May 21, 2008

John Gallant, Network World, Inc. – New Network World Survey Rates Security Vendor Entrenchment

Paul Gillin, Paul Gillin Communications – When it Comes to Content Delivery, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom

Elyse Tager, Elymedia, LLC – BT – Behind the Scenes Innovations

Jean Romeo, Research Concepts, LLC – Why Do Organizations Switch Technology Vendors?

Ann Roskey, Accela Communications – Viewer Data Collection Strategies for Online Video

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New Network World Survey Rates Security Vendor Entrenchment
John Gallant, CEO, Network World, Inc.

"There is no security on this earth, only opportunity."   — Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Life ain't easy when you're a security vendor.

Not only do you have to keep up with the latest threats and help customers patch the newly found holes in their defenses, you have to deal with the market realities of consolidation among competitors – like IBM buying ISS or EMC gobbling up RSA – and the emergence of venture-funded start-ups targeting the newest, juiciest opportunities. Sure, security has been a lucrative segment of the IT industry for quite some time. But getting on top in the security market and staying there is no walk in the park.

Network World has just completed new research that will help security vendors – new and established – understand how to improve their position with customers and gain an edge on competitors. Our 2008 Security Vendor Affinity Study is the first in a series of customer research projects focused on specific tech markets and aimed at discovering which vendors have the strongest leadership positions and which have the tightest bonds with buyers. In addition, the survey has findings on how difficult customers feel it would be to abandon particular vendors and what factors would cause a buyer to switch to another provider’s security solutions.

(Jean Romeo of Research Concepts, which conducted the study for Network World, has a great piece in this newsletter on the vendor-abandonment findings and she also provides more detail on how the survey was conducted.)

This column can’t do justice to the depth of the study, which not only highlights major differences in how top security companies are viewed by customers and non-customers but also provides insights into how these companies can address specific challenges they face in the market. But I want to point out some specific angles of the study using some key companies as examples.

Case in point: When asked which companies they view as ‘industry leaders’ in security, customers cited Cisco more than twice as often as they picked Juniper Networks. But things change fairly dramatically when the findings are dissected along the lines of customers and non-customers. Juniper rockets up near the top of the pack with a leadership ranking close to Cisco’s among their respective customers. What’s pulling down Juniper’s overall ranking is its standing among non-customers.

Juniper scores very well against Cisco and all competitors when customers and non-customers are asked to rank technology innovators. But its status as a ‘preferred vendor’ – while very high among current customers – is hurt by low scores from prospective customers, where Cisco scores much higher.

All that data on leadership, innovation and preference enabled us to create a Marketplace Perceptions grid that positions vendors as ‘Resting on Their Laurels,’ ‘Needs to Work Harder,’ needing to ‘Get the Word Out,’ or in a ‘Position of Strength’ with customers.  (Check the survey to see where Juniper and Cisco fall.) No matter in which quadrant the company resides, there’s advice aimed at helping the vendors maintain or enhance their positions.

The Marketplace Perceptions grid is paired with a Security Entrenchment grid that positions vendors based on how likely their current customers are to recommend the vendor to colleagues and peers, and how difficult buyers believe it would be to replace the vendor. It also factors in perceptions – both from current buyers and non-customers – on how hard the vendor is working to win their business. (It’s surprising how some companies are perceived as doing little indeed to court even their existing major customers!)

The grid highlights which companies are well entrenched – but need to keep working hard to maintain that position – and which companies are most vulnerable to poaching. For me, Microsoft provided some real surprises – particularly compared to some of the best-known, long-time security brands.

Overall, the 2008 Security Vendor Affinity Study provides a robust overview of the strengths and weaknesses of major vendors and what they need to do to enhance their status among customers and prospective buyers. (To learn more about the 2008 Security Vendor Affinity Study, contact Donna Pomponi, Director of Marketing, at dpomponi@nww.com.)

Next up for us is the Storage Vendor Affinity Study and I’ll report on that as the findings become available.

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When it Comes to Content Delivery, Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom
Paul Gillin, Social Media Consultant and Author of  The New Influencers

For more than a decade, technology marketers have used white papers and webcasts to deliver useful content and generate leads.  These vehicles should be an essential part of your content marketing initiative, but in this flourishing multimedia world, they are only two of more than a half dozen new ways to reach prospects.  Think holistically and start to tap into these emerging delivery channels.

