The month of December saw many analysts take a look back at growth and changes in online marketing in 2008 and make a number of predictions for the coming year.
Web searches for online shopping vouchers increased by 133 per cent in the past 12 months, data from Hitwise revealed, with some 20,000 variations on the term ‘voucher’ used by searchers.
Meanwhile, research from TNS Global found that web search is the most popular online activity for British internet users.
In mid-December, eMarketer made a number of predictions for the future of online marketing, with senior analyst Jeffrey Grau anticipating that long-term internet customers will drive retail sales, which are predicted to increase by four per cent.
Finally, David Berkowitz of Search Insider said that a number of changes could impact the search engine marketing industry in the coming year, including the rapid growth of social media, photo-sharing sites and blogs.
He explained that web marketers will need to consider their website’s search rankings, as well as in terms of social media.
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2009 is definitely going to be the year where small businesses have a really great chance to win in the customer service department, whilst their larger competitors go to the wall.
Put yourself in the shoes of a customer. When you buy a product, do you always get it home and find you instinctively know how to use it? Or do you end up scouring the internet to see how to set it up, build it, configure it, or which buttons to press to make it work? It doesn’t matter what product you sell, you can help out your customers by providing an easy get started guide, followed up by, for instance, daily emails, which help them make the most of that product. Have you tried this? Did you know it can do this? etc
The whole thing can be done online, digitally, automated and cost you mere pennies, but in 2009, it is small touches like this which will make all the difference.Treat your customers as you would like to be treated yourself as a customer.
All of us have bought something recently that undoubtedly has had us pulling our hair out to get the most out of it. Whether it is software, a new washing machine, a car, or even a toy at Christmas, simple instructions plus follow up advice would really make a difference. Some gadgets nowadays are so complex, that quite often it isn’t even obvious where to put the batteries! And software invariably is not used to its maximum potential.
Don’t let your customers go out onto the Internet looking for advice, help and support. Get it in front of them immediately they make a purchase. Even if all it is a small piece of paper with a URL on it telling them where they will find “How to” guides, the helpline phone number, or your forum of users who will guide them through the ins and outs of your products.
Next time anyone asks them what they think of the product, what they will remember is the fact that your after sales help and support was second to none. And then you will get those all important word of mouth, or word of mouse, referrals that are worth their weight in gold.
E-commerce sites harnessing blogs to boost traffic should focus on the titles of their posts, according to one expert.
Armando Roggio of Practical e-Commerce said that blog titles can have a large bearing on search engine optimisation, as well as on the appeal of that website to consumers.
He advised marketers to utilise keyword research tools and insert relevant terms into blog titles, as well as to make use of common or general phrases where possible as this will do much to boost traffic as opposed to using very specific terms that web users may be unfamiliar with.
Mr Roggio remarked: "Good blog posts should increase traffic to your store, but to get the best possible results, carefully develop your titles, providing your readers with an intelligent, keyword-rich promise."
According to the most recent figures from comScore, more than 14 million UK web users visited a blog during the month of August.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
New research has revealed that e-commerce firms now consider more than visual appearance when undergoing a website redesign.
The survey by Internet Retailer showed that half of e-commerce sites have been redesigned in the last 12 months, with site and search engine optimisation the top priority for almost three-quarters of merchants.
Just over six in ten respondents said they were focusing on organising their home, category and product pages, while almost half were concentrating on improving navigation.
More than two-thirds of businesses said they expected to see higher sales conversions as a result of their website design work.
When it came to website goals for the next 12 months, 43.3 per cent said they intended to implement web video, while 40 per cent revealed they were planning to make use of personalised product recommendations.
Last month, a poll by Shape The Future found that a fifth of UK businesses were looking to spend more on website optimisation in the next 12 months.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Two worthwhile reads for the day. Firstly, some sound business advice from the BBC, and secondly, some research from Pew about the importance of the internet for news items.
The first piece highlights the importance of the 360 degree view of your business and the opportunities right now to re-structure for the long term. The second highlights the need to include your business in the news.
Should you Twitter for business purposes? Twitter has been referred to as a micro blogging tool, mainly because of the limitation on characters for each Tweet, (140), but many are beginning to argue that it is more than just an option for blogging – it is in addition to blogging, and should become part of your marketing and networking toolkit.
However, as more people adopt it, it becomes difficult to decide what strategy to take – one way or interactive? Twitter for business has to mean interacting with your followers/customers, but for a company this can become time-consuming and difficult. It also means that the true interaction ie following others within your industry or with authority, is left aside. However, this may well prove to be the most important business aspect of twittering – the networking side of it.
This last few days has seen a flurry of discussion about how to search for and decide who to follow, and whether there should be some sort of ranking of twitterers. Loic Le Meur posted about a search on Twitter by authority, where authority was somewhat simplistically designated by number of followers. Jeff Jarvis gave a pretty reasoned response over at Buzzmachine. Meanwhile, no sooner did Loic ask for a way of searching by authority, than Jon Wheatley produced Twitority which does allow you to search by the number of followers on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the discussion goes on about Twitter, business and search!
