Dispelling 7 'marketing limiting' myths about IP geolocation
IP geolocation technology has been around for more than 13 years. It is used across the globe for a variety of purposes, one of the foremost being marketing.
And yet, an aura of mystery still surrounds what IP technology is and what it can do. IP also has a slightly tarnished reputation in some companies; usually as a result of IP data providers supplying data that fails to meet expectations, leaving companies disillusioned with the technology’s business potential.
This article aims to dispel some common misconceptions on the use of geolocation data, including the way data is derived. The objective is to help marketers understand this technology's true potential, which is increasing in an increasingly location-based digital world.
IP geolocation explained
IP geolocation is an extremely powerful technology that can make a tremendous…
New social media benchmark research reveals which social media tactics are working best for businesses
The Social Media Benchmark is a rolling six-monthly study exploring how marketers are adapting to, investing in and getting value from social media.
We first reported on Wave 1 in February 2012 when the results from an Autumn 2011 study were published. Wave 2, the first survey for 2012 was published in June 2012. I have updated our summary below, showing the changes between Wave 1 and 2.
Purpose and methodology
This is a major, ongoing initiative from The Chartered Institute of Marketing which is supported by Ipsos ASI and Bloomberg. You can see from the names behind this research is not just, a poll, instead it's a major research programme.
It's intended to help companies understand how they can get value from social media marketing through publishing regular waves to benchmark against. The first wave of 1500 marketers…
New report highlights the top luxury brands and the challenge of ongoing engagement
Firstly, it's important to remember that the luxury market really has been slow to adapt to social media marketing. Largely ignoring the channel in the early days, most likely since it's nothing akin to the world that luxury brands are used to, advertising orientated essentially. It's what they know, and how the communicate to the mass audience.
For a short period it seemed that luxury brands had come to truly appreciate social media’s ability to reach its customers, brands like Porshche and Burberry have started out and done very well, and let's not forget is was only 2010 when Prada, Jimmy Choo, Hugo Boss and Marc Jacobs set up their first online storefronts!
Today the most aggressive, or forward looking, of these companies are Macy’s, Sephora, Lancôme, Michael Kors and IWC,…
Explainer videos for marketing story telling
I'm writing this post about explainer videos since we've just created a new explainer for Smart Insights, which you can see below. At the same time I thought it was worth showing how you could use explainer videos in your own marketing.
Here's our new explainer video created by First 10 Digital, it's part product description and part brand story telling since we wanted to give potential new users a flavour of why we exist.
We hope it works in conveying what we're about?
The king of content marketing?
They're a major tool amongst all the content marketing options. Some might argue Explainer's are the tool in the content marketing toolkbox. They offer a way to capture and hold the user's attention, and communicate…
New Research Shows Key Ranking Factors for the UK
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Search Metrics 2012 Ranking Factor Report
The volume of data and number crunching to form this guide is remarkable. It's based on analysis of 10,000 selected top-keywords, 300,000 websites and millions of links, shares and tweets from within the Searchmetrics database.
It has been condensed well for a quick summary on SEO in the UK. The guide looks at the 6 trends / changes the research highlighted which are summarised in the diagram below.
Marketing implications
While the report probably won't show anything that most people will not have heard already it may hopefully spur you into action or debunk some of the SEO myths. I have summarised the 3 I believe are most important below, but you can see the full…
Establishing familiarity, transparency and accountability
People with pollen allergies are 23% less likely to click on yellow links.
Amazing, no?
Well, it would be if I hadn't just made it up.
But you might have believed me, given the stat is published at a site that enjoys a trustworthy reputation.
The role of trust in evaluating and responding to advice, information and offers can only grow as online choice becomes overwhelming.
So how do you build trust through your email program?
Wearing my consumer hat, I can pick out three groups of basic tactics that influence my perception of an email and its sender:
Build and exploit familiarity
Establish transparency and accountability
Demonstrate "quality" and consistency
I'll review the first two areas in this article, the third in Part 2.
Build and exploit familiarity
One of the things we do when reviewing email is to identify who each message comes from.
A clear sender identity is itself a contributor to trust, but by ensuring you're quickly recognized,…
Why are brands killing the Facebook conversation?
June 2012 update - a new service for benchmarking Facebook customer service:
On June 20th at LeWeb, Socialbakers introduced a new service, Socially Devoted, which gives an idea of what are good and bad levels of customer service within Facebook.
Here is the worst from the retail category which shows there is still plenty of room for improvement:
The most responsive show how it can be done:
I originally read this post by Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, in October 2011 about the lack of interaction of brands have on their own Fan pages. Apparently only 5% of wall questions from consumers on brand pages ever receive follow-up interactions from the brand - shocking really! It's really shooting yourself in the social foot…
Have you considered Facebook Promoted Posts? Examples of results from tests.
Another new feature that Facebook is offering (and yet more evidence of its post IPO drive to monetise) is Promoted Posts.
As I reported here recently, most fans are only seeing 17% of a brand's posts. This data has always been available in the Insights dashboard, but Facebook are now choosing to bring it to brand page admin's attention far more by displaying the percentage to date under each post.
Brand page managers have been less than delighted to discover that they are now having to pay for the privilege of their earned fans seeing their updates. But, even with the best optimised posts on the platform, you will be limited in getting your message out there. Enter Promoted Posts.
It's pretty simple to promote a post. Create your new post and either at that point (or up to three days later) selecte "Promote". Depending…
Practical guidance for modelling full customer lifecycle attribution
With ongoing pressure on marketing budgets and a burgeoning array of digital marketing channels and choices, attribution is a hotter topic than ever.
‘Last click’ is the most common approach; attributing 100% of a sale’s value to the last or converting click.
‘Last click’ is a flawed, though, because it ignores all previous activities that led to the sale, which could result in reduced or cut investment regarding the key contributing activities.
To build a truly accurate attribution model you need current and historic individual-level data from your online channels.
Read on to see why.
The value of aggregated individual-level online data
Only by piecing together each individual customer journey can you build up a truly accurate picture of the inter-relationship between your digital marketing activities and the relative role, importance and value of each one…
How to use the new Facebook scheduling feature for weekend engagement
Despite Facebook engagement rates in multiple sectors rocketing at the weekends, on Sunday in particular, reports from organisations such as Buddy Media show that very few brands are in fact posting content at the weekend. Those brands that do post outside of normal business hours enjoy 20% higher engagement rates.
One of the reasons for this tardiness is likely to have been the lack of ability, until recently, to schedule updates on Facebook without using a third party tool such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite.
Furthermore, using these may not be a great idea. The Facebook Edgerank algorithm appears to favour posts inserted directly into its platform rather than those scheduled via Hootsuite. Eloqua claim that there is 61% less visibility when a third party tool is used rather than manual…
