Archive for the ‘Digital Marketing’ Category

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Pinterest Is Still Valuable for Brands

Saturday, May 5th, 2012

Not only is Pinterest growing in popularity, but it also boasts a better conversion rate than when a customer finds a product on a different social network. The reasons are still not entirely known, but there is speculation. The social media agency needs to take its clients onto Pinterest and possibly even use that as the main social network as its platform. Users are able to use Pinterest to share onto FaceBook and Twitter, so a focus on Pinterest does not leave the other networks in the cold.

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One of the concerns with Pinterest is the domination by women. That number is changing though. From January to March the percentage of men on the service rose from 20% to 28%. Most of these users are making a decent income. Almost half make between $25k to $50k each year. The next largest group resides in the $50k to $75k income bracket. One thing to note, however, is that a product’s pin is twice as likely to be shared if it does not include a price.

The most important data to consider is about the percentage of internet purchases derived from the main three social networks. FaceBook is still dominant but its dominance is slipping. From the second quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012 the percentage of referrals from FaceBook fell from 89% to 82%. Twitter’s relevance dropped precipitously from 10% to 1%. Pinterest seems to be the network stealing those numbers as its share rose from 1% to 17% of all purchases referred by a social network.

The social media agency needs to develop a Pinterest strategy. This strategy would also help on the other networks as images become more and more important to a brand’s attempts to recruit sales and conversions.

Measuring the interest in Pinterest

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Pay Per Click Under Criticism Again

Friday, May 4th, 2012

Research from BloomReach puts the bounce rate (the percentage of viewers that leave a website without making a purchase) after a non-branded paid click at 55%. Over half the time a click on a paid ad goes through it fails to produce a conversion. Other studies put the bounce rate anywhere from 10% to 90%.

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Raj De Datta, who runs BloomReach, has a recommendation for this abysmal failure of the main (across all channels only 2.5% of a site’s visitors convert) way the social media agency does paid advertising. De Datta suggests big data is the saving grace for the social media agency. Big data, which is able to see where customers are also looking and what the demographic and past search histories have been, is able to measure exactly what the customer is looking for. The context surrounding what the customer wants is better predicted by the digital marketer.

Big data can navigate the twin polls of scale, the number of people being brought in by an ad, and profitability, which focuses on making a sale to each customer. There are an increasing number of big data apps that can offer instantaneous results about what each customer is looking for. Ideally, the ad would be creative and draw in as many people as possible and then landing page would then, via the big data app, be tailored to that unique visitor matching what that customer wants.

The main problem with the big data apps is their cost. Because most of the content on the internet is still about two years old, access to the data and mining it is still nascent and difficult. This puts successful big data apps well within the purviews of large brands. But as more time passes and the as the social media agency focuses more and more on the data that economy of scale is slipping. De Datta argues for pursuing these apps and helping to drive down the costs. Until then even the small firm can act like a big data purveyor by testing with ads and testing with landing pages narrowing to smaller and smaller distinctions among a websites users. It’s labor intensive, but the only way to combat the 55% bounce rate that plagues digital advertising.

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AdWords Now Matches Misspellings

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

The social media agency has for a long time now been composing AdWords ads that account for misspellings and plurals in search queries. An update allows AdWords to now automatically match keywords in ads for misspellings and plurals, but advertisers will be able to opt out of the new changes.

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There are five areas the new changes will take effect within: misspellings, plurals, stemming (“single serve” to “single serving”), accent marks, abbreviations and acronyms. Google says these differences affect almost 7% of all searches. After a trial period with some advertisers, Google says there has been a noticeable gain in search clicks. The gain has been almost 3%.

The new format will take a few months to completely rollout, so advertisers have some time to figure out if they want to opt out of the new system. It will be the rare advertiser that does opt out of this update. This is good news for the social media agency not only because it may represent a 3% boost in search clicks, but it also means less work is needed when composing search ad campaigns. No longer will the agency need to anticipate errors in customer searches and instead the agency can focus on what customers want when searching.

Google will include misspellings automatically in AdWords keyword lists

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SaveLocal Offers a Groupon Like Coupon With a Twist

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

SaveLocal is a new Groupon like service, but there is a difference that makes it different and possibly more lucrative. Groupon and Living Social are well known for their ability to bring in many new customers, because they have large databases of local customers. Of course, they also keep a hefty portion of the revenue, forcing the actual vendor to rely on upsales and sometimes unreasonable margins to cover the costs. Another issue many businesses have with the large players is the lack of data about the customers they pass along to the vendor.

