Building a Customer Data Infrastructure through Segment sets you up with a data pipeline that’s able to take data to a multitude of applications downstream. The quality of that data as well as the potential the data holds is tied directly to the quality of your technical specification as well as the quality of the implementation of that spec. We’ll share 4 ways on how you can verify an implementation in order to be able to verify, validate & debug the spec and its implementation to ensure an impeccable implementation.

 

1. Debugger

The first method simply uses Segment’s built-in Debugger functionality.
This provides an overview of the events that are being sent to Segment by a specific source. Simply trigger the different events and watch them come into Segment using the Debugger.

2. Network tab

Right click in Chrome & select inspect. Navigate towards the “Network” tab.

Type “segment” in the search box. You can find the Segment calls here as they occur.
Simply trigger the different events and watch them being sent to Segment through the network tab.

Example of an identify (i) call:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Example of a track (t) call:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More information regarding the statements can be found on the Segment help portal.

3. Console

Right click in Chrome & select inspect. Navigate towards the “Console” tab.

Type the following command:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The console will start logging all of the interactions with Segment. Simply trigger the different events and watch them being logged into the console.

To stop the console from logging these run the following command:

4. Plugin

A fourth and final way to debug Segment is by using the Segment extension.

Simply trigger the different events and watch them being logged into the plugin’s pane.

The following tools should be able to help you verify, validate & debug your current Segment setup.

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For several months, a new application has appeared on google ads accounts. Google now gives the possibility to know its optimization score. What does this mean? How to use it?

What is the optimization score? 

First of all, the optimization score is a percentage that highlights the potential of each google ads account. Thus, calculated on a scale from 0 to 100%, the higher the score, the better the account is configured and the less it needs to be optimized. 

The optimization score can be found in the account, on the top left in the tab called "recommendations" and looks like this:

How is it calculated?

The optimization score is calculated by Google in real time and is based on different factors:

• The statistics, set up and different statuses of your account
• Relevance of possible recommendations
• The history of the recommendations
• Search trends for ads

Google will then look at the different factors and weigh each optimization it thinks will improve the performance of your account to determine the optimization score. 

Recommendations

The optimization score is accompanied by several recommendations. This in order to improve the optimization score and the performance of the account. Each recommendation also indicates the impact it will have on the optimization score if applied. There are recommendations at the account, campaign and administrator account level. 

Note that the accumulation of all recommendations will give a percentage above 100 because some recommendations are linked to each other and will not be applied once another recommendation is applied.

Apply or dismiss recommendations 

If you like a recommendation, you can easily click on view and then apply. It will be directly effective and may impact the performance of your account. On the contrary, if a recommendation doesn't seem to be suitable, it is possible to dismiss it by clicking on the cross in the top right corner. Both applying or dismissing a recommendation will have a positive impact on your optimization score. 

Use the optimization score with caution 

When analyzing the optimization score, it is important to judge it objectively and take into account your personal goals. Indeed, google does not always have the same objectives as yours. Moreover, the optimization score is based on artificial intelligence.  It is therefore essential to evaluate it and to add your reasoning and your knowledge on your account to evaluate the optimization score and its implication on your results. 

It is therefore not fundamental to aim for a score of 100% but to get as close as possible to it. 

Finally, to conclude, we can say that the optimization score is a great innovation brought by google. Indeed, it allows everyone to have an idea on what it is possible to improve to get closer to google's goals and this in a very fast and easy way. However, it is necessary to take it with hindsight and use it to a good extent for it to be fully efficient. 

 

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At Semetis, we are always on the lookout for the next big thing in advertising. One of the bigger trends in the market today is the gaming and live streaming industry. This industry is more and more present in our lives whether on the Internet or not. 

In recent years, the gaming industry has been booming and we are now seeing all the classical media channels pick up on the trend and feature TV and radio shows on gaming or live streaming. Next to that, the podcast industry has been very big on gaming due to the natural audience match. 

In this first article of this series, we’re first going to focus on the historical and business sides of those industries, and present a few of the key opportunities for advertisers.

