Marketing Innovation

App Developers, NativeX Has an Education for You

February 11, 2016 By Graeme Thickins

Graphic: VentureBeat

If you publish apps (and it’s hard to find a company these days that doesn’t), you’d better be up on the new science — and art — of App Store Optimization. Yes, say hello to another acronym: ASO. We all know about SEO — it’s such common practice, we do it like breathing. But when the whole world has gone mobile, when everyone and their mother are publishing apps, if you aren’t into ASO – well, you’re falling behind. It’s a major new focus for app developers and publishers, and one of our most successful Minnesota startups is ready to take you to school on it.

ASO is the direct result of a phenomenon VentureBeat calls “invisible app syndrome.” In a post today, it explains: “With over 1.5 million apps in each app store, it’s easy for apps to disappear and never be seen… App Store Optimization (ASO) can bring your app out of hiding, placing it squarely in front of the customers who need or want it, and keep them clicking through.”

St. Cloud-based NativeX is an experienced player in helping app publishers optimize for the app stores. You know them well. We’ve certainly written about the company before. It lately describes itself as “the premiere ad technology choice of top-charting mobile games and apps.” It has an expert team of engineers, data scientists, account managers, and designers, and has been recognized as a leader in effective monetization and user acquisition.

NativeX has been an innovator as well in redefining native advertising for mobile games and apps. (Worth mentioning here is that this Minnesota-born startup has been profitable for 12 straight years. Yes, you read that correctly. We grow ‘em good here in the cold North – where the firm began life under the name Freeze.com.)

An Upcoming ASO Webinar: “Money for nothing, clicks for free”
VentureBeat is hosting a webinar on February 18th on App Store Optimization. It’s sponsored by none other than NativeX, who will be participating along with Aaron Kardell, founder of Minneapolis-based real-estate apps publisher HomeSpotter.

From the post about the event (where you can register): “Mobile app developers are fighting a fearsome battle every day. As mobile continues to be second nature for us, publishers are releasing countless new apps on a daily basis — almost 1,500 a day are added to Apple’s App store alone. However, only a few will gain the undivided attention of the public.”

ASO Best Practices
In addition to sponsoring the upcoming webinar, NativeX just released an ASO white paper, which is all about best practices to help publishers improve app store visibility. It’s the first in a two-part series. Part 1 focuses on Search Ranking optimization. Part 2 will focus on improving Chart Ranking.

Ryan Weber, NativeX

“With the millions of apps already in the app stores,” said Ryan Weber, NativeX cofounder and chief product officer, “many developers have experienced the crushing reality of publishing an app that never finds an audience because the audience never finds the app.”

VentureBeat says this about the new white paper: “It takes effort and insight to implement the kind of ASO that makes a measurable difference, but the experts at NativeX have broken that process down to four steps.”

Ryan Weber adds: “67% of app users say the last app they downloaded was found through typing their inquiry into the app store search, making search the dominant organic app discovery method. Improving search ranking within those stores has become one of the most critical ASO requirements for publishers.”

Weber said that NativeX published the white paper to answer the questions most relevant to app publishers about ASO and how to improve their app store visibility. Specifically, here are the questions it addresses:

What is ASO?
What motivates users to download an app?
How are users finding/ discovering apps?
What impact do paid installs have on organic installs?
What do you need to measure for effective search discovery?
How do you pick the right keywords?
What tools are available to help with keyword selection?
How does relevance, difficulty and popularity affect keyword prioritization?
What are On-Page and Off-Page influence factors and what improves search rank?
How do you optimize paid campaign delivery for the purpose of influencing Off-Page factors?
What can you do in your app to influence Ratings and Reviews to improve ranking and conversion rate?
What are best practices for optimizing your app store click-through & conversion rates?
What tools are available to help with AB Testing to determine best assets to use?

VentureBeat published an extensive report a couple of months ago on App Store Optimization. In a post describing that report, it says, “App publishers who implement ASO can realistically expect a 20% lift in organic downloads, and can in some cases double or even triple their organic downloads. That’s huge, and reduces overall cost per acquisition of each mobile user.”

That report sells for $499. But you can get a pretty darn good education for free by reading NativeX’s two-part white paper series mentioned above.