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SaveLocal offers a slightly different business model. The offer is sent out only to the vendor’s email list. All of the customer data is turned over and the surcharge on the revenue is slight. SaveLocal does provide recipients of the offer a social media ability to share the offer to friends. The service is closer to what is provided by the social media agency than to what Groupon or Living Social offers.

One of the main concerns is that customers who are not new and who may have been coming in anyways are now coming in with an unnecessary discount. Of course, this assumes that those customers were already guaranteed to be repeat customers. Despite the criticisms, this is a much better offer for many firms. The social media agency could possibly incorporate this model as a way to gain new clients or, at the least, add SaveLocal to its arsenal of tools to help clients increase their customer base.

New SaveLocal Social Coupon

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Competition Among Online Advertising Raters

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Both Nielsen and comScore are working on metrics for online advertising, which will propel them to be the premier advertising ratings agency. What is happening in the hunt is something advertisers have never had before: competition. Both have campaigns geared towards measuring reach and frequency while accounting for demographic information. As of now it looks that comScore might have a superior measurement in its Validated Campaign Essentials program, but that will only make Nielsen upgrade its metrics.

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This is all very exciting news for the social media agency. Nielsen’s monopoly of TV ratings has led to some criticisms that there is not an accurate method to measure the reach of TV advertisings. The inaccurate measure then makes advertisers pay more for their ads than they return in sales. Not only does a good metric help digital advertisers, but competition among those metrics will help keep those metrics honest and protect advertiser’s ROI.

Until the latest updates from the different agencies there is one difference the social media agency needs to be aware of. Nielsen has access to FaceBook data and comScore does not. However, that is not a solid tip towards Nielsen as the nighttime viewing hours usually have many members of a family logged into a single FaceBook account. There are other differences among the different metrics, but for now that is the one of most significance to digital advertisers. As the competition heats up, then the firms will revamp and refine their approaches all making for a better environment for advertisers.

Online Advertising Intensifies

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Google Analytics Coming to Google+ Accounts

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Google has been updating its Analytics package to make it more powerful and easier for the social media agency to use. One thing missing, however, is social data. There is not (yet?) a pairing with FaceBook or with Twitter for access to that data. Those two social networks seem unlikely to cooperate with Google in any near future. Other social networks, however, might be more receptive. The easy partnership is with Google+ and leaked photos show that integration is coming. The integration appears simple enough, an existing GA account number entered into the appropriate tab and all the Google+ social data is now being tracked into an Analytics account.

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It will be easy for users to see the data, as a new tab from within Google+ will show the data, eliminating the need to log into a GA separately. The expected statistics will be measured: visits, pageviews, average time and bounce rate. This is a welcome addition to the social media agency’s arsenal, and will help significantly with measuring the effectiveness of a brand’s Google+ presence. Although, the ultimate problem with Google+ remains. It is relatively small compared to the alternatives. Businesses need to be on both Google+ and FaceBook, but no matter how brand-friendly Google makes the network it will always come in second unless it attracts more users and more frequent usage among its users.

Google+ Becomes Analytical

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Google Will Launch a Commenting System

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

The FaceBook commenting system is found on millions of websites. Google has decided that it does not want to miss out on the action and is launching its own service. It will be just like the FaceBook version, where third party sites host it and the comments then track back into Google’s network. It’s the deeper integration that makes it possibly better than FaceBook’s system.

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Google will be able to combine its already large data pool with what people are saying on third party sites. Once Google also finishes its semantic data engine, then measuring what people say will be immediately testable against what they also buy and where they go online. The commenting system will also have some serious implications on Google’s search business.

The social media agency will be able to have a much more comprehensive understanding of their potential customers once this system goes into place. It might also be helpful to begin testing products and brands on different platforms so the commenting system will immediately begin accessing that information.

