Digital Marketing | Digital Strategy | This Digital World

Insights for Search - Digital Marketing Terms

Google's Insights for Search tool (beta) provides a simple way of looking at trending search terms.  Today I looked at digital marketing related search terms.  This data is worldwide searches since 2004.

Internet Marketing

 

Interesting decline from what was a hot keyword search from the early 2000's. 'Web marketing' shows exactly the same trend.

Online Marketing

 

Fairly flat for 'online marketing' - no distinctive change over time.

Digital Marketing

'Digital Marketing' shows a marked increase, possibly because 'digital' represents more than just online, so as mobile has grown, so has this term.

Affiliate Marketing

Finally I looked at 'affiliate marketing' and as you can see, it shows significant growth.  Interesting, since affiliate marketing has been around since the early internet days.  It shows just how important affiliate marketing is as part of an overall digital marketing mix and how valid affiliate marketing still is in today's digital world.

As a side note, anything with 'digital media' in it has seen a significant drop off over time.

Digital Sales Will Take Time to Replace Physical

A recent study by research firm EMarketer shows that it will be another tough few years for the movie business, as sales of DVDs continue to decline and digital sales fall short of making up the gap.

 
Despite expected healthy growth in digital, it is a bleak picture for many of the big entertainment companies, who some say are still not doing enough to embrace this real change in consumer behaviour.

With services in the US like Hulu offering a simple way to watch movies and TV online, often for a fraction of the price of DVDs (or free), it is not too surprising that consumers are opting for the simplest, cheapest way to get what they want.  Netflix launched its streaming iphone app last week, which gives any registered user paying about $9 a month, access to hundreds of movies instantly, through their iphone or ipad.  It works beautifully, so long as you are on a decent wifi connection.

The music industry has the same set of issues, although arguably piracy is a bigger problem.

As technology improvements continue to make life simpler, we will all gravitate to accessing content in the simplest, cheapest and least riskiest way possible.  Now is the time for traditional entertainment companies to start building some brand equity in the digital world and position themselves for future growth by building relationships directly with the consumer, rather than dragging their heels and pretending that this digital evolution is smaller than it really is.

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.

David Cameron, Facebook and Social Research

 The UK government today released a video on YouTube, showing David Cameron chatting with Mark Zuckerberg about using Facebook to engage the UK population on policy change.

I take my proverbial hat off to Cameron; not only is he putting himself and his government in the place where a large proportion of his voters hang out (there are 26 million UK Facebook users) but through the Democracy UK initiative, it seems like he might actually care about what the voters want and think.

Engaging the public, asking their opinions on how to spend the billions he has at his disposal and doing it in a way that is natural and easy for people makes a lot of sense.

Interestingly Cameron remarks towards the end of the video, "If Government wants to engage people we often spend millions, sometimes billions...this is a way to do it for free!"

The potential for businesses to use Facebook as a research platform is huge and it's simple.  Announce a new product feature and ask for feedback; ask your users what they want to see next; ask them what's not so great about your product or service. The possibilities are endless, the upsides huge.

Remember there are also downsides.  The users that become a fan of your Facebook page will be your most vocal customers.  If they are spending the time to leave comments that will help you make a better product and ultimately more money, then they expect to be listened to.  They expect to get timely feedback.  They will criticize and expect you to deal with it in a level-headed way.  Learning how to communicate effectively with your customers/supporters through Facebook takes time and is not easy.  But if you are respectful of them, treat them like you would expect to be treated yourself and understand the power of Facebook as a research tool, you will be able to:
1. Do research for free
2. Make a better product/service
3. Change your 'brand' perceptions for the better
4. Create more loyal users

That's what Cameron is hoping to do with this initiative and I wish him every success.

You can watch the video below: