The widespread availability of fixed line and mobile broadband has made the internet a faster, smoother place for the majority of users. However, it has also significantly raised expectations with the result that sites which are poorly optimised for speed will be ignored in favour of those that load quickly and perform consistently.
Google Analytics regularly publishes Site Speed reports in order to demonstrate which sites are fastest loading and which countries around the world routinely offer the best performance for web browsers.
Interestingly, one of the most recent reports suggests that the gap between desktop and mobile browsing is closing at a faster rate than some had predicted. This means that optimisation needs to take into account not only traffic from a laptop or desktop, but also visitors who are connected wirelessly and who are browsing via a tablet or smartphone.
The mean page load time for mobile devices sits at just over ten seconds, while twenty nine per cent of web pages viewed from a mobile device take between three and seven seconds to load.
While desktop machines with a landline connection clearly have an advantage, Google has pointed out that these figures take into account sites designed specifically to be viewed on a smartphone. This suggests that there is perhaps room for improvement when it comes to page load speeds, potentially attainable through even better optimisation and management of web server resources.
For businesses that rely upon making a good first impression through their web presence regardless as to the platform on which it is viewed, taking a proactive approach to mobile page load speeds will almost certainly deliver better conversion rates and repeat custom.
Google’s latest breakdown of the page load times across different industry sectors makes for interesting reading. Sites relating to the automotive industry are at the top of the charts, with mean load times of under six seconds, closely followed by those in health, beauty and e-commerce.
Only three sectors exceeded the eight second mean page load time mark, with entertainment and housing sites taking almost nine seconds, perhaps understandable given the inherent rich media involvement.
News sites languished at the bottom of the table with a mean load time of almost 13 seconds. Key reasons behind this position are believed to include sheer traffic volumes and their appeal to an ever growing mobile audience by dint of the content and services they provide. However, this does not prohibit further optimisation with the aim of lowering these averages and improving the value of such sites to the end user.
Other factors are known to influence these statistics; most notably the necessarily international nature of the results. However, when you look at the country-by-country breakdown, the UK is in a good position, with mean page load times of just under five seconds putting it in fourth place behind Canada, Sweden and market-leading Japan.
For individual statistics, it is possible to use Google Analytics to learn a lot more about the page load speeds associated with your site and to adjust your strategy accordingly.
As smartphones, mobiles and tablets become more prevalent, and wi-fi hotspots mean that data transfer can cost next to zero (a cup of coffee and a bun in many places), so we are seeing an explosion in mobile marketing. Geo-location and location based marketing aim to attract and encourage customers within a locality with services such as Foursquare, location based SMS, and m-commerce to make branding and m-marketing easy for business, and purchases more simple for customers.
However, much of this type of marketing relies on a bricks and mortar presence – you are endeavouring to attract people to your store, restaurant, gym, B&B, hotel, etc so that you can make a sale in the real world rather than online through your e-commerce store and website. But, what happens if you are a market stall, a pop-up, a table top or car boot sale vendor, manning an exhibition stand, or selling hats and wellies on top of a mountain and need to process a card payment rather than dealing only with cash?
The founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, launched Square in May 2011 and whilst providing a mobile payment scheme, Square is more than a little disruptive for the payments industry and hence exciting for businesses, large and small. Sir Richard Branson invested in Square last November and although it is not yet available in the UK, Branson’s investment will undoubtedly bring it to these shores. What Square does, and what other companies are likely to try to emulate, is make any smartphone into a credit card processing terminal. We have recently seen businesses such as Barclays taking potshots at the likes of Paypal for consumer payments via mobile with the Barclays PingIt service, but for many businesses, the rapid approach of multiple payment options eg Square can only be a good thing, especially if it reduces bottom line costs and keeps products competitive.
One option is the card reader, which plugs into the headphone jack on your phone. The sheer simplicity of such a device indicates the likelihood that it will take off, even though there have to be some security concerns about how easy it *could* make kiting and card cloning once apps are undoubtedly produced to help scammers. However, today’s announcements that credit card fraud is down must offer some reassurance on that level.
