June 17, 2008
Measuring marketing engagement is not an exact science as Simon van Wyk finds out.
It all used to be so easy. In the early days of web analytics everything was focused on impressions, click-throughs, and conversion rates.
However, with an increased marketing spend online comes increased expectations of measurement and tracking. Marketers are looking for different ways to measure the success of their digital marketing spend.
Of course any campaign, whether on or offline should be measured by whether it meets its objectives. And those objectives are trending towards engagement.
After all, when people are truly engaged with your brand, it's highly likely they will be loyal customers too. And to get them highly engaged, you need to create valuable content and tools that your customers need or want to interact with, when they want to interact with it, 24x7. Of course this means channelling marketing budgets into valuable content development and not short media bursts of activity.
Continue reading the story.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 9:51 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: marketing | engagement | measurement |
May 26, 2008
Brands are getting behind content again. Simon van Wyk finds out why.
Advertising clutter is the single biggest problem with marketing today. Advertising is inescapable, but that also means less effective. People are increasingly fed up with advertising in every way, shape and form. TV commercials aren't watched, banner ads are blocked or ignored, spam filters block your most recent mailing campaign.
Consumers don't want to be sold. But they do want to buy things and they do want information, advice, comparisons and comment about these things. As such they value relevant information. They value content. And they will seek it out.
Continue reading this story
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 10:19 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: content+strategy | marketing+trends |
April 22, 2008
Simon van Wyk thinks social media is mana from heaven for nonprofits.
The major headline coming out of research conducted by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research late last year was that charities in the US are outpacing the business world in their use of social media/web 2.0.
The study of the Forbes Magazine list of the 200 largest US charities, called Blogging for the Hearts of Donors found that more than a third of the organisations are blogging, forty-six percent report social media is very important to their fundraising strategy and the majority monitor their online reputation.
Indeed, something like three quarters of those nonprofits studied were using some form of social media - including, podcasts, social networking, video blogging and wikis.
Continue reading the story.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 2:08 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: social+media, | nonprofits |
March 26, 2008
Simon van Wyk takes a look at why mobile's getting exciting.
It's hard not to get carried away with the freewheeling mobile bandwagon. According to research firm, Informa, the worldwide cell phone market passed 3 billion units in November last year.
Indeed, a staggering 1.12 billion phones were sold around the globe in 2007 with sales forecasts predicting something like 1.2 billion this year. By the end of this decade 70% of the world's population will carry a mobile phone which would suggest that we are officially entering the mobile age.
But for mobile to fulfil its potential, the barriers which have so far kept a lid on mobile data consumption will need to be removed.
And surfing the web on a mobile device needs to get a lot easier too.
Continue reading this story at the HotHouse website.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 10:22 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: mobile |
February 11, 2008
Simon van Wyk discusses how user experience is so much more than usability.
As global brands try to work out how to make their brands relevant in the social media age, user experience begins to take on a far more strategic bearing.
Indeed, according to the second Annual Online Customer Engagement Report by E-consultancy and cScape, ninety percent of companies are paying more attention to online customer engagement than ever before, with three-quarters of organisations (77%) saying that its importance has increased in the last 12 months.
So with customer engagement key, marketers are learning fast that good user experience is the backbone to online customer engagement. And that user experience is far broader than just usability.
Hygiene factor
Certainly usability is important, and websites do need to be easy to use. Clearly you can't have a good user experience without good usability. But it's just a small part of the whole user experience. HotHouse's User Experience Manager, Piero Colli, likes to describe usability as the site's hygiene factor - something that's important, but simply the minimum standard required.
Read the full story on user experience.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 12:07 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: user | + | experience |
January 15, 2008
Simon van Wyk takes a look at the emerging opportunities in local search
Research from Nielsen//NetRatings and WebVisible that came out over a year ago called "I Clicked, I Contacted, I Transacted" showed that 70 percent of U.S. internet users have used a search engine to find a local service vendor.
Up until recently, helping to find local businesses was of course the tightly held territory of the Yellow Pages. Increasingly however, people intuitively use search instead of either the print or online version of Yellow Pages.
Indeed last year, TMP Directional Marketing commissioned a study with comScore Inc. to understand consumers' attitudes and behaviour toward offline and online local media sources when looking to make an upcoming purchasing decision.
According to the study, on results of 3,000 survey respondents, one out of three consumers still regarded the printed yellow pages as their preferred source for local information, but the internet in general was cited as the most prominent source referenced by over 60% of participants.
Interestingly eMarketer estimates that by 2011, 51.3 percent of U.S. local online spending will go to paid search, compared with 43.1 percent today.
Read the full article on local search
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 11:23 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: Local+Search |
January 15, 2008
Simon van Wyk predicts one of the biggest trends in 2008 will be brands creating content and not ads.
One of the biggest things that we're going to see in 2008 is this much written about, much discussed and much anticipated shift of advertising budgets from traditional advertising to online marketing in all its many forms.
