  Its client list spans many different industries including hotels, automobile manufacturers, electronics, IT companies, and includes many large companies such as Dell, Toshiba, Reebok, BMW, and Yamaha.

While the company has yet to be profitable, its client list and management team are impressive attributes to this young company.  The company has sound performance goals and prominent clients that rely on their services.

Next, here is an analysis of its e-commerce industry:

iPerceptions is an on-demand provider of web attitudinal, web analytics services and research for online marketers and Fortune 500 companies.  iPerceptions’ solutions impact two traditional business intelligence practices:

1. Website Analytics and

2. Market and Customer Satisfaction Research.

Because iPerceptions’ solutions overlap with many companies in different areas, it is hard to differentiate iPerceptions’ services from others. Each competitor in the web analytics field seeks to differentiate from others by offering a unique approach. Therefore, given the infancy of this industry, there are no true substitutes, but rather, competitors with different approaches.

Competitors (an abbreviated list):

  1. Behavioral Analytics: This is a traditional way to track online customer behavior by using cookies and other tracking devices.  Major companies in this sector include: Web Trends, Omniture and Coremetrics.
  2. Traditional Research Analytics: This is the way to gather data by surveys e.g. telephone surveys and online surveys. Major companies in this sector include: Ipsos-Reid, Nielsen, Harris, Survey Site, Zoomerang, Insight Express, Survey.com and Keynote.
  3. Web attitudinal web analytics: Analyzes customer behavior analysis by customer survey, such as interview and questionnaire, would be considered as direct competitors of iPerceptions. For example, ForeSee is a company that collects customers’ feedback by online Voice of Customer.
  4. Traditional Customer Satisfaction Vendors: Customer Satisfaction Vendors will initially rate the client company using online surveys, polling, regular and online panels and focus groups to generate syndicated Customer Satisfaction reports.  Customer Satisfaction Vendors then provide solutions and work with clients to improve their ratings. Major companies in this sector include J.D. Power, Merits, and Harris Interactive.
  5. CRM Analytics:  A broad category of analytics to help companies improve the customer relationship by combining data from various customer interactions e.g. website visits and call centers.  Major companies in this sector include: SAS, SPSS, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, and Seibel.
  6. Clickmaps:  Click maps attempt to study customer behavior by statistical analysis.  The major player in this category is CrazyEgg.

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Is iPerceptions’ business, a profitable one?

iPerceptions’ revenue margin has consistently been about 50% of sales for the last few years.  Its operating expenses however are very high, exceeding its annual revenue.  These high operating expenses are mainly due to sales and marketing, administrative costs, and research and development.  These types of expenses are often elevated in a young, growing company that is actively trying to improve its product and gain market share.

iPerceptions current model is to charge a single fee for full service.  However, in order to continue utilizing a large operating budget it is important to acquire alternative sources of revenue.  Some potential possibilities could be:

  • Provide advertising space on their sites or surveys.
  • Create partnerships with hosting companies or blogging services (e.g. WordPress).
  • Produce a subscription-based consulting magazine based on web analytics.
  • Produce industry reports using data from the iPSI satisfaction index that could be available for purchase.
  • Provide online workshops to inform users about web analytics, the tools present, and how to use and interpret them.

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Conclusions and recommendations:

With the entry of Google Analytics, the web analytics market has simply exploded, because now anyone who wants to have access to data from their website can have it for free.  Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s anticipated free web analytics tools will only expand the options that practitioners have at their disposal.  But access to the tool and data, although empowering, does little to ease the problems related to figuring out what a company’s success metrics are and how to perform web analytics correctly.  This is mainly why web analytics solution providers such as iPerceptions still stay in business.

The main obstacle of iPerceptions is the need for a more sustainable business model.  While the major expenses in R&D and sales and marketing are necessary to keep up the first-mover image of iPerceptions, these expenses are not sustainable in the long run, unless alternative, and more importantly fixed sources of revenue are created.  Therefore, it is recommended that iPerceptions research the following alternative channels of revenue:

1.    Partnerships with hosting companies: Hosting companies such as GoDaddy compete fiercely against their competitors to differentiate themselves as the better provider of hosting solutions.  Differentiation is achieved through the offering of a variety of pre-installed plug-ins that range from blogging tools (e.g. WordPress) to mail management tools (e.g. MailChimp) to e-commerce tools (e.g. Google Checkout).  iPerceptions could make a similar offering with its 4Q online customer satisfaction tool.