When you begin to consider the uses to which business can put this form of “payment anywhere”, it makes you itch for it be released in the UK. Not only does it solve the problem of having credit card processing terminals at outdoor events, but it also will herald a new level of competition in the payment processing market which has for too long been monopolised by the banks. Credit card transaction fees can be prohibitive, especially on micro-payments and low profit margin items.
For instance, Paypal charge 5% +5p per transaction on micropayments and 3.4% + 20p for regular payments.
WorldPay charge £19.95 /month for 350 transactions (5p each) and then 10p each for further transactions.
Barclays charge 3% with a £10 management fee and a minimum bill of £10 (no micropayments option, it seems)
Square charges 2.75% per swipe and 3.5% for manually entered cards with a 15c charge (only available in the US, at present).
The ubiquity of mobile phones and their impact on pretty much everything in our daily lives, especially in the world of commerce, is likely to see many more optional extras to plug into your phones over the coming years. We are likely to see far more use made of the headphone jack, as well as mini USB connectors already in mobile phones to offer additional functionality, both for consumers and businesses. After all, it’s not that long since a phone with a camera was a novelty and the Square card reader is precisely the type of disruptive technology that will change the way we do business.
What re your thoughts? How would your company use a mobile card reader? What else would you like to be able to plug into your phone?
There are far too many examples of brands and companies attempting to hide information from consumers and being caught out. The reality is that honesty in business, as in all other aspects of life, is essential. Especially in these days of the Internet where it is surprisingly easy for the diligent, upset or just plain determined punter to find out even the most well-hidden boardroom or corporate secret.
Some companies have adapted to the realisation that no longer can you rely on a carefully crafted press release to hype your new product launch or for an experienced crisis manager to respond to any situations which may arise. It has become necessary to take into account that out there, somewhere, may be a snippet of information which could inadvertently throw your notes to editors and hard won reputation into disarray and decline. Nowadays, you only need one person to discover a negative piece of information that proves you were being economical with the truth which goes viral, and this will cause the phone to ring off the hook, in a negative way, with journalists and customers demanding an explanation.
Open and transparent businesses who admit mistakes, seek to amend their ways, respond humbly and apologetically, and can be seen to be trying extremely hard to resolve issues that have garnered column inches (or the equivalent online) are treated more gently than those who are still sticking to PR 1.0 and who have not grasped that prosumers and citizen journalists are now capable of achieving in bringing a brand to its knees. Rightly or wrongly in some instances.
Whilst larger companies may require more hits to sink (a la battleships model), each hit will see a further decline in the fortunes of the company, in the reputation of the brand, and eventually in the continuing success of the company unless action is taken. The consumer battleships have just gained a new weapon in their armoury – brands, be warned.
In actuality, there are plenty of apps and services, review sites, fora, etc which all provide the consumer with an opportunity to fight back against the PR machine, but Open Label may well catch on for its absolute simplicity, and the fact it works with a globally established system – the barcode.
If you as a company have been taxed by government regulations about labelling products, or Advertising Standards Agency restrictions on what you can and cannot say within your creative, this could create yet further headaches. Unless you see this type of application coming and respond accordingly.
Open Label will allow anyone with a smartphone to scan a barcode and add a publicly available review of that product to anyone else who also scans the product. This type of application wrestles control away from the brand behind the product, in much the same way as the Internet has removed full control of marketing messages from the PR and marcomms teams.
Adapt or survive may be the key message here as this level of prosumer control over what is being said about your product will undoubtedly add a new level of headaches simply in monitoring what is being said and responding. However, from the consumer side, it is very much about taking advantage of technology to undo and see beyond the marketing hype which has been blighting the advertising and marketing industries for many years.
It is likely that this will go further. For instance, there is no reason for Google not to adopt something as simple as the barcode and add it to your search engine listings in much the same way as you can now show you location, enhanced site links, author rank etc. Whilst, as an advertiser, your ad revenue £££s are important to Google, so is maintaining an audience to whom Google et al can show your ads. After all, who wants every review, good or bad, shown against your search engine listing? But that happens already, so why not in Google Merchant listings in the SERPS, show the barcode with the most recent comments appended by consumers?
As a business selling products online, do developments such as this concern you? Is it ‘adapt or survive’ or just companies fight back against the growing groundswell of prosumers who may not grasp all the complexities and intricacies of your business decisions when writing a review? Is it down to businesses to be more open and transparent, or should businesses be permitted a degree of confidentiality about how the bottom line savings are made to keep them competitive? Will this level the playing field in some small way for those SMEs who do not barcode their products?
Let us know your thoughts. And if you get access to the private beta and have tried the product, please do share your opinion of it.
For 5 years, Twitter has somehow escaped the notice of the younger generation, with many quite happy to reside on Bebo, MySpace, and then Facebook. However, one has to wonder whether the decline of the latter of these three social networks may begin when the teens grow bored, and move on to pastures new, as they did with MySpace (now almost exclusively the haunt of bands) and Bebo (is it still the place to be for anyone?). If so, then the tipping point for Facebook may have been reached as there seems to be a growing realisation amongst the yoof that Twitter offers a cheap and simple way to communicate. Not only that, but it gives these youngsters a chance to be noticed and a remarkably quick way to share information.
A classic quote from this evening’s investigations as to why the younger generation are leaping aboard the Twitter ship was, “Be warned, Justin Bieber and Glee will be trending before you know it.” Whilst this may strike fear into the hearts of many, especially those who have enjoyed the relative obscurity of Twitter to date, for youngsters, the ability to use Twitter to be heard through something as simple as power in numbers causing global trends, (as was the case with the Arab Spring etc), may prove a bigger pull than even the simplicity. And for marketers targeting the pockets of an increasingly canny set of customers, ignoring Twitter for much longer may carry a costly penalty.
IF, and it is a big IF, the trend towards Twitter amongst teens continues at its seemingly increasing pace, it is likely that shortly the de facto place for youngsters will not be on Facebook, but in 140 character texts and twitpics. At that point, it is likely that Facebook will lose its appeal for many. Just as Pinterest appears to seemingly cater mainly for women of a certain age (but that demographic is rapidly skewing as Pinterest takes advantage of being the de rigueur site for now), Facebook may end up a wasteland without the youngsters to keep us all entertained. After all, how many people over 30 are on Facebook simply because those younger than them made it the site du jour?
Marketers and brands who have omitted to work a Twitter thread into their strategy may find themselves playing a fast catch up, and will also need to understand the fickle nature of this generation. “Everything is only a click away” means that unfollowing a particular brand or company really is incredibly simple, far more so than Unlike on Facebook where so few companies have actually mastered social engagement that your Feed is not constantly cluttered with marketing messages. If a brand ceases to be the flavour of the month, be prepared for your number of followers to decrease rapidly as peer pressure and possibly even a certain type of bullying could take place if your Tweetstream is seen to be full of RTs of the wrong company.
2012 may well be the Year of the Younger Tweet, and we are currently carrying out a survey of 13-18 year olds to determine what is the trigger for the mass move, aside from two which we have heard all too often recently, “Facebook is boring” and “All the good stuff happens first on Twitter”. Some of us oldies knew that a while ago, but it seems the realisation has dawned amongst our teenagers and the sooner internet marketers realise that the downward shift is occurring in Facebook, the sooner it may become obvious that the next budget and strategy meeting of the Marcomms team should probably include a long, hard look at Twitter. After all, Gen Y may not be your customers today, but is is highly likely that they will be in 5-10 years time. Alienate them now at your peril……
The Search Marketing Barometer from the Internet Advertising Bureau UK gives a useful snapshot of how the large companies are applying search marketing today. The most recent report, published in February, covering 2011, was based on a survey of 123 marketers from the top 200 brands across all sectors including entertainment, retail, FMCG and automotive. Although it’s based on the experiences of large companies, it has lessons for all companies using search around how to review and improve their search capabilities.
