Digital Marketing | Digital Strategy | This Digital World

Daily Deals - know what you're getting into

A new marketing category is born - daily deals.  Sites like Groupon, Living Social, Tippr and others have sprung up across the world, offering consumers amazing discounted deals.  In Seattle alone there are more than 6 companies competing for their share of the coupon stampede (Foodie Offers does a good job of aggregating the restaurant only deals which makes my life easier).

So, it's good for consumers because they get access to a wide range of discounted offers. But is it good for the businesses involved?

I went to Flying Fish in Seattle the other night to take advantage of a restaurant deal there.  The place was packed out, we waited half an hour longer than our allotted booking time to get a table and the service was average.  They just couldn't cope with the influx of new business.  What is that going to do to their reputation and will all those people that jumped on the discounted meal really come back.

If your business is approached by a daily deals salesperson, make sure you know your margins so your 'free marketing' doesn't hurt your business or your reputation.

Related links: Groupon and why it matters to your business

Small Businesses Spending More on Paid Search

US small businesses are spending more than double on paid search campaigns compared to a year ago. That's according to a new report out by Webvisible, which looked at how small businesses were spending their marketing dollars and how well paid search was performing in particular.

Paid search spend (those text ads you see down the side of Google), was up 159% in 12 months, with small businesses buying more keywords than ever before.  Performance, measured by conversions or actions resulting from the click through, was also up, although the reasons are unclear.  Maybe they have all become super-hot landing page optimizers in the last year.

Part of the reason for the increase in spend is probably because keywords just get more expensive over time.  The cost of a typical paid search campaign on Google is significantly higher than two or three years ago because more companies are bidding on the same keywords.  This drives CPC (cost per click) up on the keywords that typically have big volumes.  Advertisers are then forced into the 'long tale', hunting for keywords that are less popular and therefore cost less.  So by default, the number of keywords in a typical category buy is bound to increase.

I think this is going to become a big problem, not just for small businesses, but for any business that relies on paid search to drive the majority of their acquisitions.  At some point it just won't be profitable to buy certain keywords, because the cost will outweigh the return.

Two things will happen as a result of this:

1. Advertisers will have to look to other channels to make up the difference - get better at organic search, use social media more effectively, get better at word of mouth referrals etc.

2. Landing page optimization and keyword conversion will become even more of an art.  Having solid analytics and a platform that enables you to do simple A/B testing and more complex multivariate testing will be critical to stay profitable.

Social Networking Now the Most Popular Past-time in the UK

Spending hours looking at your favourite social network is now the most popular past-time for Brits, according to Irish social media experts Simply Zesty.

The agency just published an excellent short video, which you can watch below, detailing the social networking habits of the UK population.

I pulled out some key stats which reinforce why businesses must start taking the social networking evolution seriously:

85% of the population are now online and 60% of them read blogs
- do you know the most influencial bloggers in your line of work?  You should be establishing relationships with them, feeding them information and generally keeping them happy!

64% of the population have a social network profile
- does your business?

78% use the Internet to research products and services before buying
70% of people online trust reviews from strangers and 90% trust reviews from friends
- this means two things:
 
1. You need to be aware of what people are writing about your product or establishment and if necessary take measures to correct it.
 
2. You need to establish social relationships with your existing customers through Facebook and Twitter.  Offer your fans special deals, show them the love. They are your biggest ambassadors.

Casual Gaming Crosses Into Food Retailing

 This story is a great example of how the worlds of online and offline are becoming increasingly intertwined.  Farmville, a social casual game played by 65 million people worldwide, has teamed up with Green Giant, vegetable makers to the masses (owned by Betty Crocker), to put Farmville cash coupon stickers on various products in 4,000 stores across North America.

The idea is that this virtual currency is of real value to the game players, who can use it to buy all sorts of things in the virtual game itself, so they will be more likely to buy these food items as a result.

It's a very interesting cross-over between online and retail marketing don't you think?

Redfin, Real Estate Marketing and iPhone Apps

If you are looking to buy or sell a house in the US then you should be looking at Redfin. A Seattle based start up that was founded in 2006, Redfin describes itself as 'the industry's first online brokerage for buying and selling homes, half Century 21 and half E-Trade.'

The website is a great user experience - rich with both listing information and local information, an intuitive search engine and a home buyers/sellers service into the bargain, offering savings on traditional buying and selling methods.

We can all learn a lot from their iphone app. It's a perfect fit for the home searcher on the go.  A simple, intuitive design, content rich (the photos of the houses look great) and well thought out search.  From a practical perspective, an iphone app for a real estate aggregrator makes so much sense.

