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100 Million A Month Using Google Maps for Mobile

Written on August 20, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

It’s the “Year of Mobile” v. 2010 remember? Whether it is or isn’t officially is irrelevant. What is important is just how much mobile is continuing to influence the lives of many Internet users. While not as ubiquitous as many in the industry would like us to believe, it is still a very strong component of the online world and one that has seemingly limitless upside for years to come.

Evidence of just how influential the mobile world is comes from Google who announced that they have hit the 100 million users per month using Google Maps in some form. No matter who you are, that is a big number. From the Google Mobile Blog

Almost five years ago, we launched Google Maps for mobile to help you get where you needed to go from your phone instead of a paper map. Today, more than 100 million people a month are now using Google Maps for mobile to get from point A to point B, find nearby places, and more.

Below is an infographic (notice the use of the hottest Internet marketing buzzword) that shows the evolution of Google Maps for mobile until this point.

What is happening today with this Google service is even more important as the usage continues to rise. The trouble is that the vast majority of the businesses that could benefit from this service don’t even have a clue that it exists let alone how important it could be to promoting their business.

Lately, we’ve been especially focused on helping you find the right place at the right time. With recent additions such as Place Pages, you can now pick a nearby place by browsing information such as opening hours and review snippets for the places around you. It’s easier than ever to find those places with Search by voice or the new Places icon on Android. With this latest Android version, we’re happy to see that you’re now searching for places almost three times as often, doubling how many Place Pages are seen a day.

Place Pages are going to be more and more important to the local player and to the BtoB space as well because they will are a supplemental source of data that may actually be used before a web site or even, gulp, instead of one, by people looking for whatever it is they need.

I believe though that unless Google becomes a better marketer themselves this service will not be fully utilized in the way it could be. Google unfortunately just expects people to know this stuff then even puts the following at the end of this post

If you’re a business owner, help millions of people find you by claiming your free Place Page available in Google Maps and our most used mobile “app” — Google Search. Get started at places.google.com/businesses.

It’s a nice touch but the actual numbers of business owners reading any Google blog are likely to be pretty low. Most readers of Google’s blogs are the industry / tech geek type that can get the word out for sure, if that was their job. In most cases it’s not the business owner reading this so these ‘notifications’ are nice but they are not getting the word out……at all.

Even despite that, a lot of people are using Google Maps though, right? Imagine what it would be like if those people using it had even better information to retrieve because the people they were trying to find were there (and in control of their information) too.

One can dream, can’t one?

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100 Million A Month Using Google Maps for Mobile

Dear BP: Fix the Oil Leak First, Then Your Reputation

Written on June 7, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

“BP: Stock rises after it reports oil spill progress”

That’s the headline from a CNN story today.

And that’s the bottom line for BP executives. They can run all the TV ads they want, take-out all the full page print ads in the world, pour money into Google AdWords, and tweet until their heart is content, but it really all boils down to this:

Fix the oil leak, before you try to fix your reputation.

Even BP’s shareholders understand this simple concept. News that the oil company is making progress on the Gulf of Mexico leak, leads to an increase in share price. Fix the problem and shareholders will fix your stock price.

The problem is, BP is not fixing the problem fast enough. I’ve lost track of how many days this disaster has been going on, but it’s closing in on 50 and that’s simply unacceptable to even the most staunch BP supporter.

50 days X 19,000 barrels a day = the worst reputation crisis in recent history.

Not that BP had a great reputation to start with–none of the oil companies did. The memory of $4+ gallon of gas is still fresh in our memories. So are the $30 BILLION in annual profits! That’s a big number compared to the $1.25 billion BP has spent in an effort to stop the spill and clean-up the Gulf.

Look at Dell. Look at Dominos Pizza. Heck, even look at Tiger Woods. Would each of these “reputations” be on the road to recovery if they continued to provide lousy customer service, unhygenic pizzas, or continued to sleep with umpteen women?

Crisis communications is important, but even more important is actually fixing the problem. Telling the world that you care about the oil spill and will work to fix it, is not the same as actually fixing it. In the world of social media, any attempt to “spin” or talk in carefully prepared soundbites will become nothing more than ammunition for your detractors:

(a sample of tweets from the BP parody Twitter feed)

(img credit: Reuters)

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Dear BP: Fix the Oil Leak First, Then Your Reputation

YouTube At 5: Over 2 Billion Views Served Per Day

Written on May 17, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

YouTube is celebrating its 5^th birthday this year. Needless to say they have done more in their first five years than most. Not the least of the accomplishments is the sheer enormity of the following point of interest (I refuse to say fact): YouTube is streaming 2 billion views per day currently. To put some perspective on this, albeit that the company is proclaiming it, that “nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined”.

TechCrunch gives us a little more info into how YouTube is celebrating:

To help commemorate the occasion, YouTube is also launching a new channel of videos called “My YouTube Story”, which includes a collection of clips featuring people around the world talking about how YouTube has changed their lives. The initial batch of clips were filmed by documentary filmmaker Stephen Higgins, and some of them are quite touching. YouTube users can upload their own video stories as well; YouTube will be plotting these videos on a global map, and will also offer an interactive timeline of clips.

