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Social Media Pays: People More Likely to Buy from Brands they Follow

Written on March 17, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

A new study from market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that social media might actually pay off—in real dollars in addition to the traditional branding and influence lift. The survey of over 1500 consumers showed that they were more likely to buy from and recommend brands they follow on Twitter and Facebook.

51% of those surveyed said they were more likely to buy from a brand after following them on Facebook; 67% said they were more likely to buy after following on Twitter. Brands also got a boost in recommendations: 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers were more likely to recommend a brand to their friends.

This is only natural, says eConsultancy:

The most popular reason people follow brands in social media is to receive discounts. But there were also many people who responded that they follow as a customer of the brand and to show their support of it. On Twitter, that reason was less popular. Only 2% of respondents followed a brand to show their support. More often, they are looking for discounts, new information and exclusive content.

That makes a lot of sense, as Facebook’s fan ability is more geared toward letting users express their appreciation for something.

And here’s our grain of salt: this is a survey. This only shows what people think they’re doing. It may be that people don’t want to admit they’re only following Nike to look cool. However, with questions like these, I’d assume there’s at least a little boost for the brands in terms of dollars and recommendations.

What do you think? Are these people accurately reporting their spending and recommendations?

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Social Media Pays: People More Likely to Buy from Brands they Follow

Fuzzy Math Puts Facebook Ahead of Google as Most Visited Site

Written on March 16, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

I really thought this chart from Hitwise (via TechCrunch) was going to be a bigger deal than it actually is.

On the face of it, Facebook just overtook Google as the most visited site in the U.S:

However, Google doesn’t get the benefit of traffic to YouTube; and Yahoo is a mere third, because Yahoo Mail or Flickr aren’t credited towards its total.

Considering Facebook does video, images, messaging, it seems this chart has been carefully crafted to create headlines.

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Fuzzy Math Puts Facebook Ahead of Google as Most Visited Site

Pew Study Affirms Paywalls a Bad Move

Written on March 14, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

There are certain things that anyone can hear and automatically say “I don’t think that’ll work very well” without doing any real research. You hear something and you have a visceral reaction that just makes you go with your gut because it makes sense. Even in those kind of no-brainer situations it helps when your “gut” is validated by a reputable source who actually did a little research.

The latest case of this occurrence comes from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. As reported over at ars technica the prestigious group has done the research to help us all say that our collective gut is right on the money when it comes to paywalls for news: the idea pretty well sucks.

Advertising remains the primary means of support for online news outlets, and there’s a long uphill battle facing anyone trying to forge new business models, at least according to a report produced by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The extensive report on the State of the Media examines numerous aspects of the media world, but emphasizes that, when it comes to online news, getting people to pay for content they otherwise value is “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons.”

Ouch. Last I heard, butterflies never go back into their cocoons. Boy it would be just like some mean old news guy like Rupert Murdoch to force a butterfly to do something so unnatural.

Some of the numbers that support this claim are that 81 percent of Internet users say they are fine with online ads of it keeps the content free. A surprising number of people click on these ads as well with 21 percent saying they do and the numbers going up to 39 percent when the level of someone’s Internet usage is high. On the downside, however, is the admission by these folks that they actually like ads because they “find them easy to ignore”. Ouch again.

The combined effect of lower ad impact and revenue has led many news sites to look for new ways to make some money, but the Pew report is not very optimistic on the prospects for other business models. Only seven percent of Americans said they would consider paying for news content and most said they would simply look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall.

The likelihood of hybrid offerings is increasing because the first company of any relevance that fails while trying a paywall only approach rather than the traditional free approach will get beat up pretty bad. Although the pressure for revenue is severe the downside of actually acting on all this paywall talk could be keeping folks away from it.

With only 7% of Americans saying that they would pay for content is seems hard to believe that there is any room for this model moving forward. What’s your take? Please be sure to comment in our new “pay per comment” section. You’d pay for that opportunity wouldn’t you?

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Pew Study Affirms Paywalls a Bad Move

Google, Yahoo & Portals Are Top Online News Sources: Study

Written on March 14, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book

Major news portals — like Yahoo News, Google News, AOL, and Topix — are the most commonly used online news sources, beating out the web sites of major news outlets like CNN, CBS, and the New York Times. That’s according to the the State of the Media report issued tonight by the Pew Research Center’s [...]



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Google, Yahoo & Portals Are Top Online News Sources: Study

Marketing in Europe? Display Works

Written on March 12, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

comScore released a new study today examining the effects of display advertising in the European market—and it’s pretty dang impressive. The study (well, actually, report based on more than 20 studies) indicates that, despite minimal clicks on the ads themselves, “those exposed to online ad campaigns in Europe were 72 percent more likely to visit the advertiser’s website and 94 percent more likely to conduct a trademark search query on the advertiser’s brand, compared to a control group of similar Internet users who were not exposed to the campaigns.”

