Can Other People Read Your Most Secret Thoughts?

This week I saw a press release announcing that The Amazing Kreskin was back. He bills himself as a mentalist, but when cornered says he's just an entertainer. The news item brought to mind some of the ways eCommerce technology is reading our thoughts. Here's a blog post from 2011 about the degree to which we're being watched by the machinery of the Internet age.

It Doesn't Require Mental Telepathy Any More

Magicians have always been fascinating to me, and no doubt to many others as well or there wouldn't be so many sold out magic shows in Las Vegas every week. Much of the magic is simply technique and trickery, illusion and misdirection. But what about the mind readers? How real is mental telepathy? Can one person read another's most secret thoughts?

Actually, now that we live in the Facebook age there's very little hidden any more about many of us. A 2011 UPI story stated, "The social networking site, whose profits come primarily from advertising, had been vague about its collection of tracking data. But it now acknowledges it can use cookies to create a 90-day log of where each of its members have gone on the Web after visiting a Facebook page, USA Today reports."

Privacy advocates want to stop this practice, but the ad agencies love it. It gives them the ability to target specific rifle shot ad messages to people who by their behavior have revealed their hot buttons.

This explains why the day after I was looking for a hat on eBay there appeared ads for hats on my Facebook page. What's scarier is that people are having their emails scrubbed for hot-button words so that ads can be thrown their direction via their browsers.

How much do the computers know about us? The UPI story goes into great detail on exactly how many details they own on us. The ad industry doesn't need mental telepathy to know who we are or what we're about. Our social media and Internet activity proclaims all.

The article is thought provoking and worth checking out. Be sure to take two minutes to watch the video, What Facebook knows about you.

Just a little something to think about. (And yes, I know what you're thinking.)

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EdNote: I do not know the most current policies and practices of Facebook, Amazon, Google and the like. I only know that they're better at mind reading than Kreskin.

Tech Tuesday: Data-Driven Marketer Jon Thralow Talks About eCommerce, SEO and What's New @ Google

I've been reading Walter Isaacson's The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, a thoroughly researched history of the men and women whose ideas and energy created the Internet and all the other manifold technologies that have become so embedded in our lives, from video games to A.I. and self-driving cars. Imagine a world without Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.

One of the beneficiaries of all this innovation has been Jon Thralow, a geek programmer who evolved into a data-driven marketer with his fingers on the pulse of emerging trends and the application of new technologies. When I interviewed him in 2009 I asked what were the two or three most important things internet entrepreneurs needed to know. He replied, "First, set up tracking mechanisms to measure every marketing penny that you spend. Second, find your niche and don't deviate; stay focused. Third, use the scientific method so that you can test for the outcome. This ensures that you do not make the same mistake twice."

His article at the end of this interview will show you how he's not deviated from this path and, in fact, has only become more sophisticated at it.

EN: You've been doing eCommerce now for almost two decades. What are some of areas that have been of special interest to you during this time?

Jon Thralow: My first love was programming viral SaaS software. It was fun to see a creative take on a life of its own and grow, but I did not have the time to develop the infrastructure on the program and, eventually, it grew to a point that was unsustainable. I then found SEO and hacking Google's algorithm became a passion of mine. I was getting anything to the top positions and it was easy. Then Google got a lot smarter and the workload to get a site listed on the first page became too time-consuming so I shifted to paid search. Paid search is about the only thing that I do today.

EN: Google has certainly emerged to be a very big gorilla in cyberspace. How did this happen from your point of view. They began simply as a fast, reliable search engine, right?

JT: There was a race to be the most accurate search engine. In 1998 I was trying to get our site listed on about 50 different search engines. All of them had a chance to be the most used after the shakeup, but in 2000 Google came along. It was a research project from Stanford so it did not have the money-hungry feel. It felt like a service and it gave great results. It quickly grew and took the number 1 spot where people found things on the internet.

