I rarely print stuff out anymore, but this download caught my attention. A lot of businesses have been asking about how to do this or that on Facebook, so I thought I’d post their recent guide here. And while Facebook Business Pages in my opinion  is a very un-intuitive environment for small business owners, I’m sure that Facebook will figure this out and create a more user friendly environment as they move forward. After all, I think that Google (Places) and Facebook (Pages) are locked in a race to take over the corporate website and small business marketing as a whole!

Anyway, you can download the Product Guide Here

Anyway, where was I…uh, yes, so I was about to try and create an analogy between poker and marketing. I’ve heard some poker stars say that, ‘Anyone can learn poker, but it takes a lifetime to master’. The same goes for online marketing. Anyone can jump in this space quite easily. They can become a marketing manager and direct a design, hire a team to build an application or even be an ‘SEO Consultant’. But the ultimate question is whether they are driving revenue?

Though I’ve only dabbled in poker myself, there are a few things that stick out in my mind about the good players.

• They are good with numbers
• They know the game inside and out
• They’re very attuned to patterns within the game
• They have good instinct (and understand human behavior)
• They’ve got a serious amount of hours logged on a table

With the web, it is very similar. Those who are really good in the online space:

• Know the (online) game inside and out
• They have intimate knowledge of how people use the web
• Very atuned to patterns & trends
• They understand the importance of analytics (numbers)
• They have an obscene amount of hours spent online.

In the end, good poker players end up blending their instinct and ability to read people with their grasp of statistics. Some lean towards the ‘feel’ side while others lean towards the ‘numbers’ side. Whether they realy on their intellect or perception, they’ll move towards their stregnth. But the point is that ALL of them have these two primary pieces in common.

The same goes for the web, but online this comes in the form of analytics, and a variety of metrics, whereas with cards it boils down to statistics & probability.

If you are a marketer that isn’t embracing analytics there is a problem. Sure there are a lucky few who have launched a great product at the right time, spent no time measuring anything and become a zillionaire. But if you are an Ad agency, creative design shop or Interactive group you’ll have to embrace the numbers to make a difference.

Note of caution: As with anything else, too much of something can be bad. Be careful not to get lost in the numbers. This can lead to paralysis by analysis.

While many of us have had great ideas over the years, we have also lost a lot of opportunities for improvement by not paying enough attention to user behavior. Google Analytics, Yahoo Web Analytics and HaveaMint just happen to provide us with these tools free of charge. Despite the fact that analytics is a deep & dark tunnel and has the capability to consume an enormous amount of hours, there is some very valuable information within.

In the end though the equation is simple. You need to get your website visitors to do what you want them to. If you do this on a consistent basis, you will never lack of clients.

The key is to effectively blend your intuition with data.

So often, we tend to focus on the end results before we even start; be it a website, campaign, online marketing…etc. Clients tend to pay less attention to the process and the many small variables that a good designer, consultant or developer brings to the table. But this is a very difficult concept to get across to the a prospective client. You’re essentially trying to sell them on your experience and it ends up sounding like something that Chris Farley might have said in the movie Tommy Boy.

This came to light recently when a client insisted that a Facebook Ad look a certain way. They insisted that the itty bitty ad that they wanted have writing on it, i.e. name of company, website..etc. I tried to tell them that this wouldn’t be readable for the user and they’d be much better off with something simpler and that they should rely on the text below the add for any details. I mean, what would we know – we’ve only been doing this forever.

So, the we placed their ad up. But the story doesn’t end there.

To prove a point, we kept the other ad to and served it as well without the client knowing (and we paid out of pocket to see how our ad would perform). Lo and behold, our Ad returned 700 percent higher click-through rate than theirs. We mentioned this to the client and they said something to the effect of oh, yea..we wanted ‘our’ designer to do the work because they ‘understand’ our style and brand. Huh?

Every time I think about this my heart starts beating just a tad bit faster until I calm the mind with some ‘Buddy The Elf’ truisms that I keep handy. All kidding aside though, I come across countless small experiences where experience can help a client, increase campaign performance, drive online sales, increase leads for websites but most of them tend to fall into the ‘intangible’ category – things that aren’t easily tracked and things that are done without the client even knowing.

This concept of  ‘many small things’ become evident when working with a good developer who understand usability. A good developer will create small elements, enforce logic and simplify based on experience that eventually enhances the user experience (and eventual success of a website). Nearly all of these things will go unnoticed by clients.

So how do we compare how a site is built, versus how a site would have been built if the client moved in  a different direction?

I guess it really boils down to good communication with the client and in making sure that we focus on analytics. In the end, success online comes from the proper execution of many small elements. If we can show companies results at the end of the day maybe the details should remain the intangible things that make up a good marketing team, dev or design team?