The barometer has many findings about use of search, but those that surprised me most were around customer insight and integration.
Surprisingly, 53% of brands had “little or no understanding of attribution modelling”. This surprises me for two reasons, first if you’re not using attribution you can’t really optimise your digital marketing mix, particularly if you’re making large investments in paid search, display ads and affiliate marketing as many of these brands will be. Taking the example of paid search, attribution helps you understand the influence of generic terms which searchers use early in the path to purchase. Since these are much higher by volume of searches than the long tail terms as users close in on purchase, it’s really important to know how they influence search. If you just use a last click wins model, then the value of these generic terms won’t be clear. I’m also surprised in that the analytics capabilities to understand customer journeys have been available for many years and are improving recently with new releases.
Google Adwords has had its Search Funnels feature available since 2010 to companies who have setup conversion tracking through Google. More recently, Google Analytics has added a multichannel funnels feature (see the official Google video) which provides a great representation of which digital channels are providing “assists” on the path to purchase. Many larger companies may not be using the free Google tools, but alternatives including agency tools also have attribution features, so lack of tools isn’t an excuse. My experience is that the tools may be configured in the organisation, but the lack of time, skills or process to interpret and action the results is more likely to be the problem. The report also found that only 13% of brands feel they have sufficient amount of performance data to help them with attribution modelling. I personally doubt whether lack of data is the problem, lack of people, process or skills to action it are more likely to be the problem.
The research also suggests that search advertising is still not fully integrated into the marketing mix, with 94% of UK advertisers believing there is a greater opportunity to link it with the rest of their communications activity. Of the marketers surveyed 94% said that there is greater opportunity to integrate search into the wider media mix. The survey found that online display and social media are most integrated with search in campaigns, at 65% and 62% respectively. This is followed by TV, with 43% of campaigns integrated with search marketing. With consumers using mobile more, this is also a missed opportunity – separate research by the IAB on the Mobile and Online Journey which they rather unnecessarily call “MOJO” shows that half of those following up adverts on smartphones have been watching TVs.
So overall, the research paints a fairly dark picture of how the potential value of customer insights is being used. I don’t think this picture will change until companies change the way analytics data is reviewed and actioned across the business.
We are increasingly moving from a search driven world to a social driven world. If your online marketing spend includes the vast proportion being spent on SEO and SEM, it is time for a rethink. Google’s development of Google Plus in an effort to ‘get social’ (against the behemoth in the social world that is Facebook) is based on a simple fact: that Facebook and social is beginning to dominate traffic on the Internet. And traffic = money. Not just for the big players such as Facebook and Google, but to those these giants serve. That’s you, and your business.
There is no getting round it. We have moved into a new era on the Internet and there are now companies (and not just those who at first glance would seem most suited to the social world) where anywhere from 30% upwards of traffic comes directly from Facebook activity, and not from the search engines. Some companies, according to research published in 2011, are seeing nearly all of their traffic coming from social sites such as Facebook, Stumbleupon, Twitter etc rather than the carefully crafted SERPs.
Whilst it is unlikely that the world is suddenly going to cease using the search engines, and hence the need for SEO will continue, the reality is that social media marketing is becoming THE traffic driver and cannot be ignored.
“We don’t do Twitter or Facebook because we have banned all access to social sites within our business” sounded fairly ludicrous 4 or 5 years ago. But now it sounds more like a death knell for any company taking such a stance.
Ignoring the fact that Facebook is introducing new forms of advertising and using social signals amongst friends and networks to bring advertisers closer to potential customers would be plain daft. Google would seem to be deeply concerned about the Facebook threat to the display advertising market Google has held almost absolute power over this last few years. After all, that’s part of Google’s core business, and any threat to that level of revenue has to be taken seriously.
