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

Search And Social Security Fears Block Staff Use!

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The great search and social divide! Once again news surfaces highlighting a hardening of attitude adopted by some companies towards their employees using social media. In the aftermath of the recent high profile hacking of major brands and global organisations, security fears have led to a 10 per cent increase in banning staff from accessing social network sites.

Social paranoia appears to have gripped the business world as newly published figures show over two thirds of companies monitor staff activity on the web and more than half are blocked from accessing a number of social media sites. Security concerns are overriding the very real benefits that social media content sharing and networking bring to establishing a holistic perception and trust in a brand identity across today’s multi channel and platform environment.
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Google To Kick The Click And Roll With The Scroll?

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Recent observations of Google testing a new design concept for its’ search results page could replace the ‘Google No.1’ mentality, which has constantly obsessed eCommerce site owners, mostly to the exclusion of all else in the last twenty years. In the age of the smartphone and tablet, it’s the scroll and the flick-thru’ rather than the clunky click that gets the speedy search result. Seems Google, mindful of search and social remodelling the landscape around itself, is going scrolling…

In other words … Google is testing the idea of an infinite scroll of web search results. It appears that the top search box, navigation bar and the left-hand side panel will be retained while the user scrolls through results, producing a page sequence matching the current Google experience. While a click is still needed to go to the next page to see more results, the possibility for infinite scrolling in web search results, as deployed in Google Image Search, could be a real boost to future online marketing campaigns and improved traffic performance from selected SEO keywords.
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Does Your Business Tweet And Greet Or Fail To Meet Completely?

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Twittering on the edge? Or just getting on your tweets? Scrolling through the endless stream of marketing messages can make you fed up to the back tweet when looking for a reply to your query, a solution to your problem. You thought that social sites were like forums, a community where individuals, groups and businesses try to connect and engage by offering help and insight.

Er – no! All you seem to see are businesses just looking for clicks, social point scoring with Google, ramping up their ranking …

Is anyone actually having a conversation? When individuals ask questions directed at Twitter users who have set their feeds for specific topics, is anyone actually answering? While the more savvy of eCommerce ‘get it’ and understand how to use Twitter as an effective customer service channel, it appears that an overwhelming number of users are just going about their daily online marketing business.
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Corporates Get Vocal As Google Goes Social!

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The launch of Google+1 by the planet’s biggest search engine, hereby, declares the age of search and social is officially open! What’s important now is not only to ‘do SEO’ but also to ‘say hello’. The word on cyberstreet is that SEO has become social engine optimisation. To ‘like’ is as important as to ‘link’ and to be ‘human’ is to have real site authority. Even the big boys are doing it now!

A newly published study reveals that in the first six months of 2011, the number of FTSE 100 companies on Facebook rose by more than 50 per cent, and over half also opened a corporate Twitter account, an increase of 40 per cent since last year. Amongst the top performing social media users in the FTSE 100 are Aviva, Centrica, BP, Shell, Marks & Spencer and Tesco, although the UK, inevitably, lags behind the US!
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Don’t Let Your Site Be Shopped By A Bad Mobile Experience!

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The latest UK stats are in – it’s official – the UK is going shopping by mobile! Retail search on the move has increased fourfold in the last quarter. Yet with some 10 million online consumers making a transaction using a mobile device in the UK last year, over 80 per cent encountered problems and a ‘bad’ site experience. Site owners are still not getting the message – or if they are – choosing to ignore it!

According to the recently released figures from the British Retail Consortium (BRC), the volume of retail search increased by nearly a third through the use of mobile, which rose by over 200 per cent, year on year. Targeted online retail search only was up by a fifth, and overseas retail search grew by three quarters in 12 months.
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Customer Experience Key To Site Conversion

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Converting visitors to buyers – in the era of smartphone and tablet search and social. More problems for website owners to worry about! Or not, in too many cases! Surprisingly, latest research shows that while consumer expectations are changing, the answer to optimising sites for ‘conversion to purchase’ lies in getting key design basics right. It’s all about providing great customer experience…

The essence of online marketing is firstly, reaching out to encourage target, niche market segments to follow and visit the company website. Secondly, driving further visitor engagement to quickly and easily find the object of their search and trust the site enough to proceed to checkout. For eCommerce sites, visitors completing the payment process without finding a reason to ‘abandon basket’ at any stage is the holy grail to survival on the web.
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Trust Marketing In Search And Social.

