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Marketing Experimentation: How to get real-world answers to questions about a company’s marketing efforts

April 11th, 2023

Whenever we have questions in our weekly LiveClass – ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel – we answer them here on this blog to help attendees, but to help any of our readers who didn’t attend but may have had a similar challenge as well. Read below and get ideas for powering the growth of your business with marketing experimentation. And feel free to join us for a Wednesday LiveClass using the link I just mentioned.

Has anyone tested video ads vs image? Preston’s question in the LinkedIn group got me thinking. Daniel Burstein, do you know of any?

Here’s an example. “The team discovered through testing these Facebook ads that medium-form copy received 33% more clickthrough than short- or long-form, and video drove more clickthroughs and had greater reach than static images. Because of this testing, the team realized that video was one of their most powerful tools” (from Email Marketing: List size increased 600% in one year through content, paid ad strategy).

The reason I start with this question is because it lays out the reason we should be conducting marketing experimentation – so our customers answer key questions we have about our company and our marketing with their real-world behavior, instead of just making decisions based on internal guesswork.

No matter what has worked for another company (including the above example I just used), it doesn’t mean it will work for your unique customers, your unique value proposition, your unique situation. So don’t just follow what others do, use it as fodder to come up with your own wildly creative ideas – and then test them.

Now that we know why we should test, let’s get into some of the mechanics of testing, starting with test planning…

What is the main purpose of the [pre-test planning] calculator? Is it to estimate how long you’ll need to run the campaign? If I have a set daily budget, set level of confidence, set conversion rate, set number of variants and an unknown variance [the questioner is referring to the relative conversion rate difference between variants of the ad], what is the main purpose of estimating the data? As soon as the ads start running the numbers will all change and need updating. What’s the main metric we’re aiming on understanding?

As I have mentioned in a previous blog post, I’m not the mathematician, I’m the storyteller. So I won’t get into the math behind these concepts. But I do think it helps for marketers to understand the concepts at a basic level, to inform their testing. And if you haven’t already, reading last week’s blog post will help get you up-to-speed on some basic marketing testing concepts – Factors Affecting Marketing Experimentation: Statistical significance in marketing, calculating sample size for marketing tests, and more.

In this question the person is outlining the different metrics in the pre-test estimation tool (that is included as part of membership in a MECLABS SuperFunnel Cohort).

The goal of the tool – as with any planning – is to inform your efforts. Things may not turn out exactly as you think they will, but when you see the levers that you can pull to shape results, it should help you make decisions on what you want to move forward with and actually execute.

One of those levers is budget, to affect how large of a sample size your treatments receive. In this question the “daily budget” can’t be changed, so if you run the pre-test calculation and realize it would take an inordinate amount of time to reach statistical validity based on the amount of impressions or traffic your budget can buy, you may have to get creative.

Here’s one example, using Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. The team behind Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies had a set ‘daily budget’ for how long they could work on an episode. So if they wanted to do something a little more groundbreaking, they would ‘borrow’ from other episodes. Maybe they would take only four days instead of five for a few episodes, and then using that time they saved up they would dedicate eight days to an episode to really push the envelope (I recommend Duck Amuck and What’s Opera, Doc?).

Perhaps this planning tool might help you do the same thing. Invest less of your fixed daily budget in experiments where you know there will be a large conversion rate difference between the ad or landing page variants, so you save up some of that budget for experiments where there is a smaller difference.

Which brings us to another decision pre-test planning can help us make…

Ave Test Users = Impressions … Primary KPI Successes = Clicks (Or is it Opt-ins?) Variants = number of ads, Assumed Real Difference = Between the ads

The question is around what the primary KPI (key performance indicator) should be for an experiment – clicks on the ad or opt-ins on the landing page.

This is important to statistical significance because it will impact the sample size. The deeper you test in the funnel, the smaller your sample size will be. More people will click on an ad then will opt-in on the landing page. So the larger budget you will need to get a large enough sample size.

This is another reason why using the pre-test estimation calculator can be helpful – to inform where in the funnel you decide to test, based on your budget and/or other capabilities for getting people to see the conversion action you are trying to test.

What should your sample size be? There is no set sample size you need to reach. It is affected by how different the performance is in the different treatments. And we use the pre-test planning calculator to help us find that number.  “An important factor in sample size determination is the difference in results between the treatments. If the treatments return very different results, it’s much easier to confidently say that you really do have two (or however many) emails that will perform differently. You don’t need as many samples to do that. However, if the treatments have very similar results, you want many more observations to see if there really is a difference.” (from Marketing Optimization: How to determine the proper sample size)

Why make impressions-to-ad-clicks as the primary KPI and then ad-clicks-to-appointments a secondary KPI? Why not make impressions-to-appointments the primary KPI? Is that just because the volume of data for the latter would be higher? So measuring more the message lever, rather the whole funnel effectiveness?

This question naturally follows from the previous one. As discussed, your KPI for a test is partially informed by the sample size and relative difference between the control and treatment.

But it is also partially informed by what you are trying to learn. Let’s not get too deep in the math and mechanics that we forget the goal of test – to learn how to better serve the customer and better communicate to the customer so we can improve our results (as discussed in the first question in this blog post).

And remember, you don’t have to learn everything in one big test. Your goal is to test and learn repeatedly. So your first test can be in the channel, and then your second test could be on the landing page, for example.

To inform future testing it helps to establish secondary KPIs when you set up your test. Of course, you could just look at every possible metric under the sun. But the reason we do pre-test planning is to run our experiments with intention.

One of our former data scientists explained it to me this way – an experiment is picking a specific tree in a forest, then throwing a rock and seeing if you hit that specific tree versus throwing a rock into a forest, seeing which tree it randomly hits, and then remarking, “oh yeah, I meant to hit that tree.”

Pre-test planning focuses our thinking and efforts on hitting that tree. And secondary KPIs can help here as well. “Don’t try to analyze it all; you’ll get lost in data and become discouraged and confused. Instead, narrow your focus to the metrics that will provide the most relevant insights. Having primary and secondary KPIs for your site will help you begin to narrow your focus” (from Marketing Analytics: 6 simple steps for interpreting your data).

So you could first test message levers in the channel using a primary KPI of clickthrough. Then if your secondary KPI is conversion rate on the landing page, and the conversion rate is low for the winning ad treatment, you have a next (and very interesting) question to test.

Did the ad message you used simply bring lower-quality traffic, less motivated people to your website? For example, an ad message of “Free iPaid” might win a test in the channel but isn’t necessarily doing your funnel any favors if you can’t pay off that promise.

Or, is it an effective ad message to attract your ideal customer, but you don’t pay off that message well with you landing page. There is poor continuity between the ad and the landing page, which was simply a previous page you already had and didn’t align with the treatment ad’s messaging. Which brings us to…

Why would we use a page separate from our webpage?

You may have an ad message you want to test that is very different from the message on any webpage you have now. In that case, it would likely make sense to create a new landing page for it.

We could use the experimentation process I just mentioned to determine that our current webpage does not deliver on the new ad message, that there is poor continuity from the new ad message to our webpage.

However, signing up for marketing experimentation is not a binding agreement to endure unnecessary agony. We can also use our common sense and marketer’s intuition to avoid changes that are very likely to have poor results – after all, we are testing with a real budget and real people – and focus our energies on the questions that are more difficult to answer and will have a big impact on our business.

Of course, this means you may have to build a new landing page. Which brings us to our next question…

Chris it looks like you followed the template exactly, Daniel are you saying feel free to move the layout around and put the hero image in place of the form?

Participants in the MECLABS SuperFunnel Cohort get access to MECLABS SuperFunnel builder software (a simple drag-and-drop landing page builder that is embedded with the MECLABS methodology). This includes templates to help you build a landing page based on an approach that has shown to be effective in previous experimentation.

I won’t go through the entire template, but it begins at the top of your landing page with Micro-Yes 1 – Yes, I will pay attention. This section should be a synopsis of your core offer. Followed by Micro-Yes 2 – Yes, I will engage deeper – where you address any friction or anxiety. Also, in this section you can add a video, image, or a form that supports your message.

The Cohort member I was providing optimization advice for in the LiveClass has a spokesperson that is well-known in his industry, and my point was invoking that spokesperson earlier on the landing page may help grab attention and be a core element of the offer that gets the ideal customer to say ‘yes.’ It may also be a way to reduce anxiety.

For example, I am a huge fan of Jerry Seinfeld. If he ever produced a show focused on marketing (let’s call it Copywriters In Cars Getting Conversions), his participation in the show would be a core part of the offer that would grab my attention. His participation in the show would also reduce my anxiety that it is a quality show and get me to engage deeper.

The SuperFunnel template can guide you to build your landing page but should also be spurring future hypotheses in you for further testing. For example, is our founder a core part of the offer and she should be included at the top of the page along with her image? Or is she a tertiary credibility indicator, and she should be used lower down on the page to help address any last-minute anxiety?

This is an example of a question you can test that has implications for the business. You can start by testing in the channel and conduct further testing on the page.

To get you thinking of possibilities for your own business, you can see three value categories we test through email for VolunteerMatch in A/B Testing: How to improve already effective marketing.

If you are conducting a marketing experiment in the channel, you will also need to create the different ads to test. Which bring us to…

Ask ChatGPT what colors to use: “I have an ad with #CFB82C as the primary text color, #384E6C as the background color, and #333333 and #FFFFFF as additional colors. What color should my call to action button be and what color should the text be on top of it. Give me html codes.” … “Is there a green color that will work?”

OK, this isn’t really a question. I found this in the Zoom chat, and I just thought it was some nifty advice for using artificial intelligence to help you build an ad.

Hi Flint, what does the cohort entail? 4-5 weekly meetings. 40 days total/ price? Also if I’m generating a sales funnel for the first time is this a good option for me or should I start on another level (finishing my Micro Yes’s now)

How do I join this group!?

How do I join the MEC200 group?

How do I register for the next cohort?

Is there another cohort scheduled yet after April or approx. start date?

Jane, Is this video zoom call a part of the first cohort?

What happens with the transition to cohort 300?

There were a lot of questions from attendees about the cohort itself, and we answered them with a Q&A session at the end of the cohort. If you would like to learn more about the cohort, and the five ways you can ‘pay’ if you choose to participate (there are monetary and non-monetary options), just join us on a Wednesday LiveClass of ChatGPT, CRO and AI: 40 Days to build a MECLABS SuperFunnel.

Even if you don’t choose to join, by attending you should get a few ideas you can implement to your marketing funnel right away to improve conversion.

Here’s a quick excerpt from a recent LiveClass to give you an idea of what to expect – Hypothesis Articulation vs Essence.

Marketing 101: What are ad blockers?

February 8th, 2019

Marketing has a language all its own. This is our latest in a series of posts aimed at helping new marketers learn that language. What term do you find yourself explaining most often to new hires during onboarding? Let us know.

Ad blockers are software that, as the name suggests, allow web users to block the ads on websites. Ad-blocking software (also known as ad filtering) can take different forms — from a web browser extension or plugin like AdBlock Plus to a standalone browser like Brave.

According to MarketingSherpa research, the top reason American consumers block online ads is because “I dislike large ads that pop up over the entire webpage,” followed closely by “Ads make the webpages load too slow” and “Rollover ads are intrusive.”

While ad blockers have gotten more attention lately, they are not new. For example, MarketingSherpa published a story on them back in 2001 — Should Publishers Worry About Ad Blocking Software? SaveTheFreeWeb.com’s Bill Dimm Explains Reality.

Ad blockers have been a difficult phenomenon to deal with for publishers.

For publishers, ad blockers threaten to steal advertising revenue. Some online publishers have adapted by either forcing visitors to allow ads or pay for a subscription to see their content. Here is an example from WIRED magazine.

ad blocker notice Wired mag

Read more…

3 Strategies for Overcoming Banner Blindness

January 19th, 2016

To be honest, I don’t even see them most of the time. It is as if the top and sides of the webpage I’m looking at are blurred—I know they’re there, but I don’t even notice them. For this, I thank “banner blindness.”

Banner blindness is the result of templated or “best practice” page layouts that place banner ads in specific places, such as the very top center of the page or on the far right side of the page. See the red boxes below:

common-ad-layout

 

Why is it called “blindness”?

The ad is there, but we ignore it because our minds have “seen that, done that” so many times before. We have established the typical banner areas as distracting from our goal on the page.