 

Gaming & Streaming industries: A long & short story

The first video game ever was designed in the 50’s but it’s really during the 70’s-80’s that something close to what we know today was launched thanks to the video game console. After that, the console and games never stopped improving in terms of quality and complexity and games received more and more playable time.

This led to the first generations of young “geeks” that were really into those games and able to spend a lot of time and money in this brand new market. But it is really during the 90’s that technological progress made video games suitable for the masses. Until today, the gaming industry never stopped growing and is generating more and more revenue.

Today, the ’80s and 90's generations of ‘young geeks’ are adults who have entered the working life. Those people are of course always receptive to the call of videogames and now have the financial capabilities to buy that brand new console or PC that will help them remember the ‘good old days’ when they didn't go out all day to play video games.

On top of those generations, we can also see that the new ones (2000, 2010) are more and more attracted by games and it’s peripherals. Today, the percentage of young people that frequently play has never been higher. With those new generations, we also saw recently the emerging importance of ‘live streaming’ and ‘e-sport’ scenes that are followed by millions of people. This also helps game and console sellers to make viewers want to buy the games or accessories that their favorite streamers own and that will help them reach their level.

 

Gaming & Live Streaming industries: A lucrative trend

While some could say in the past that those industries were not where the attention is, we surely cannot say the same today.

In fact, in 2018 the video games market generated $131 billion spread between PC, consoles, tablets, and smartphones. The mobile share has, since last year, even outpaced the revenue made by console and PC (Source: Newzoo).

According to Forbes, in 2019, there will be more than 2.5 billion gamers across the globe that will spend $152 billion in the gaming industry with the US and China as the largest markets by revenue. Moreover, this revenue is expected to grow to $300 billion by 2025.

Comparatively, the e-sports and live streaming industry are expecting to surpass $1.5 billion of revenue by 2023 according to Business insider and accumulate 646 million viewers by that time. This is, of course, way less than the global gaming industry but there is a lot of potential in that industry and lots of brands already understood that. 

So this is only logical that we see big brands like RedBull, BMW, Toyota or AT&T sponsoring big competition of most popular games like League of Legends, Dota 2 or Fortnite. We’ll cover more specific examples within the next section.

Finally, We can already see a lot of new opportunities for the gaming and streaming industries to evolve and always propose new content and experiences. Cloud gaming, digital distribution, a growing market, and greater regulation are likely to be some of the biggest trends in the next decade and will shake things up in the industry. 

 

What are the opportunities for the advertisers? 

The present and future opportunities for advertisers are numerous. In this article, we have gathered the 4 biggest trends that represent great potential for advertisers in terms of specific targeting and reach. In future articles, we’re going to focus on one of those trends to better understand their challenges and opportunities.

• Live streaming: 

While the gaming industry generates revenues from everything related to gaming, we can see the live streaming as one of its big trends. This, in turn, is a big opportunity for advertisers to reach a young, engaged and very targeted audience. 

While it is rather obvious that the gaming industry is getting its revenues from the selling of the games and by-products, the live streaming makes revenue on ads placed on platforms like Twitch or Mixer with pro streamers that are playing videos games for a living thanks to their high skills in those games or their extraordinary entertaining capabilities.

• Free to Play and In-Game monetization:

It is certainly one of the biggest trends. Its operation is quite simple and consists of free2play games that are being monetized through in-game elements such as skins, rare items, special abilities, and so on. These are often driven by advertiser and brand partnerships.

This is a great opportunity for advertisers as they can create a strong partnership with the latest popular game and thus reach plenty of gamers that are a great match for their products. A great example is Fortnite that has done a lot of brand collaboration with dedicated skins, dances or backgrounds of Nike, Samsung or even Star Wars. This is a win - win - win as Fortinite makes high revenue thanks to the partnerships, brands can reach lots of highly involved audience and gamers have new content to play with.

• Virtual Reality: 

Another interesting trend that has begun to emerge is virtual reality gaming.  