We are seeing the big advertisers exchanging www.ourdomain.com on TV and print ads, packaging, websites etc with Follow Us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Short status updates are so much easier to manage than redesigns and website updates. There is a level of immediacy about social media which is missing from websites; a layer of personalisation and response that is difficult to ‘see’ on your bog standard, old school website. Whilst adding +1, Tweet, Like and other social sharing buttons to content on a website can help to illustrate the popularity, authority and quality of content, it somehow lacks the impact of a status update with 100+ comments, or a tweet that has been ReTweeted multiple times. A website also lacks the reach of social updates and it is easy to see how a simple tweet or status update can go viral, (mainly because of the lack of overlap between every individual’s personal network), at a cost – HR and cash – that is verging on impossible with more ‘traditional’ internet marketing methods.
Google’s Search Plus Your World is a clear indication that social signals are receiving more importance in the algorithms. And hence businesses need to pay more attention to the social space.
Are you still focussed on SEO and SEM? Or has your business decided to put more budget into social? What are your social media marketing plans for 2012?
Adam Symes, senior account director at ClickThrough Marketing, joined senior PPC account executives Meriem Nacer and Samantha Thomas at Google@Manchester last month, as reported in our previous blog post.
But what if you wanted to learn those six things in just 30 seconds? Well, now you can with this handy Infographic…
Google Farmer Update
One of our favourite things about working in online marketing is that there’s always something new to think about. Embracing new technology, expanding our knowledge, keeping up with the ‘new’ and learning from the ‘old’ – these are all essential elements to an effective digital marketing strategy.
That’s why we jumped at the chance to attend last month’s Google@Manchester event – which was led by Google’s director of agency sales, Dominic Allon.
We sent Adam Symes, senior account director at ClickThrough Marketing, along with senior PPC account executives Meriem Nacer and Samantha Thomas, to check out the event and catch up on the latest industry news – direct from Google itself.
They reported back with some intriguing details, and the information that they gleaned from the event confirmed that our innovations in search marketing are very much in tune with Google’s own reports.
That isn’t to say that we didn’t learn anything new, though. So to start 2012 with some fresh industry facts, here are six things we learned from our visit to Google@Manchester – firstly in detail, and then summarised in a ClickThrough Google@ Manchester Infographic:
1. 52% of conversion journeys are multi-click
Shane Cassells, online conversion specialist at Google UK & Ireland, gave a presentation entitled ‘Full Value of Search’, during which he provided some inside information that will be useful for any online retailer. Cassells recommended that the timeout for shopping baskets on eCommerce sites should be extended, and that we should all consider offline sales in our conversion strategies, as it has been shown that 40% of customers will buy offline after researching a product on the internet.
The big statistic to bear in mind, however, is that more than half of conversion journeys involve multiple clicks – whereas nine out of ten PPC conversions are still credited to the final click. As a conversion-focused online marketing agency, this kind of statistic is a nice reminder that we’re doing things properly – understanding that conversion paths are as unique and complex as the people buying your products.
2. Google+ is the fastest growing social media platform in history
Google’s foray into social media has proven to be a powerful marketing tool, with 94% of the top 100 brands already on board. We’ve been keenly watching the progress of Google+ and it will feature significantly in our social media marketing strategy for 2012, as we create and promote Google+ brand pages for our clients.
What Google@Manchester revealed is just how breathtakingly quick the rise of Google+ has been. Despite only being launched in June of last year, Google+ now has more than 40 million members – making its initial growth faster than Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.
To further cement its position as an innovative social networking tool, the portion of the show dedicated to Google+ was delivered as a video conference via the Google+ Hangout feature.
3. Customers are nine times more likely to click on mobile banners
Dr Patrick Dixon, futurist and chairman of Global Change Ltd, delivered a stirring speech called ‘Bringing It All Together: A Look Into the Future’. His scientific approach to marketing had the crowd transfixed – our own Adam Symes described Dixon as “one of the best speakers [he had] ever heard.”