It's not an app for the sake of having an app. It actually adds value to the user.  How many times have you been driving or walking by a house for sale and wanted more information on it? Or in a neighbourhood that you like and wondering what property prices are like? I find it useful.  It adds value to my house search experience and makes me think good things about Redfin.

I have also downloaded apps that really do nothing other than extend the brand to the device.  Trust me, those dollars are wasted.  Find a reason why downloading an app makes sense for your customer and then go build it.  Don't waste money building an app just because that's the latest 'thing' to do.  You don't want people uninstalling your app because that little icon has just become a waste of space on their cluttered phone's display.

The Importance of Bloggers to your Business

Mashable, the online bible for social media developments, published an article today entitled 'why food bloggers are here to stay'.  As a food blogger myself and long time reviewer of restaurants online (I founded The London Restaurant Review in 1995 when user submitted reviews of anything were a rarity), I know how even 'unknown' bloggers can help a restaurant.

With London Appetizer I set about creating a blog focused on new London restaurant openings and quickly built up a database of restaurant owners and their PR agencies, eager to send me the latest news on the restaurants they represented.

Blogs written using platforms such as Typepad and Wordpress generally get indexed very well on search engines and so getting a mention of your restaurant on a blog (and ideally a link) does wonders for your own website visibility (one of the things Google looks for when deciding how high to place a website in the search listings is how many quality links that website has back into it).

Any business owner should be aware of the bloggers related to his/her business sector and actively reach out to them.  Send them information (bloggers always need good content), invite them to review your restaurant, hotel, golf course, dry cleaners, hair dressers etc), build a relationship with them.  Bloggers tend to be good marketers and are usually members of larger networks (UrbanSpoon is a good example of this in the restaurant world).

Being part of the 'blogosphere' means more visibility for your business and hopefully more customers. 

Groupon and why it matters to your business

Groupon is a website that presents a local, daily offer to thousands of willing consumers.  The offer is only good for that day and is dependent upon a minimum number of people buying it.  The offers are usually significant - 50% off your dry cleaning, 30% off a meal at your local restaurant etc.
 

 

The local element is extremely important since it creates relevancy.  The fact that the offer is only available that day creates urgency and for the business making the offer, Groupon creates new customers.

Groupon makes its money by taking a slice of the action - but a small enough slice to make this new form of advertising extremely lucrative to small businesses, that otherwise would never be able to afford the kind of exposure Groupon can give them.  In fact more that 95% of businesses that advertised once on the site came back for more.

Here is a simple comparison of how Groupon compares to traditional advertising (click to enlarge):

With over 6.5 million users, Groupon is a very cost effective way to market your business.

Groupon uses very simple ways to get the offer to the user.  I might not be in the mood to check the Groupon website every day for an offer that suits me, but I get an email every day (opt in) that tells me what it is.  If I'm on the go, I can download the Groupon iphone app and sign up that way.

As a local business owner, there really is very little downside in using Groupon as a way to market yourself.  It's free advertising and as long as you do your maths and figure out what discount you can afford to give without going bankrupt, you are sure to benefit from the increased business.

There is a great set of FAQs on the website, explaining the service in more detail and if you are a business owner you can watch a video and submit your business here.

Keeping up with the Joneses

We have a saying in the UK - Keeping up with the Joneses.  It means that people are constantly worried about whether their neighbours are doing better than them, have better gadgets, climbing the social and economic ladders faster etc.  It's always been a material world and the way technology is progressing, keeping up is hard to do.

It's difficult to avoid reading stories of the latest social media phenomenons, since they have breached traditional media.  Seemingly every day there is a new story appearing about Facebook, Twitter or some other popular website or application.  Filtering what's important and what's hype is tough.

No doubt about it, knowing the basics of social media and keeping up with technology trends will definitely help your business.  The old ways of marketing your business are quickly being replaced with much easier, cheaper and targeted ways, so knowing about these methods will not only save you money, but make you money.

There are also plenty of money pits.  In the late 90's I founded a company focused on helping small businesses drive traffic to their websites.  Back then, many businesses had been sold a fancy looking website costing tens of thousands of dollars and were perplexed when no-one visited it.  The website designers knew nothing about online marketing.  I helped bridge the gap, using SEO (search engine optimization), affiliate marketing (using other websites to promote your products) and paid search (buying keywords on search engines).  Back then, it was the wild west (and there were a lot of cowboys).  Now these online marketing methods are well established and making companies like Google, billions of dollars every year.

ThisDigitalWorld helps filter the important from the not so important, enabling businesses of any size to benefit from the way the technology world is changing.