I had the pleasure of speaking to a great group of music industry executives and promoters yesterday at Canadian Music Week in Toronto.  The panel I moderated was called “Data is King” and we were to speak about using data to enhance the understanding, targeting, and results of digital media.  The panelists included smart folks from Radian6, Nielsen, SkyTide and BigChampagne.  Before we went up on stage we were huddling and realized that there was a real possibility that many in the audience had a total annual marketing budget that would be smaller than the smallest one of our products.  So, I made this the first thing I asked when we got on stage and indeed, just five people in the audience had a marketing budget of more than $20,000.

Audible.  Green 33, speak about free. Hike.  First question for the panelists: What is the one free tool you would recommend that marketers on a very tight and limited budget be using today (and don’t say, “yeah, what he said.”)  I got four very good answers.

1. The first and most obvious is Google analytics.  Knowing where your visitors are coming from, search terms that drive them there, and the geography within which you’re most popular are all “must know” data and can be the start of a good foundation in a low budget marketing plan.
2. Next was TweetDeck, and what a great answer.  Bands have certainly embraced the power of social media and use facebook and twitter regularly, but monitoring what is being said about your band, business, or even your competitors can be done through TweetDeck’s search functions.  You get what you pay for in that TweetDeck lacks the ease of use and data arrangement paid tools will offer, but what a great start.
3. Next was compete.com.  You may know we’re a big advocate of Compete as well through our partnership with them, but their free product is also a great way to peer into basic web site analytics of other web sites.
4. Finally, Quantcast is a must-use.  It’s worth “Quantifying” your own site but the ability to see where else your audience visits frequently and information about your competitors’ sites will give you a leg up on less savvy marketers right away.

Sure, Omniture, Radian6, and CompetePRO are all much more robust but when you have $20k annually (or less) to market your brand, band, or product, every dollar has to go to media.  If you’re in this position, take comfort knowing there are plenty of free tools available to get you started on a great path.

P.S. A tremendous point was made by Eric from BigChampagne that didn’t fit into the body of this post but is worth mentioning.  Most data is now available free somehow or another.  When you hire a BigChampagne, Nielsen, or any other company, make sure you’re not spending money on the data itself but on the analysis and insight they can provide you.  Most of these companies have experts that can take data which would have otherwise taken your, or someone at your company, days or weeks to pour through and make sense of it immediately.  Now that’s worth the price.

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Sheesh, Tolman, you sure made some waves! The funny thing, though, is that waves are usually only made when someone puts an obvious truth out in the open that was previously unwilling to be discussed.  In this case, the media is crying that publishers are “getting squeezed” by all the other players in display space.  Why not look at it from an economics perspective, though?  The publishers aren’t getting squeezed; buyers are buying what they value.  What they value is the audience data, the ability to aggregate and optimize across hundreds or thousands of sites, and have it all delivered in one clean report.  Buyers apparently value this much more than whether their banner appears on people.com, perezhilton.com, or insertcelebrityraghere.com.  If they hit their eCPA, what’s the difference?

I believe this is simply the reality of the web catching up with those who have been trying to buy digital media for the last 15 years the same way they bought traditional media.  Because there haven’t been instantly measurable results in traditional media, content was king.  Now, results have dethroned the old regime and publishers are the ex-communicated.

Publishers will argue that this will lead to a world of all junk content.  I don’t see it that way.  I’m sure Perez doesn’t either.  What it will lead to is a broader base of lesser known brand name-based content, and not because consumers want these lesser-known brand names, but because these lesser-known brands will have a business model that can be profitable selling their display at significantly lower CPMs – rates buyers are willing to pay.

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