Then you can not only be on your way to increasing your own downloads, but you’ll be ready to help your mother when she’s ready to publish her first app, right?

——-

[Note: This post first appeared on my personal blog, Graeme Thickins On Tech.]

The State — or Lack of a State — of Marketing Analytics

September 13, 2015 By Graeme Thickins

Image ©VentureBeat

(Note: this post first appeared on Graeme Thickins On Tech.)

How does one assess the landscape for an exploding technology category like marketing analytics? There’s so much confusion and hype around the topic. You’ve heard it all — too much data, we’re drowning in it, woe is us. And, along with that, too many vendors trying to sell us the latest cure. First we were shocked to hear the number of vendors was 1000, now we’re told it’s 2000! The argument that all these vendors create too many data silos is now a refrain we’re hearing more often. Hard to argue with that.

With such high numbers of players comes confusion, and complexity.

But it begs the question: how in the world do you unify all your marketing data to understand it and gain a competitive edge for your organization? Will a platform or single vendor solution emerge? Some of the big players like Oracle, Adobe, and Salesforce are certainly trying, opting in a big way for buy vs. build. (These three have led a frenzy of acquisitions in the marketing technology space.)

Yet significant roadblocks still exist to widespread adoption of marketing analytics in business today — and for companies to extract real value from it. The lack of data science skills we’ve all heard about by now till we’re blue in the face — it’s the “sexiest job title in the country,” blah blah blah. Big shortages, universities scrambling to launch graduate programs, etc, etc. But should this technology really require a PhD in every marketing department and agency in the land? That simply doesn’t compute! Why can’t there be more solutions, more tools, that marketers and general business folks — regular Joes and Janes — can use? Why does it all have to be so complex?

Well, I’m confident more answers will be forthcoming, or at least some enlightenment along the way. It’s still the early innings in this game. An attempt to dissect the landscape was recently undertaken by VentureBeat Insights. It’s a lengthy report, months in the making, which they were kind enough to let me get a look at. It’s entitled “The State of Marketing Analytics: Insights in the Age of the Customer.” Here’s a link to the summary. It provides a good overview of vendors and tools available today across all areas of marketing analytics use cases.

Pity the CMO

The report begins: “There’s more data available than ever, and that’s exactly why it’s so challenging to truly make sense of marketing data. While cloud-based data platforms have accelerated the availability and access of marketing data, it hasn’t made the marketer’s job any easier. It’s just the opposite. ‘Mo’ data, mo’ problems.’”

The VentureBeat report author goes on: “CMOs are more challenged than ever. If they’re going to spend more, they need to deliver more. The latest Duke CMO Survey clearly shows that marketing organizations feel more pressure than ever to prove their value. In fact, 65% of respondents report that pressure from their board or CEO is increasing. At the same time, 65 percent say they lack the ability to really measure marketing impact accurately. That means a huge opportunity is buried in the data, waiting to be uncovered.”

An opportunity, and also a warning: “Budgets are shifting to the CMO to take advantage of this opportunity — but those who can’t manage the data will simply be taken advantage of”… and that would be by the technology vendors. So, fair warning: they’re always happy to sell you another point solution to add to the pile you may already have. But, cruelly, that can just add to the the complexity — which is the problem.

Just Give Me the Data That Matters

Two of the insights from the VentureBeat report that I found interesting:

1) Today, there’s a “general lack of ability to prove which data matters” — which it attributes to a skills gap. And that lack of ability can be at least partially ascribed to a lack of “self serve” tools — those that are “marketer ready.” I take that to mean tools that a non-technical marketing person can use. Or at least that a data scientist, whom you must train in marketing, could easily use. (But first you must recruit and hire that person in an extremely competitive talent marketplace. More on that later.)

2) Measuring marketing ROI is not getting easier, as you might think. It’s actually getting more complex and challenging. Why? Because “the answers to these performance metrics are buried in marketing data from dozens, if not hundreds of data sources. And the first step is understanding what those data sources are all about.”

Sounds like a ton of work, huh? It is.