As marketers, if we are stuck in these blind areas, what can we do to increase the effectiveness of our banner ads? For questions like this, I always like to refer to the MECLABS Institute’s (MarketingSherpa’s parent company) Online Ad Sequence  heuristic for guidance:  

Read more…

Paid Search: 3 things you should know while running a PPC campaign

December 19th, 2014

“You cannot sit down and wait for shoppers to get to your site,” said Victor Yacaman, Ecommerce Director, Leonisa. Leonisa is the No. 1 provider of underwear in Latin America, with 52% of sales generated from paid search.

With the ability to track and measure visitors, it’s no wonder PPC has continued to be widely used by retail marketers, “[which] means you can spend more dollars on the things that are working and less dollars on the things that aren’t working” said Timothy Seward, Founder and CEO, ROI Revolution.

Timothy referenced a recent study by Shop.org via Forrester, saying that, on average, “46% of [marketers’] online retail marketing budgets is spent on paid search.”

PPC ads offer a way of quickly determining ROI. “What you can measure, you can improve,” offered Seward, making the platform an easy way to optimize messaging and placement.

The analytics behind the campaign isn’t the only tool that PPC provides. In a world of big data, ad targeting can be remarkably precise.

“You can get every niche into very specific forms,” Yacaman stated, which is an interesting concept for underwear, if I do say so myself. The Leonisa team has a specific campaign for each type of product — whether it’s hosiery, shapewear or whitey tighties.

With such a variety of products and such a wide consumer base, Leonisa needed a targeted way to find its customers.

“Paid search was a solution for us because, through paid search, you can do bidding really heavily on those words where you have a really high conversion rate,” explained Yacaman.

When asked how marketers can improve their own PPC campaigns, the pair offered these three pieces of advice:

 

1. Identify your target customer and behavior patterns

By having “niche” ads for each product and each target audience, you’re helping the consumer find a solution that will serve them best. Having specialized campaigns contextualizes your ad in the mind of the customer and invites them to continue the conversation with you further in the buying funnel.

 

2. Determine the devices your customers use to access your site

“57% of customers in the U.S. are transacting with your website based on multiple devices,” said Seward. Customers don’t just browse on the family desktop in the living room anymore. They’re searching on their phone, reading reviews on their work computer and purchasing on their iPad later that night. Consumers have a volatile shopping experience, and your PPC ads need to accommodate their journey.

Read more…

Search Marketing: 3 questions every marketer should ask when starting an AdWords campaign

July 9th, 2013

Google AdWords campaigns are a terrific way to target specific audiences.

Unlike advertising on television or billboards, which tries to convince consumers they have a need for the product, search advertising tries to fulfill a need the customer already has.

The only problem is figuring out exactly what searches your customers are performing to express the need your product is the answer to.

Answering the following three questions is a great start to understanding your customers a little more, and will help you fulfill their needs and provide them with solutions.

 

Question #1.  What phase of the sales funnel are our targeted customers in?

Understanding where your target customers are within your sales funnel will help you know how they are searching for your products and what kind of queries they will be using to find them.

Here are a few points to consider when creating a Google AdWords campaign based on what stage of the purchase decision process a potential customer is in before they buy:

Initial – Very early on in the funnel, your potential customers may not even know your product exists. It is up to you to make them aware of your product, and to let them know what the benefits are of using it. For example, if a customer is just beginning their search for a new computer, they’ll probably start with general keywords like “laptop deals” or “cheap desktops.”

Intermediate – Even if your customers have a good understanding of what your product is and are interested in it, they are going to do more research on your product and compare it to similar products. This is where search queries will become more specific for products like “lightweight laptops with dual-core processors.”

Also, keep in mind at this stage, customers may begin to query brand names in their search efforts as well. This is where your keywords should become more specific about the details of your products.

Advanced – This is the stage where a customer has done their research and has reached a decision. In keeping with our computer example, it’s where search terms will likely be brand or name specific as the focus has now shifted to buying.

So if you are aware of what stage in the purchase decision process your customers are in, you can alter keywords to meet their specific needs.

You can even create different ads to match specific keywords customers will search for during each of the different phases as shown above. This will also help you discern which phases you should focus your paid search marketing efforts on.

For example, if most of your keywords are targeting customers in the early stages, you may want to concentrate on adding keywords they would use later in the funnel to make sure they follow through with the buy as ultimately every phase has the potential to turn into a buy.