EN: Online success is more than good Search Engine Optimization, but don't the rules for good SEO keep changing? How does a business stay current?

JT: Today it is more work than ever to be a top ranked site. Google has started ranking profitable sites below content sites making SEO almost impossible to win if you are a business. Google knows that sites that make money can pay for the paid placements so that is what they are trying to do. If you want to make money with search today you will most likely have to pay for it or create amazing content that is published in major news outlets.

EN: Even before the Internet I always said, "You can't manage what you don't measure." Since the Internet, analytics has been taken to a new level. How do you stay current on what's going on in the realm of online analytics?

Thralow is ever on the lookout for
new horizons to explore.

JT: Most of my day is spent measuring. My favorite class in college was statistics and I found a place where I can use that logic for my real-world job. I am at the point now where I am incredibly frustrated by holes in Google Analytics. Most marketers take Google Analytics as cut and dry data, but there is so much bad data that can be misunderstood that sometimes I forget that marketers of 20 years ago had to often rely on gut feeling.

EN: You mentioned that the next step in analytics will be the ability to actually tie in-store sales to Google adwords on mobile devices. Is this really possible and when is it coming?

JT: This is being worked on today and it's being beta tested with some large retail businesses. I have worked on their beta program with Red Wing Shoes and we are seeing some great results. We have recently started uploading our point of sale data to Google and are starting to tie our online and offline sales to online ads.

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Related Links
Learn to Measure AdWords for In-Store Conversions
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Jon Thralow, Revisited

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." ~Arthur C. Clarke

At the end of January we interviewed Jon Thralow on Internet entrepreneurialism and especially eCommerce. It seemed we'd only scratched the surface so I met with him yesterday at the Red Mug to do a little more probing regarding his work.

Though now primarily doing consulting work, Jon used to manage a team of programmers. As we compared notes from time to time these past few years, I found it interesting to learn that programmers and Internet developers can have temperaments like artists. Those who do the best work may not fit neatly into your standard corporate cubespace. Jon, though a technical wizard and programmer himself, understood this art-heart-spirit of his team. They consequently achieved remarkable things together.

Here, for a few moments, we explored the meaning of Web 2.0, the explosion of web content and at least one solution for dealing with the tsunami of information that is washing across cyberspace.

Ennyman: I have been hearing a lot of numbers thrown around regarding how fast the Internet is growing. What kind of numbers are you seeing and where do these numbers come from?

JT: As for sales growth the Internet is one of the few bright spots for the economy, but the larger growth is happening in content My best guess is that in pure data being uploaded is growing so fast with YouTube, and social media sites that the number of gigabytes online is at least doubling every other year.

Ennyman: The Internet has brought a lot of new terminology into existence. Here are a couple that the average person might be hearing that need clearer definitions. What is “Web 2.0”? What is the “deep web”?

JT: "Web 2.0" refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design that aims to facilitate communication and interoperability on the World Wide Web. Some concepts that have led to this evolution are web-based communities, hosted services, and applications; such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, and blogs. As all of this new content is quickly being added search engines like Google are having a hard time keeping up and indexing this information. The amount of information that Google is able to index is a small fraction of the entire Internet. Everything that is not indexed by search engines is called "deep web".

Ennyman: You have helped develop a number of successful eCommerce companies and are currently consulting in this area. What is it that so turns you on about eCommerce?

JT: I am not really sure. I like science and I like doing things that people tell me not to. When I first went into eCommerce, it was more of a feeling like, “What is this? It is going to go away in a week or two and will it even work if more people get online?” I was just too curious to leave it alone. One of the parts that I liked best was the ability to marry marketing and science. Knowing exactly what each dollar did and how much that dollar turned into…

Ennyman: You are also involved in a company called Mozenda which helps eCommerce companies efficiently gather data from the Internet. Why can’t people just do this with search engines like Google?

JT: Mozenda does much more than help eCommerce companies. We have very large companies using this tool.