More on that last point, this from a post called “Marketing technology is eating the customer journey”):

“Today’s marketers own more customer data and touchpoints than ever before, and more than any other department. New digital channels and devices — including search, social media, and mobile — have empowered consumers and complicated the customer journey. On each of these, consumers create unprecedented amounts of data about themselves and their interests. And as a result, both the process and technology of modern marketing have expanded as a result of these changes in consumer behavior… Today, digital offers new channels for engagement and accurate measurements to learn from. What’s more, as marketing’s reach has grown, the traditional roles of sales and support have diminished because consumers increasingly inform and support themselves.”

And more — this from “Building a marketing tech stack that drives retention,” a post by martech vendor Sailthru:

“With more than 2,000 companies across the marketing technology landscape, it’s daunting to figure out exactly which products and services you really need… Unlike more mature technology sectors, marketing tech does not yet have a consistent, established ‘stack’ of components.”

The importance of measuring marketing performance in today’s enterprise is further emphasized by a finding in the VentureBeat “State of Marketing Analytics” report:

“Despite marketer confidence in their ability to use the data effectively being relatively low, marketers across all levels, including CMOs, view marketing analytics as being extremely important to the financial success of the firm, not just the marketing organization.”

There’s a lot riding on the shoulders of the CMO. And marketing performance or ROI — the by-product of marketing analytics technology — is a huge part of that weight.

In its survey, VentureBeat asked the marketing execs it surveyed (sample size: 1000+) what were their use cases for marketing analytics. Here are the top five:

Customer acquisition
Customer retention
Ad/campaign effectiveness
Customer lifetime value
Customer behavior/audience insights

Duke Isn’t Only Good at Basketball

Another key source for understanding the field of marketing technology today, as mentioned earlier, is the Duke CMO Survey. This semiannual survey surfaces trends in the budgets and priorities of chief marketing officers at top U.S. firms. The February 2015 study was conducted across a sample of 2,630 marketing execs. Here are two key questions they asked those execs about marketing analytics; there are some surprising answers to the second one:

1) What are the areas in which you are using marketing analytics to drive decision-making?

Customer acquisition 37.8%
Customer retention 30.2%
Social media 27.4%
Product line/assortment optimization 26.4%
Branding 26.0%
Pricing strategy 23.3%
Promotion strategy 21.9%
Marketing mix 19.8%
Multichannel marketing 14.6%

2) What factors prevent your company from using more marketing analytics?

Marketing analytics does not offer sufficient insight 21.9%
Marketing analytics does not arrive when needed 19.8%
Marketing analytics is overly complex 19.4%
Marketing analytics are not highly relevant to our decisions 19.1%

Those negative answers should certainly be a wake-up call for the industry.

Two key bright spots in the Duke report (especially for vendors), courtesy of the TrackMaven blog:

1) Marketing budgets are expected to rebound to the highest point in more than three years. Top marketing execs have lofty budgetary expectations. Over the next 12 months, CMOs expect marketing budgets to increase by 8.7%, the highest forecasted increase since August 2011.

2) CMOs expect their spending on marketing analytics to nearly double. Over the next three years, CMOs expect their spending on marketing analytics — defined by the Duke survey as “the creation and use of quantitative data about customer behavior” — to increase by 83%, up from a 6.4% share of the overall marketing budget to 11.7%.

So there are some positives. But another big downer from the Duke CMO survey:

“Only 40% of CMOs report the ability to prove the impact of short-term marketing spend on their business, and even fewer (34%) can qualitatively prove that impact in the long term.”

The obvious conclusion, again: there is much work ahead.

Wait, What, There’s a Skills Gap? (Duh)

VentureBeat’s “State of Marketing Analytics” report says marketing organizations need to “cultivate hard data science skills to stay ahead of the curve.” It notes that Gartner predicted 4.4 million data science jobs will be available by this end of this year, but only one-third of them will be filled.

Here’s another view on the topic of the skills shortage (from “Marketers are about to make new friends — or not — with data scientists”):

“Data scientists will soon take a lot of jobs away from marketers. The reasons are simple:

1) There’s already more data produced and mined every day than anyone can make sense of. Business gets this and is moving to incorporate data analytics into every facet of the organization.

2) Virtually every marketing technology of note (and there are many) is either a data analytics solution or a solution almost wholly reliant on reams of data.

3) Marketers simply don’t have the required skills to leverage these techs, or the underlying data. Unfortunately, that seems to be true at every level of the marketing organization.

