In a guest post to ReadWriteWeb, Wild Apricot argues that when it comes to the choice between sharing or keeping secret their product road maps, companies should SHARE and get feedback from their customers.

Wild Apricot’s post is in response to a prior guest post by Mike McDerment from FreshBooks who believes in keeping product road maps confidential. Wild Apricot, however, firmly believes that being more open with customers - and inviting them into the product development cycle - actually leads to better products.

Indeed, Wild Apricot follows a 5-step ‘never ending’ product development cycle:

Release an update

Review accumulated feedback from clients, and add or change items in the work queue

Reprioritize the new list, and pick top items we can fit into our next update

Several weeks of intensive development, then testing

Rinse and repeat

As a result of this approach, the company tends to release product updates every 6 to 7 weeks.

Interestingly, the company has addressed only 50 percent of its original list of proposed improvements. Why? Because it’s focus has been firmly on making CUSTOMER-driven improvements. Indeed, Wild Apricot has released around 200 items that customers have requested.

Wild Apricot doesn’t just wait for customer complaints or requests either. Instead, it invites them. It uses a special discussion forum where customers can post their ideas, as well as comment and vote on those ideas.

Wild Apricot constantly monitors this forum, but rather than react to every single suggestion, the team looks for recurring themes. Then they generates ideas and features to address such customers’ wants, which may or may not match exactly what such customers had in mind.

You might wonder, as I did, whether this approach is TOO open. Whether it allows competitors to eavesdrop on customer feedback and get insight into Wild Apricot’s product plans.

Wild Apricot, however, believes that:

“the competitive edge is in the execution, not the initial ideas, which are a dime a dozen. Plus, of course, customer service, however lame it might sound: this old-fashioned concept still goes a long way towards winning (and losing) clients.”

I can’t agree more. And what an exciting thought? To think that you don’t necessarily need to come up with the latest and greatest ideas… that 50 percent of what you think are necessary improvements may NOT be all that desirable… and that your customers will tell you what they want.

And that you can WIN just by being responsive to your customers, delivering on your promises, and by providing good (let alone exceptional) customer service… even if your competitors are watching your every move!

Wild Apricot gets it: that product development is really a part of marketing, and marketing is not just generating and converting customers, but is also about satisfying and re-selling customers based on what THEY want.

That’s not to say I agree that all product plans should be revealed, but I do believe that bringing customers into the product development (i.e. marketing) process is not just ideal… it’s ESSENTIAL.

Source: RWW Sponsor, “Secrecy or Transparency? One Startup’s Experience”, ReadWriteWeb, November 27, 2008

Undoubtedly in response to numerous questions from concerned and confused Google Adwords advertisers, Google has posted an explanation of its Quality Score changes on its Adwords blog.

In short, here are Google’s responses to the main three issues on advertisers’ minds:

1. How will Quality Score be calculated?

Google will STILL consider (a) the historic performance of you account, evaluating the clickthrough rate (CTR) of all the ads and keywords in that account; and (b) your landing page quality. However, although Google will evaluate your overall Quality Score at the time of each search query, it will evaluate landing page quality less frequently.

2. What’s the impact of the removal of ‘Inactive for Search Status’?

Google believes that by making all keywords active it will better be able to evaluate keywords for any query where they may be relevant. The company has acknowledged that keywords previously marked as ‘inactive for search’ would otherwise never show ads on Google.com, even where they might have been a high quality match for certain queries. Now it’s giving such keywords a chance.

3. What’s the difference between ‘first page bid estimates’ and the old ‘minimum bids’?

Google says that for queries that don’t have much advertiser competition, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with lots of advertiser competition may have much higher first page bid estimates. This is because you’ll probably need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than the competition and show on the first page of paid search results.

Source: Trevor Claiborne, “Quality Score improvements to go live in coming days”, Inside Adwords, September 15, 2008

Here’s a quick tip for improving just about any aspect of your marketing or business: start measuring it.

Now, measuring performance is NOT enough of course. It’s critical to take action to improve that performance. But measuring it is a great first step. Once you know the numbers - whether they relate to traffic, conversion rates or anything else – you’ll naturally start thinking about how to improve those numbers… and ideally you’ll start making those improvements.

Even if there are numbers you just don’t have the time or resources to improve right now, it’s still worthwhile having them on your radar. In fact it’s critical if you’re to avoid unpleasant surprises. By keeping track of key metrics you’ll tend to notice patterns or anomalies that require immediate attention. More importantly, you’ll be able to give them immediate attention.

If you haven’t implemented a website statistics program, I recommend signing up for a Google Analytics account. It’s free and provides a range of invaluable data. If you do track your web statistics, make it a habit to check them at appropriate intervals.

