The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Bing search results- between authorship and subjectship March 26, 2013 – 5:33 pm				Cristiana

Search results have always been important both for SEO and sales . While the algorithmic  formula is kept secret, many search engines are trying  to push the “creativity” further.Let’s compare Bing and Google.When someone starts searching for a particular keyword, the results  surprise, especially because they are confusing. For instance, the Bing results for author images seem to show exactly as the ones from Google. With one exception: they cannot be called author images,because they get more into subject images (which may be an attribute specific only to Bing search results).Example of authorship image from Google:

This is a  picture of Jim Crammer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money and a co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. In this case, Google associated my search with his picture and biography.Now moving forward with this analysis, let’s take a look at how Bing proceeds in terms of showing search results.

Both arrows reveal that Nick Goodman’s picture shows he is author of those articles instead of … topic. In the middle of the search results page, instead of Nick’s picture (since he is the founder of the company that is subject of the article), one can notice a picture showing a plane  - the cover picture of the article in Forbes Magazine.While constantly trying to improve their search results,  engines have the tendency to become more confusing instead of creative. I think the best way to bring improvements to your search results  is using clarity and avoiding as much as possible misunderstandings. People get confused very easily, and if they are not particularly interested in a specific topic, and will go further with their readings, (so if  they just take a look at the Bing page) they will not understand who Nicholas Woodman is.

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »

M-Commerce: New Possibilities for Marketers or Less? January 30, 2013 – 5:55 pm				Cristiana

In December of 2011, I wrote a piece on mobile commerce experiences and its increased significance,citing a Tesco case study. At the time, I asserted that mobile commerce will continue to change the way consumers interact with brands and their products. The more sophisticated smartphones get, the greater influence they will have on a conversion. Their sophistication has only been compounded by the growth in mobile connectivity; taking smartphones from entertainment and communication devices to providing a familiar e-Commerce environment for a unique and convenient shopping experience.    
Now, one year later, mobile commerce has gained traction and anticipated to be one of the most powerful trends in 2013. Traditional payment methods have been replaced by more convenient technologies, like Google Wallet or Apple’s Passbook. Like a lot of new technology, consumers have not yet been enthusiastic or trustful of these apps. Their purchases have been diverse and range from small items to very expensive ones, with the expectation that more consumers would be willing to give up the traditional method of going into their wallets or purses to enter a credit card number; and would instead embrace online payment services already tied to them.
According to Perception Research, 76% of smartphone owners use their devices while shopping and in showrooms – mostly for comparative pricing but more importantly, to purchase.
The comfort users have with the increased capabilities of their smartphones can largely be attributed to the handful of large companies that have been on the forefront of this technology. Companies like Amazon, PayPal, Google and Starbucks have made significant strides in integrating mobile devices in the everyday interaction consumers have with their brand. Single click checkout processes were one of the ways some of these brands were able to slowly introduce the use of the mobile phone in the conversion funnel. For many of these brands, it signified a stepping stone to launching a more aggressive mobile campaign in which they expect users to be comfortable enough to participate in.

According to RSR’s latest survey, 44% of respondents reported their primary form of payment is credit card with 20% expecting that some form of digital payment, including mobile, would be their primary form of payment in 3 years’ time.
Retailers however, have shown some apprehension to this concept in its current state. “The payment networks get the most credit for leading innovation in payments, followed by Google and PayPal,” said Nikki Baird, managing partner at RSR Research. “But the payment networks are also overwhelmingly tagged as the biggest inhibitors to innovation, followed by mobile network operators such as AT&T and Verizon.
“Over two-thirds of respondents say that they are waiting for the dust to settle from fights among bigger players like Google and Apple before they’ll feel comfortable making any significant investments in digital or mobile payments,” she said.
Tom Nawara, Vice President of Acquity Group adds that there probably will not be a mass mobile wallet adoption in 2013, but the industry will definitely see growth.
What is to be seen, is how marketers will adapt their campaigns and how efficient their messageswill be in targeting this new audience. Will M-Commerce drive a significant ROI in 2013, or will it be a
distraction in the effective target of a campaign’s demographic?