Net-net, the ecosystem is changing, and the winds do not favor marketers with no data science game.”

The writer cites three types of firms in which he believes traditional marketers will soon be displaced by a new breed of data scientists cum marketers: enterprises, agencies, and marketing technology vendors. Yep, that pretty much covers it all!

The implication isn’t that overall marketing employment will not be increasing (though it might) — but that its makeup will be reapportioned. Marketing will become more about science than art. (Not news to those of us marketers who’ve been following this shift for a while.) Lesson: sharpen up those analytics skills.

But all this talk about the need for more advanced-degree data geeks would be lessened if vendors could just develop tools that non-techies can use. It’s hard to argue that, in the software technology world, those that can make the complex simple always seem to win.

One category of marketing analytics software where this is already being seen was called out in the VentureBeat report: “Self-service analytics with a big focus on data visualization (like Tableau) has found its way into marketing organizations at many levels.” Other vendors are surely noticing that one (very successful) company is proving the point.

What’s a Marketer To Do, Now?

With all this change going on in marketing, and science gaining on art in job descriptions and resumes everywhere, you can’t sit still. But there is no simple, universal action plan. The VentureBeat reports says it well: “Marketing analytics is as complex as it is unique to the individual performing it. There is no one way of prioritizing the right kinds of metrics, for the right channels, for the right products, with the right people, under the right organizational model.” Here’s a summary of their recommendations:

Develop a completely custom digital marketing analytics roadmap that incorporates establishing a well-defined strategy for your analytics organization firmly aligned to business outcomes.
Then, establish your technology requirements.
Next, define all the messy organizational requirements for your analytics strategy.

And they rightfully end with this point: “Your metrics and KPIs will be completely unique to you, but consult with experienced marketing analytics agencies in your industry. They’ll help you figure out which metrics to track.“

Land of 10,000 Data Pros (well, almost)

It goes without saying that one big thing you need to do is keep learning. Soak in as much as you can. In that vein, I must mention an upcoming conference here in what myself and my data colleagues also like to call “The State” of analytics — Minnesota! (I’m co-organizing it with Lizzy Wilkins, a marketing-focused data scientist.)

It’s the 2nd Marketing Analytics conference from MinneAnalytics, so “MAMA2” for short, and it’s scheduled for January 22, 2016 in Minneapolis. It will be educational in nature, and we expect more than 600 attendees. MinneAnalytics is the largest local/regional organization in the country for data professionals, with more than 5600 members from the region (and growing), from startups to our many Fortune 500s, across a wide range of industries. It hosts free, sponsor-supported conferences. More details on MAMA2 will be forthcoming on the MinneAnalytics web site. (You may also follow the Twitter feed.)

One thing I can say about the conference: it will be keynoted by the leading voice in the country today on the topic of marketing technology. We have spots for up to 20 other experts to give presentations on a variety of marketing analytics technologies and case histories. Those speakers (and sponsors) are now converging. It’s sure to be an enlightening event.

SPS Commerce VP Says Marketing Has Been ‘Transformed’

August 5, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

Speaking at a meeting of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) this morning, Peter Zaballos said the practice of marketing has changed dramatically in the past five years. “It’s completely transformed,” said the VP of Marketing and Products at Minneapolis-based SPS Commerce, which runs a supply chain cloud service for retailers. And a lot of that transformation has to do with “how businesses buy,” according to Zaballos, citing the advent of the iPad as but one example in recent years. “My largest spend is technology, not media,” he said. “Marketing organizations have had to retool.”

Zaballos joined SPS (NASDAQ: SPSC) just two and half years ago, and the company has seen its revenues double in that time. (For the full year of 2014, the company expects revenue to be in the range of $125.7 to $126.5 million.) What undoubtedly surprised attendees at the meeting was learning that, before Zaballos joined, the company had no marketing department — only a group of top-performing sales people who each kind of did their own thing. But SPS realized it had to formalize the marketing function if it was to achieve the aggressive growth plans its management and board had laid out. Today, the firm continues to expand and add employees, Zaballos said, ”and we’re now the largest cloud service in Minnesota.” It reported recently that its retail sourcing community exceeds one million items and 7,000 retail members.

