A summary of some thoughts, ideas and notes on digital marketing developments in 2013:

Facebook Graph Search

Not a great name, but it’s on the way. Users will be able to search for, say “Indian restuarant” in Facebook and the results will be in part a function of not only their location (usually known by the Facebook system), those businesses with a Facebook listing, but the activity of the friends of the person doing the search.

For a users friends to “like” or “check-in” with suppliers, that supplier (which could be your business) needs to have a Facebook presence.

Google+

OK, I still don’t personally like and use this much, but it is being used more and more by Google to rank a business.

Google+ local is expected to merge with Google Places.

Google AdWords

The new Google Enhanced campaigns give more control of when (eg week days during business hours) and were your adverts will appear. So you can increasinlgy target people in specific countries, or specific areas of a country.

YouTube Advertising

If you have YouTube advertising content (or could easily create some), it is currently a LOT cheaper than other Google advertising (much lower cost per click). You also only pay if the user watches your video all the way to the end !

The Mobile Web

OK, this is for the Web at large, but the current figures indicate that about 30% of all Web pages are looked at using a mobile device.

• This tends to very much be mostly for B2C sites.
• The UK is Europe’s leading country for smart mobile phone use.

Although the most common mobile device is an iPad, where a normal Website probably works fine (there are subtleties)  it’s fundamentally different when you consider iPhones and other smart phones. The site might work, but usability with having to continually pinch zoom into the site isn’t great.

• Simplified mobile phone friendly navigation (that doesn’t require pinch and zoom).
• Smaller screens do mean less content.
  -  An easy first step can be to remove side columns and associated information for users that are probably doing this themselves anyway.
• Contact details including your address, with the postcode and a map link that will link to map functions on a particular smart phone.
  - Most smart phones will recognise the HTML markup for telephone number eg <a href=”tel:+448453709300″> on our phone number 0845 370 9300.
• Smart phones are more often used by consumers, often at work, where they don’t want to (or aren’t allowed to) use their work computer for their target activity.

We can code a Website to use a library such as Tera-WURFL, not only detect the device being used to visit the site, and so deliver content and design for that device, but event triggers for if the user tilts the mobile device so that the layout could change to help the user!

• Server side detection is more reliable than Javascript on page detection.
• It’s good to give mobile device users the option of going to the full / normal Website.
• It is cheaper to build a mobile site than a mobile app. If an app is the plan, a mobile site can be a good first step in this direction as it is faster and easier (so cheaper) to be reactive with a mobile site than a mobile app.
• Have a look at your Google Analytics to see how many site visitors are using which mobile devices.

Content is King

Where marketing was once dominated by mail shots and similar, on-line marketing with Google Analytics on your Website and other reporting tools on your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIN, e-mail shots the scope to analyse and continually update your marketing.

Through all of the channels, the base of good, customer orientated content is still king.

• Push the Customer Experience Optimisation.
  Good content for customers, is also good content for search engines. 

Consider that apparently 90% of the CEO’s of US firms find their B2B suppliers and not the other way around.

This “in-bound” marketing depends on search engine optimised content.

In the buying cycle, the same key questions must be answered:

• Awareness – what needs does the customer have?
  
• Consideration - what product or service do you provide?
• Interest – why should the customer choose you and your solution?
• Preference – are you providing the best value solution?
• Purchase – how can the customer make contact and get the product +/or service?

Recylce, Reuse, Reduce

In terms of the multiple platforms (SEO, Google AdWords, Social Media, Email, Content Creation) you can re-purpose your updated content to the various channels via tools such as Hubspot, Eloqua and Marketo.

These will also let you compare site traffic from which campaigns, so you can evaluate which campaigns to focus on more or less.

In terms of CRM (Customer Relationships Management) systems such as SalesForce, let you track site visitors, their orders etc.

In terms of locations to publish more about what you do, here are a few that you might not have considered:

• E-books
• Social media sites (Facebook etc.)
• Blogs (look for blog sites that talk about your sector)
• Email marketing
• Video (set up a YouTube channel and look at video advertising)
• White papers
• Editorial articles
• Brochures
• Case studies
• Tick lists
• Testimonials and endorsements.

• updated their on-line brand presence,
• built on the existing property database and
• streamlined the process of getting new content on-line.

In collaboration

With the HNG team we developed a minimal online identity where the property database takes center stage.

The property features were expanded to integrate with Google Maps, have brochures, floor plans and energy performance documents attached along with specialist contacts and property details, all of which are searchable.

This gave the end user a much more informative and user friendly property database to use and the client a solution they found easy to use and maintain.

Yes some of our client sectors aren’t as busy as others, but even within sectors that aren’t as busy, there are clients taking advantage of the reduced work load to update and expand their Website and other marketing, to launch new initiatives, to gain market share compared to others.

Giles Andrews at Andrews Denford & Boyd has launched Office Space, where we created the branding (logo etc.), the Web site and printed marketing material.