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog | No Comments »
Tags: 7 pillars of digital marketing, blog, Interactive Marketing, m-commerce

Poll: Celebrity endorsement in advertising… It does not always work! November 26, 2012 – 1:34 pm				Cristiana

Luxury brands are spending every year millions of dollars hoping to be able to engage as many fans as possible in as many ways as possible via as many channels as possible.

For instance, the famous Louis Vuitton brand had a $10 million advertising agreement with Angelina Jolie. With such a powerful celebrity endorsement, everyone would expect to automatically be an amazing success. But it depends on the way this tactic is approached.

The first question that everyone should ask himself is if the celebrity endorser is credible for a given product or category. Angelina Jolie is quite credible for Louis Vuitton – she is an icon of fashion and glamour and it’s not too hard to imagine her wearing Vuitton products by choice. James Gandolfini would be credible for cigars – it doesn’t require a whole lot of imagination to see the Tony Soprano actor smoking a Montecristo. Now if we change the roles, there will not be any relevance into this approach. So…is the celebrity endorsement cost-effective? Campaign budgets vary, and the situation is the same for celebrity price tags. But as a general matter, the kind of celebrities that could make a difference are not cheap at all.

To find out an answer to the question stated above, Adweek/Harris Interactive recently conducted a poll about celebrity endorsements in advertising, and the results are as follows:

• 77% of respondents claimed that “when a sports star, movie star or other celebrity endorses a product” they are no more or less likely to buy it.
• 14% stated they are less likely to buy.
• Only 4% stated they are more likely to buy. What’s more, these results were remarkably consistent across age groups and gender.

Of course, this poll, as any other opinion survey takes into consideration three big assumptions:

a) that respondents are aware enough of their, often subconscious, mental processes to assess their reaction
b) that they will openly admit  their views; and
c) that their stated views are predictive of their actual behavior

In other words is the celebrity endorser credible for a product category? The answer is simple: not always. For instance, if we take into consideration categories such as perfume, liquor or fashion, celebrity endorsements can bring a lot in terms of credibility while if we refer to financial services, a Hollywood star will never have a positive impact simply because he is not a finance specialist and second because he does not represent the portrait of a potential customer who may need such services.

So, what marketers should do first is to analyze the advertising tactic from different perspectives and be very cautious regarding who is going to endorse the respective product or service because the category and the celebrity are chosen wrongly, then even if the company spends $10 million it may not bring any brand capital.

The following infographics speak for themselves:

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Case Studies, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), CRM (Pillar 5), Industries, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Public Relations, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »

Your Meta Mapping Style September 27, 2012 – 2:11 pm				Riyaad

It’s not uncommon to see a great keyword list poorly executed. This can result in hard work gone to waste and your website can see little to no SEO improvements.

By the same merit, a terrible keyword list properly mapped throughout a site can assist in your SEO success. Keyword mapping is often the first stage of writing meta data. There is not right way to do this. Every SEO optimizer has their own technique for allocating keywords to a page. Some like to just wing it and write each page as they go along, and some like to attack in stages.

In the past, keyword stuffing had been effective. We can still see some sites that have effective search results with stuffing. Though, when we examine their larger keyword strategy, we can quickly identify the short-comings with this method.

Proper keyword strategy includes allocating specific keywords to relevant pages. The keywords you have chosen should be uniquely (ideally) relevant to a particular page or set of pages on your website. Some search optimizers like to make one big list from which they’ll make their selections. This certainly is a popular method and I’ve done this in the past as well as seen it work well with others.

Blueliner’s keyword list approach is unique. Based on the 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing techniques and best practices, Blueliner’s keyword lists use a tiered approach. A typical keyword list is broken into 5-8 tiers, depending on the size of the site. These tiers represent the level of importance these keywords have to you and how you will distribute them throughout the site.

The keywords in Tier 1 are more important to you and thus distributed more freely throughout your content and in your meta-data. Tiers are developed based on several factors, including volume, relativity, specificity, competitiveness, and more. Each keyword is given a score based on these verticals. The system works well as it forces the optimizer into providing justification for their keyword selection and why they deem one more important than the other. Even more importantly, the scoring system (which is complex and I won’t get into) allows for flexibility. Because of this, the same system has been effective for websites across an array of industries.

