Google Analyzes Consumer Device Preferences: Insight Into Mobile Purchasing Journey
Google has just released a blog post and infographic sharing insights into consumer shopping behavior over the recent 2012 shopping season. In many cases, Google said, consumers discovered a business on one device, for example on their smartphone while in a store, and would then engage further with that business on another device at a later time.
It is critical that companies understand the various entry and touchpoints during their customers’ buying journey, then optimize existing and new content to fulfill needs at each point. Your own data will always be most valuable, though the industry trends companies with access to as much relevant data as Google has can be helpful, as well. For example, they found that smartphones were the preferred device for contacting or navigating to a business with 71% of shoppers using a store locator on their phone, while 82% of shoppers used a larger device like PC or tablet for making online purchases. Is your content, whether written, visual or video, currently optimized for mobile formatting and consumption?
Samsung Has a Surprise Viral Video Hit, Shows Appliance Makers How It’s Done
Let’s face it, washing machines are pretty dull fodder for YouTube. Samsung released a brilliant video on February 14th the eschews the typical product feature-demonstration-paid actor commercial format and it paid off big time. As in, over 13 million views in one week, big time. In the video, a film crew set the scene for a wintery video shoot for an EcoBubble washer commercial. The premise is that they’re out in the wilderness on a frozen lake, thanks to the EcoBubble’s ability to perform at cold temperatures using bubbles. The team are interrupted by the arrival of a brown bear and… well, check it out:
Twitter Announces Advertising API for Promoted Products and Accounts
In an effort to make it easier for advertisers to manage campaigns, Twitter has announced the upcoming release of their Twitter Ads API. They’ve been testing with a select group of partners since January, according to the announcement. What does this mean for marketers?
Twitter’s April Underwood, Revenue Product Manager, explains: “You’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns — and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies. Equally important, users will continue to see the most relevant Promoted Tweets from advertisers. With the Ads API, marketers now have more tools in their arsenal to help them deliver the right message, to the right audience, on the desktop and on mobile devices — all at scale.”
The first five companies able to offer Twitter advertising features to their clients are the beta partners: Adobe, HootSuite, SalesForce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.
Study Reveals Brand Marketers “Mostly Clueless and Inept” at Localization
Say it ain’t so! Greg Sterling at MarketingLand reports this week that national marketers have a lot of work to do in tying brand campaigns to offline stores and sales efforts. The study, written by the CMO Council for Balihoo, a local marketing automation company. One might think that because a local marketing company commissioned the report, it would be prone to bias; however, brand marketers actually lent their insights through a survey and this is the frightening tale they told:
- Only 8% of brand marketers will make the development of a comprehensive mobile relationship marketing strategy a priority this year. Thirty-three percent are “still investigating the mobile opportunity.”
- A whopping 57% of brand marketers said they lack the resources and bandwidth to stay on top of constant content needs.
- Despite 59 percent of national marketers noting that local demand generation was essential to their business growth, only 7 percent feel they have highly evolved campaigns and measures in place that can activate consumers at a local level.
- While 30 percent of marketers execute local campaigns within eight to 20 days of a national launch, 31 percent require in excess of 30 days to distribute local marketing materials.
- Only 8 percent of the 296 brand marketers surveyed were extremely satisfied with the way new product, pricing or promotional campaigns are executed and leveraged by local field sales, reseller, franchise or partner networks.
Download the full Brand Automation for Local Activation report from CMO Council (registration required).
This Week in the @TopRank Social Community
We have a fantastic and active social community across a number of platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. What were @toprank tweeps talking about this week? The top ten topics you mentioned in tweets to our account were:
Visualization from Tweet Archive
@TopRank Tweets We Loved
We read every single tweet you send us… some even make their way through the office email chain. Here are just a few of our favorite mentions from this week:
(Thanks, Arianne! We’re glad you enjoyed the session. Linkdex did a fantastic job grabbing the highlights of this SES panel with Andy Mihalop, Ammon Johns, Norm Johnston and Judith Lewis in the post you shared.)
(We completely agree. Attracting new customers is important, but engaging existing fans creates loyal customers and advocates for life and NASA’s event this week was a prime example of how it’s done.)
Facebook Content YOU Loved
This week, the post that engaged more people than any other and also generated the most conversations was our content optimization visual. Our handsome wee TopRank Marketing Tips Line caller asks, “What type of audits should I run to determine if my content is optimized?” Facebook fans found the answer here.
Online Marketing News Briefs from the TopRank Team
Who Do You Trust? Social vs. Search
Edelman recently released their annual Trust Barometer study and while it revealed a multitude of interesting findings, perhaps the most eye-opening results relate to social. Social usage continues to grow at a staggering rate across the globe, but that doesn’t mean that consumers trust all social information. Edelman found that those surveyed trusted search results over information shared in social. To read the whole study, get the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer report.
Taco Bell, ESPN See More Than 225K QR Code Scans for Recent Mobile Campaign
Who said QR codes are a trend that’s already had its day? They’re becoming more and more relevant while tacos are becoming tastier and tastier. Where those two meet is here, with this update on a successful QR code campaign involving ESPN and Taco Bell. They worked together to encourage football fans to scan QR codes found on Taco Bell packaging to receive special online content and previews. Their success teaches us a few things: find out what your consumers like other than you – and work to bring them tacos. Wait, no, that’s not right.. work to bring them the things they want from multiple angles to increase engagement all the way down the line.
Multi-Format Web Designer’s SEO Checklist Release
Learning SEO can be a daunting task. To help with this process, webdesign.tuts. has provided A Web Designer’s SEO Checklist as part of their 18 part series SEO Fundamentals for Web Designers. They have even created a number of versions of this checklist, including an HTML version, Markdown, PDF and Evernote for downloading. This checklist may be a great help for designers with little SEO experience and may help take care of the basics if SEOs are to be brought into the process at some point during development (hopefully sooner than later!).
Much to be Learned from SES London
This past week, European and international marketers converged in London for three days of intense training, professional networking and expert advice on digital marketing. TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden presented his Creative Content Marketing: Winning Hearts, Minds & Wallets session and moderated other panels of experts, including one on Content-Driven SEO on a Shoestring.
WordTracker compiled as excellent resource for marketers consisting of their 214 top tips and takeaways from the event. Linkdex liveblogged Integrated Marketing: What Does It Really Mean? and Andrew Girdwood published his collection of over 60 helpful tips for digital marketers. As always, those in attendance shared freely with one another and with their social communities through publishing these resources during and after the event. Check them out!
Have Your Say
Have you seen an interesting digital marketing story in the news? Share yours in the comments or stop by and see us on Twitter!