Here the possibilities are numerous and mostly unexploited due to lack of financial or technological resources. The potential in terms of income is however very present and Facebook with its Oculus Rift has understood this. Indeed, thanks to its virtual reality headset, Facebook could easily collect information on gamers in the future as “there’s nothing stopping Facebook and Oculus from choosing to share more data in the future” (source: The Verge).

Imagine how Facebook can increase its understanding of your buyer profile just by observing what type of game you prefer (cars, war,...) or if you spend a lot of time gaming or not. There is a lot of information to collect and it is very interesting for an actor like Facebook who uses that data for advertising purposes.

• Cloud Gaming: 

This last trend could also become a huge thing in the gaming world in the future. In short, thanks to cloud gaming, there is no need to own a very powerful PC/console to play the latest games in full resolution as everything is computed on external servers in the cloud and not on your personal machine anymore. 

This will allow, in the long run, everyone to have access to a very high-quality gaming experience. And who better to popularize cloud gaming than one of the kings of the cloud, namely Google? Here again, there is very high potential in terms of data collection and Google, like Facebook for the VR, understood that very well.

Conclusion

To sum up, we saw that gaming and live streaming industries are fastly growing and will be part of the top industries in the near future with more and more people interested in it. We’ve also seen the current and future opportunities in terms of advertising in the gaming sector that is very far from being saturated. 

Following those trends, companies are massively investing in those industries to position themselves and cater to a young (but aging) audience that is growing every year. Many of the opportunities that those industries will generate are still unknown but one thing is for sure, we are not about to see the end of this upward trend. One day, it might even exceed the "classic" sports industry in terms of revenue generated.

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This article is the first in a series in which we’ll cover our vision on B2B marketing and present a pragmatic 3-step model for B2B marketing success. 

Introduction

Like a lot of B2C companies, many B2B companies are undergoing a so-called ‘digital transformation’ with the intent of fully embracing the role of digital (marketing) in their organizations. 

Although the gap in digital maturity between B2B and B2C companies is still very visible, we can see that this gap is starting to dwindle. The road towards full digital maturity (should this exist in the first place) is still long, but the B2B marketing industry enjoyed huge growth in maturity in recent years. Today, hundreds of tools and technologies are at our disposal to automate marketing flows, streamline lead qualification, build segments and audiences, and so on. 

This is definitely good news. The opportunity is there but in turn, so is the complexity - marketing officers can easily get lost in the plethora of tools, tech, and features that get pitched to them on a daily basis. The main question that pops up: how can a B2B marketing officer take advantage of this digitalization and focus on growing their business? 

One challenge lies in building a coherent tech stack that is focussed on building synergies and enables marketers to reach their business goals. However, a good tech stack doesn’t guarantee success. Indeed, it all starts with a sound methodology and framework guiding marketers and their teams forward. With that in mind, we advise focussing on two main elements: 

1. Implementing a sound framework and methodology: there are many good methodologies that help you set goals and define your ideal approach. We’ll present ours in this article series, so we won’t expand on this here. 
2. Implementing the right data architecture: within this track, you’ll need to be able to answer questions such as; what does your technology architecture look like? What tools and technologies are you going to set up? How will these tools ‘talk’ with each other? What are the synergies you can build from the different tools? This topic won’t be expanded on during this article series, instead refer to the following articles in this series to get started. 

Having a vision on the above will drastically increase your chances of success from a B2B marketing POV. 

B2B vs B2C

Before we deep dive into our model, we have to highlight a few B2B marketing specificities. This will help us understand the challenges, how our model addresses them, and how it streamlines the processes. Correctly applying the model should guide any company with B2B services on a path towards marketing success. 

Specificity #1: The audience. Within B2B marketing, we are targeting the needs, interests, and challenges of individuals who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, their organization, thus making the organization the customer. In B2C marketing, we are targeting consumers who are making purchases on behalf of, or for, themselves, thus making the individual the customer. 