2.    Consulting magazine: iPerceptions already holds a wide array of information about web analytics.  The company could use some of this information to create an online (or offline) magazine that offers some content for free to create a base of readers.  If the reader following of iPerceptions becomes large enough, then the company could sell advertisement space to potential advertisers or marketers.  Another alternative is that iPerceptions could charge a monthly or annual fee to readers that would like access to premium content without any advertisement.

3.    Industry reports: iPerceptions could release industry reports and sell them online.  The cost of creating an online store for web analytics reports is quite low, however iPerceptions would have to analyze whether making reports available online for a fee does not give away too much information about its iPerceptions Satisfaction Index (iPSI).

4.    Online workshops: iPerceptions could experiment with live web-seminars to corporate clients as a way to expose clients to the array of services it provides. By providing a live web-seminar to key personnel inside organizations, iPerceptions could tip the balance in the decision of whether or not the potential client should hire the services of iPerceptions.  The low-cost of a live web-seminar could provide an inexpensive way for the key decision maker to make a more informed decision about hiring iPerceptions, while providing extra revenue at the same time.

Adding extra sources of income in the internet business model of iPerceptions has a positive impact on the scope, that is the market segments to which iPerceptions offers customer value and the range of products that contain value.  The customer value component improves because iPerceptions will be able demonstrate that its customer value is distinct from that of its competitors.  Given the infancy of the web analytics field, this is a challenge for all competitors, new and old.  Another important observation is that the revenue source component improves in the new Internet business model because the described alternative sources of income should have higher profit margins because of their scalability.  The price component is indicated as a positive change because the company would improve its value for the customer’s dollar on the consulting side of business by implementing the alternative sources of revenue.  In the final analysis, we believe that there will be important improvements in the relationship between iPerceptions’ revenues and the underlying costs of generating the revenues (cost structure component).  This is the main objective of the proposed Internet business model, to expand the customer audience of iPerceptions, in order to divide the fixed costs (R&D and marketing) over a larger base of customers and revenue.  iPerceptions needs to take advantage of the low marginal cost of adding an extra customer.  Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt that R&D and marketing expenses become more efficient and accountable so that is that there is a better understanding of how they contribute to generating revenue.  iPerceptions has the right management and board of advisors to implement this business model, however it needs to act fast to be able to survive to current recession of 2009 as companies are downsizing in their expenditure of consulting services.

Here’s a slideshow that summarizes the presented Internet Business Model Analyisis of iPercetpions:

Find your Top 10 Google AdWords (feat. Vampire Weekend)

There has been a lot of movement at our office over the last and current week, a lot of colleagues coming in to finalize the details of our product launch.  Given the nature of our product launch, I cannot write much about it, but I can tell you that in about 20 days I will be able to give more details.

In the meantime, let’s talk about one of my assignments:  to find the top 10 Google AdWords for us.  The main goal is to set up a monitoring systems that allows us to monitor these keywords in conversations relevant to us on Blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.  Sounds easy?  I wish!

Finding the right (key)words is hard, just like NY prepsters, Vampire Weekend sing on “Oxford Comma”:

Haven’t got the words for you / All your diction dripping with disdain / Through the pain

So what is a web analytics newbie to do?  I set on the following 3 tasks:

  1. Review Brian Clifton’s “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” for all mentions of Google AdWords.
  2. Review Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool.
  3. Read relevant blogs on the subject.

