Posts Tagged ‘online’

October 20th, 2008

A Secure Office Cabinet

Searched Google today for a “Secure Office Cabinet”. In position 4 in my Google search returns was the UK Cabinet Office Intelligence and Security Committee. I think this raises important questions. Does Google in its infinite information-driven wisdom, know that the Home Office Cabinet Security Committee with its brief to “examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service” is in fact nothing more than a secure cupboard tucked away in Whitehall? Or is it the case that Google really can’t tell the difference between a high ranking government department and vendors of lockable office storage cupboards? There is of course a third and rather Pythoneqsue possibility: that the Security Committee meets in a cupboard. This is not as ludicrous as it sounds; the Beatles reputedly recorded their White album track “Yer Blues” in a studio cupboard.

Interestingly for SEO purists, the SERP #1 return, LA Office, had a PR of 1/10 whilst the government department at SERP #4 has a PR of 5/10.

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September 18th, 2008

Is Google Marketing’s new Yellow Pages?


For many years Yellow Pages had an interesting, if not pole, position in marketing performance reports. Whilst many communication and media channels would deliver a cost per sale of £X, the Yellow Pages always topped the report, often with a CPS of a 10th of £X - or even less.

Why did it do so well? Not because it had any magical qualities as an advertising medium but because it because it was the first calling point for many consumers wanting to find out more about an advertised product. When calling a call centre, the operative might ask, “And where did you hear about AB Financial services?” to which the caller would respond, “In the Yellow Pages”. This Yellow Pages source would then be duly logged in the call data for future agency evaluation. Let’s call this “Yellow Pages Syndrome”

Google is now increasingly performing this “first port of call” function in marketing activity, particularly in non-retail services marketing. The result is that when brand terms are measured in pay per click campaigns they can perform extremely well. Conversions on PPC brand search terms for product X can come in at less than 10% of the cost per conversion on generic category terms. Think “Atco lawnmowers” versus the generic “lawnmowers” for example. “Atco lawnmowers” may deliver a cost per conversion of less than £10, whilst the generic “lawnmowers” may produce a cost per conversion several times higher.

Informed marketers always knew that Yellow Pages was only the “receptacle for response” not the originator of the response itself. The problem was that Yellow Pages was very difficult to measure, all we had to go on was the circulation or distribution volumes in each book’s catchment area. This figure was flat over the whole year and no daily or seasonal readership reporting was available. As a result is was almost impossible to form robust causal linkages between advertising activity and Yellow Pages response. But Google’s daily level reporting across all purchased PPC terms including factors such as response, conversion and key page visits (through Google analytics) means that we have enough data variation to examine those linkages. And, lo and behold, the data clearly supports the idea that advertising drives brand searches.

The fact that advertising and direct marketing drive Google brand term searches means they now have a new metric against which they can be judged. Advertising and direct marketing that produces Google searches can be driving some of the lowest cost sales a business is likely to make - -provided Google searches driven by these channels are correctly attributed. So whilst online and offline, Google and other techniques may appear to be competing against each other, they are in fact enjoying a harmonious and synergistic relationship.

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June 26th, 2008

What’s the future for call centres?

For many years, even decades, call centres have been the primary recipient of response to consumer advertising campaigns. Throughout the 1990’s call centres were able to grow on the back of a strong growth in response-seeking advertising and marketing. In the last decades of the last millennium there was significant investment in call centres, technology and people.

However, as we entered the new millennium, the internet emerged as an alternative recipient of response. Now, as broadband penetration has increased to critical mass, online interactivity has become the norm and many companies are driving huge volumes of response to the internet. These developments open up a debate about the future of call centres with their significant costs in terms of buildings, communications, technology and people. Marketers are asking: What is the future of the call centre?

I found some interesting research on this topic from Forrester. Forrester asked 176 large US firms (turnover of $500m+) to forecast how the saw the way they interact with customers changing over the next two years.

The big gainers are web and email, whilst the big loser is call centres. 96% predicted a significant increase in the use of the web and 80% saw a significant increase in the use of email. Virtually no companies saw a reduction in these online interaction channels. At the other end of the spectrum 28% saw either a small or significant reduction in the use of call centres whilst only 17% saw significant growth prospects. Phone self service was tabled for a 69% increase suggesting that whilst these firms recognise that there are many consumers who still want to interact by phone, they are not necessarily prepared to pay for that to be a live conversation.

It looks as through live call centres are in for a tough time; they’ve lost their historical monopoly on non-retail interaction with the consumer. Companies are going to see very tempting cost savings in online interaction so they’re likely to encourage and invest in it. I think they’ll always be a role for live call centres, though much reduced and focused into the type of high value conversations that justify their relatively high costs. Live conversations are likely to be increasingly reserved for high value products, high value relationships and high value customers.

Forrester

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June 9th, 2008

What is Web 2.0?