For eCommerce, a search engine only returns results on the browser while Mozenda gathers the data you want and puts it into a usable format.

Ennyman: What other kinds of companies are currently using Mozenda’s software platform? How are these companies using the program?

JT: There are many different companies including even a couple of DOW-tracked publicly traded companies, one from retail and one from financial. Financial companies will track buy/sell data to predict future stock prices. The retail company is using it to compare its prices to its competitors. Another financial company is using it to gather data from one section of its organization to mesh it with another. Many PR companies are using the program to watch the reaction to the brand by harvesting data from blogs and forums. Other large companies are using the product to learn about potential recalls in their product line before production has put too many out into the marketplace saving the company millions and increasing the product quality.

Ennyman: Doesn’t it seem a little like opening the door to a Big Brother situation here? Can this kind of data acquisition lead to abuses and does that concern you?

JT: Yes, this sure can lead to abuse. I think the analogy might be that Mozenda makes the guns and they can be used for either good or evil fits here. There have been companies that have been taken to court by stealing data from their competitors, but Mozenda does not advocate this practice. The goal of Mozenda is to make the data on the net much more usable.

Lara Fabans: More Insights from the Edge

This is part two of the interview we did last weekend. Lara Allen Fabans might look like just another mom in the park with her eight year old daughter, but then you notice the laptop and iPort and as you peek (you're not supposed to peak over peoples' shoulders, but sometimes we do) you see she's working on an Internet marketing campaign or analyzing demographic data or maybe merging online registrations with lead generation data or possibly helping a company register new URLs.

Ennyman: What is “data mining for retention”?

Lara Fabans: Some sites have registration. Your hope is that these people regularly visit your site. I worked with one client where we were able to track the rate of registered users, and how many clicks they did before leaving the site. We were going to get down into categories to find out what were the most popular, and test how to improve retention. Some people used to measure time rather then page clicks, but you know, the phone rings, someone pops into your office, and it artificially increases the time, so I'm glad they've moved past that.

Another metric is how long does someone stay on your email list, or how long do they continue to buy your product. Most items that are quickly consumable such as vitamins or diet products have a retention rate of about three months. So, knowing that, you need to ensure that you are bringing in enough new customers each month to keep your revenue steady.

Enny: I regularly get asked questions about viral marketing. Isn’t a viral type of campaign dependent in part upon the culture of the company? Can you point to any examples of really successful viral campaigns?

Lara Fabans: I think most Viral Marketers are trying to get the hype of viral marketing to go viral :-) The key is to have something noteworthy that people want to recommend.

And the best way to do that is have a Recommend This To a Friend form right on the web page, or even a squeeze page to capture them before they leave.

The most fun viral campaign that I remember was in the very early 90s, you called National Discount Brokers, and the IVR had "If you would like to hear a duck quack, press 7." You pressed 7, and a duck quacked, and then it said "thank you" and hung up. It was so silly that we sent it to everyone we knew. Sadly, in 2006, Ameritrade bought National Discount Brokers and removed the duck quack which goes to show that they have no sense of humor.

Most people point to the "End of the Internet" page which said you've reached the end of the internet and it was really a good squeeze page. You were supposed to put in your name and email address and that of a friend, and then you were supposed to go back to the beginning of the internet. There's a high curiosity factor which is vital in viral campaigns.

A viral campaign has to be interesting, be something real (no one will recommend it if they feel gypped), and make the person really curious about what's going to happen next. And I suspect even a "stodgy" company could do something interesting that has high curiosity as long as it has the proper tone that they're comfortable with, and it's directed to an appropriate group.

Enny: In my world, measurement is a critical component of success. How come people don’t make a greater effort to measure their marketing results?

Lara Fabans: I suspect people are taking shortcuts. They get overwhelmed with the data, and ignore it, or don't know how to properly test. I suspect they're trying to save money by not having someone on staff who could generate these statistics with recommendations. I also suspect people don't have marketing plans. The purpose of the plan isn't necessarily to follow it, but to think things through.