I personally prefer a multi-tiered approach. It’s exactly Blueliner’s strategy but makes it easier me when optimizing and analyzing a website. The first thing I do when I look at a website is break out the different sections. When doing keyword research, I like the break out the optimization based on subject matter. Thus if a website’s content can be broken out into six different talking points or subjects, I’ll create seven smaller keyword lists. The first keyword list will be general and speak to the website as a whole. These keywords represent those that will be distributed and represented throughout the entire site.

I tend to find inspiration for keywords based on what the website currently ranks for, what their competitors rank for, and by just reading the site copy. Although I know some of that will change, one can never underestimate the ideas or directions they’ll come up with based on the site copy. Unfortunately, this is not common practice for everyone. Reading almost an entire website is one of the first things I do when creating a keyword list.

The other 6 mini lists include keywords specifically targeted to the variant website subjects. The keywords within these lists are broken down and organized the same way as Blueliner’s tiered strategy. When I create a sitemap, I’ll assign each page a subject. I tend to color code this in Excel and correlate this to the color coding on my individual keyword lists. From there, I’m able to easily allocate the keywords based on subject to the most relevant pages of the site. I will always take at least one keyword from the general list and incorporate it into the page.

This helps to put it into perspective a bit. I now know which keywords are on which page, why they’re there, and can easily affirm their relevancy.

After implementation, this multi-tiered approach makes link building easier as well. I can now track link building to sets of keywords, rather than a keyword list where I sometimes have to wonder if a certain part of a site has gotten enough attention.

When analyzing, refreshing website data, or doing a routine competitive analysis, the multi-tiered approach can also assist in determining how much of a voice you have. It allows you to single out how competitive you are for the different aspects of your website against varying competitors, allowing for a different perspective on where improvements can be made.

This is just my method though. There are tons of great ways to stay organized from the very beginning, making subsequent aspects of your SEO easier on you. Write in the comments below, and let us know what little things you’ve done over the years that have helped you keep a handle on large and complex websites.

Posted by Riyaad
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, blog, SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3) | No Comments »
Tags: how to seo, Internet Marketing, keyword list, meta data, SEM, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), SEO, SEO / Search Engine Optimization (Pillar 3), writing meta data

The power of marketing language: when it is time to say “STOP”! September 21, 2012 – 12:36 pm				Cristiana

The rising popularity of social media represents a real opportunity for many businesses with one condition: to be used in an intelligent manner in such a way to boost their brand.

With millions of people chatting, sharing pictures and networking, companies have a real chance to use these platforms to pitch their products or get their customers’ feedback. If companies do know how to use these social platforms in a correct manner, they will arrive in a position where their customers will create/produce the advertising ads for them and then share the new media products with their friends. All these – for free.

But what happens if something goes wrong?

What happens if there is too much creativity and things get out of control?

It is very important to understand that same tools that can bring your brand to a point it has never been before, can carry many risks that sometimes can be unpredicted.

For instance, Toyota Matrix -   the advertising company that worked for this client decided to create an innovative social media campaign with real-life elements… Unfortunately, no one knew what this “high-end creative process’ would lead to. Basically, their concept was based on the famous MTV show (Punk’d). According to the plan, a prospective buyer of a Matrix would single out a friend to be the target of a prank. This may be the perfect scenario for some free marketing across social media channels.

Things got out of control when one of the targets – Amber Duick, received a series of emails from a fictious British soccer hooligan (Sebastian Bowler). He told her in the emails he would come to visit her and will bring out his pit bull as well. One of these emails contained a fake bill for damages made by Bowler in a hotel room. According to the information Duick got, the soccer hooligan had left as contact information her email address.

The consequence was easy to guess… Duick filed a lawsuit of $10 million.

To defend themselves, Toyota and their advertising company considered the claim as being “”entirely without merit adding that Duick had already granted her permission to receive e-mails and other communications from Toyota.

While the plaintiff was terrified – according to her lawyer, the next question is….had the email specified the entire process was an advertising campaign? If so, the woman would not have been so scared….

Again, beyond creativity and beyond any kind of sophisticated strategy it has to be about marketing language!

This is one of the situations when it makes a difference of $10 million (damage that can be counted) but the brand damage as a whole cannot be estimated because it is reflected not only in social media (number of impressions or other variables) but also in sales.