The topic of today’s meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of the BMA, attended by some 80 members and guests, was “Success Stories: How Marketers Overcome Their Greatest B2B Challenges.” After Zaballos gave his opening talk, he moderated a panel of marketing execs from local firms. (Left to right in the photo below: Zaballos; Audra Wendt, Cargill; Guy Wray, MOCON; Britta Iwen, Ecolab; and Judy German, Cachet Financial Solutions.) He led off the panel with his take on marketing today: “It’s about affecting change, including getting sales to adopt new tools” — citing a challenge all the others on the panel went on to talk about, among other topics.

It was a lively discussion, with panel members openly sharing their experiences navigating the new world of B2B marketing and the challenges they specifically have faced at their respective companies. Some of my takeaways:

• When the panelists were asked what was the one medium each of them relied on the most, invariably “content” was the word that quickly came out of each panelist’s mouth — whether it was about developing it, sharing it, repurposing it, or “leveraging it across all channels.”

• It seems social media is at the top of every B2B marketer’s mind these days, too (much related to the above), and is only becoming more important. At least one panelist mentioned the CEO pushing to do more with it. One reason: compared to older, traditional methods, it’s just much easier today to segment and identify prospects with social media — for example, by advertising on LinkedIn. “I can spend $125 (targeting certain titles or functions) and get 35,000 impressions.”

• The new product management is “growth hacking,” said Zaballos — meaning iterating improvements, and trying new things, or “failing fast.” When the panelists were asked how they encourage that, they all had good answers. At Cargill, it’s recognition — a “Fail Fast Award.” At MOCON, a heavily engineering type environment, it fits the culture to simply call them “experiments.” Ecolab encourages employees to talk about what they learned. At Cachet Financial, the youngest firm in the group, one concludes it’s just sort of built in to the culture, in what is more of a smaller, startup environment. (And, by the way, kudos to BMA for having an early-stage firm on the panel of an organization that’s more populated with large firms, including many of our local Fortune 500 giants. I say mix it up more with startups, and everyone benefits!)

• Asked about the technology they use — what and how much — it was not surprising to hear the word “data” mentioned most. As in analytics.

On that last point, I hope we get to hear more voices from the local BMA chapter speak at the “Marketing Analytics” conference I’m helping to plan this fall, being put on by the MinneAnalytics organization, on whose board I serve. I’m very happy to say that SPS’ Zaballos has agreed to speak about how his firm leverages its considerable customer data to obtain insights previously unavailable — arguably one of the most significant of those transformations happening in the world of marketing today. (Watch for more on that upcoming conference soon on Minnov8.)

>>> Here’s a video interview I did of Peter after the meeting. <<<

And be sure to check out more great events upcoming from the BMA Minnesota Chapter this fall as well. If you have anything at all to do with B2B marketing, you really should follow the organization on Twitter (@BMAMinnesota) and consider becoming a member!

TruScribe and Weird Al Yankovic Take a Shot at Corporate America

July 21, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

In a post today in the Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” blog (which covers media, entertainment, celebrity, and the arts), the latest music video from Weird Al Yankovic — called “Mission Statement” — was featured. It’s hilarious!! Take a look (length is 4:34)… I’ll wait.

What’s cool is that the video has a Minnesota connection. It turns out Yankovic and his longtime coproducer tapped TruScribe to make it — starting some ten months ago. TruScribe is headquartered in Madison WI, but also has an office in downtown St. Paul. (In addition, it maintains international operations through many key European partnerships.) Andrew Herkert, who’s VP of sales and a cofounder, heads the St. Paul office and helped launch the company while a student at the University of St. Thomas about five years ago. TruScribe has grown significantly since then.

An excerpt from the WSJ post:

The song, from Yankovic’s new album “Mandatory Fun,” is in the style of Crosby, Stills & Nash… (it) features Yankovic harmonizing with himself on lyrics constructed of corporate jargon, like “operationalize our strategies” and “leverage our core competencies,” while the animated whiteboard video depicts a live-action hand that is drawing illustrations to go with the words.

“I wanted to do a song about all the ridiculous double-speak and meaningless buzzwords that I’ve been hearing in office environments my entire life,” Yankovic says by email. “I just thought it would be ironic to juxtapose that with the song stylings of CSN, whose music pretty much symbolizes the antithesis of corporate America.”