Don’t do this obsessively of course - i.e to the point where you spend more time checking your numbers than doing anything about them!

Instead, check them as frequently as is necessary to be able to notice trends, problems or opportunities, and make any necessary changes.

Last Thursday, Google announced improvements to its Quality Score, which it introduced in July 2005 to vary minimum bids for keywords based on relevance.

Google is making three key changes to Quality Score:

1. Quality Score will now be calculated at the time of each search query. On that basis, Google will evaluate an ad’s quality each time it matches a search query. Consequently, Quality Score will vary according to such factors as where an ad displays (Google, search partner, content site) and where the searcher is located (country, state).

2. Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’. Rather than be deemed inactive for search due to low relevance and/or searches, all keywords will be able to have ads shown on Google and the content network (unless you’ve paused or deleted them).

3. “First page bid” will replace the “minimum bid”. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results in Google, based on the ‘exact match’ version of the keyword, the ad’s Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword.

So what do these changes mean?

Well, as far as a more dynamic Quality Score goes, it probably just confirms the need to keep keywords relevant. The good news is that, theoretically, YOUR ideas over what is relevant can be borne out by the behavior of your target market, rather than be deemed by Google. Provided, of course, that you get it right.

The lifting of the ‘inactive for search’ restraint is, I think, good news. Again, provided that you know more about your market than Google’s algorithm.

As for the replacement of the “minimum bid” with the “first page bid”… this sounds suspiciously like an excuse to make Google Adwords advertisers pay more. Hopefully not, but we won’t know until Google rolls out these “improvements” over the next few weeks.

Source: Trevor Claiborne, “Quality Score Improvements”, August 21, 2005

This is truly shameful.

I call myself a marketer. I provide marketing products and services. I publish a 6-day-per-week marketing newsletter.

But when it comes to investing in marketing, exactly what percentage of company expenses do I spend on marketing?

Let me explain…

We’re finalizing our end-of-year financial reports (the financial year ends on June 30 each year in Australia). Although I should keep MUCH better track of these things, the fact is I am not the numbers person I should probably be.

Yes, I’m a big believer in ITTI (innovating, testing, tracking and improving) and it’s the numbers that indicate the extent of any improvements (or lack thereof), but this is a learned skill… not one that has come naturally to me. So I have a tendency to keep track of some numbers… and not others…

So when it came to finally evaluating our annual performance and seeing the numbers in the cold light of day, I was shocked to see how little our company actually spent on paid-for marketing initiatives last year.

Now I should say that this figure does NOT reflect the time we devote to marketing, which is considerable… but it does reflect a “tightwad” mentality. A mentality that is, I must admit, a
carry-over from (a) building two companies with negligible startup capital, and (b) being too product oriented.

So what’s the damage? Well, our spending on advertising and marketing services constituted just 2 percent last year.

That’s right, an anemic 2 percent!

Granted, we poured a lot of our budget into development last year (and still are - if you’re familiar with DomainerIncome.com… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!) so that was bound to reduce the percentage spent on other things.

But I’ve always thought that the bulk, if not a significant percentage of ANY business’s expenses should be invested in marketing. If anything, there should be NO upper limit as long as the amount spent on marketing is generating a sufficient return on investment (ROI). So the fact that we haven’t followed our own advice is, indeed, shameful.

Moreover, we’ve left money on the table!

So that’s my embarrassing admission… but what about YOU? Have you been fed the myth that Internet marketing is all about freebie marketing tactics and avoiding any marketing initiatives that cost money?

Probably not. Let’s face it, no serious business skimps on marketing.

For us, it’s time to get serious!

Late last year we surveyed the readers of our Success Accelerator email newsletter. We generated enough responses to get a good idea of:

• How people read the newsletter;
• What they thought about its frequency, length, number of articles, etc;The topics they were, and were not, interested in;
• What improvements could be made; and
• Other fascinating and invaluable insights that enabled us to better tailor Success Accelerator to readers’ interests!

Now, we could have guessed what our readers wanted… but what a missed opportunity. There’s no way we could have known what our readers really thought and wanted. And, yes, the aim was to give them what they wanted… so they, in turn, would keep on reading the newsletter and, ideally, purchase some of the products and services we advertised in it.

Of course, surveys don’t always reveal the “truth”. What people actually do… and what they say they do… can be two different things. But if you word your surveys appropriately, don’t get too personal, and allow people to be anonymous, you can often glean incredible insights. Particularly, the “why” behind what they do.

If you get the chance - and if you don’t get the chance, make the chance - survey your customers. Find out what they want, like and dislike about your business, products or services… and then use the information to improve them!

(And yes, we plan to survey readers of this newsletter in the not-too-distant future too!)