Today's business decision-makers choose to consume media using whatever channel is most convenient. For example, time-strapped businesspeople are gravitating to podcasts as an efficient means to learn while they engage in off-line activities like commuting, exercising and mowing the lawn. Emarketer estimates that the U.S. podcast audience grew 285% in 2007 to 18.5 million people and will increase to 65 million in 2012. What's more, this audience is affluent; podcast listeners are twice as likely to have incomes over $100,000 as non-listeners.

Or take PowerPoint. Microsoft’s ubiquitous presentation software is evolving into a legitimate delivery channel. Business professionals appreciate the succinctness of PowerPoint presentations and like being able to integrate slides into their own presentations. When those slides can contain facts and figures that speak to your company’s strengths, it's all the better for you.

Other alternative channels include online video, serialized blog entries, screen recordings, FAQs and even live chats.

Savvy marketers are learning to craft their Web campaigns with the same content but multiple media. Let's look at just two examples of how this can work.

Start with the tried and true eight-page white paper. With just a little tweaking, the content can be delivered as a Q&A podcast interview with an official from your company. A new technology called enhanced podcasts enables authors to combine images with sound for playback on video-enabled media players. You can also create a PowerPoint that highlights key points of the white paper and deliver it as a download, slide show or PDF. You can even add audio directly into PowerPoint presentations.

Or let's start with an executive presentation from a conference. It doesn't take much time or expense to capture the presentation on video these days. That then opens up a variety of packaging options.

One simple tactic is to extract the audio track from the video and make it available as a podcast. Many professional conference organizers do this today. You can also combine speaker slides with the extracted audio track and package them into a webcast. If the speaker's presentation includes a screen demonstration, use screen capture software like Snagit, Camtasia, Quick Screen Recorder or any one of several others to record the demo in real time. You can then post the screen show and link to it from the webcast.

You can even convert the video into a written document using a transcription service. Some offshore providers work for less than two dollars per minute of recorded speech. This is a great way to get a printed premium out of a spoken presentation. Customers often like to download both.

Paul Gillin is a writer, speaker and content marketing consultant specializing in technology and new media. He has been a technology journalist for 25 years. His next book, Secrets of Social Media Marketing, will be published in the fall of 2008.

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BT – Behind the Scenes Innovations
Elyse Tager, Founder and Principal, Elymedia, LLC

“It’s the data, stupid,” might well be the mantra of the direct response industry. Or a corollary “database segmentation and analysis is the key to ROI." Much of the analytical methodology and discipline is now popping up with a variety of BT products and solutions.

I spent quite a bit of time talking to a variety of Ad Networks, publishers and other suppliers around what’s new in BT during Ad-Tech in San Francisco in April. I may sound like a broken record, but I continue to be astounded at how much the methodology behind many of the new targeting solutions are firmly based in direct marketing, data-driven practices now moving in to the online space. Utilizing techniques of working with anticipated click streams to predict future behavior, as opposed to merely measuring past behavior, the level of sophistication is rising. Good news for the advertiser!

I met with Don Mathis, president of Epic Advertising (previously known as Azoogle, plus an acquisition or two) to discuss how they have using BT and some upcoming changes. Epic Advertising now encompasses two main units focused on online consumer traffic acquisition: AzoogleAds and Bazaar Advertising. AzoogleAds continues to provide broad-based traffic acquisition services leveraging the company’s leading performance-based ad network business. Bazaar Advertising continues to provide search engine management and marketing services, specializing in keyword discovery, purchase and optimization of online search campaigns.

While the company had previously offered a robust, classic BT solution to it’s advertisers, just this week, they are announcing the official launch of Performance CPM (pCPM), a patent-pending metric that allows advertisers to track performance-marketing campaigns by measuring “induced visits.” Advertisers can now determine campaign effectiveness utilizing a new, more comprehensive approach and gives a new definition to the concept of “behavioral.”

The premise of pCPM is rooted in induced visits, or visits to an advertiser’s site tracked beyond direct clicks. A visit to an advertiser’s site is “induced” if it results in any way from an ad, even if there is no immediate response or direct click path from ad to site. This metric goes beyond traditional campaign measurement tactics by employing scientific techniques to discern the broadest types of cause and effect, excluding things like “accidental clicks.”

