Yesterday, my colleague Martin Hofmann and I had the opportunity to speak at the Canadian Marketing Association conference. The buzz at the conference: making web marketing & online communications effective. Martin and I talked about connecting with customers online through Web 2.0 tools and the keys to doing it right. (If you would like a copy of the deck, e-mail me and I will send it to you). My takeaway is that marketers on the B2C side recognize the need to integrate the Web into their overall marketing plans, while B2B marketers are still dipping their toes in the 2.0 ocean, wondering how to incorporate social networking, videos, and blogs, etc.   

After our talk I was able to stick around and check out Avinash Kaushik. Avinash is a web analytics guy, who writes an excellent blog and just put out a book. (He says the book is based on his “free” blog content, so you could save the $19.99…). Avinash really hit home the message: Web analytics tools now are easier to use than ever before and cost next to nothing. If companies are skipping the step of doing solid analytics work on their online properties, they are choosing to make decisions based on intuition rather than facts. The case studies and data he presented were compelling. The ease with which web marketers can test and then make changes based on the results of those tests means bounce rates can be cut dramatically simply by listening to the what the customer wants.