Requests for a definition of Web 2.0 are still made by clients - for some this is still a new subject. Here’s a summary of the points I recently used to describe Web 2.0 to an FMCG advertiser.

Web 2.0 is an inclusive phrase that covers the new web based networking, customisation and data management functionalities that have emerged since 2000. 2000 is a significant start point because it played host to two important events in the gestation of Web 2.0. First, 2000 was the year of the dotcom crash which, in an almost Darwinian sense, extinguished poor performing technologies and ideas and created the intellectual, technological and financial ‘space’ for something new. And second, 2000 was the year that Google began real take-off after receiving $25m of venture capital in 1999. This investment paved the way for Google to expand globally and redefine the way web information is catalogued, ordered and retrieved worldwide.

It’s important to note that the web as a technology platform remains largely unchanged, but in Web 2.0, the way that platform is being used has changed dramatically. Web 2.0 is about moving web content from being information on a news stand to being customised information solutions for individual needs. This individual customisation is the essence of Web 2.0. The guys who coined the phrase Web 2.0* cite a number of examples to illustrate how Web 2.0 is an evolution from Web 1.0. Here are two examples that really sum it up:

1) Encyclopaedia Britannica versus Wikipedia

Britannica was - and remains - an online encyclopedia written and researched by the Britannica editorial team. It’s a huge compendium of information, but it remains under the tight control of Britannica. Wikipedia on the other hand is open to editorial contributions from almost anyone at any time. It is therefore never the same across any two days. That makes it a living and evolving entity. Where Britannica is ice, Wikipedia is water. Britannica is Web 1.0 and Wikipedia is Web 2.0.

2) Personal Website versus Blogs

Personal websites are generally static and non-interactive. Content is uploaded, pages are then fixed and remain unaltered unless the webmaster decides to make changes. Change is cumbersome, requiring changes in HTML source code. Blogs on the other hand are a platform designed to have content updated frequently. New content can be posted every minute and uploaded from PCs or mobile phones. Readers can air their views by posting comments. Content can be emailed to others. Blogs can be “claimed” at Technocrati where all registered blogs are brought together in a searchable blog universe or blogosphere. Personal Web sites are 1.0 and blogs are Web 2.0.

Other ways of defining Web 2.0

There are other ways of defining Web 2.0. Think of drinking in a highly social pub rather than having a glass of wine at home alone. Think of videoconferencing rather than watching the TV. Think of CB radio with its network of “breakers on the side” rather than a one to one linear telephone call. Think in terms of the Internet versus the printing press or conventional TV versus You Tube. Web 2.0 is Facebook where 1.0 is a printed membership directory. Web 1.0 is one dimensional, non-network based, comparatively static and delivered to “mass” online audiences. But Web 2.0 is about being multi-dimensional, connected, highly dynamic and delivered on a customised one to one basis.

What are Web 2.0’s component parts?

Web 2.0 is many things and the list is potentially endless – there are already about 9m references to it in Google. Even the guys who defined Web 2.0 had to say “Web 2.0 doesn’t have a hard boundary, but rather, a gravitational core”. Here are some of our examples:

Blogs / Blogosphere
Broadband
Comments
Communities
Content
Databases
Democracy of information
Facebook
Google
Google Adwords and Adsense
i-Tunes and i-Pods
LinkedIn
Networking
Tags
The “People who bought this, also bought this” feature in Amazon (A web 1.0 survivor)
Technocrati
User Generated Content
Widgets
Wikipedia

These examples are component parts of a totally new media age. It’s a new form of media (indeed media may no longer be the right word) with a new set of rules, a new language, a new functionality and it’s a world that puts the consumer, as the scheduler, at its core.

* O’Reilly Media and MediaLive International

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May 6th, 2008

Does offline advertising drive online site visits?

Many advertisers are asking whether offline media drives their online traffic and to what degree. I recently had to review this for a major blue chip advertiser so I thought I’d share the sources and results I’ve found:

1. Jupiter/IPSOS Study
Jupiter and IPSOS got together in 2007 to survey 2,000 US web search users to analyse what drove them to make web searches. The Jupiter/IPSOS research found that 37% of respondents claimed they had searched in response to a TV ad, 30% had searched as a result of seeing a newspaper or magazine ad, 17% had searched after hearing a radio ad and 9% had searched after seeing an outdoor billboard ad. These results were higher amongst “daily searchers” i.e. people who say the use search engines at least on a daily basis. For example the percentage of daily searchers quoting TV and press/magazines as an influence climbed from 37% to 44% for TV and from 30% to 35% for a magazine ad.