I laughed out loud at one comment on the post (from a guy named David): “Weird Al hits all the right points. Anyone who has written a press release should hang their heads in shame.”

TruScribe is getting a ton of praise today (including from Al himself), as you can see on its Twitter account.

And here’s a great blog post TruScribe published today, Weird Al is making fun of you! And us, too.

TruScribe’s technology is called “Scribology,” and the company has built an impressive client list.

I had the pleasure of meeting cofounder Andrew Herkert at the most recent University of St. Thomas “Fowler Business Concept Challenge” (a student competition), where we were judges on the same team. Here’s what he had to say about the news today:

“Weird Al is a creative powerhouse, with a decades-long influence on pop culture, and that makes it an honor that we were selected as vendor for his whiteboard-animation project. The TruScribe team is optimistic this is just the beginning of a deeper relationship with the media industry. … I have high praise for Jay Levey of Imaginary Productions for catalyzing the vision for this video. Jay is Al’s business partner and manager/agent/fellow visionary — they’ve worked together for many, many years. In fact, Jay discovered Al some 30 years ago.”

TruScribe is another great example of Minnesota creativity and technology innovation! Okay, Wisconsin claims them as well. We hate to admit it — but, yes, occasionally, cheeseheads can be creative, too… 🙂

NOTE: This post first appeared earlier today on my personal blog, GraemeThickinsOnTech.

Comcast Partnering with CoCo for 1Gbps Fiber

October 10, 2013 By Steve Borsch

Good news for anyone already (or planning to be) a co-working person or company at CoCoMSP‘s Minneapolis Grain Exchange location or at its new Uptown facility: Comcast is providing dedicated one-gigabit fiber network connectivity to CoCo’s growing entrepreneurial community.

More in the good news department too: This 1GB fiber connection is symmetrical (same speeds upload and download) but there is no word yet on whether or not Comcast Business terms of service allow, or disallow, hanging a server off of this connection!

Since bandwidth is so incredibly important this is a good move by Comcast and a smart partnership by CoCo.

Here is the press release:

CoCo Minneapolis and Comcast Business Announce
Partnership to Provide Startups and Entrepreneurs
1 Gigabit Ethernet Connection

High-Performance Ethernet Services Enable CoCo
Entrepreneurs to Access Ultra-fast Internet Speeds

October 10, 2013

MINNEAPOLIS–Comcast is partnering with Minneapolis-based CoCo coworking and collaborative space to provide dedicated one-gigabit fiber network connectivity to CoCo’s growing entrepreneurial community, including its downtown location in the historic Minneapolis Grain Exchange and a new Uptown site that opens today.

“At CoCo, we always need more bandwidth, so this type of resource is a huge opportunity for our members. We appreciate that Comcast is leading by example in supporting startups and mobile workers.”

The Comcast partnership gives CoCo members access to an entirely new level of Internet bandwidth, once only available to larger businesses. The Comcast one-gigabit fiber connection is hundreds of times faster than outdated legacy technology and is symmetrical to provide equally fast upstream feeds, allowing the kind of bandwidth necessary to meet the most demanding applications.

This cutting-edge resource demonstrates Comcast’s commitment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem and its dedication to helping foster business growth and innovation in the Twin Cities.

“The Twin Cities is among the most connected metropolitan markets in the country, due largely to the major investments we’ve made in our metro-wide fiber optic network,” said Jeff Freyer, Regional Vice President for Comcast Twin Cities Region. “The resources we’re providing CoCo and their clients through this one-gigabit connection are a perfect example of the kind of scalability we’ve built into our infrastructure to serve businesses of all sizes – as well as our residential customers – with a full suite of innovative and affordable products and services.”

Freyer continued, “We appreciate the opportunity to partner with CoCo and are excited to empower today’s technology entrepreneurs with this ultra-fast internet connectivity.”

CoCo serves more than 500 members across three locations in the Twin Cities, including Lowertown St. Paul, downtown Minneapolis and now in the growing Uptown neighborhood. CoCo’s membership consists of startups, freelancers, consultants, and increasingly, mobile corporate workers.

