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Tim Ash
Beginning now, we are introducing a weekly post recognizing top Internet marketers for their contributions. Our goal is to help business owners, marketing managers and others gain a broader understanding of the marketing landscape as it exists today.
These are the thinkers and pioneers in online marketing. They’re the people we pay attention to and learn from, while we develop cutting edge technologies of our own. Hopefully, in learning a bit about them, you’ll be inspired to take your own marketing efforts to ever greater heights.
I first learned of Tim Ash in 2007 when I read his book, Landing Page Optimization. By then, I already had several years of digital marketing experience behind me—especially SEO and conditional messaging, and sales-pipeline kinds of activities.
In the 2-3 years prior, I had begun formulating my own ideas about how marketing, especially online, was more of a statistical exercise than an artistic one. It was Tim Ash’s book that solidified my thinking, and gave words to what had previously been vague ideas and thoughts.
Even today, I recommend Landing Page Optimization to all of our newly hired Internet Marketers at OCG. Around here, Landing Page Optimization is referred to simply as “the book.” Save for the expected evolutions in available technologies, “the book” is a relevant today as it was in 2007.
Tim Ash is the President & CEO of a company called Site Tuners, a CRO (conversion rate optimization) firm that works with large organizations to ensure the highest possible ROI for their online efforts.
His Ph.D. studies were in Neural Networks and A.I., and he has a Master’s degree in computer science…. So, enough said about qualifications.
In many ways, we build and utilize landing pages the way we do today, because of the effort of Tim Ash back in the 1990s. I was an Internet Marketer at that time, working with some of the very first companies engaged in this new concept, e-commerce. That was before Google, and the search leaders were companies like HotBot, Inktomi and Ask Jeeves!
To imagine someone like Tim, with the foresight to analyze consumer behavior at a time where we were just focused on getting our SSL connections to work is amazing to me. It’s also humbling.
So, thank you, Mr. Ash. You’re an inspiration to me, and a great resource for our company.
If you’d like to learn more about Tim Ash, visit http://sitetuners.com/about/management/tim-ash/.
If you’re doing business in 2015, the term marketing automation has likely made its way into your vernacular—or at least your inbox. But unless you have a comprehensive marketing department, or a service provider who specializes in it, you’re probably not making full use of it as a time-and money-saving tool. If you’re like a lot of small businesses, you may even be fuzzy on exactly what it is. This brief primer is for you. Marketing automation is an umbrella term that refers to the process (and its technologies) of turning prospects into customers in a way that's data-driven and standardized. Marketing campaigns are automated, and usually channeled through email, social media, blogs, and websites. That automation allows your marketing staff to spend fewer resources on moving prospects through the sales channel, while speeding up that process. Data gathered during this process is useful both in the journey to a particular conversion, and for future marketing and even product planning. Automation typically has three components that work together: Intelligence/Analytics At this phase, prospect activities—for instance, who clicked what link in an email, or used a particular search term—are tracked and analyzed, allowing campaigns to be more highly-targeted to a prospect’s interests based on their behavior. Prospect-Campaign Automation Here, prospects are categorized based on the analysis of their interests gathered in the first phase, and then presented with marketing messages and campaigns that target that particular interest. This is where you’ll see marketing components like shopping cart reminders, and those uncanny Facebook ads that seemed to know what you were thinking earlier in the day. Workflow Automation Marketing campaigns activities can be creative and exciting, but they can also be tedious and labor-intensive. Workflow automation allows marketing staff to automate repetitive processes, like campaign budgeting, file approvals, brand asset management, campaign scheduling, and other internal activities. The field of marketing automation isn’t new, but for many years it was used primarily by larger organizations with the budgets, staff, and expertise to purchase and use those tools. In recent years, it has been gaining traction among even small businesses and entrepreneurs, thanks to more accessible and affordable technologies, and an increasing number of digital marketing agencies offering it as a one-stop service.
I just read something that struck me as both funny and poignant. It was an article about website budgets that pointed out how every project begins with what the author described as a "subtle psychological game of 'you go first'" between the agency (us) and the potential client. The point of the article was that the creative agency or web design firm should be bold and ask. Fundamentally, I agree and here's why. To begin with, regardless of the business owner's budget, there will almost always be a solution that will at least satisfy some of his organization's goals. So, for Reno web design projects with smaller budgets, we always do our best to guide the client toward options that have the best possible chance of early success.
Sometimes, outlining the scope of a project ties our people up for days. To be accurate, we develop what we call use case diagrams outlining every possible interaction between the various potential users of the final website. Additionally, considerable effort goes into higher level strategic planning long before we present a proposal. If we have a sense of the planned budget going in, we are able to concentrate our energy on strategies and tactics that have a realistic chance of being implemented. It's easy to understand why a potential client might prefer to play it close to the vest. There are agencies that would propose a project at, say, $5,000, but if they know the budget is twice that, the proposal will be presented accordingly. It's an opportunistic form of bidding that is both unethical and unproductive. In our firm, if we know the budget is X-dollars, we bid the project based on realistic expectations of hours regardless. If there's anything left, we'll make recommendations about how the client can gain additional value with the same budget, or simply leave it out of the proposal. But, in either case, we never jack up the price just because there's money available.
Obviously, no one wants to be charged more than what the web design or development project should really cost. But, not having some idea of budget at the onset makes it very difficult to propose the right solutions. Also, there are times when a budget is simply too small for the proposed project scope. Proposals cost a lot to produce. There's almost always a significant amount of discovery that must take place prior to putting together the quote. So, if we're going to invest several hours putting together an accurate proposal, we need to know that there's a reasonable chance that the project will move forward.
In an ideal world, the client and creative agency share the same goals. In other words, both sides should be working to achieve the same result, which, by the way, must be to reach the objectives set forth by the client, not those of the agency. After all, we don't get hired to send invoices. Our Reno web design and internet marketing team gets hired to accomplish something the client cannot accomplish internally. In my view, it all boils down to this. If you are the client, try to at least give some kind of range regarding website budgets for a given project. That will help the web designer and engineering or marketing team outline the best possible tactics for meeting your goals. If you are the agency, be honest and quote what things really cost. That way, we maintain trust as an industry and everyone involved wins.
