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Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Spotify Specifies Subscription Wise!

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When ‘Content is King’, tribute must be paid! So the gathering changes around the web appear to confirm. Not only have search engines, Google and Blekko, recently flexed their algorithm muscles to bump low quality link farms down the rankings, last week Spotify announced they will be halving free access listening time – in other words, streamlining their streaming music service!

Spotify’s original credo was to “make music on-demand available to all”, but like many marketing strategies by online services, including the Press, which suffers millions of pounds of revenue loss year-on-year, the original business model apparently, can no longer be sustained. Of their 10 million worldwide users, only 1 million currently pay for Spotify on subscription.
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Customer Support Expects More From Email Disconnects!

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The endless taking of the email marketing pulse to discover if this veteran messaging organ is “ dead or alive” received another batch of adrenalin-enhancing stats this week with the announcement by an European survey that “ emailing reach is generally up to 40% higher than reported by mail programmes”. Yet, a different study, investigating certain types of online services also reported that “almost half of all email enquires went unanswered”.

The first study suggests that while newsletters do get clicked and ‘non-openers’ read emails, nearly a third of email opener clicks were not measured as a result of a type of email service provider (ESP) software, called a “tracking pixel”.
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Particle Followers In The Social Hadron Collider

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Using social media to identify, focus on and foster niche followers and meaningful click traffic should be the underlying ‘connection intention’ in today’s fragmented, segmented online environment. But are site owners listening and looking or just relying on broadcasting. Time to plug the Babel fish in ….

Business owners know only too well that they need to keep close to the needs of their marketplace consumers. It seems it was only a few short years ago that it was simply a matter of potential customers going onto the Net to find websites offering products/services they were searching for and following up by enquiry form, emailing, calling the landline or just making a purchase.
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If You Want To Kinect You Need To Know Who Wii Are!

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Kinecting with your screen avatar is not the same as connecting with your niche customer! But some website owners can also hold an illusory image of their online follower traffic and it’s the reason their social media reach fails to engage.

It’s more than checking daily analytics and pinpointing SEO keywords. The fundamental question at the heart of today’s social online marketing is not restricted to who is your customer and the one or two words they might quickly Google or Bing!
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Smart Websites Are On Smartphones!

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Mobilemania! Everywhere you look – headlines, reports, pronouncements and predictions. Mobile is the new edition of the human brainstem, about to take control of organising our every waking need and desires, all connections and engagements permanently wired into the instant web orgasmatron of gratification. Thing is, is your website ready?

It’s a question that is being asked a lot these days! What with the recent news that website search by smartphone has overtaken search by PC and mobile payments/barscan/QR codes are about to hit the eCommerce marketplace.
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The Rise Of Twitter To Global Big Hitter

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News last week claiming that Twitter was being valued at $ 10bn as both Facebook and Google are, apparently, squaring up to buy the site reflects not only its strategic importance as a social and realtime news tool but may also change many sceptical attitudes amongst the business community.

Mentioning Twitter or social media in a number of business quarters can still produce kneejerk, derisory comments about ‘celeb trivia’ and ‘passing fad’. Of course, much has changed since its launch in July 2006 and the worldwide messaging site was, by July 2010 according to Wikipedia, to have 190 million users generating 65 million tweets and handling over 800,000 search queries per day.
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Web Mechanics To Social Organics!

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It’s a game of two halves! Website experience has always been about the set pieces of usability versus user friendly. Either forms of site play can too easily lead to scoring own goals and hasty exits. On the new, level playing fields of social media engagement, human presence wins the silverware!

There was a time when a functioning website design was mostly about clean coding, metatags, clear navigation, testing precise content layouts and checking page links. Strictly web mechanics to ensure that all the investment in online marketing, whether PPC ad or SEO keyword link bait was firmly fixed on maximising inbound traffic to onsite conversion and then followed by the obsessing over tracking and collecting analytics!
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SMEs Are Your Flexible Local Social Friend!

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SMEs mastering social media can steal an advantage over their larger scale competitors. Compact, agile and more easily adaptable, potential audiences can feel more genuinely engaged and be responsive to targeted SEO content messages from a favoured bookmarked resource.

It’s always been true that a small business can attract a long term, loyal customer base because SMEs are more likely to offer a committed, customer-focused and personal service. Not always a strong point when dealing with some of the big UK national brands, where the transaction is purely price driven and engagement is minimal.
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Social Media Mobile Marketing Morph Max!

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How many pieces of tech do you carry around every day? One, maybe two mobiles, MP3, laptop or netbook, iPad even? Content can follow us everywhere across a variety of platforms but it’s likely a smartphone will soon be all we’ll need to do a majority of daily tasks. And not forgetting that handy tablet, too!

News this week that two of the big network providers, Orange and T Mobile, following in the footsteps of Google’s Nexus S, will be rolling out contactless payment by a new mobile to be launched in the summer with NFC ( Near Field Communications) technology, could soon take over many of the payment tasks carried out today by the credit/debit and Oyster card.
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Escape From Jurassic Business Park!

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It’s still 1991! At least it is to some business owners! They’re still looking to have a cool looking website built in Flash, sales copy talking about their CEO with over 25 years experience and how they ‘pride themselves on giving best value and service’ and once that’s done, they’ll think about SEO, if there’s any budget left this year…

Welcome to Jurassic Business Park! An exotic territory where business owners are beginning to sense that the yawning gap now appearing to open up between themselves and their savvy competitors may be starting to affect brand identity in their niche marketplace.
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Abandoned Basket Sites A Big Xmas Problem!

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Xmas shopping figures flying thick and fast – as were website visitors who fled in their droves as they experienced problems with making a purchase at over a third of UK sites, where it seems very little had changed in usability or customer engagement.

According to a YouGov survey commissioned by Online Customer Experience Management (CEM) specialist Tealeaf, it appears that there are still an overwhelming number of domains with original website design issues that caused inbound visitor traffic to abandon their basket, thereby losing valuable sales and the likelihood of a return visit.
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Remotely, Mostly Or Totally Socially?

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Just about everyone has started doing a bit of it this year! And should be getting more into it next year! Social Media – like the PC or mobile, you can’t do business without it – and in 2011, it’s time to do it properly, not try to fit it in when you’re less busy!

Doing nothing is no longer an option! Implementing a workable social media policy is now recognised as a key mainstream activity, which many website owners have been coming to terms with over the last 12 months. Efforts can vary wildly from tacking a blog on somewhere below the fold or sticking a few pics on Facebook to tweeting every day. Learning to weave a social fabric around your online marketing model is a listening and learning curve which takes time and expertise to integrate properly.
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