2. PPA / BMRB Study
The PPA, a trade body representing UK press and magazine titles, undertook a survey of 3,045 online adults aged 16-64 during August 2007. The research found that 70% of those surveyed had visited a web site as a result of seeing offline communication and 58% of online adults have made a purchase online as a result of seeing offline messaging. When asked, “Which of the following have triggered you to go online when looking for information on products that you have considered purchasing?“ the responses were as follows:

TV - 50%
Magazines - 45%
Newspapers - 31%
Radio ads - 17%

3. Retail Advertising and Marketing Association / BIGresearch (US study)
The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association (RAMA) undertook research with BIGresearch in the US and surveyed over 15,000 consumers in its Simultaneous Media Survey. This project found the top 10 media that trigger an online search (Adults 18+) to be:

51.6% Magazine
47.7% Read an Article
44.2% TV / Broadcast
41.3% Newspaper
35.6% Cable TV
35.3% Face-to-Face Communication
33.8% Coupons
30.3% Email Advertising
29.3% Direct Mail
28.2% Radio

4. Hitwise Media Impact Report
This report contains good case studies from the AA, Orange and Sky. Key take outs are firstly that integrated campaigns drive greater levels of search volume and secondly that product specific advertising in offline channels e.g. press can have a positive uplift effect on the search terms that reflect the product being advertised in that offline channel.

Understanding your own traffic sources
All brands have their own DNA and industry and category level research will only give you an indication of how offline media might drive online traffic to your web site. Only a bespoke analysis using your own media data and search/web traffic logs will help you to understand how offline media drives traffic to your site.

There’s no need to get into intricate modelling to reveal these relationships. Most statisticians will begin even the most complex analysis by simply plotting media activity looking for patterns. Try plotting your media activity (e.g. spend, impacts or GRPs) and search traffic volume data (only relevant terms) into charts and observing the patterns. This may be sufficient to illustrate whether offline media is driving traffic to your site.

Your analysis will be much stronger if you are able to strip out all referred traffic and focus on direct traffic when looking for these relationships. If you use a reporting tool like Google Analytics, you can strip out all traffic source data that can be explained by other activity such as paid search, banner campaigns or link referrals. You are then able to isolate direct organic search traffic coming into your site and compare that with your media activity.

Larger brands with more complex and inter-related traffic drivers may have to undertake more sophisticated econometric modelling to isolate the effect of individual traffic-driving variables and remove the effects of underlying seasonality and brand awareness.

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January 14th, 2008

Online revolutionises SME marketing

Targeting Small and Medium sized enterprises with less than 250 employees (SMEs) has been a notoriously difficult area of marketing and communications planning for many years. Even though there are nearly two million UK businesses employing between 1 and 250 people, the available communications options were based around four areas:

1. Direct communications: Direct Mail, telemarketing and email
2. Trade journals (i.e. verticals catering for a specific area of SME activity)
3. Business sections in broader newspapers and magazines (i.e. horizontal targeting of management and business owners)
4. Sponsorship of trade exhibitions and events

Creating something new within these options was a bit like seeing how many different ways one could fold the same piece of paper. Even more difficult was reaching buyers through these channels when they were active and at the point of making a purchase. But now the growth and maturity of internet has spawned a large number of new, highly targeted and relevant opportunities for marketers targeting SMEs. Two new areas that are worthy of strong consideration by those targeting SMEs are:

1) Information Channels - by their nature many SMEs have to solve their own problems when it comes to IT, infrastructure, mobile communications, VAT, finance and email. Because they don’t have many traditional office functions like IT support or finance SMEs have to solve it themselves using access online help sites and user forums. These environments present an excellent targeting opportunity for SME marketers for two reasons. First, they offer good targeting opportunities in terms of audience delivery, but second, they deliver these audiences when they in the all-important ‘problem-solving’ mindset.

2) Business E-Commerce sites – SMEs have to make regular online purchases including IT hardware, software, office equipment and office consumables. It’s easier for SMEs to review products, make purchases and organise delivery online. By shopping online they are able to assure themselves that they have got the best value possible – however they choose to define it. Many of the business shopping sites carry advertising and these offer a new and exciting opportunity to target SMEs when they are in “buy” mode.

Screwfix in the UK offers a great case study in leveraging online for SME targeting. The company is a leading supplier of fasteners (nuts, bolts, brackets, tools etc). They have created a forum which has 12 talk areas - one for plumbers, one for builders, electricians, tilers etc. It’s got 54,000 topics and 540,000 messages across over 1,500 content pages. All the talk areas were active with most showing posts from the last hour as I wrote this post. Screwfix have created their own SME media channel.

Mobile display advertising is going to present the next big SME opportunity. A lot of these guys are glued to their phones. It’s not surprising when you consider that they have to work in a virtual office, taking their phone or Blackberry with them wherever they go by car, truck, van, tube, train, bus or even abroad. Networks are still developing mobile opportunities into commercial packages, but the close “personal space” communication they offer promises to bring an additional set of developments in SME targeting. If these developments are combined with the community based principles of Web 2.0 / 3.0 then we will be witnessing a revolution in SME marketing, that’s if we haven’t already.

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