“The high-bandwidth, low-latency connection goes a long way to even the playing field with much larger businesses and tech centers with huge resources,” said Spark software engineer and CoCo member David Middlecamp. “The symmetric bandwidth supports creators of content and services, rather than just content consumption, and facilitates working remotely across the globe, or collaborating across millions of connected devices.”

“This is the type of resource many of our entrepreneurs need in order to develop new technology and grow,” said founding partner Don Ball. “At CoCo, we always need more bandwidth, so this type of resource is a huge opportunity for our members. We appreciate that Comcast is leading by example in supporting startups and mobile workers.”

About CoCo Minneapolis
CoCo is a community for tech and creative entrepreneurs, independent businesses and corporate workgroups. We offer inspiring environments where they can gather, share ideas, team up on projects and get work done. A CoCo membership is an alternative to working from home, the cubicle farm or the local coffee shop.

About Comcast Business
Comcast Business, a unit of Comcast Cable, provides advanced communication solutions to help organizations of all sizes meet their business objectives. Through a modern, advanced network that is backed by 24/7 technical support, Comcast delivers Business Internet, TV and Voice services for cost-effective, simplified communications management.

The Comcast Business Ethernet suite offers high-performance point-to-point and multi-point Ethernet services with the capacity to deliver cloud computing, software-as-a-service, business continuity/disaster recovery and other bandwidth-intensive applications. Comcast Ethernet services are significantly faster than standard T1 lines and other legacy technologies, providing scalable bandwidth from 1 Mbps up to 10 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) in more than 20 major US markets.

For more information, call 866-429-3085 or visit http://business.comcast.com/enterprise.

About Comcast Cable
Comcast Cable is the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone provider to businesses and residential customers. Comcast has invested in technology to build an advanced network that delivers among the fastest broadband speeds, and brings customers personalized video, communications and home management offerings. Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) is a global media and technology company. Visit www.comcastcorporation.com for more information.

Contacts

Comcast
Mary Beth Schubert, 651-493-5775
Vice President, Corporate Affairs,
Comcast Twin Cities Region
Marybeth_schubert@cable.comcast.com

Workface Adds Status

December 8, 2011 By Steve Borsch

At Minnov8, like most social media-savvy folks, we leverage all the social connection capabilities we can for Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing options. It’s an absolute requirement if your organization is online and you want to be “in the game” with today’s always-on and always-connected workforce.

As a fanboy of Workface (disclaimer: was at one-time a services vendor to them too), I pay attention to pings from the CEO, Lief Larson. He just alerted me to their announcement of the first version of the Workface “Chat Live” status button which is rolling out now.

Huh? You’re doing a post about a “status button” Borsch? Yes, but only because I’m personally connected to organizations who are using the Workface toolbar within their sites and would find this instantly useful. These companies are connecting their folks directly to prospects and customers with a toolbar that makes anyone in customer-facing roles like inside sales, support, community management and other functions immediately available to a site visitor in the Workface toolbar.

Brainerd Savings Sam Horn has her Workface status set for "Online! Chat Now". (click for larger view)

Even though that Workface toolbar can be resident at the bottom of a website at all times, some organizations load it only on specific website pages (e.g., a sales or support page). The problem has been that people are usually listed on one or more company pages, like this first-to-deploy Workface customer did on their team page at Brainerd Savings & Loan. This Status button means that wherever a person is listed on their website anywhere their status can be available to a visitor at the click of a mouse.

This Workface Status button alerts visitors to your website whether or not you’re online. If you’re connected to the internet, it says, “Online! Chat now”. When a visitor clicks on it, they can go directly into live text, audio, or video chat communications with you. It can easily be deployed for one person, or the whole company. When you’re no longer connected to the Internet, the button automatically changes to say, “Send a Message” and then your website visitor can drop you a message.

The entire Workface team is eating-their-own-dog-food and using the new Workface Status button. Check it out at Workface and consider signing up for their service.

MIMA Summit 2011: Interview With Tim Brunelle and Ed Boches

October 11, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

The president of MIMA, Tim Brunelle, and his team have put together an amazing 10th annual MIMA Summit event. MIMA, as the oldest and largest interactive marketing association in the U.S., with more than 1300 members, never fails to disappoint in drawing excellent, in-demand speakers to its annual event. I had the pleasure of running into Tim chatting with one of those speakers, Ed Boches, who was a founder of the famed Mullen agency in Boston, and is now its chief innovation officer. Tomorrow, Ed will team with a colleague of his, Dave Armano, EVP-global innovation & integration at Edelman Digital, to do a talk they call “Group Therapy for Would-Be Innovators.” It is sure to be a highlight of the event, and I will be there!