 

Question #2. How are customers searching for us?

Potential customers generally search the Internet to find answers to questions or solutions to problems.

So, how will customers search for the answers and solutions your products can provide?

There are an infinite number of possibilities considering their queries may be an actual question, a symptom that they have a description of their problem or the cause of their problem.

For example, if someone’s air conditioner is broken, they may search “broken ac” or “how to fix a broken ac,” “why is my ac freezing over?” or  “ac repair in [anytown USA].”

Your ultimate goal is to answer those questions and solve those problems.

And, in order to do this successfully, your AdWords campaign should consider as many of the different search possibilities that relate to your products as possible.

It’s also worth mentioning whichever search terms customers use will also set certain expectations that your landing page or process needs to deliver.

So, when conducting your keyword research, you should list as many search query possibilities customers would likely use to search for your products, and match those searches with keywords that offer the most relevant solutions and answers.

Read more…

Online Advertising: Retargeting drives 3% to 7% in incremental topline revenue for CafePress

November 15th, 2012

I’ve been put in the audiences’ shoes a little more than usual this month. My idea, The Tomato Upstairs, has been chosen as one of five finalists in a national idea program. And since there is daily voting on the ideas until November 26, I’ve been promoting and marketing away to get some votes.

One thing I did was create a t-shirt to sell on the site, with proceeds going to a worthy cause. I created these sites and helped the cause open a store on CafePress.com, an online retailer of stock and user-customized on-demand products.

 

Then, something really caught my eye …


Like you, I see retargeting ads all the time. In fact, I’ve jokingly talked about them this way … “I visit your website once, and you stalk me across the Internet for the rest of my days.”

However, these ads really caught the attention of even my keenly skeptical eyes. After all, they were showing shirts that I created.

So, I reached out to Sumant Sridharan, VP & General Manager, CafePress.com, to get a quick background about the site’s retargeting efforts, and thought you might find these insights helpful for your own efforts …

Read more…

PPC Marketing: A look at analytic and monitoring tools

August 25th, 2011

Here at MarketingSherpa we are always looking to bring you actionable tactics and interesting insights based on surveys of your marketing peers. You can pre-order our latest research — the 2012 Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report – PPC Edition. Better yet, you can even download the executive summary from the report at no cost.

The direct download of this excerpt is free and does not require registration.

In the executive summary you’ll find six charts outlining the key findings from our research, but one of the perks of working here at Sherpa is I get the chance to take an early look at entire report (and the rest of the 125 charts.)

During this sneak preview I found a couple of charts that highlight an area where many marketers can improve their pay-per-click efforts. Read more…

Online Advertising: How your peers optimize banner ads

March 29th, 2011

Online display ad spending by B2C marketers increased 57 percent over the last two years…which means more competition for your ads to get that click, and more pressure to deliver ROI on your ad spending.

To help you get the most from your banner ads, we’re hosting a webinar this Thursday, sponsored by TRUSTe, to teach you “How to optimize your banner ad performance while complying with new privacy regulations.”

But before we share our discoveries, we wanted to hear what you had to say. Here are a couple of our favorite tips for optimizing display advertising…

Match your ad closely with the landing page

Create a landing page for this ad, don’t send people to your homepage and make them figure out what to do next or where to look for their answer. Your ad attracted them for a reason – usually to solve a problem, so make sure you offer a solution that they can find easily before they lose interest:

  • Make sure your ad matches the look and feel of the page they will be landing on – from wording used, to matching the colors of the display ad with the landing page. You want to ensure the person who clicked on your ad knows they have arrived at the right site.
  • Reinforce your message from the ad through headlines and copy on the page, as well as images.
  • Along with your solution, make sure both the ad and the landing page have a call to action that clearly tells the visitor what step they need to take next in order to complete the desired action. Whether it be signing up for a newsletter or adding something to their shopping cart, a direct call to action promotes user activity.
  • Test. Don’t assume your first ad you created is working out well. Always test and see what you can do to improve the ad and landing page. When you have determined a winning ad – test a new one, make it a continual process.

Rebekah May, Founder, Whole SEO

 

First ask “Why?”