As budgets flatten this year for advertising and marketing, it is obvious tha all of us as businesses will need to ensure we get maximum bang for each marketing buck that is spent. With the ever-changing search landscape too, where 2009 is likely to be the year where searchers find their results becoming more personalised and search engineers find it more difficult to measure results with the likes of ranking and PR, it is going to become increasingly more important to not just attract visitors, but to keep them on your site responding to calls to action, or to harvest contact information so you can engage with them when they leave.
This is going to be the year where small businesses in particular realise that the number of ‘hits’ their site receives is totally irrelevant if none of those visitors at least start a meaningful, and hopefully long term, relationship with the business.
How you extract value from your visitors is dependent on the purpose of your website, and your business model. However, whether you are looking to build your brand, sell products or services, or impart information, you need to consider carefully what you are offering your website visitors in return for their click and attention.
The ideal has to be to develop a long-term relationship with those visitors by offering good value, including freebies, and best quality products and services. You need to differ from your competitors with a unique selling point, unique content, and outstanding customer service.
The value you gain from your visitors is in reducing the cost of customer acquisition, building relationships whereby your loyal customers help to spread the word about your products and services, and continue to support you even when the going gets tough. Whether this is from regular and informative email newsletters, from special offers for loyal customers, or from ensuring that each and every customer has a worthwhile and satisfactory purchase experience from you, the value extraction has to be two way.
Your potential and existing customers need to be treated extra specially well during the economic downturn that is occurring, and now, as the New Year approaches, is the very time when you should be looking at your website rather than, for instance, monitoring your PPC bids to ensure that you are catering for those who will buy from you, now and in the future – YOUR WEBSITE VISITORS.
Make sure your website delivers to those people, and make sure all your backend systems, processes and responses are in good order to deliver the best possible service your customers will expect from a business that is in good fettle, trustworthy and likely to survive the economic recession. Building trust with your customers and showing that you are in it for the long term will bring more business than just spending more on PPC keyword bids.
None of us can be sure about how 2009 is going to pan out, but it is obvious from the daily reports of well-known names going out of business or struggling to remain in business, that it is not going to be an easy year ahead.
However large or small your business is, it is ever more apparent that using the internet to promote your business and products is one of the most important ways forward. However, in order to do this successfully, one of the most important activities you should schedule in for this year’s internet marketing strategy is testing.
It is going to be even more important to ensure that not just are you bidding on the most effective keywords in your PPC campaign, have optimised your website correctly, and that your online and offline marketing is co-ordinated, but also that when visitors arrive on your website, you are achieving the maximum conversions from your landing pages, key messages and calls to action.
There are multiple methods to do this, and one of the easiest ways is to perform A/B and multi-variate testing on different areas and pages of your site so you can measure and monitor the results of changes you make to text, design, key messages, graphics and so on.
It is surprising how even small, seemingly insignificant changes can actually affect how a visitor will respond to a call to action, but it is only by testing these changes against one another that you will know how to capitalise on the visitors who you do attract to your website.
One great tool for this is Google’s Website Optimizer which allows you to test different versions of pages against each other (A/B testing) as well as different variations of the same page (multi-variate testing). There are clear instructions on usage, as well as detailed information on the considerations you will need to make when deciding what and how to test. Even if you only test the response rates to a single landing page, this may well improve your conversion rates sufficiently to keep you in business this year.
New research has suggested that pharmaceutical businesses will spend more on web-based marketing in the next two years.
MarketBridge and Pharmaceutical Executive magazine surveyed about 220 executives within the industry and found that the majority of firms spend up to ten per cent of their marketing budgets on the internet, while 32 per cent spend between ten and 20 per cent.
It is likely that the proportion of companies spending up to 20 per cent on digital marketing will rise in the next two years, mirroring trends seen in other industries, the report said.
The survey also found that search marketing tactics such as search engine optimisation were viewed as being among the most effective online marketing campaigns.
"Digital marketing spend is expected to rise and digital has at least ‘some influence’ in hiring, as organisations move more towards digital marketing adoption," the report said.
Search engine marketing spending reached £981 million in the first six months of this year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.
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Search engine marketing professionals are likely to see significant changes within the industry in the next year, according to Search Insider’s David Berkowitz.
The expert said that those making use of search engine optimisation (SEO) and marketing will need to consider their rankings in terms of social media as well as their own company website.
Those taking advantage of SEO services should think about how consumers find their organisations, as a growing number of web users do so via sites like Twitter and Wikipedia, as well as photo-sharing sites and blogs, Mr Berkowitz suggested.
"SEO is shifting from a focus of entirely maximising a site’s rank in the engines to maximising a site’s reach across all the top-ranked listings on a search engine’s results page," he remarked.
Search marketing spending has increased by 30 per cent this year, according to the 2009 Search Marketing Benchmark Guide from advertising blog and resource provider MarketingSherpa.
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