Quite a few clients, including Acorn Homes (who build luxury new homes in Cornwall) are focusing on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as a cost effective way of increasing enquiries from potential clients.

Earlier in the year, we created a new site for freelance journalist Jane Labous. It’s great to watch her posts as she wanders (mostly) around Africa.

Quite technical, but focusing on the increase in Web search from mobile devices (smart phones, tablets etc.) where the location of the user is known, so the results can include those suppliers with geographical relevance to the user.

The article also looks at the “rich snippets” plan to differentiate phrases. For example:

a search for ‘Mercury’ does not differentiate between the element, the planet, or the singer.

Read the full article at http://www.findmeontheinternet.com/where-i-what-i-who-i-digital-marketing/

How Google and Bing beat the content farms to make your searches better http://bit.ly/uXtcw5.

Full URL is http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228436.200-inside-search-engines-war-on-bad-results.html

ANYONE can publish on the web, but it would be better if some people didn’t; the world does not need another site that provides advice on how to unlock an iPhone or find cheap car insurance. Now new evidence shows that search engines have upped their game to make sure their results are not dominated by such low-quality sites.

Search engines are meant to pick out high-quality sites amid the sea of knock-offs, but even they get overwhelmed. As recently as March, for example, the first 10 results from a Google search for “how to organise your desktop” contained nine links to pages churned out by “content farms” – websites that publish reams of articles, often of dubious quality, that aim simply to attract clicks and advertising dollars.

That prompted New Scientist to ask computer scientistRichard McCreadie at the University of Glasgow, UK, to look into the issue. The results show that Google and Microsoft have won a major victory in the fight against such content farms. In the process they may have inflicted serious pain on two organisations often cited as providers of content farm material: Seed, a project from AOL, appears to have stopped commissioning content from freelance writers, though the firm declined to comment. And Santa Monica-based Demand Media has seen its stock price fall by over 50 per cent since it went public earlier this year for $1.5 billion.

But how to track how well this works ?

As the links to the PDFs would not involve an HTML page, we couldn’t at first think of a way to track these downloads (OK Web server logs, but they can be cumbersome).

Until Phill at James Walker found and has started using http://qrpro.co.uk/, where with your account, they’ll give you reporting on how many times your QR code is used ! The pricing structure is sensible, with 1000 hits for £1, so 12 codes on 12 items for £12.

5th October 2011 update on tracking

Jamie who does Search Engine Optomisation (SEO) for quite a few our clients has also pointed out that you could use the Google URL builder to put tracking on specific URLs (that could be Web pages, PDFs etc.). This would integrate the tracking into the Google Analytics for a client / project.

More information on this is at http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578

Our own Website content guidelines are:

• Make sure the images and first 50 words convey, as directly as possible, what the page is about. “Long established, market leader at providing …..” is 6 words that don’t say what is on on offer.
  How often have you arrived at a Web page or seen a TV advert and thought it was great, but known what was being promoted?
• Say why what is on offer might be wanted by the site visitor. What solution or desire does it satisfy.
• Why does your offer stand out from the alternatives, which could be the same offer from a different supplier or a different way of meeting the solution or desire.
• How can the Website visitor get it? This could be as simple as contact details.

The 7 Best Practices for Improving Your Website’s Usability article looks at:

• Keep content as concise as possible
• Use headings to break up long articles
• Help readers scan your webpages quickly
• Use bulleted lists and text formatting
• Give text blocks sufficient spacing
• Make hyperlinked text user-friendly
• Use visuals strategically

Sites that score well for usability also score high for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

A fantastic list of the top 18 items to make your Website Search Engine Optomised.

The key is always quality content.
- ie real genuine content. But as you create and edit the content, look over this list of items that Bing.com (the Microsoft Search Engine) is wanting.

• Make sure your site is crawlable by using an XML sitemap, a robots.txt file, and well-structured on-site navigation.
• Improve your site structure by using an HTML sitemap and linking to trusted sources both within your site and outside of it.
• Create a solid content hierarchy by doing basic keyword research and avoiding placement of your content in rich media such as Silverlight and Flash.
• Use a short meta title that has fewer than 65 characters and that’s unique to each page, and try to include the targeted keyword toward the beginning of that title.
• Use a unique meta description tag.
• Create quality content (following the guidelines Bing provided earlier).
• When you build links, focus on keyword-relevant anchor tags that link back to quality content on your page.
• Create an RSS feed.
• Use schema.org markup.
• Create a user interface that prioritizes the user experiences; the search perspective on things like page load time aren’t as important as how the user responds.
• Encourage social sharing with the use of social buttons.
• Don’t cloak your website.
• Don’t use link farms.
• Don’t engage in three-way linking.
• Don’t duplicate content.
• Don’t use auto-following on the social front.
• Don’t use thin content.
• Don’t buy links.