 

Given the urgency of our product launch, I have only been able to do the two first tasks so far (and have not been able to blog about it, until today!).
Let’s see what I got:
First, the book by Clifton is really great and I can see referring to it a lot in the future.  It already has lots of page separator’s by subject.  If this book is either sitting on your shelf or on your Amazon.com wish list, here is a motivator to pick it up.  Check the following pages on tips regarding AdWords:  73-75, 92, 103-105, 173, 190-201, 299-305 and 308.  The tips range from setting objectives of your AdWords campaign to creating filters on Google Analytics reports to determining key measures such as cost per acquisition.
One of the main problems with selecting and monitoring keywords is the specific/broad dilemma, that is whether to choose a campaign based on “shoes” versus “blue shoes”.    A broad match set on “shoes” would allow you to measure web visitors that searched for “blue shoes”, “nice shoes”, etc., while a specific match set just on “shoes” would only measure web visitors that searched “shoes” only.  Also, a specific match set on “blue shoes” would not include a keyword search like “pair of blue shoes”.
Second, after reviewing the Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool, the mentioned problem becomes evident.  By generating keywords using descriptive words or phrases I get some interesting results. For example, I am particularly interested in “photo sharing”, which has an approximate average search volume (AASV) of 165,000.  Not too bad…I thought.  Just the keyword “photo” has an AASV of 20,400,000!  The keyword sharing has an AASV of 2,240,000!   What is a web analyzer to do?
Think outside of the box!, said Vampire Weekend.
So if there’s any other way / To spell the word / It’s fine with me, with me
-.p
The next step is to generate keywords using your actual website content, let it talk to you.  After inputing our company address I got very good leads like “photo gallery” with a healthy AASV of 823,000 and “slideshow” with 1,000,000.  Funny, these are key features that I had not consider before and they make more sense (besides having a greater AASV!).
Conclusions:
  1. Check your handbook / It’s no trick:  There is a lot of literature available on selection of keywords.  Try the tutorials at Google AdWords and AdSense first, then complement your ideas with Clifton and web analytics’ blogs (refer to my Blogroll on the left side for some references).
  2. Adjust my tie / Know your butler, unlike other guys: Two words > Keyword Tool!  Listen to your website.  Let it do the legwork for you.
  3. I met the highest lama / His accent sounded fine:  Quality over quantity.  Selecting a single word with a high AASV may provide you a greater hit rate, but these site visitors may just exit on your home page after realizing that your site has nothing to do with their search.  Remember the key is conversion!
me!
Vampire Weekend playing "Oxford Comma" at Pipeline Cafe (Honolulu, HI). Photo credit: me!

Web analytics of Flickr.com using Google Trends

On the latest post from web analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, he discusses into a lot of detail the use of Google Trends as a free and acceptable competitive intelligence tool.

So what is so hot about it?

According to Google:  “With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched on Google over time. Google Trends also shows how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and in which geographic regions people have searched for them most“.

Interesting!  Not only that but “When Google Trends detects a spike in the volume of news stories for a particular search term, it labels the graph and displays the headline of an automatically selected Google News story written near the time of that spike.”  In simpler words, we can find the a plausible explanation for that spike in the search term.

As part of my work, I have to follow closely the activities of Flickr.com.  After reading Avinash’s entry I rushed into doing some web analytis of Flickr.com using Google Trends.

Let’s see what I found out.

Daily unique visitors at Flickr.com
Daily unique visitors at Flickr.com
  • The graph above indicates the number of daily unique visits at www.flickr.com.  Flickr’s daily unique visits has gone up and down over time but has an upward trend wordwide.
  • Worldwide visitors who visited this site also visited:
  1. flickr.net (no surprise there)
  2. bighugelabs.com (tools/widgets/applications to use in Flickr)
  3. divinecaroline.com (e-zine for women, so I can have the hypothesis that photo sharing websites should focus on women!)
  4. cracked.com (a place to kill time)
  5. photobasement.com (photo-blog)
  6. failblog.org (photo-blog)
  7. consumerist.com (name says it all, independent consumer report site, don’t really understand the connection here)
  8. digital-photography-school.com (blog that teachers better photography techniques)
  • Flickr is searched mainly in the USA.  Second to the USA, India is ahead of all other countries in looking/visiting Flickr.
  • Inside of USA, California is by far the most active subregion with Flickr.
  • According to this data, consumerist.com and divinecaroline.com are the top other sites visited by Flickr visitors.  #3 is cracked.com.
Search Volume Index of term, photo sharing, using Google Trends
  • The second graph above shows the search volume index for photo sharing.  The letters indicate important news related to that point in time.  It is interesting that these stories are related to a company/organization promoting a better photo-sharing product/service (e.g. Flickr, Avanquest, lenzus.com, Ubicom.