These figures are pretty staggering—especially when compared to US figures, which comScore reports as “an average lift of 49 percent in site visitation and 40 percent in trademark search queries across hundreds of ad effectiveness studies.” The European lift effects were most significant during the first week after exposure, but didn’t drop off dramatically.

comScore Director of Marketing Solutions Mike Shaw said in the press release,

These results help illustrate how online advertising works. Despite the long-held obsession with using clicks to measure campaign performance – which reflect only the immediate impact of an ad — the comScore studies demonstrate that the Internet is clearly effective as a latent brand-building medium. Europeans appear to be particularly receptive to online advertising, and whether it’s due to better creative, less ad clutter, or greater receptivity to online ads, the implication for brand advertisers is clear: ignore online as a brand-building channel at your own peril.

And I guess it also shows that it pays to know before you go . . . ad shopping.

What do you think? Why might Europeans be so influenced by display ads?

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Marketing in Europe? Display Works

Companies Spend More on Email Than PPC; 39% Have No Clue of ROI

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Wouldn’t it make sense that if you spent more money on email marketing than pay-per-click marketing, you’d have a reasonable explanation for that choice?

Well, according to the data discovered in Econsultancy’s 2010 Email Marketing Census, companies are spending more on email marketing (17% of online budgets) than PPC (16%) despite not fully understanding the return on investment (ROI) achieved or taking advantage of one of the most important benefits of email marketing: segmentation.

When you run PPC campaign, you attempt to segment your target audience by using different ad creative and targeted landing pages. You wouldn’t bring a “window shopper” to a landing page that displayed only one product, would you? So it’s a shock that many companies are still not using segmentation to target their email campaigns and deliver messages, or offers, that are tailored to their customers’ known interests and buying habits. Think about that. When you email your existing customers, you already know at least a little about their buying preferences, so why would you not segment them so that they receive tailored email messages?

With this lack of fine-tuning of their email marketing efforts, it is no wonder that 39% of companies quizzed have no idea what their ROI is from email marketing. Almost forty per cent of those that are spending more on email marketing than search, have no idea why they do so! That is astounding – but even more astounding is that 33% of agencies who manage their clients email marketing campaigns have no clue either!

Companies have become complacent with their email marketing campaigns. They’ve put them on “auto-pilot” and have focused too much on fine-tuning their search and social media efforts that they’ve neglected a channel that can create new sales and keep existing customers happy.

Let 2010 be the year that we realise there’s so much more we can do to improve our ROI from email marketing.

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Companies Spend More on Email Than PPC; 39% Have No Clue of ROI

PPC Academy Toolbox: Keyword Monitoring

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book

Because we are still in the research phase of PPC development, it’s important to get a very clear understanding of the advertiser’s business online and how that will affect the way we build and manage the account. Last week, I introduced the concept of the keyword landscape, the set of keywords, ads and competitors [...]



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PPC Academy Toolbox: Keyword Monitoring

Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google

Written on March 10, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

It’s always the darkest before the dawn.

Whatever the cliché being thrown around in Redmond, it must be working, because Bing’s US search share continues to nudge ever upwards.

According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the “we’ve given up on search” Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.

The only kink in Microsoft’s plan to catch Google? Google’s share increased too–up from 65.4% to 65.5%.

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Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google

Watch Out America! Here Come the European Social Media Marketers!

Written on March 9, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

According to a new study being published this week by Unica, European marketers trail their American cousins, when it comes to the adoption of social media marketing.

While, 58% of marketers in North America are already engaged in social media marketing, only 34% of Europeans can say the same.

That’s likely to change in the next 12 months:

Some quick math suggests that this time next year, 76% of American marketers will be knee deep in social media marketing, with an impressive game of “catch-up” played by European counterparts–hitting 64% adoption.

So what’s keeping Europe from making this a photo-finish? Well, the biggest set-back is the 20% of European marketers that don’t want anything to do with social media. Not, “we’re more than 12 months out” or “we not sure yet” but flat out “we have no plans for social media marketing.”

I’d love to know what industries those marketers represent because I’d go and steal their lunch money!

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Watch Out America! Here Come the European Social Media Marketers!

SEO 101 - Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms

Written on February 23, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: searchengineguide, seo

by Stoney deGeyter

The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.

Research Takes Time

The process of researching your keywords isn’t something that should be rushed. Each phase of the research process needs to be performed deliberately, ensuring that you take the time to find all relevant terms and discard the irrelevant. Any attempts to rush through the keyword research process will likely lead you down the wrong paths at best and at worst cause you to have to rethink your entire keyword targeting strategy.