The time is right, and it's not just the signs of the oncoming recession in the US. Marketers are growing in confidence online. They are beginning to understand that it's not just about transferring the principles of traditional marketing to the web. Sure, a few years ago, online marketing was restricted to email and banner sizes or whether sites would take pop-up ads. But so much has changed. And marketers can finally move beyond traditional advertising conventions in order to capitalise on digital marketing opportunities.
And that's precisely what Nike achieved in 2007 with its evolution of Nike+ - using the power of the web with the idea of community to deliver a highly engaging experience. They provided motivational goals and progress tracking, virtual racing and global community comparison tools - effectively satisfying a broad target market and giving them something that they truly value.
Read the full story.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 10:48 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: online+marketing |
December 12, 2007
Richard Branson adorns the front cover of the December/January 08 issue of Fortune Small Business. Wearing his customary ear-to-ear grin, Branson's Virgin Money is cited as something to watch in 2008.
Virgin Money of course is the new name for the social lending site Circle Lending which Branson's Virgin USA bought earlier this year. And with its cut-through and cheeky marketing launch using tags like "Go Fund Yourself", Virgin Money is certainly standing out from the other contenders in the rapidly emerging peer-to-peer lending arena.
For borrowers, person-to-person lending sites offer lower-cost alternatives to conventional financial institutions, while lenders have the opportunity of higher returns and the altruistic benefits of helping a real person.
According to research firm, Online Banking Report, about US$100 million in new person-to-person loans will be issued this year, jumping to as much as US$1 billion in 2010.
Of course the peer to peer lending revolution is just one form of new competition that is biting at traditional banks and compelling financial services providers to adapt, evolve and re-engineer their product and service offerings.
Continue reading the article.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 12:08 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: financial+services |
November 19, 2007
Have you got something to say to your customers? Simon van Wyk writes about podcasting.
One of the most attractive things about online marketing is that, although you can spend a fortune on your online activities, you can also achieve a lot by spending very little.
Podcasting is a great example of this. A podcast is essentially a radio show that can be downloaded onto a customer's computer or MP3 device so that they can listen to it at their leisure. It's that simple. You can buy the necessary equipment for less than $200, download free software and do it yourself (though many companies hire a studio to get perfect sound levels).
You don't hear a lot about podcasting because it's not as sexy as TV advertising, but it is turning out to be the quiet achiever of Internet marketing.
Read the full story at the HotHouse website
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 11:44 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: podcasting,online+marketing |
November 19, 2007
One of the joys of the iPod revolution is that an amazingly high number of people now sit quietly on public transport, with white earplugs jammed into their ears.
A couple of years ago they had a phone stuck to the side of their head while everyone around them could hear half of a private conversation. They've still got their mobiles, but now they hold them in front of them while they text, their heads slowly bopping to the music.
Their information-gathering is personal – my music, my conversations with my network. A few years ago (before mobile phones), most people on public transport would read a newspaper. Today, newspapers are something read by (shudder) old people.
Read the complete opinion piece on the HotHouse website.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 11:32 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: online+news |
October 10, 2007
It's commonly held wisdom that once you choose a bank, you stick with it. Your bank moves with you through life's stages - offering you everything from student loans, credit cards, personal loans, mortgages, investment loans - the whole kit and caboodle.
Banks and financial services institutions are fully aware that the lifetime value of a penniless student can be substantial, and naturally there's fierce competition.
Of course the financial services industry has been highly sophisticated in targeting this customer segment developing a range of products and services to suit their needs.
But marketing to these students is a whole new ball game. They don't use the media we've always used, they don't want to be interrupted and they are turned off by advertising.
Today's students have grown up with technology, and have a preference for blogs, podcasts, wikis and Instant Messaging. They are extremely high users of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
They depend on referrals from credible sources like friends and family or even trusted brands and blogs.
Continue reading
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October 10, 2007
More and more consumer brands are making effective use of online to get their message across to their customers, as Simon van Wyk writes.
Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a US-based media investment bank (that's a politically correct term for private equity firm), recently published the 21st edition of its seminal Communications Industry Forecast report, and there were a couple of gems buried in the report among all the CAGRs and GDPs of the detail.
The first is that for the first time in nearly 10 years, average consumer media consumption dropped slightly - 0.5% - in 2006, to just over 9 hours per day. The last time this figure declined was in 1997, when the Internet had yet to take off.
The VSS report attributes the decline to "digital media efficiencies", which means people are watching a few minutes of YouTube instead of 30 minutes of news or comedy. This must be keeping TV programmers up at night - people are choosing to watch a college student dance in front of a webcam in their underwear instead of watching TV shows that have cost millions of dollars to produce.
Read the full article at the HotHouse website.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 11:58 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: FMCG |
September 17, 2007
As the notion of Web first becomes akin to an involuntary impulse, it's no surprise to find that e-commerce sites are heavy users of search engine marketing. Indeed a comScore report published earlier this year revealed that e-commerce sites are the most frequent users of search engine marketing, with each of the top ten search engine marketers being either retail or comparison shopping sites.