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Enter your name and email address … trust me! Or not, as seems to be the site visitor’s overwhelming response these days! New research revelations highlight the growing trend for visitors to not provide any personal details when interacting with a brand website. Too little effort to encourage trust and the desire for social anonymity are changing the marketing mix in 2011.

The more we go social online, the less information we are likely to reveal! Or to be more exact, more than one in three site visitors now withhold key identifying data when attempting to obtain information online from a company or organisation website, according to a recent survey of current marketing strategies.
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Online Marketing Reverts To Former Bad Habits!

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Today’s savvy UK consumers are less than impressed with an overwhelming number of non user-friendly websites with irrelevant products or services ads, according to latest You.gov and Mintel market research. With widespread disapproval of intrusive display ads on social networks, which are largely ignored, it appears that online retailers are failing to properly understand how to engage with their target audiences on the changed web.

Oh my bad! Website owners still seem to not be listening – either to their own online marketing people or indeed, their intended target market audience. A recent You.gov survey reveals that over three quarters of consumers are regularly, “ … frustrated by difficulties in finding the products, services and inspiration to satisfy their needs”.
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Email Sails Further Up Mobile Channels!

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Email is alive and well and thriving on all platforms! As if we didn’t know. Included on smartphones and tablets, its’ successful migration from desktop to mobile users on the move has seen phenomenal growth and data galore. So it’s time to find out the right time to send the right message to be read.

According to a new survey of email platforms and subscribers, over 80 per cent phenomenal growth in mobile usage has been seen, adding to the traditional desktop and webmail – as opposed to early forecasts of being swept away by emerging social media messaging sites. In fact, the rise of mCommerce and tablet browsing is re-energising email marketing potential across the developing platforms.
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SME Marketing Strategies Survey Reveals Same Old Same Old!

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According to a new survey of UK small businesses, nearly two thirds have no current set marketing budget, yet over two thirds understand the need to invest in their website as opposed to print marketing and some 10 per cent only would consider social media due to lack of time and resources. Sound familiar?

It’s the same old, same old! Where have these business owners been while the online marketing terrain has been dramatically shifting in recent years? It appears that many are just now waking up to the realities of the web as they see the diminishing returns of just physical print advertising by itself.
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Bing Sings Out With New Search And Social Tools!

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The thing with Bing is it’s really getting its’ thing together, like …. like with Facebook’s “Like”, for example. Stepping up to that proverbial plate to mix it with the social networking sites, the search engine has just introduced a wizzy array of new search and social features beyond the basic “like” to open up the conversation of shared content.

It’s the latest move by a search engine to go social. With Google’s Plus One soon to go live, rival Bing is chasing fans on Facebook and making eCommerce even more a community decision making process – like going shopping with friends on the high street! In other words, online search for sites, products, service and content is becoming a more shared experience and even less a solo pursuit.
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Microsoft Skype Mobile Marketing Strategies

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As news of the £5.2bn Skype buyout by Microsoft hit the headlines, a new survey from high tech analysts, Canalys, shows that the smartphone market grew by over 80 per cent in the first 3 months of 2011, with Android at number one and Samsung outselling the Windows phone by more than a million units. In the year of the mobile, it’s not only Microsoft who need to capture some of the realtime action.

The attempt by Microsoft to sidle up alongside the likes of Apple, Android, Symbian and Google in the current mobile internet, voice and video revolution is another sure sign of the way onDemand, realtime communications is reshaping marketing strategies in response to web user behaviours. With market share having fallen to a half, Nokia replaced Symbian in February with the Windows Phone 7, which is not due until the end of 2011.
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