Jonny - Head of Social Media The Wall, Brand Republic’s social media blog, has published the last in our series of social media audits looking at the performance of the retail sector.
It’s been a fascinating exercise. Essentially we’ve found that across the retail sector there is huge untapped potential and that very few retailers are really fulfilling their social media opportunities. Get in touch if you need help demystifying social media. We can add real value.
Here’s the article, which looks at high street booksellers, card shops, jewellers and opticians.
Natalie - PPC Account Executive Last week Google started to alert AdWords users to ‘New! Improvements coming to exact match and phrase match’. The use of the word ‘improvements’ should be taken lightly, more on this later…
Exact and phrase match, which up until now have done precisely what they say on the tin in terms of search query matching, will no longer work as we know them.
This is the way they were:
Exact match – matching keywords only to exact match search queries.
Phrase match – matching keywords to search queries which include the phrase in exact order but with additional keywords able to be present on either side of the phrase.
This has been something which has worked well for advertisers, allowing you to get cheaper clicks for exact match keywords and being able to tailor ad copy very specifically.
Now Google’s changes, which are to come into effect at the start of May, are to shake up an AdWords staple.
The new exact and phrase match:
| Exact match keyword | Ads may show on searches for | Ads won’t show on searches for |
| [tennis shoes] | tennis shoes tenis shoe |
red tennis shoes buy tennis shoes |
| Phrase match keyword | Ads may show on searches for | Ads won’t show on searches for |
| “tennis shoes” | red tennis shoes red tenis shoes |
shoes for tennis tennis trainers |
AdWords gives the above examples and explains that ads will be eligible to be shown for close variants of your exact and phrase match keywords. Close variants are said to include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemming (-ing, -ed and so on), abbreviations and accents.
In many ways this will be a useful change, and it will eliminate the need for trawling search query reports for misspellings. It does however make the new match types a lot closer to broad match modifier.
There are also some negatives that spring to mind, and a cynical view would be to see this as a way for Google to further increase revenue by increasing visibility and therefore clicks on exact and phrase match keywords. Not only this, but the change could also be detrimental in cases where keyword insertion is used in ad copy, and where ad groups have been split out very granularly for ad copy purposes. For example, we would generally separate ‘ski holiday’ from ‘skiing holiday’ so that searches see an exact reflection of their query in the ad text.
Google will automatically opt you in to these changes, but crucially you do have the option to stick to the old exact and phrase matching options.
The choice is yours…
Jonny - Head of Social Media Socialbakers, the Facebook analytics and marketing platform, has released an infographic highlighting the performance on UK brands on Facebook.
From our perspective it is interesting to see that it is not just product brands seeing great success from social media but also restaurants, retailers, charities, travel and media companies and so on. This reflects the current status quo that social media is now very much a central part of how people now engage with companies.
This infographic highlights the real potential of social media. No matter what your budget is, make sure you aren’t left behind and put some real commitment towards social media.
Jonny - Head of Social Media It has been a big week for social media developments. Facebook buying the mobile photo application Instagram for $1 billion, and Google+ rolling out a brand new look.
What does this news mean for social media marketing and your business?
Facebook buying Instagram
Facebook’s mobile strategy is central to its growth as a business. Recently Facebook evolved its advertising platform so that adverts are now published on people’s newsfeeds and therefore also available on mobile. Instagram, despite not having an obvious revenue strategy, it does perhaps offer more flexibility should Facebook increase its focus on content advertising. Facebook’s recently rolled out Premium Ads stress that this is an area of growth.
Ultimately Facebook’s overall strategy is about content, with photography being a key component. Facebook is the number one photo sharing site online by miles and the Instagram not only solidifies this position but it lets it evolve its proposition, both in terms of customisation and mobile activation.
Instagram is a great application as demonstrated by its impressive growth. As a result of it being acquired by Facebook, Instagram’s exciting functionality will now have an even greater audience. Ultimately this move should enable businesses to share more interesting photography with their audiences in a seamless matter, helping generate better community engagement as a result – on Facebook at least.
Google+ new design
Google, having received some slack around the usage of its social media platform, has this week rolled out a new design for it. The video below, produced by the search giant itself, highlights the new Google+ design:
Firstly, it is very evident that Google has made changes to counteract Facebook’s roll out of Timeline. Profile page designs (for both users and brands) are suspiciously similar.
Secondly, there is a greater degree of customisation, so the user can focus on functionality they are most likely to use. I particularly like the new “Explore” tab which highlights the important discussions happening there and then.
Finally, and probably the most important thing to note for businesses, is there is now an additional column which got online conversations buzzing (including a Twitter trended hashtag #whitespace) this week. Discussions have been largely centred on this being perceived to be a design flaw.
Misguided or somewhat missing the point?
At DBD Media we believe that Google doesn’t make alterations unless it they have been thought through. In fact Google’s own social media head Vic Gundotra has publically said “We have plans for the column.”
Timely and in the news, Google today reported strong first-quarter results based on advertising returns. Advertising you say? The #whitespace becomes a whole lot more interesting in this context.
Axelle - Conversion Analytics Consultant 
Founded in 2004, IgnitionOne (formely SearchIgnite) is a global leader in digital marketing solutions enabling companies to integrate cross-channel marketing efforts within one platform, thus allowing deeper insights and greater online success.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend IgnitionOne’s webinar presenting their Digital Marketing Suite’s newest feature: Engagement Optimisation.
Relying on last-click attribution has been long accepted as one of the common pitfalls of conversion optimisation. Every marketer should have heard of A.I.D.A. It’s in every business class, textbook, manual, and is the number one sales best practice. But when it comes to investing real money, best practices fly out the window. Let’s review the process:
- Awareness: a user clicks on an ad for your website
- Interest: they browse through your website
- Desire & Decision: they later come back to your website via a search engine
- Action: they make a purchase
→ The conversion is attributed to organic traffic (search engine) when really it would never have happened without the ad.
Some tools such as DoubleClick, CoreMetrics or Omniture already provide multi-channel attribution which shows how different channels work together to generate a conversion. But IgnitionOne’s nifty little device does much more.
By tracking traffic sources and measuring the level of activity that leads users to conversion, the platform now draws a profile for each specific visitor based on keywords and Facebook activity. Instead of using one single metric, or a selection of metrics to determine a user’s propensity to convert, IgnitionOne uses a combination of metrics and cross-channel attribution to allocate an “engagement score” to each user profile.
As a conversion rate optimiser, can you imagine being able to determine after exactly how many visits from what source of traffic and how long on the website which user interested in what product will be most inclined to click on that big CTA you have designed especially for them?
And on top of that, it looks really cool!
I therefore encourage online marketers to get their geek on and try out this new tool which has the potential to reinvent CRO!