Search is playing such a key role in driving traffic to online retailers and e-commerce sites, but the site still has to live up to expectations when the customer gets there.
An interesting insight reported on internetnews.com regarding the online retail customer experience cited ForeSee Results, the US based online satisfaction measurement and management company. The report, published in June this year, found that the users' satisfaction with their site experience was the most important criteria for consumers rather than the lowest price. The story quoted Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results: "Meeting customers' needs, setting expectations and living up to them [produces] the kind of satisfaction that drives decisions and customer loyalty more than anything else."
With the user experience rather than price potentially a key driver of online retail's success, it's critical to get the online experience right.
Read the full story: Web 2.0 delivering new online retail experience
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 1:16 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
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August 22, 2007
Digital technology is ruining the party for creative types. Mind you, the rot started long before that with people like Henry Ford perfecting the use of assembly lines to build uniform copies of his Model T cars 100 years ago.
Ford was the Bill Gates of his time, driving a technological trend into a society-changing phenomenon. His famous line, "They (customers) can have any colour they want, as long as it's black" was one of the first examples of science (and commerce) triumphing over art.
That's not a bad thing - can you imagine what cars would cost if they were all hand-crafted? But it has been a trend that has moved into most other areas of business. Think property developers and their cookie-cutter houses, IBM and computers, Microsoft and software, record companies and sausage-factory music, and film companies and blockbusters on thousands of movie screens. One notable exception to this is Apple - Steve Jobs seems to be able to hold both creativity and mass production in his hands at the very same time.
Continue reading the article "And geeks shall inherit the earth".
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 1:34 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: new+media+landscape | ad+measurement |
June 21, 2007
The art and science of search engine marketing is developing at a rapid pace. More and more customers are using the Internet as their first port of call in making a purchase decision and as a result, more and more companies are using paid and organic search to direct customers to their business.
As search engines like Google change their search algorithms daily to stop unfair manipulation of search terms, there is a growing and bewildering array of techniques that need to be mastered in order to stay ahead of competitors in the fight for relevant traffic.
Meta tags, keywords, image tags, niche directories, link building, pay-per-click, AdWords - those are just some of the simpler terms that are taking up more space in a marketer's brain.
And the amount of brain space required for search-related thinking grows every year. Search expert Greg Jarboe, one of the speakers at this year's Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in New York, pointed out in his column in ClickZ that this year's conference included 33% more sessions than at the 2004 SES conference. Meanwhile, only about 10 sessions had the same title as sessions in 2004.
Jarboe writes, "This means that more than 80% of what we learned in 2004 (about search engine marketing) is no longer being taught in 2007. Or, to put it another way, less than 20% of what you need to know today is something that you could have learned three years ago."
Read the full article
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 12:18 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: Search |
April 19, 2007
In this month's article, Simon explores the promise of ipTV.
Here's an excerpt:
Wikipedia describes ipTV (Internet Protocol Television) as "a system where a digital television service is delivered using the Internet Protocol over a network infrastructure, which may include delivery by a broadband connection." ipTV is typically delivered to a set top box or ipTV enabled TV by a broadband operator (typically your telecom provider) using a closed network infrastructure.
ipTV is often mistakenly referred to as Internet TV or iTV which is the delivery of TV content over the public Internet - exemplified by watching YouTube-style media clips in tiny web-windows (though Joost's iTV promises to muddy this distinction) . Whilst ipTV is all about high-quality, multi-channel television and streaming video delivered via Internet Protocol.
The best of TV with the best of the Internet
The emergence of ipTV reflects changing media consumption behaviour and complements people's increasingly busy lives by allowing them to view programming as and when it suits them. And this programming means more channels, faster channel changing, picture-in-picture with on-screen guides, on-demand video gaming, and interaction with other Internet services like on-screen chat or email.
In essence ipTV heralds the end of couch potatoes as we know them. They certainly won't be getting off the couch - but the vegetative state will be replaced with a frenzy of interaction. No wonder everyone wants their ipTV.
Read the full ipTV story here.
Posted By Victoria Kerr @ 1:41 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: HotHouse | Article | ipTV |
March 28, 2007
With the new HotHouse blog up and running, it's only fitting that in this month's opinion piece Simon gets back on his corporate blogging soap box and ponders businesses blogging. Indeed to blog, or not to blog may well be the life and death question for businesses in the digital age.
Read the article here.
Posted By @ 12:02 PM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: blogging |
March 14, 2007
Without doubt, Web 2.0 has not only changed what's on the Web, but how it works. Web 2.0 technologies have transformed the Internet from a publishing platform with simple repositories of information into a network of rich, active, inter-connected spaces.
As Ross Dawson stated in his keynote address at the HotHouse "Diverse Media Future" event last year "The turning point was when simple, free blogging platforms emerged around 2000, enabling people to ignore domain registrations, HTML, and website design, and in minutes post their words and pictures on the Internet for all to see."
Read the full article.
Posted By @ 9:36 AM Permalink / Comments (0) / Trackbacks (0)
Technorati Tags: participation, | web+2.0 |