His talk focused on the future of marketing, the emotional effects that marketing has on us and how we can build emotional relationships with our end users – pointing out that 80% of potential customers will lose interest if a process takes longer than 20 seconds. He made enough points to warrant multiple blog posts on this theme alone – but for the sake of brevity, we’ll focus on the intriguing details he offered on mobile marketing.
Dixon pointed out that whilst standard web-based banners typically have a 0.5% clickthrough rate (CTR), mobile banners boast a CTR that is nine times higher. He also mentioned the fact that mobile users are twice more likely to click on a banner after 8pm than earlier in the day. With only 17% of UK businesses offering mobile-optimised websites, but almost half of online consumers using their smartphones or tablets when researching or buying a product, it’s clear that businesses are risking missed opportunities if they ignore the powerful and growing mobile user base.
4. 60% of organic clicks are from top-three search positions
Dr Dixon also shared this search engine results surprise. We’ve always focused on getting top-tier results for our clients in the results pages of Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other leading search providers – what Dixon’s statistic shows is how incredibly important it is to optimise every facet of your business’s webpage. With an increasingly clued-up online user base, appearing in the first page of a Google search just isn’t enough anymore.
5. 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Another highlight of the event was the ‘Connected TV’ panel, featuring experts from Google, the BBC and IAB (the Internet Advertising Bureau). Here we learned that video-sharing site YouTube is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate, and how technology manufacturers, agencies and companies can come together to combine the best elements of internet video and traditional television – with the interactivity and customer targeting of the internet, and the quality and reach that television can still offer.
Perhaps the overarching theme that we can glean from this discussion is that YouTube should not be ignored as an online marketing tool. By their nature, Google+ and Facebook offer a quicker, easier and more cost-effective way of communicating directly with customers. However, when a video booms on YouTube, it really booms – few social websites have the potential for viral marketing that YouTube provides. Rest assured, we have some tricks up our sleeve that utilise the video sharing site that started it all.
6. Digital sales grew by 16% in the third quarter of 2011
‘It’s All About You’ was Mark Howe’s contribution to proceedings. The country sales director for Google UK opened the show by discussing the tremendous growth that was been observed in eCommerce in the third quarter of 2011.
This is good news for any business that uses the internet to promote its products, and further proof that consumers are increasingly turning to online purchasing despite the continuingly difficult economic circumstances. With the rise of price comparison websites, and review portals such as Trustpilot – which provide customers with the opportunity to rate online shops according to their experiences – it is more important than ever to ensure that your online business practice and promotional strategy are up-to-date. Dr Patrick Dixon predicted that price comparison websites will destroy businesses within five years if their prices aren’t competitive enough.
Did you attend the Google@Manchester event? If so, what were your highlights?
Apple’s iPhone 4S launched last week and whilst it may seem little different on the outside, there is one feature of definite interest to search marketers. It is called SIRI and it is voice recognition software that may finally prove VR has come of age.
This is not just your “Phone Home” type voice command system, but seems to rely quite heavily on the development of AI (Artificial Intelligence) since Apple bought SRI. The software is sufficiently advanced to be able to complete several different processes in order to carry out a task, and Apple dedicated enough of the 4S launch to show that SIRI is important to Apple in future.
Let’s move beyond the basics of reminding you to order flowers for your wife and adding your anniversary date to your calendar though, and look at what this might mean for voice search.
For many people, computers are still an issue. The rise in smartphone usage and iPad/tablet sales even amongst the non-techies has highlighted that the days of the desktop, keyboard and mouse are probably numbered. Mainly because they are just too complicated for your average person. Ditto search engines.
Each month, the rankings regularly report top level domains in the most searched upon terms, implying that far too many people still cannot use search properly nor effectively. Whilst typing “google.com” into Bing may not seem a major issue, the implication is that even the most simplified browser with a location bar will not prevent enough people in the world searching for a domain they already know.