Unfortunately the research process isn’t always linear. You can often be working on several phases of the research process at a time depending on what your focus is on at a given moment. There is a lot of overlap and moving backward and forward through the processes but care needs to be taken that you don’t skip over or leave any of the phases out.

Brainstorming Keywords

You can start the keyword research process anywhere, but I like to start with a clean slate. What keywords do you start the research process with? Do some brainstorming.

Brainstorming allows you to get a list of keywords from an unbiased perspective. The brainstorming process doesn’t mean just sitting around and thinking up phrases, though can be a part of it. Good brainstorming starts with asking questions that can then lead to answers. More times than not, those answers will also be your keywords.

First, think of what questions are relevant for you. Don’t try to answer them, you have time for that later, but compile your list of quetions that will help you find the keywords you are looking for.

Once you have a good list of questions do whatever research is needed to find the answers. Those answers give you a base of keywords you can then take to the online research tools to look for related phrases. These related phrases produce a wide-range of variations in how your topic is searched. Some relevant, others not so much.

Find Core Terms First

Undoubtedly in the brainstorming and research process you’ll amass a list of hundreds of phrases. You want to keep the process as simplified as possible so we’ll start by eliminating everything that is not a core term.

A core term is a keyword phrase boiled down to the essentials. It’s specific enough to produce a relevant result but broad enough to cover a wide range of much more targeted phrases. Generally a good core term is two, maybe three words. On rare occasions a core term can be a single word, but only when there is no room for alternate interpretations.

Only use qualifiers on a core term when it is necessary to ensure that the searcher will be led to a relevant page. For example the word “bag” could mean anything from a garbage bag to a sleeping bag to a travel bag. This is a core term that needs a qualifier in order to be relevant to the searcher. If it’s not relevant it’s not a core term.

Each page of your website should have a single core term associated with it. You may find several pages on your site that are a good fit for a single term. That’s fine during this research process but later you’ll want to make sure you select only the most appropriate page for any single core term. The others will have to find their own core terms.

Don’t stop your core term research until you are certain there are no more possible variations that produce measurable traffic. Using the keyword suggestion tools available in most keyword research programs, find all relevant variations on each of your core terms. For example a “travel bag” can also be a “back pack”, “luggage” (a rare case of a one-word core term) and a “duffel bag.” Each of these can be searched to find even more possible core term variants.

In almost every industry I have worked with I have been able to find different ways searchers think of the same product that the site owner hadn’t. Sometimes these variations don’t get searched much while other times they are more popular than the terms that the site owner said were the most important. Knowing these options in advance can make a dramatic difference in the direction you go with your optimization campaign.

Core Term Site Mapping

After you have put together an exhaustive list of core terms and before you start performing deeper research into finding specific phrases, you want to map out where your core terms will be integrated into your site. For some industries it’s as easy as looking at the content and assigning core terms to pages. For others, where there are a lot of core term variations that mean the exact same thing, it can be more difficult.

Assigning core terms to pages must be done very carefully. You need to ensure that the content of each page is either a 100% natural fit or the content can easily be adapted to fit that core term. A good example is “cost segregation” versus “cost segmentation”. Both essentially mean the same thing but both are frequently searched (though one more than the other.) The content of a page about “cost segregation” can easily be adapted for “cost segmentation” without altering the meaning or focus of the page.

If you can’t make a keyword fit without significantly altering the message of a page, then you find another core term, or another page for the core term.

I recommend prioritizing your core terms before assigning pages to them. Figure out which terms get more search volume, are most relevant, bring in targeted audience and which produce the best sales. These are all important factors of determining which core terms are more important than others.

By prioritizing your core terms you can research and optimize those that are most important first before moving on to lower priority terms. The optimization of your high priority terms can take some time so leaving the secondary terms for later is good optimization strategy.

Before you move into the next phase of the keyword research process you have enough information to start optimizing your website. With the core terms and the map of where each core term will be implemented, you can begin to perform a very broad and quick optimization of the website. Going a page at a time, optimize title tags, meta description tags, headings and even a bit of content.

I wouldn’t spend a lot of time on each page as you can go do a more indepth optimization later, once you have more keywords to work with.

Missed a part of this series?
Part 1: Everything You Need To Know About SEO
Part 2: Everything You Need To Know About Title Tags
Part 3: Everything You Need To Know About Meta Description and Keyword Tags
Part 4: Everything You Need To Know About Heading Tags and Alt Attributes
Part 5: Everything You Need To Know About Domain Names
Part 6: Everything You Need To Know About Search Engine Friendly URLs & Broken Links
Part 7: Everything You Need To Know About Site Architecture and Internal Linking
Part 8: Everything You Need To Know About Keywords
Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms
Part 10: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Qualifiers

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SEO 101 - Part 9: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Core Terms