Digital Marketing Radar
Looking at the infographic below with a company’s website at the center of the digital marketing universe, there is a considerable variety of platform choices that can be overwhelming. For the purpose of this discussion, let’s break it down for a few key platforms: Social Networks and Search Engines. A marketer today has to use both online and offline strategies to reach the target audience. According to Social Media Examiner, “Social media marketing is about making emotional connections through positive customer experiences, exceptional service and engaging conversations. Customers are very fickle and if they don’t feel the love for a brand instantly, they are gone in a blink of an eye. As a business owner, do you need to be present on all of the channels? The answer is obviously no, but a business does need to understand that creating an integrated overall communications strategy is important.
Googling…
The
Internet has kind of become our 3rd brain and can answer just about
anything. Google is the number one search engine and we’re embedded with the
terminology that we say “Google It” instead of search. With that said, it is
surprising how many businesses do not have the free business listing offered by
Google called “Google My Business.” Consider it the modern day Yellow Pages as
the listing provides relevant information for customers and prospects with a
display of photos, address, phone number, hours of operation, directions and
collects and displays reviews of the business, which builds credibility and
reliability with consumers. Spectoos states that 90% of a customer’s buying
decisions are influenced by customer reviews and testimonials and 63% indicate that they will buy from a
site with reviews. Oddly enough, most businesses do not verify
the information and therefore go unlisted in the local search. It is
mind boggling how many customers a business may be missing by something so
simple and how many visitors to your website that may be lost.
Clearly,
Google is the king of the web with a predominant user preference and because of
its positioning in the search engine universe, Google has amassed an impressive
database with the ability to reach potential customers and prospects. To put in
perspective, Google handles more than 40,000 search queries every second for a
total of more than 1.2 trillion web searches every year. No other search engine
can offer the potential audience reach compared to Google.
Google AdWords
GoogleAdWords is a paid search program that is text-based advertising where a
business has an objective to increasing the number of visitors to its website. Below
is a short video from Google that explains Google AdWords in an easy to
understand presentation. The ranking of the ad is based on the bid amount, the
components of the Quality Score, and the expected impact of extension and other
ad formats.
The
Quality score is intended to provide a forecast for a variety of components and
generates approximate averages or above average estimates for keywords
selected. The score rating is from 1 to 10 and according to Google provides an
overall feeling of the quality of the ad. The expected click through rate (CTR)
is based on the ad’s historical clicks and impressions, ad relevance which is
how relevant the ad text is to what a person searches, landing page experience which
addresses the relevancy of the ad text to what the person is searching, and targeted
devices show how well the ad is performing on a variety of devices whether it
is mobile, tablets or desktop/laptops. According to an article in the Journal for American Society for Information Science and Technology, “generally it is
beneficial for advertisers to bid for higher positions, especially the top four
positions and for profit generation, advertisers should focus on targeting
those top ranked positions within the first search engine results page (SERP).” Below is a sample of a SERP. The ads that are
highlighted in red are paid advertisements and the blue highlighted area is the
free organic search. In future blog posts, we’ll discuss what a business can do
to increase organic search engine results, but for this discussion the
conversation will focus on paid advertisements.
Google Display Network
Another
method of advertising and increasing web traffic with Google is through the GoogleDisplay Network, which are visual based ads with banners or sidebar picture
advertisements. Have you ever wondered why when searching for an item that a
variety of competing products show up on the right hand side with a photo, or a
banner ad pops up on the search engine results page? It is no coincidence
because businesses have paid to appear based on keywords, topics or based on specific
cohorts. The next time a search is performed take special note of which brands
are popping up on the search engine results page (SERP) in the top ten, which
display ads are being displayed and observe if they are relevant to your
specific search. Some of the benefits of display ads are increase brand
awareness, engage with customers, build increased loyalty and sell more
products or services. There are a
variety of formats such as text, image, video or rich media formats, which can
grab the attention of a prospect and tell a compelling story. The tools aim to
convert searchers into buyers. Below is a video from Google that explains in
brief what is the Google Display Network.