Google Battles Facebook

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Google Offers Now Comes with Rewards

Monday, April 2nd, 2012

Google is retooling its Offers programs to come with better incentives and to better collect data about offline purchases. For now there are only a few participating partners and only MasterCard is the cooperating credit card. Users register a credit card and when the requisite number of purchases is made Google will put money on that card. An example is the partnership with Sonoma Chicken Coop. When a registered customer makes two purchases, then he will find an $8 credit on his credit card bill.

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The past few months have seen a drop-off in the daily deals market, as people are either consider them tired gimmicks or the market is saturated or both. However, this new incentive is a boon for the social media agency. The new incentive is likely to increase customer participation even if it is merely because of the novelty.

The other benefit of this initiative will be in the data accumulation it helps Google collect. The largest problem with online selling has always been the offline component. This program will help bridge some of that divide and make them coexist in a manner that can be measured. Google will be able to better see what people are buying and what motivates them to do so. That data will then be able to trickle down to the social media agency and help make conversions. It is possible brands will also find the reinvigorated user base receptive to the offers as an advertising vehicle.

Google Gives More

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Paid Searches Are Still Important

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Google has updated a 2011 study with new data about the value of continuing to pay for search results. A dose of skepticism might be helpful, Google does, after all, have an interest in keeping the social media agency paying for search advertising. Despite the skepticism the results of the data pass the gut check. The conclusion is that paid search advertising results in an 89% bump in site visitors.

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Some brands might suspect cancelling paid search payments would raise traffic besides save the money. While it is correct that organic searches rise as a result of cancellation, the rise in organic searches is covered by the overall decrease in traffic directed to a site. The overall loss of traffic amounts to an 85% decrease even with the boost in organic search results. If a brand only decreases the spending on search ads then the loss is only an 80% drop.

Google not only has a large number of brands that have ceased paying for search ads but a number of those firms have even resumed payments. Resumption of payments, however, does not necessarily restore the traffic. From a zero base, an increase of payments only improves traffic 79%. This means there is a permanent loss of 6% of the original amount of traffic a brand was seeing. From a non-zero base, that is as specific Google is in their results, restores 78% of the original traffic.

Some brands that were unsure of the value of paid search results cancelled the payments and saw a significant drop in traffic. Some of those firms then reinstated the payments, but their traffic did not fully recover. It’s an important to lesson be aware of as the social media agency tries to maximize budgets.

Google’s New Study

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Data About Google Places Ranking

Monday, March 26th, 2012

A new study has been released about how Google Places determines ranking for its search results. The method of this study appears to be more rigorous and more scientific than most reports. The data is compiled by academics trained in statistics to do the quantified studies. There are some interesting results that will help the social media agency better help its clients.

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The study did break down the results into two categories. The first is integrated rankings. This is when a place is listed not only in Google Places but also will return results in a regular Google search. The immediate action to boost rankings in integrated results is to make sure the business category listed is broader than the search term. If a user is searching for pizza, then a brand’s ranking will be improved if the place is listed as a restaurant and does not specify pizza. The second best boost of rank is if the search term occurs in the business title, for example, Seattle Pizza. The final tip offered for boosting integrated rakings is if the “at a glance” category uses the search term. This is where Seattle Pizza would tell Google Places it is a pizza vendor.

The tips for improving rankings are different for non-integrated results. The easiest way to boost rankings is to have five or more Google reviews. The penultimate method is to list the location in the “at a glance” section. The remaining three suggestions are about the category term. The term should be listed in Google review content, business description and in the “at a glance” section.

Overall it is Google Reviews that do the most for brands. The rating is not very important, however. The added difference of average ratings from 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 made very little difference to the overall search rankings of the business. But, an average rating of 1 or less does significantly hurt a business. This makes the strategy for the social media agency quite simple. Customers need to be encouraged to fill out reviews that factor into Google Places searches. As of now that is Google Reviews, but it may expand to other social networks as Google reaches partnerships. Some brands may worry about the ratings they receive on those reviews, but as long as the average rating remains above 1, then there is only benefit from the increased number of reviews. There is a caveat to that, though: the added benefit stops at 5 reviews and kicks in again at 100 reviews.

The listed address is not as important as some people feared. A business just outside city limits with a different city as the address is not penalized for the address. They are, however, penalized for their distance from the center of the search location. Because of the inability to altar the actual location it is advised to not worry about it as a factor in searches. The above tips for boosting search ranks should be quite help for brands and the social media agency.

Google Places Ranking

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