Along with measuring induced visits, the metric encompasses elements from traditional tracking methods – CPC, CPM and CPA – as well as inherent branding impacts to offer a more holistic view of an online advertising campaign’s success. Because pCPM involves only statistics, it avoids any retention of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

The ability of the advertiser to use these new metrics to increase performance of their BT campaigns will only increase their effectiveness in optimization. Don stated, “This method lets our advertisers do two new things: they can see the impact of an ad beyond direct clicks, and they can put a solid measure of user-impact on their traditional brand-oriented CPM campaigns. We believe our method, marrying marketing and technology, is the next step in online marketing campaign tracking and will serve as a model for the industry.”

It all started to sound like smoke and mirrors until I spent additional time talking to Bill Softky, their “Chief Algorithm Officer.” His academic background is in brain science and pattern recognition, and his mathematical work on neural irregularity and correlations is intimately related to the statistics of online advertising traffic. I was intrigued with Bill’s further explanation of “induced visit”:

An “induced visit” from an ad is any visit that can be statistically linked to viewing the ad. Because it is statistical, you can’t just have one induced visit; you have to look at lots of ad-views, and lots of site visits, and then do some careful correlations to discover how many more site visits you got with the ads – than you would have had without them. The math behind the metric is just subtle enough that others aren’t doing it, but it’s actually fairly simple, and has been used in signal processing and neurobiology for decades. 

The ability to tap into the nuances of intuited or induced behavior to predict future performance is a new direction for Behavioral Targeting. As we, as an industry, become more expert and rigorous in our technological capabilities, we all will benefit with far more relevant ads, less ad budget waste and happier end users. What's not to like?

About Elyse Tager
Elyse Tager is founder and principal of Elymedia, an online and traditional media agency that has worked with many of the world's most recognizable brands, from Microsoft to PowerBar. With 20 years of executive marketing experience in direct response and 10 years of Internet marketing experience, Elyse has gained a thorough understanding of both types of media and how they interact. This depth of experience and knowledge has benefited her clients as they strategize marketing objectives in both on- and offline worlds. Contact her at info@elymedia.com.

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Why Do Organizations Switch Technology Vendors?
Jean Romeo, Partner, Research Concepts, LLC

For over a decade I was a loyal customer of a certain PC brand. Every three years I would upgrade to the latest model, doing minimal research because I was extremely satisfied with the ability of the vendor to deliver a good price, excellent service and support, easy distribution, etc. But, this last year, after buying four different models from the same vendor, I switched to a new PC vendor. For me, it came down to two important criteria that my original vendor no longer delivered on – performance and service and support. The organizational buying process is much more complex than consumer buying, and so is the decision to swap out an existing technology vendor. So, what causes an organization to replace an existing vendor? And, if an organization is looking for a different vendor, what will entice them to do business with a vendor they are not currently doing business with?

Network World’s Security Vendor Affinity Study provides insight into these questions. While the study focus was in the security space, the findings on vendor switching are highlighted here and are relevant to all technology areas.

The results reported are based on 248 respondents recruited from Network World’s Technology Opinion Panel who participated in an online survey. Respondents were screened for involvement in the purchase of security-related products and services and represent a diversity of industries from small, medium and large companies.

Vendor Entrenchment
Respondents were asked what makes it challenging to replace an existing security vendor. The goal was to find out what factors make vendors entrenched in organizations, meaning it is difficult to swap out the existing vendor with a new vendor. The top challenges to replace an existing vendor were the capital costs associated with using a new vendor (mentioned by 71% of the respondents) and the integration of the existing vendor’s products throughout the organization (mentioned by 68%). More than half of the respondents (62%) cited the training costs associated with using a new vendor as a reason not to replace an existing one.

Interestingly, 42% indicated that their long-standing relationship with the vendor makes it difficult to switch to a different vendor. So, for vendors that have been with an organization for a while, longevity is compelling to less than half of the market. One respondent said a long-standing vendor was replaced when their “product got too fat…we replaced it because it got bloated.”

How New Vendors Can Challenge Entrenched Vendors
In order to provide insight into how a new vendor can make inroads into an organization that is not currently using its products, respondents were asked the impact 14 different factors would have on their decision to use a security solution from a vendor they are not currently doing business with. Out of the 14 factors, five were the most compelling (listed in order of impact, from highest to lowest): Here is what respondents said a vendor looking to get their business needs to do:

• Provide better service and support than we have already
• Offer better pricing or fee structure than we have already
• Highlight the vendor’s reputation
• Offer a clear transition plan to its solutions from our existing solutions
• Solve a problem we are not addressing

Respondents’ verbatim comments provide further insight into what a vendor could do to get organizations to consider swapping out their existing products to use products from a vendor they don’t currently purchase from:

• A carefully documented case study of a peer organization, with a project plan, cost model w/ROI, and a high satisfaction rating from the deployment team and the end user's experience.
• New vendor would have to be able to provide some sort of functionality that the old vendor either could not or will not be able to provide in the near term. Of course if this functionality also came at a reduced cost in terms of money, man hours or productivity would also garner a second look.
• Not only price and performance/functionality but an indication that they have an innovative way of looking at security problems. Also, that they integrate with and add value to our drive to use Open Source solutions whenever possible.
• They would have to provide more value for the capital cost required to switch products. This added value would need to offset administrative costs associated with uninstalling previous software and redefining security policies on new products and/or replacing hardware.

Vendors wanting to dislodge an entrenched vendor need to focus on service and support and pricing. In addition, they need to demonstrate they have a proven track record and can do it “better” than existing vendors.

Find out more
The complete study includes a Customer Bond Index for 10 different security vendors. Also developed was a Vendor Effort Index which shows the degree to which the vendors are perceived as making an effort to keep business. These two indices were used to create a Security Entrenchment Grid which shows how entrenched the vendors are and which ones are most vulnerable to lose business to aggressive competitors. For the complete study results, contact Sandra Kupiec at skupiec@nww.com or at 415-267-4510. Jean Romeo can be reached at jromeo@research-concepts.com or at 978-443-9042.

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Viewer Data Collection Strategies for Online Video
Ann Roskey, VP of Marketing and Audience Development, Accela Communications

Savvy marketers are looking for ways to effectively incorporate video into their web sites — and with good reason. In March of 2006, users averaged 100 minutes of Web-based video content consumption and by August, the streaming audience had increased to 64% of the total U.S. Internet audience (comScore). Another recent B-to-B study found that 78% of respondents believe video makes online content more compelling (KnowledgeStorm/Universal McCann). These consumption patterns indicate that consumers and business professionals alike find great value in video as a means of learning more about companies and products.

While the incentive to produce video content is clear, making a decision about what interface you use is a little more complex. The choice about what platform you use, should be underpinned by what you can learn from the project in terms of the impact on viewers. The value of your reporting and measurement metrics is often dictated by the incoming data. There are many different approaches to collecting data from viewers, enabling marketers to select what will work best for meeting a program's particular goals. For example, gradually gathering information from viewers is less intrusive and typically delivers a richer, more complete profile into the sales pipeline.

Following are a few different approaches to consider when building the storyboard for your program:

No registration: When awareness and brand building are paramount, marketers want to maximize the number of viewers and therefore do not want to impose any limitations on the ability to view. In this case, date, time and duration along with information on the sources leading viewers to a program can be captured and analyzed. Segment timing data is another way to learn what content is most appealing to viewers, with or without registration barriers.

Optional registration: To maximize "eyeballs" and at the same time give viewers the ability to receive additional information, an optional registration form can be introduced at any point during a program. An incentive to complete the optional registration form, such as a white paper or other deliverable, will increase response. In this case, viewers would have the option to watch the program in its entirety without supplying any registration information.

Up-front registration: Traditional, up-front registration can be used when the program has high-value content and lead generation is the primary goal. Viewers must complete the registration form before viewing any part of the program.

Delayed registration: In this scenario, the viewer is given a taste of the program, which may include an introduction by a high-profile speaker, but then must complete the registration request to continue. Typically, a delayed registration form will be presented within the first few minutes of the program. A powerful introduction and high-value content offer is key.

Polling: Poll questions can be delivered at any point in the program, directly through the player window. The poll typically includes a question directly related to the content. Cumulative results are then displayed to the viewer, which also further encourages participation and response. This is an unobtrusive way to collect viewer data throughout the program. Data collected in this manner is stored in the viewer's record and can also be used to pre-qualify sales leads.

Q&A: This feature enables viewers to ask a question, which is stored in a web response management system and automatically sent to the presenters via e-mail. The presenters can then respond and continue the dialogue with a known entity rather than an anonymous caller.

Exit survey: An exit survey is used to collect information at the close of the program to solicit feedback on program content, request additional demographics, or determine follow-up actions and deliverables.

Ann Roskey is VP of Marketing & Audience Development for Accela Communications, an interactive marketing firm that provides online video production, streaming media and data management services. Ann can be reached at ann_roskey@accelacommunications.com, or (508) 303-9704.

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