Minnesota ‘Brand Storyteller’ Changes Name to Brandpoint

March 14, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

Hopkins-based ARAcontent, which has been a leader in content-based marketing solutions for more than 15 years, announced today it has changed its name to Brandpoint, underscoring the organization’s evolution from a provider of traditional PR brand storytelling into a comprehensive, content-based digital marketing platform.

Brandpoint offers three core product channels, each enhanced by accurate, real-time reporting of results:

• Media creation and distribution: Consumer-focused feature articles help clients tell their brand stories, and provide high-quality content to a network of online publishers. Brandpoint guarantees clients online placement of their articles through its powerful, cost-effective media creation and distribution service.

• Search engine optimization (SEO): Brandpoint provides full SEO consulting services that range from website audits to keyword analysis. Placement of quality content on trusted media websites is an effective way for brands to increase their SEO relevancy.

• Social media: Brandpoint supports clients’ social media strategies with outreach tools and writing services that help brands maintain and grow their social media presence.

“Changing our name to Brandpoint reflects how our business has evolved from a heritage of print article distribution into a comprehensive content-based digital marketing platform,” said David Olson, SVP and general manager of Brandpoint, in the company’s news announcemnet. “As the online marketing landscape becomes more dynamic, consumers are connecting with each other and the companies they patronize in new and exciting ways. By following consumer trends and continually integrating new services such as social media and SEO, Brandpoint is nicely positioned to serve as our clients’ strategic partner today and in the future.”

The parent company of Brandpoint, and another product called Adfusion, is ARAnet. It is an article-based digital media company that educates consumers, builds brands, and drives sales through product offerings that focus on digital advertising, SEO, and public relations, and leverage content and technology to achieve clients’ specific campaign goals. The company began life 15 years ago as Article Resource Association, providing copyright-free content to print media across the country. As the digital marketing world evolved, the company maintained its front-runner position by developing new content-based marketing tools and utilizing emerging technologies for a broad portfolio of public relations industry, corporate, and interactive agency clients.

Today, Brandpoint is recognized as a pioneer in content-based digital marketing and real-time reporting of measurable, effective results. For more information, call (866) 287-9168 or visit the company’s web site at www.brandpoint.com, where you can also click on an online demo.

Best Buy “On” Officially Debuts

January 6, 2011 By Steve Borsch

Though we’ve been aware of this “Best Buy On” adventure for some time, this week Advertising Age reported that Best Buy company had officially rolled it out saying that it is, “…a multichannel network filled with original editorial content spanning everything from how-to videos and gift guides to new-technology primers and behind-the-scenes looks at popular movies. The network, called Best Buy On, includes a website it bills as an “online magazine” and a huge in-store component with its content and ad messaging “broadcast” on screens across the store, including in the TV, mobile and portable entertainment sections.”

In today’s online media, content must be shareable, give me added value world, “On” is a brilliant strategy to be deeply involved in delivering high value content for a variety of needs and create even more reasons to lean on Best Buy for ones technology.

There is a lot of content at Best Buy On, but we went there today specifically to seek any content related to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) going on right now in Las Vegas. Take a peek at this CES press preview where the Best Buy crew shot video:

CES is THE place for most manufacturers in the world to rollout their new gadgets and tech. Today we’ve been viewing videos, listening to podcasts and reading blog posts about all the hot introductions at CES in anticipation for tomorrow’s recording of the Minnov8 Gang podcast.

Here’s the potential problem with how easy it is to be plugged in to CES’ introductions: Consumers who are interested in knowing what’s coming in the near future are consuming that exact same content! I’ve often wondered: wouldn’t consumers knowing the next generation technology shown at CES this week virtually kill the sales of the current products on the Best Buy shelves today? It stands to reason that if someone sees the next, hottest, must-have gadget in some CES recap online (and we can safely assume that that product will be on store shelves within weeks), wouldn’t consumers just wait to buy that new one?

… [Read More…]