All Things Data-Driven Marketing

Neuromarketing Ethics: How Far Is Too Far?

As the marketing industry developed, researchers dove deeper into buying behavior and buyers’ minds. One early researcher was Edward Bernays—Sigmund Freud’s nephew—who coined the term “public relations.”

Bernays believed that people could be influenced via crowd psychology and psychoanalysis. His “Torches of Freedom” campaign in the 1920s promoted smoking among women as a symbol of liberation, opening a new market to cigarette companies.

Decades later, in 2002, Dutch marketing professor Ale Smidts coined the term “neuromarketing.” Neuromarketing maps neural activity to consumer behavior to help marketers craft more valuable, science-based campaigns. 

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Google Analytics vs. Google Analytics 360 (Based on a Decade of Implementations)

For companies that build their analytics on Google products, purchasing Google Analytics 360 is a symbol of maturity. 

As a business grows, it inevitably runs up against limitations of analytics tools. For example, while the data aggregation process in Google Analytics seems like a “normal” feature, it might be a hurdle if your business needs to process data at the hit level instead of by sessions or campaigns.

It’s one of many potential business needs that could affect your decision to upgrade to a Google Analytics 360 license. But is it worth the serious investment?

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Twitter Conversions: 7 Steps to Generate More Clicks

Twitter is always a highly recommended social media channel to promote your brand online. But it’s not easy to build a following. It’s even harder to persuade followers to click through to your site—and convert.

Indeed, historically, Twitter traffic has had one of the lowest conversion rates compared to other social media giants. Yet Twitter can be a reliable source of both clicks and conversions.

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How to Use Google Data Studio to Build Better Dashboards

Set up the measurement tool. Clean and process the data. Turn it into information. Analyze it. Extract insights.

That’s hard work. But to have value, there’s still another step—the work must also be well communicated. You want data to form a straight line from KPIs to influencing business decisions.

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SaaS Acquisition: The Hidden Risks of a “Frictionless” Sign-Up Flow

Optimizing the sign-up flow is a never-ending saga for SaaS companies, for whom it’s mission-critical to acquire and activate users as quickly as possible. 

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No More "Double Dipping" on Featured Snippets—Does It Matter?

On January 23, Google announced that, “If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat it in the first page of results.”

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How to Hire for Growth, Not Skills

No hiring process in the world is designed to hire the best and brightest.

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How to Use Google Optimize & Tag Manager for Personalization

About two years ago, I wrote an article on using Google Tag Manager (GTM) to personalize your website. Even then, people asked why I wouldn’t just use Google Optimize. At the time, the answer was simple: Personalization was part of Google’s six-figure paid solution.

However, in November 2018, Google released the functionality to all users. Since then, Google Optimize has become a primary platform to initiate personalized experiences. But GTM is still critical to overcome its enduring limitations.

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Tracking Multiple Domains: Setup & Reporting for Dozens of Sites

How do you coordinate the analytics setup of a web shop that sells their products all over the world—if you have to handle 10+ languages and currencies in over 80 countries?

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How to Scale Organic Traffic (Without Writing a Million Blog Posts)

In-house SEOs and consultants alike are routinely challenged to find new opportunities to expand organic traffic. But the classic approach of researching new keywords then writing articles for those that match your domain strength doesn’t work for all sites.

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