This is the story of ‘Your Other You’ campaign that failed because the language was inappropriate and because no one took into consideration that such an approach is so unpredictable and consequently, marketers have to be very careful when they judge any kind of approach as being creative –crazy –not interesting-risky. In other words, this is a part of marketing where focus groups cannot really help just like new scripts for a indie movie. You cannot predict, you cannot test your customer’s taste – you risk a lot. This being said, do not put additional pressure on your campaign by trying to pass over the edge but rather create a positive context and engage your prospective customer into it rather than building a real life situation that is turning into a sinister joke…..

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), CRM (Pillar 5), Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing Agencies, Online PR, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: marketing language, social advertising, social apps, social media, social media agency, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), toyota, toyota campaigns

The customer you are looking for, you already have September 20, 2012 – 9:22 am				Damjan Dano

The latest research done by Adobe Inc. and their Digital Index section of the website shows that the Pareto principle should not be forgotten and still plays a valuable role in the business planning process.  The research outlines that 41% of online revenue comes from returning (customers who have already purchased something twice on your website) and repeat purchases (post-second purchase visitors that buy more stuff), who represent only 8% of total visitors to your online store.

The research states that in the US, only 1% of shoppers actually make a purchase, but more then 75% of retail marketing budgets are spent on search and display advertising to attract these type of visitors, not to bring or to increase the brand loyalty with the repeat purchasers.

The lesson from the report is to invest in brand loyalty, to make sure your current customers are satisfied and are coming back or referring you to their social circles, before you go and spend money chasing new customers that most likely will not convert. Tools like e-mail marketing, social media strategies and loyalty promotions and even simple thank you notes are the channels that should be used to target your valuable customers.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), CRM (Pillar 5), Email Marketing, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), Web Analytics | No Comments »
Tags: brand loyalty programs, digital marketing, marketers, marketing agency, marketing research, online research, online shopping research, repeat customers, social media agency

Digital Nation and Multi-Tasking – Impact on Marketing’s Language September 10, 2012 – 7:56 am				Cristiana

Social Media has changed the way people think, the way people react, the way people communicate and the way companies brand themselves. For many, it is an integral part of their overall business, PR, and CRM strategies as well.

Moreover, Social Media has changed the structure of the brain itself by becoming an addiction. Addiction forces new generations to function in a self inflicted multitasking learning environment. For instance, studies have found that students studying at Ivy League Universities have problems with their capacity to stay focused on a single task. This leads to misunderstandings, disorganized memory and lack of capacity to think clearly. This has made reputable professors ask themselves if they are just unable to prepare capable-thinking students, as the quality of the learning process has been decreasing.

According to a recent study in Korea, children are spending 50 hours/week playing computer games. This sort of behavior is considered a psychiatric disorder. The Korean Government decided to support the creation of schools to treat computer addiction, where children having such issues can stay for 2 weeks and partake in a free training. This issue is part of a broader problem – multitasking syndrome – which is generating constant interruptions. Consequently, the ability of students to focus single tasks are hampered.

Brilliant students from top universities that are concentrating on multiple fronts the same time “by profession”, have been asked if they were able to perform well while multitasking, and their answers were positive. The actual experiment on them showed otherwise: the capacity of the brain while switching from task to task modified their capacity to stay focused.

Technology has changed the way new generations are thinking, communicating and behaving. In another experiment, listening to one stimulus while watching another unrelated, led to reduced brain activity when compared with listening or looking alone.

Of course the first question that comes to one’s mind is “What does this have to do with marketing?” It’s up to marketers to position a brand in an efficient manner, especially for this target.  This may mean that marketers should start working closely with psychologists /sociologists to understand people’s behavior according to demographics and psycho-graphics.

How will digital marketing adapt to this? This market has different potential and has to be approached differently – not in the same manner this audience was targeted 10 years ago.

Not only is Technology changing and improving itself, but it also changes people and the structure of the society from a relational perspective. Marketing has to change the platforms of their message and adapt to consumers by the way it structures its visual stimulants and language. This is most easily likened to the “elevator pitch”.  Attention has to be caught in the first moments otherwise you risk the distraction from another element. The challenge is an alternative form of getting the customer to understand your brand or product in under 3 minutes, or some may argue less (when distraction typically occurs).

In other words, the new generations, coming from Ivy League Universities or not, change the perspective of the education process itself, change the way technology repositions its newest devices and most importantly, change marketing’s way to address messages (language and platforms).