Imagine if you cut out all the faff of typing, Boolean operators, narrowing down a search by typing endless terms in to Google etc, and instead….
Well, instead you speak your search query into your phone. With AI, there is no reason why, over time, your phone cannot learn to recognise the type of queries which you most frequently make and tie these into the likely search result(s) you are looking for. This type of cognitive and responsive technology has been the end goal of AI for many years.
Could search queries using voice on a mobile phone take traffic away from a text based search service such as Google? One can only assume so, although the tie-ins with Wolfram Alpha, Yelp and Wikipedia point to a slightly different search audience (research more than consumer) at present.
If you have not yet designed a mobile friendly website for your business yet, nor made sure you feature on local search for mobiles, and also aren’t au fait with where mobile devices are heading, this would seem to be the time to take on board that mobile quite simply is not going away.
This means taking a new look at how you provide the information that you want to be easily found by your potential customers. If you sell raincoats and umbrellas and there is a convention in town, with a huge number of people asking SIRI about the local weather for tomorrow, wouldn’t you like to show up as an advert for the shop in the road behind the conference centre when they ask the weather forecast for tomorrow? Or is it just easier to go and hawk them on the street when the rain clouds open in the morning?!
There may be few occasions when Wolfram Alpha is yet the best search engine (it is a knowledge and computational engine after all) for the mass of consumers online, but if I could ask my phone exactly how many centimetres it is between here and my A Level Maths student’s school, I’d be delighted when it returned 1.643 x 10^7!
The more likely scenario though is that as people use more and more apps to get the answers they seek eg comparison apps to find the best price for an item whilst shopping in town, the use of the search engines for such research will inevitably dwindle. And it may be here that SIRI really begins to take a bite from search traffic. And it may be in this change from desktop searching to on the move questioning that we should be pointing our attention.
The annual Talk Like a Pirate Day is upon us again – 19th September.
It’s the 16th year of the event and although the official website is showing its age, it is still worth a visit if you haven’t yet lost your sea legs.
So, how is the web’s love of everything Pirate holding up year on year?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could find out…
Funnily enough, we now have a lot more visibility on long-term search trends thanks to Google Trends, and it’s archive now contains seven years of data to give a true picture of the growth (and sadly, the fall) of the popularity in Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Talk Like a Pirate Day - Global Search Trends from Google Trends
As you can see from the above chart, Talk Like a Pirate Day peaked in 2006 (in terms of search volume). That’s back when MySpace was bigger than Facebook, and Tony Blair still had a year left in Number 10.
What is interesting is that although some online trends are real flash-in-the-pan – it has taken six years for the web to really begin to tire of this (admittedly very fun) day of Pirate-i-ness. And that’s possibly one reason why – if something only happens once a year, it takes far longer for people to tire of it – and there will still be some people online who have yet to discover this day dedicated to all things Piratey.
What’s the lesson for marketers? Well, creating “event days” have long been a mainstay of marketers, where they seek to “own” a day each year for their brand. In recent years, many brands have decided to launch their own music festivals and sporting events (e.g. Innocent Fruitstock, Ben & Jerrys Double Scoop Sundae and Red Bull X Fighters) to create an evergreen marketing vehicle that chimes with a particular demographic. They can create fantastic PR, generate oodles of unique content and provide opportunities to develop “money can’t buy” giveaways for consumers.
And what about the benefit in recurring events for online marketers? This chart from MajesticSEO for talklikeapirate.com show that even 16 years after launch the site still manages to gain links in the months surrounding the annual event, which can be very valuable as many of these will come from reputable and authoritative news sites reporting on the event on the day itself.
MajesticSEO - talklikeapirate.com
If you have run a one-off online event that has gone well, consider whether it can be repeated again – don’t assume that you target market has grown tired of it – or even that they all heard about it the first time around!
So, I hope ye enjoyed Talk Like a Pirate Day, ‘n I look fore t’ seein’ ye soon!
BTW – Have a go at Talking Like a Pirate yourself with this handy translation tool!