That being said, you don't want to get bogged down in process. That's why the analysis and testing are so important. You put a stake in the ground, analyze how well you did, make a few more tests, and then keep moving forward. You can be nimble and still have analytics being done.

Enny: Being so young you seem to have a lot of interesting experience under your belt. What has been your biggest achievement thus far? Of what are you most proud?

Lara Fabans: I'm on the downhill side of 40 which, I suppose, makes some thing I'm a baby & others think I'm ancient. I learned to love learning from my father, and think it keeps us young. He's retired but working on iPhone applications. Go Dad!

My crowning achievement is my daughter and my marriage. I'm proud of having some really long term friendships in my life, and even though four of them have moved far away, we maintain the bonds.

I've made huge mistakes along the way, but I view them as learning experiences and keep moving forward. I can choose to think about the positive or the negative, some would say. Pish, I think about them both pragmatically and analytically. Experiences are neither positive nor negative. It's our response to them that matters.

Enny: A lot of companies still seem to be clueless when it comes to internet marketing. What, in your opinion, are the first areas to focus when a business undertakes an internet marketing initiative?

Lara Fabans: They need to realize that it's a different type of marketing and requires its own plan. Direct marketing is a "push" whereas internet is a "pull." You need to find the best way to pull eyeballs to your presence. In addition, we've moved from the age of information to the age of recommendations (swiped that from a blog). It helps to put useful information out to build up your reputation, and then have people recommend you, your company, your products, your services, your information, etc.

And what companies really hate is that it takes time. If you start it now, it may take as much as a year to build up a strong reputation. And they don't want to wait. They want to do 500 cold calls which yield 50 leads which yield 3 sales and know that it takes a month. Unfortunately, if they don't start working on the online reputation, their competitors will be light years ahead of them when they wake up.

Those that fail to create an internet marketing strategy will be left behind with the horse and buggy. Like Borland, and Tandem. And all of the newspapers. (ok, maybe not the WSJ).

Enny: Thank you, Lara, for your contributions here and to all whom you have helped in the past and will advise in the future. If I had more time, I think I'd like to pick your brains for a book on eCommerce. I am totally confident you'd be a gold mine of insights that would be of value to any business serious about profiting from opportunities the net has placed at our mutual fingertips.

The very best to you, in all things.

5 Minutes with Jon Thralow: Internet Entrepreneur

Despite the turbulence of the economy these past dozen years, Jon Thralow has had a remarkable run of good fortune. In 1996 Thralow’s older brother Dan, founder of a Midwest sunglasses business called Peepers, took his first baby steps in eCommerce. In less than three years, with the company listed as one of the fastest growing Internet retailers in the country, they sold out to a New York City firm at the height of the tech bubble. When the bubble burst, the Thralows were able to re-obtain the domain names they’d sold… for a song.

The lessons learned only made them hardier. Instead of developing a mall that batched all their product lines under one domain, the Thralows embraced a specialized market niche concept, recognizing the power of defined domain names. Before long the new company, Thralow Inc., was rolling out niche eCommerce businesses with remarkable effectiveness so that they were once more catching the attention of major magazines like Inc. and Internet Retailer. At the end of 2006 Thralow Inc. sold its 30-plus domains and eCommerce sites to Netshops of Omaha, Nebraska.