Social Media
MikeDeNunzio, online marketing expert, calls interactive media “The Fourth
Communication Revolution” with “two-way global digital communications” (Jones,
2006). Social media channels provide an opportunity to engage in two way
conversations between the brand and customers, the brand and its advocates and
between customers. A brand can learn so much by listening to its audience and
encourage user generated content (UGC) as a tactic to share a brand’s name with
a wider audience. If I like the UGC and I share with my audience of 200,
someone in my network may also share and so on and so on, which is also called
word of mouth marketing (WOMM). One exponential benefit of social media is the
conversation, which can be measured through a variety of metrics. “Conversation is King, content is just
something to talk about” (Novak, 2010). A short time ago, social media was
about exposure, brand awareness, gathering fans, cultivating likes and
inspiring shared links with family, friends and colleagues. This platform has come of age because brands
can listen instead of simply talking and advertise in an approach that is
highly targeted based on psychographics, attributes that relate to personality,
values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles otherwise known as IAO variables
(WVU Lesson 3). The social media platforms are a great way to post links about
relevant content and can provide valuable insight to your website based on
referrals. What that means is, if a user clicks on the link from a social media
channel to a blog posted on your website, one metric is the average shared
links and response rate. If the blog is receiving the most views from the
Facebook source, it would make sense that a brand might want to look into
advertising or increasing content to drive more visitors to the website from
this source based on this metric.
Where to Begin? Try Facebook
Facebook
is the pillar of social media where 94% go to check on friends, family and
colleagues, 29% follow trends and search for product reviews and 20% comment on
what’s hot or new or actually write product reviews ((Redsicker, 2014). It
seems that almost everyone has a Facebook account. With 1.19 Billion users, the beauty of this
platform is the data collected on each account holder by Facebook has the
ability to drill down to specific zip codes, demographics and some
psychographics with interests and likes is crazy and the platform is much more
affordable to advertise with than Google Adwords. Although it is challenging
for Facebook to compete with the click through rates of Google, with an 8%
average rate, compared to Facebook’s 0.04% a brand should first evaluate its
objectives.
One
area in which Facebook does excel is retargeting. Advertising can be annoying,
disrupt your online experience and users have become immune to the point of not
even noticing the ads. However, out of all of the social networks, as
demonstrated in the graph below, Facebook has the best ranking for ads that
users find interesting. Have you ever noticed how that pair of shoes you didn’t
buy keeps following you around the web? This is obviously not by chance; it is
deliberate because a brand has decided to track and create a custom audience of
visitors who visited your website by adding a snippet of code called a Facebook
pixel onto the website. The website has identified the visitor as a prospect that
demonstrated an interest. Re-targeting is a method of reaching out to re-engage
and pull the customers closer to the brand.
In
addition, further segmentation can be achieved by targeting customers who may
have visited but didn’t convert to purchase. Another example of using the data may
be to reach customers who did convert and there is a new product to introduce,
a blog page to promote or a promotional offer. It is better to advertise with
customers who are better prospects as opposed to casting a wider net with hopes
of catching a few. Also, by tracking and analyzing the metrics, a brand can
react much quicker to a market situation and identify potential trends, fix a
landing page or change the offer for better results. Depending on the industry
being an innovator and hopping on a trend can clearly place the brand in a
better position.
Socially Responsible
How
many times have we observed friends on Facebook who have a business and are constantly
promoting their business shouting from the rooftops how wonderful they are? This
is the quickest way to lose or turnoff potential customers and is considered a
hard sell. The first business that comes to mind with
what seems to be an over abundance on Facebook are realtors. If a business
decides to create a Facebook page, it is important to focus on building a
community on the social network and maybe even individual relationships. The
key is to engage followers with interesting content that is fresh with links
and pictures that are available to share. For example, the realtor wants to build an
audience, share content with links to a blog or an article about “The most
common mistakes by new homeowners” or “How to spruce up your home with curbside
appeal in order to sell.” These are topics that a prospect may find interesting
and helpful. By tracking the open and sharing rates of the links, the realtor
can tell what content is relevant and identify a custom audience with whom to
market. Have you ever noticed that, when you click on a link, before you know
it a display ad shows up in Facebook with a promotional offer? This could be a
little presumptuous, but again custom audiences can be nurtured through a
specific response path. A social media platform can influence prospects through
family and friends, although according to a Gallup poll most consumers say
social media doesn’t influence their purchasing decisions. A brand that manages
to excel both online and offline understands its emotional connection and focuses
on what the social audience wants instead of what the brand wants.
Lastly,
one tool that has proven to be invaluable in the social media space is a social
media audit, which compels companies to decide each social media channel’s
purpose and establish key performance indicators (KPIs). According to an
article in Harvard Business Review, Professor Keith Quesenberry of West
Virginia University created the social media audit template, which is shared
below. This template allows the professional to perform an audit using the Five
Ws of journalism: who – the company, the consumer and the competitor, where –
the channel and environment such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., what –
the content and sentiment, when – date and frequency, and why – purpose and
performance. It is important to know what channel your customers are on, how
often and what are the results. This may be a good starting point for any
brand.
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