Tags

‘Intent plus audience’ is a powerful new combination for search marketers

Search advertising has come to dominate performance marketing over the last decade, with advertisers seeing amazing returns from targeting messages at consumers based on their intent.

If a consumer is searching for ‘best golf clubs’ it’s a pretty safe assumption that they’re in purchasing mode and likely to be interested in an advert promoting golf clubs.

But, any search marketer will tell you that one of its weaknesses is that you have to use a degree of guesswork when it comes to audience characteristics.

In the example above, if you knew the consumer was a female then your advertising creative would be far more powerful if it promoted just clubs for ladies. The trouble with search is that unless someone is very specific in their search term, you’re forced to make assumptions.

How are the UK’s fastest growing companies using Google+?

It’s a common declaration; ‘Google+ is a ghost town’. The search giant has amassed huge user numbers registered on its social network, but the lights are on while nobody’s home. 

The numbers seem to suggest as much, with apparently just 35% of Google+’s users active on a monthly basis, but anyone who’s a regular user will tell you the reality is more complicated than that.

The social network has hidden depths, they say. You’re just not doing it right. 

In our annual review of how the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 are using social media, we’ve found that the UK’s fastest growing technology companies are flocking to Google+, to the point where it’s on a par with Facebook in terms of businesses having a presence there. 

How do you beat Google in vertical search?

Relying on Google is a risky game. It always has been, but ever-increasingly over the last two years it’s becoming clear that relying heavily on Google traffic can hold an uncertain future.

I’ve seen a huge amount of brands who are performing extremely well via organic search, some are great at PPC, others social media.

Within their own specific channels they’re killing it, or perhaps more importantly making an absolute killing! But it’s getting more difficult and with more competition, comes bigger budgets and tighter margins.

Finding an alternative to iTunes: Amazon MP3

As of February 2013, more than 25bn songs had been downloaded from the iTunes store, averaging over 15,000 songs per minute.

There is no denying the power and ubiquity of Apple’s digital music service, after all it has transformed the way that everyone on the planet consumes music. 

Unfortunately iTunes is a deeply flawed experience. It’s impersonal and slow, with lack of support for different file formats, a stubbornly rigid price model and no browser access.

In this ongoing series I’ll be checking out the competition to see if we can find a digital music platform that can finally trump iTunes.

Previously I looked at 7digital, this time I’ll be taking a look at Amazon MP3.

WhatsApp: a calculated target for Facebook

Towards the end of last month, Facebook boldly made mobile messaging service WhatsApp an offer they couldn’t refuse, and a few hours later that $19bn dollar offer was announced to the world.

Technologists, social media experts and analysts scrambled to make their thoughts and predictions heard.

Marketers across the world sat up and paid attention to what could be termed as the biggest big data acquisition we’ve witnessed in the era of the internet.

This is particularly so because WhatsApp’s data is now another spring of information, along with Instagram and Paper, that Facebook can analyse and use to its marketing advantage. 

The New York Times on subscriptions, product development and NYT NOW

How does a newspaper create new digital products to attract new customers? Understanding your market and adapting your offering accordingly is key, according to Denise Warren from the New York Times.

At Digital Media Strategies 2014, Denise discussed new products, including NYT NOW and their development in the context of selling digital subscriptions.

As the pioneers of the paywall, what do the New York Times team have to say about making revenue from digital and innovation in product development?

Why fashion label Marc Jacobs is so hot right now on Instagram

Fashion brand Marc Jacobs has managed to attract a massive following on Instagram, with 1.15m people in its community compared to 1.3m on Facebook.

Obviously some of its success will be down to its existing presence as an international fashion brand, but that’s not the sole reason for its huge following.

So to find out more, I investigated Marc Jacobs’ Instagram strategy to find out what makes it so popular.

And for more on this topic, read our blog post looking at nine different ways to use Instagram to market your brand.

We’ll stop building links when they stop adding value

“We’ll stop building links when they stop adding value”. This seems to be the motto around at the moment and it’s probably due to the high value that gaining links still offers to sites.

Within the industry we are always striving to keep one step ahead of the curve, to ensure that our client’s rankings continue to progress whilst keeping ourselves afloat within the search engine results pages (SERP’s), and link building is still a very powerful tool. 

I believe that this is changing and that Google will devalue the power of links over the next few years, defending against the manipulative optimisation trends and habitual forms of online marketing taking place.  

Bearing this in mind, I believe that now is the best time to start adapting your search engine optimisation (SEO) for this change if not already.

Nine excellent retail apps that help to foster customer loyalty

Conversion rates from mobile commerce remain extremely low when compared with desktop and tablet, as people often prefer to use smartphones for research rather than purchases.

However, I’ve recently come across data which shows that smartphone apps are an exception to this rule, and in fact convert at a rate that’s closer to desktop than the mobile web.

Data from mobile commerce platform Poq Studio shows that in November and December 2013 conversion rates from smartphone apps was 1.8% compared to 2.4% on desktop and 0.73% on the mobile web. 

This is indicative of the fact that mobile apps are generally used by loyal customers, as the data also shows that 78% of apps users were return visitors, compared to 40% on mobile sites.

Furthermore, former ASOS director James Hart previously stated that the company’s apps saw a “much higher” conversion rate than the mobile web.

An ad campaign doesn’t always go viral, but when it does…

It’s very rare that an ad campaign truly goes viral. But when it does it becomes part of our language, its slogan is repeated by people way beyond the commercials, and the bounce for the brand can be huge.

To give some inspiration for your next effort, here are a few noteworthy examples from the United States.

And for a different take on this topic, read Econsultancy’s other posts on why social video doesn’t have to go viral to make an impact, and a run through of the top 20 Super Bowl ads of all time.

Has Instagram really killed Vine?

“Come out Vine, the jig is up! Put your hands where I can see them and nobody will get hurt”.

William Miller has recently published a blog post on Socialbakers.com entitled How Instagram Killed Vine for Marketers. In his post Miller, like so many social media grim-reapers before him, has declared the death of Vine with a singular swipe of his scythe.

I enjoy this kind of speculation. Especially when it comes to trends in digital marketing or even technology in general. 

From an objective point of view, it’s fascinating to observe the positivity drawn by a new platform in its start-up days, through to the vague grumbles it attracts once it’s past the early majority stage. 

Then you know it won’t be long before the race begins to be the first to announce the ‘death’ of that particular platform. We set them up to knock them down.

How Primark achieved 1.7m Facebook Likes in just six months

The low-cost clothing brand has entered the top five of the 100 UK retailers on social media for the first time.

According to eDigitalResearch’s Retail Social Media Benchmark, Primark now has almost 2.4m followers on Facebook alone, a steep rise from its reported 700,000 followers just six months ago.

It can be very easy for a high street brand to accrue a high number of followers on any social media platform just through brand identity alone.

However, in order to be an effective driver of traffic to online and offline commerce, brands need to use social media to directly engage with customers through conversation, quality entertaining content and through personalised, always-on customer service.

Therefore a high follower count isn’t necessarily the best metric to gauge whether a brand is ‘doing social media right’. Although the sharp rise in Primark’s social profile is indicative of Primark upping its game considerably.

Let’s take a look at Primark’s Facebook page to see if there’s anything to be learnt from its strategy. 

1 … 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 … 397