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Hands up all those SMEs sending identical messages to all social media channels.
Keep your hands up if customer analytics is regularly used to identify individual device bounce rates.
Where did all those raised hands suddenly go?
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The message that “content” is in the ascendant has taken hold over the last year or so. Both web marketing agencies and their eCommerce clients are, increasingly, turning their attention to pushing out content in a more serious bid to generate the same results as SEO keywords and link building have always set out to achieve.
Content marketing and online marketing are now being lumped together in an unfocused push for attracting interest, traffic, enquiries and conversion…
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Social business. Do eCommerce brands really understand the term? Or do they think that collecting as many Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter followers in six months is ‘doing’ social media and then bitterly complaining there was no sales, no interest, not even an enquiry?
Social is a mindset, a principle of engagement. Creating a community audience takes time to build trust, credibility and connection to show brand transparency and approachability.
Three month experiments swamping Twitter and Facebook with marketing messages or forced friendliness is not a search and social policy, it’s a turn-off to customer prospects.
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It doesn’t take long for ‘social’ good intentions to slide back to ‘broadcast’ push marketing.
Many an eCommerce brand has taken up the call to engage with their niche audiences as ‘humans’ rather than as selling machines.
But there’s increasing evidence that the conversational tone of some businesses can cool and become more ‘customer service’ oriented as the usual juggling act of “finding the time” takes over.
The once interested follower quietly unfollows…
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YouTube – a little less You and a lot more Them? Does the arrival of subscription channels at YouTube mark a turning point in content access, sharing and marketing?
In an age where online marketing strategies are increasingly reliant on freely available social media content the rise of on-demand video, such as Netflix and Lovefilm, suggest that there is a growing market for “premium” online content.
A monetising opportunity for eCommerce or just for Google?
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Websites too eager to help? How is this possible in the search and social age of ultra customer experience and rich content?
We’re talking of course about the number one site visitor irritation – the pop up.
It’s probably more annoying than the banner instantly inflating across the screen like a car airbag if your mouse so much as strays anywhere within its lower edge.
Site pages playing the ever so ‘umble, helpful servant from the second you arrive and which keep on nagging after every click are likely to lead to a very hasty exit…
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Google Now – and forever? Released in June 2012 on Android devices running Jelly Bean, the predictive search service – which knows what you want to search for before you do – is now also available for Apple iPhones and iPads.
Some question if this type of search based on a user’s search behaviour history to deliver information unprompted “when Google thinks you need it” is a search too far and has even been called downright “creepy”.
Others see the service as the inevitable next step in strategic rather than tactical search, and the optimisation of “personalised context” over link building.
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The sanctity of ‘relevance’ is the fundamental message applied to content preached far and wide across the online communities of social media.
Yet relevance has been a rigorous discipline practised within online marketing since the earliest days of internet creation.
Aiming to receive the ranking beneficence of Google, which the correct enactment of SEO keywords and PPC ads can bring to search results and click traffic, truly remains the venerable ‘holy grail’ of eCommerce site owners.
Site owners can frequently issue missives…
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Business goals, marketing strategies, growth and profit – the MO of any business from offline to eCommerce.
Sitting round a table to discuss a site owner’s objectives and planning how to achieve the desired results may start with their cries of “we need to find more customers” or “ we’ve never had much luck with a certain market.”
These days, “we did try social media once” or “we’ve been simply too busy to focus on anything else other than everyday business” is heard a lot too.
It always sounds like it’s long overdue to take a close look…
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When it comes down to it, for most of the business community it’s still all about the website, driving traffic and sales conversion – especially if they’re essentially eCommerce.
Yes – site owners do understand that today’s multichannel world of social media networking via smartphone and tablet means that followers and prospects can now arrive and check a site page out by umpteen various routes.
OK, so enquirers take their time over research and may return on at least two or three more occasions before making their mind up – but businesses can still get nervous when they see high bounce rates and low conversions.
So what’s the real reason ?
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Nearly 95 per cent of eCommerce brands now say that “personalisation” is vital to delivering the all-important “customer experience”, according to a new Econsultancy survey, February 2013.
The online survey of more than 1,100 online professionals also found that nearly half of respondents pointed to “legacy technology” and “lack of budget” as obstacles to providing the necessary personalised online marketing strategies.
Many sites still appear to show that they understand too little of the customer’s perspective.
A familiar story?
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The creation of Google+ in 2011 may be viewed as a declaration by Google, some six years after the birth of Facebook and five years after Twitter, that the internet was now officially search and social.
Before social media, site pagerank was dependent on search engine optimisation and there are still many site owners who consider them as two separate strands.
Yet for business to succeed online today, they need to remember that Google is always only interested in how useful and valuable a site and its content is by the quality of inbound link traffic.
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