Conclusions:

  1. Photo sharing is only exciting if it is better.
  2. Tools&widgets communities support the further development of a photo sharing community.
  3. Women spend time looking at pictures online. Let’s focus on them!  The wedding photography idea is really good.
  4. There is a connection between consumerist.com and flickr.com.  No idea what it is, but it might worth the while to check it out.
  5. People that spend time looking at pictures online also spend time looking at photo-blogs for quick laughs.

The term conclusions seems a bit overwhelming, I would prefer to name them hypothesis that I would like to further investigate.  However, the main point of this exercise is to demonstrate that Google Trends is a free competitive intelligence tool that provides good ideas to check your web analytics processes.

What do you think? : )

The Kaiser Chiefs’ guide to web marketing newbies

As I work my way in the web of online marketing and web analytics, I often bump into new theoretical and technical lingo that I never heard of.  It is particularly challenging to keep up with both the English and Spanish literature on these fields.  (Oh, if you are self-claimed web marketer and are not checking what’s going in Spain, then you are missing out!)

By far, one my best partners during my web metrics literature reviews are the Kaiser Chiefs.  Named after the South African football team, they are best known for their 2004 hit “I Predict a Riot” and the jumping shenanigans of their lead vocalist, Ricky Wilson.

Ricky Wilson from Kaiser Chiefs @ Brixton Academy. Photo credit: Guy Eppel

Here is what you can learn from them about getting started in web marketing and web analytics.

1. And oh my God, I can’t believe it, I’ve never been this far away from home.

(Oh My God from Employment, 2005)

SEO, SEM, conversion, blog marketing, the list goes.  Not your everyday marketing class, not even in MBA school.  Trust me, I’ve been there and there is very few going on the academic preparation of both undergraduate and graduate students in these fields.  Forget the 4Ps, everything is about conversion.  The first piece of advice that the Kaiser Chiefs drop to you is that you need to realize that you have a lot to learn and, that more importantly, you are to open to learn.  Read, read, read.  A good starting point, you ask?  Here is one:  Avinash Kaushik‘s blog and book, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.

2.  I predict a riot.

(I Predict A Riot from I Predict A Riot, 2004)

And if one is about to happen, you surely want to be the one to predict it!  Building on my previous post about starting epidemics, while it is very important that you absorb a lot of what is going on the field, it is more critical that you start reading the trends, catch on what-works and what-nots, and start applying it to your own web analytics projects.  And one of the best ways to do this is…

3.  So here we go with the letter.

(The Angry Mob from Yours Truly, Angry Mob, 2007)

…is to start a blog!  Most marketers agree that this is an essential exercise, but there is little agreement about its actual payoff.  It really depends on your objective.  Is it to spark brainstorming sessions?  Is it to network with experts in the field?  Is it to keep track of your evolution as a marketer?  Is it to organize your ideas? No matter what your goal is, having a blog about your projects brings a lot of credibility when presenting yourself to a) colleagues, b) clients, and c) head-honcho investors.

4. It does not move me, it’s not the kind of thing that I like.

(Na Na Na Na Na Naa from Employment, 2005)

This is the last thing that you want coming out from your users/clients/customers.  Yet, most of the time, we fail to listen to them.  Web analytics is ALL ABOUT LISTENING TO YOUR USER.  From MBA school we come quite brainwashed about the product development process and we fail to recognize that it fails miserably when applied to web marketing.  A/B testing, search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) are key activities and they are all about listening to your user.  Review blogs, tune into podcasts, identify the current trends!  For some MBA marketing class unlearning, check out The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank.

Bonus track

5. Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

(Ruby from Yours Truly, Angry Mob, 2007)

For those with advanced coding skills, it would be a good idea to brush up your skills on Ruby on Rails (ROR).  Why should you care?  If you are able to code with ROR, creation of websites and social networking applications (e.g. Facebook) should be a snap!  ROR developers around the USA are on very high demand nowadays with hourly rates going around $80-$150 because everybody wants their online platforms be running smoothly on ROR.

That is all for today and remember the most important lesson from the Chiefs…

Knock me down, I’ll be right back up again

I’ll come back stronger than a powered up Pac-Man!