Do you know what is the common asset of all these? The brain itself….

Posted by Cristiana
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), CRM (Pillar 5), Digital Media (Pillar 4), Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: CRM Solutions, customer relationship management, Internet Marketing, Marketing, marketing agency, marketing psychology, Online PR, psychology, social media agency

Half of Facebook users use mobile September 5, 2012 – 11:03 am				Damjan Dano

Recently, the social stats platform SocialBackers shared some insights into how many people use Facebook via their mobile version and their mobile apps… the number is (not) suprising at all… it’s 543 million users, almost 57% of the total number of users.

The research shows that the highest number of mobile visits come from an Android based phones, while the iOS based iPhone and iPad make total of 25% (19% iPhone and 6% iPad).

North Americans are the most frequent mobile users on this social network, 161,7 million users from this continent like and share content daily on Facebook through their mobile devices.

On second place is Asia with around 134,2 million users and third in number of visits is Europe with 120,7 million.

So clearly mobile usage and visits from mobile devices on the web are trending….  perfect time to invest in a mobile-friendly website.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Interactive Marketing, Mobile (Pillar 7), Mobile Applications, Small Business, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: digital marketing agency, facebook mobile, facebook stats, Mobile (Pillar 7), mobile apps, mobile usage, social media agency, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), social networking

Facebook is rolling out new features and marketers are rolling their eyes August 22, 2012 – 5:52 pm				Damjan Dano

Today the largest social network made few updates to their Open Graph platform… it allowed users to tag their friends in 3rd party apps like social games (ex: FarmVille) and geo-location apps (ex: FourSquare)… it also announced that sponsored links will be shown in user’s searches on Facebook.com.

Now your friends can tag you on 3rd party apps and you will receieve the notifications about the tag – via a Mention or Action method.

The difference between these two is outlined below:

This feature will not be added by default, users will give permissions for tagging to the apps, the same way they do now when they want to interact with some app. (tip: If you currently have some active apps on your profile, in order to use this you’ll need to renew the permissions, you can do that with  going to Account settings > Apps).

The second update marks a direct poke from Facebook to Google (maybe because of this Google is running around crazy), and will allow businesses to bid for user’s query in the search box and results page like shown in the image below:

While the tagging feature update is clearly a long awaited and requested from the 3rd party app providers and many users, the second feature update is clearly a shot to make the shareholders happy and to bump the price of current low-performing stock on the market.

Most likely the first feature will be accepted very well by the users, and the second one will likely be highly ignored with very low click-throughs as most of the current sidebar ads on Facebook. I have trouble figuring out why Facebook – platform that has tons of data and behavior patterns for all of us, still can’t figure out how to make money and how to properly integrate semantic marketing and targeting, but are copying some old-school concepts.

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Business News, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), eCommerce, Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Pay Per Click (PPC), Public Relations, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Digital Media (Pillar 4), facebook, Facebook marketing, foursquare, google, Internet Marketing, search marketing, semantics marketing, Social Marketing, Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6), social networks, tagging, tags

Google buys print ad to advertise online ad!? August 21, 2012 – 10:25 am				Damjan Dano

Google’s marketing team made another move that spiked a lot of controversy and conversations about online vs. offline advertising all over the net. Last week, Google bought an print ad space in the Canada’s Globe and Mail and National Post in order to advertise their online search ads:

With this ad purchase, Google is trying to show that print ads don’t really work and that their online AdWords platform is much more efficient…. but did Google really made the right move with buying this ad space and putting that ad copy there?

Many journalists, bloggers and media folks are making fun of the search giant’s move, claiming that with this Google actually demonstrated the value of print ads. Or maybe Google’s marketing department just wanted to poke at its direct competition and just spike a controversy. As Engadget states, the “universe has yet to implode.”

What do you make of Google’s ad?

Posted by Damjan Dano
Posted in 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing, Content Marketing (Pillar 1), Digital Media (Pillar 4), Interactive Marketing, Marketing, Online PR, Public Relations, SEM (Search Engine Marketing), Social Media Marketing (Pillar 6) | No Comments »
Tags: Digital Media (Pillar 4), google, google advertising, internet advertising, Marketing, online marketing, search marketing, SEM, SEM (Search Engine Marketing)