Though not the founder of these ventures, Jon has played an integral role in their success. His specialized knowledge in Internet marketing has given him keen insights in how to take advantage of the efficiencies and opportunities offered by today’s cyber-arena.

ennyman: When did you join your brother’s first company and what role did you initially play?
Jon T: I joined Peepers in 1997 as an Intern. My job was to add products to the site and find ways to get us listed on the search engines. At the time Alta Vista, Web Crawler, and Excite had a lot of market share. I also taught myself two tools - Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Front page.

ennyman: What lessons did you learn from the collapse of the Internet bubble that might have value in today’s challenged economy?
Jon T: I went through a year of depression. Everything that I had worked to build was being destroyed before my eyes. I had a hard time sleeping at night. I went from having a million dollars in the stock of Eyecity to having the company become de-listed. Extreme high to extreme low. Looking back on it, I learned that if you keep plugging away things will work out, just never give up. I could not have seen the huge turnaround that was about to come, but if you focus on the core business rules and keep pounding away on it eventually you’ll gain traction which will give you something to build on.

ennyman: You mentioned that you have taken an interest in a company called Mozenda in Salt Lake City. What is it that so captivated you there?
Jon T: Over the years I’ve found that gold lives in the data and the trick has always been learning how to mine the data. In the early days the log files were mined to give a picture of our website's performance. Then I found that by mining our customer database and writing scripts around that you can market to people with the exact products they were interested in. Gathering and manipulating data became one of the biggest factors in growing our company. After the sale of the company I found Mozenda, a company that took this philosophy and applied it to the entire Internet. Mozenda gives people the tool to gather all of the Internet data they could want and store it in a usable method. This company gives its users real value.

ennyman: What is screen scraper software and how is it different from simply gathering information from search engines?
Jon T: Screen Scraping Software allows the user to predefine the exact data on a page that he or she would like to harvest. Most importantly a person can harvest certain patterns of data that repeat themselves on pages. In a way this is very similar to how a search engine works. So there’s a sense in which Mozenda gives you the power of your own personal search engine. You can train the Mozenda spider to follow links and grab the wanted data that you are looking for.

ennyman: What are the two or three most important things internet entrepreneurs need to understand in order to have the greatest probability of success?
Jon T: First, set up tracking mechanisms to measure every marketing penny that you spend. Second, find your niche and don't deviate; stay focused. Third, use the scientific method so that you can test for the outcome. This ensures that you do not make the same mistake twice. For example if you want to test a new layout for your home page make sure you A/B test. This is the only way to know if you are headed down the wrong path.

ennyman: Thanks, Jon. Good luck in all your new ventures.

Increasing the Odds of Success Through SEO

Peter Bernstein, in his bestseller Against the Gods, the Remarkable Story of Risk, stated that no matter what the venture, whether managing a family or managing nations, risk is a factor that must be taken into consideration. No one can infallibly predict success, because there are always variables beyond our control. “Even with thousands of facts, the track record of experts,” wrote Bernstein, “proves that their estimates of the probabilities of final outcomes are open to doubt and uncertainty.”

In short, risk is part of business; there are no sure things. Wall Street does not always lead to Easy Street. Nor does an internet retail strategy always lead to internet riches. As Robert Burns noted in his ode to a mouse, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

Nevertheless, we also know from experience that the very opposite is also true. Attempt nothing, and nothing you will achieve. In light of this latter equation, efforts at Search Engine Optimization are not optional but necessary.

This past month a friend of mine who runs a specialized online retail music business lamented that despite efforts at click-through links and banner ads, he had not found himself making any money despite the traffic brought in.

I observed, “Your lack of success might well have been your website's inability to easily and quickly lead to a purchase decision. Another failing may be that the traffic generated was too general and not specific enough.” In other words, SEO and other mechanisms for bringing in web traffic are only one piece of a larger strategic marketing plan.

He replied that he’d not thought of that.

The wonderful thing about the net is that we can measure everything. The hard data we gather helps us fine tune our efforts. By continually improving our systems, we generate more revenue with the same amount of effort (greater efficiency). Banner ads, pay per click ads on search engines, Google Adwords are all tactics, though none guarantee sales.

All that said, one sure way to be unsuccessful is to have no traffic at all because no one can find you. SEO is one tool among many that we use to minimize risk and increase odds of success.

en ~1996

For additional articles I have written pertaining to achieving success in business, visit: http://www.enewman.biz/MARKTNG.html