The world of online video continues to explode and marketers continue to try to build the next great viral piece. If there are this many eyeballs looking for something to look at on a daily basis, that quest is likely to accelerate. Of course, unless you can tie yourself to some freakish celeb or you want a “stupid human trick” to promote your brand or product there might be limitations.

Here are a few fun facts that YouTube is sharing on their special occasion.

2 Billion views a day
3rd most visited website (Alexa)
Localized in 23 countries across 24 different languages
15 The average number of minutes people spend on the site each day
24 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
45 Million home page impressions every day
70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the U.S.
100 Years of video scanned by copyright managent technology, Content ID, every day
1700 Years it would take you to watch the hundreds of millions of videos on YouTube

Now the real telltale sign of just what purpose YouTube may be serving can be seen in the most viewed videos of all time.

Top 5 Most Viewed Videos of all time

Lady Gaga – Bad Romance with 196,115,524 views
Charlie bit my finger with 185,714,255 views
Evolution of Dance with 142,679,738 views
Miley Cyrus – 7 Things with 117,413,641
Pitbull – I Know You Want Me with 118,410,161

So while 2 billion is a big number how this milestone contributes to any progress the human race has made is left for others to debate.

Happy 5^th birthday, YouTube! Thanks for the great time wasters! Here’s to many more years of serving up the least common denominator of human capabilities!

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YouTube At 5: Over 2 Billion Views Served Per Day

7 Quick Shopping Cart Tips = 11% Increase in Sales

Written on September 17, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

If you’re B2C web site is not displaying McAfee’s SECURE trustmark you may as well pack up the shop and go live off the land. At least, that’s what McAfee would like you to believe.

In its new (somewhat self serving) report Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy, McAfee found that in a study of 165 million shoppers–my, what a big number you have–sales conversions were 11% higher on those sites that displayed some kind of security seal. In addition, 65% of shoppers take their sweet time making their final purchase–with an average delay of almost 34 hours from decision to handing over their credit card digits.

McAfee goes on to share some rather vanilla advice to etailers, but here’s my take on the topic.

1. Secure your shopping cart: if you’re asking for a credit card number, you’d be better be showing https and not http in the navigation bar.
2. Use a padlock: that little yellow padlock that displays when a web site is secure? Yeah, use it too!
3. Be transparent: I’m not entering my credit card until I know what tax and shipping you’re going to charge.
4. Don’t make me register first: look, it’s OK to ask me to create an account, but do so only AFTER I have completed my transaction. Asking me prior, may scare me away.
5. Who, where, how? Who are you, where are you located, and how do I reach you if I have a problem? If your site doesn’t answers those basic questions, I’m off!
6. Privacy & T&C: We both know I’m not going to actually read this stuff, but if I don’t see the links anywhere in your footer, it will raise a red flag.
7. Sealed with a kiss: OK, yes I admit, some kind of pretty security seal–a la McAfee–will help too!

Those are my tips. What tips do you have for securing retail transactions and improving conversions?

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7 Quick Shopping Cart Tips = 11% Increase in Sales

Shiny Future for Chrome?

Written on September 17, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

For all of the talk of social media, software as a service (SaaS) and the future of the Internet one of the most important components for delivery is that workhorse of the whole deal; the browser. Right now, Internet Explorer is the market leader with Firefox a solid second. While Safari will always be limited to the Mac-iverse the introduction of Chrome version 3 for the PC reminds us that Google needs to be a part of this mix as well. Hey, it wouldn’t be the Internet unless Google was involved, right?

TechCrunch reports that there is more to the picture though as revealed in an interview by Reuters like Mac users finally getting their chance to see their reflection in the Chrome world.

While Chrome currently has just under 3 percent of the browser market currently, a year from now, they’re planning to have at least 5 percent. More importantly, 2 years from now, if Chrome doesn’t have at least 10 percent share, Google will be “exceptionally disappointed,” Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson told Reuters. And Google’s own internal projections for the browser are even higher, apparently.

But Google also has a big wildcard it has yet to play: Mac support. And in the same Reuters article, Google confirmed that its Chrome for Mac will be available before the end of this year.

As pointed out in the article, right now Mac users are a bit stuck with a slow Firefox experience but a lot of add-ons or a quicker Safari with fewer bells and whistles. Chrome for the Mac promises to bring both to the table. Personally, I am very excited because I am wearing out the force quit on Firefox as a recent Mac convert. TC’s MG Siegler makes takes the anticipation to another level

Chrome promises to bring a combination of both speed and plug-ins to the Mac. I’ve been using the developer builds of Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) for months now, and it’s definitely getting really, really close to being ready for prime time.

I’m in. What’s your browser preference and does Chrome look to be a part of your future?

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Shiny Future for Chrome?