In contrast to the classical B2C marketing approaches, where branding plays an important role, the B2B approach rarely focusses on the latter. Apart from the odd airport billboards, we see very little ‘branding’ effort done by B2B companies around us. There’s a very simple reason for this: within a B2B context, mass-market advertising comes with huge spillage and waste. Luckily, within a digital context, we can be a lot smarter with our tactics and much more targeted. 

The challenge, however, remains on making sure your audience can be targeted in the first place. On Facebook, for example, not a lot of people fill in their job titles. So you don’t have a lot of job title targeting volume. Knowing this, we have to make certain adjustments in how we attract audiences into our marketing funnels. 

Specificity #2: The end KPI. Within digital B2B marketing, we are more often than not in the lead generation business and not in the sales business. We don’t buy or sell $100,000 air compressors via a Shopify store (yet). Instead, digital B2B marketing aims at getting prospects to ask for an online quote and have the sales team turn those leads into sales. A robust lead qualification process is the key to success here. 

Specificity #3: The user journey. While the typical user journey of both B2C and B2B customers can fit into a classical ‘awareness-consideration-conversion’ framework, the actual interpretation is vastly different. Once a lead is generated, a different approach is needed to turn this lead into an actual sale; sales and marketing teams need to collaborate in order to activate the leads. 

Looking at the above specificities, we can build our model around three main pillars: 

1. Attract: how do we attract the right people and generate leads?
2. Qualify: how do we qualify the leads? 
3. Activate: how do we chase and activate the qualitative leads into sales? 

We’ll cover these in slightly more detail in the section below and deep dive into each pillar in the coming articles. 

The 3 step model: from Attract to Activate

 

#1 Attract

A good understanding of your (online) audiences is key. Who do you want to target? What are their characteristics? What websites and apps do they frequent? Building an audience blueprint that serves you throughout your digital campaigns and funnels is a powerful tool.  

Once a clear vision on the audiences and their behaviors is established, an acquisition approach needs to be built. What channels and tactics will you use to reach and attract your audiences with the right message? The end goal of this pillar is lead generation. Focus on what drives the most leads at the lowest cost/lead. 

#2 Qualify 

The second pillar looks at segmenting the leads gathered in the Attract phase into clusters. This process is what we call lead qualification. 

There are many different ways to go about this. The most popular and effective methodology is one where leads are scored based on a number of variables: demographics, industry and behavioral. Each lead that comes into your systems should be scored based on these variables. 

Depending on the lead score, different approaches are taken: the leads that receive the highest score can be funneled into your sales team’s prospect list for immediate follow-up. This is what’s called a sales-qualified-lead (SQL). The leads that fall short of being high potentials but remain of value can be taken up in your marketing automation funnels and paid media campaigns (MQL or marketing qualified leads). The leads that receive a (too) low score should not be a focus for your teams. 

#3 Activate 

The last pillar looks at turning the acquired leads into sales. This is where a smooth collaboration between the sales team and marketing teams becomes very important. Within this step, you’re going to connect activation funnels to the right segments. 

Indeed, the most important/hot leads should be immediately chased by your sales teams. These should be contacted on a 1 on 1 basis to ensure the highest chance of closing the deal. On top, the marketing team should chase the hot leads, but also reach out to the ‘medium-hot’ leads through a series of marketing tactics. Successful strategies include email funnels, remarketing flows, etc. A more in-depth insight will be provided in the following articles. 

Conclusion

Digital B2B marketing really comes down to structuring your marketing flows from lead generation to sales activation. This is in strong contrast to classical B2C marketing where a single good campaign can push the user from ‘I don’t know that brand’ to ‘I will buy that brand’s product’. This user journey can go from start to finish in a matter of minutes - think about all the dropshipping marketing mainly driven by Facebook ads. In B2B, this is very different as there’s an obvious longer and often more complex user journey where more specific tactics are warranted. 

We believe the Acquire, Qualify and Activate model hits the nail on the head and is able to streamline your (digital) B2B marketing efforts towards business success. 

The following articles will deep dive on each of the three phases.

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