You need to know why you’re running display ads long before you start. So many companies have said “we need to try banner” with no idea of whether they want to run a branded campaign or a direct response campaign, and whether they want to run on a CPA, CPC or CPM basis. Display will flop dramatically if you don’t have a goal.

And then make sure that whatever your goal is, you must design your creative around it. There’s no point putting a brand ad out on a direct response campaign (or vice versa). I’ve seen people create banners that are so pretty but have no call to action, and then wonder why they get no clicks.

– Carl Eisenstein, Founder, DropDigger



Related Resources

How to optimize your banner ad performance while complying with new privacy regulations — Webinar, Thursday, March  31, 2011, 1-2 PM.

Sherpa 101: Online Display Ads, Part II – Copywriting, Design Tips & Ad Networks + How to Counter ‘Banner Blindness’

Online Advertising: The 3 obstacles you must overcome to create an effective banner ad

This Just Tested: PPC vs. banner ads?

Online Advertising: Behavioral Ads Threatened

December 28th, 2010

There has been a lot of talk this month about the future of behavioral advertising and privacy on the Internet. This coming year could change if and how your team uses ads that target people’s browsing history.

The Federal Trade Commission published preliminary proposals for targeting online ads on Dec. 1, and the Department of Commerce published preliminary proposals for protecting consumer privacy on Dec. 16.

These statements came about two months after the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) launched a program that lets users ‘opt-out’ of behavioral tracking. The DAA is a coalition of industry groups that supports industry-based self-regulation for behavioral ads.

Outcome far from certain

What does all this mean? No one is entirely sure. The FTC and the Commerce Department’s proposals are not laws, but folks from the FTC have been speaking with Congress about the issue. And FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has expressed dissatisfaction with the industry’s self regulation.

This much is clear: behaviorally targeted advertising is raising privacy concerns. Consumers are seeing the shoes they just shopped for appear in ads on other websites, and that is freaking some people out. Two solutions have been floated:

– The FTC’s preliminary proposal: have a browser-based solution that signals to websites that a consumer has ‘opted-out’ of tracking

– The DAA’s program: let users ‘opt-out’ by clicking on an icon next to an ad. This program has been adopted by at least one major media-buying agency.

The potential for impact

Should either of these options — or some other ‘opt-out’ system — become a wide-spread reality, it could have serious implications for online advertising. Here are two stats to consider:

– An Interactive Advertising Bureau survey of ad agencies earlier this year found that 80% or more of digital advertising campaigns were touched by behavioral targeting.

– A USA Today/Gallup poll in December found that 67% of U.S. Internet users say advertisers should not be allowed to match ads to their browsing history.

A tremendous leap of faith is not required to assume that a sizeable portion of that 67% would gladly opt-out of all behaviorally based ads.

What you can do in the meantime

While Washington and the industry figure out what, if anything, will change, your team should look at its marketing and understand the importance of behavioral ads and tracking in your programs.

Consider what would happen if the ads stopped working as well, stopped working completely, or did not change — and what you should do in each case.

Also, talk to your agencies, affiliates and ad-networks. Find out what this means for the marketing they do on your behalf. The last thing you want to do is to be caught off guard by any changes.

Related resources:

Follow the FTC’s Street Team Guidelines: 4 Recommendations for Offline and Online Promos

FTC’s New Endorsement Guidelines: 6 Key Areas to Examine

The Google Slap: Affiliate Marketers must stay in compliance with Google and the FTC

Guide to Facebook Ads

May 27th, 2010

Facebook this week launched a free Guide to Facebook Ads to give advertisers more information on how to build successful campaigns on the social network.

Facebook Display AdThe guide covers the basics, such as the types of ads Facebook offers, as well as detailed information on how to budget campaigns, target an audience and improve performance.

For example, the guide’s “Best Practices” section provides the following tips:

– Choose one goal for your campaign to better focus your efforts and set a budget

– Create ads with captivating titles, relevant images and a strong calls-to-action

– Use demographic and psychographic reports available in the Ads Manager to determine which audiences your ads best resonate with

– Closely relate landing pages to ads

– Test multiple ads to uncover the best approach for your audience

For marketers already advertising in Facebook, the guide is worth going through to round-out your knowledge and to fill in any gaps. For marketers who are just getting started, or who are considering a campaign on the network — it’s a vital resource.