Marketing on Google continues to grow

Many analysts have wished to pronounce the death of Google +prematurely, however the online search giant will always have the asset of marketing on Google to promote its new online products and services which will in turn increase revenue from marketing on Google. This year Google managed to attract 1 billion unique users, a first for the internet, emphasising the monstrous power of marketing on Google.

Google + has reportedly hit around 40 million users, however the problem for the site is that users do not engage with it as they do with Facebook, sharing a lot less publicly and spending less time on it. This makes it less attractive to advertisers. However marketing on Google has proven to be effective over the last few years and Google has taken steps to integrate the social networking site with its other products.

This month’s redesign of Youtube shows a greater emphasis on channels which Google have spent $100 million developing recently. A channel encourages a user to watch for longer than an individual video, which in turn is good for marketing on Google as advertisements can be more effective. Retaining the users interest for longer also encourages more interaction with the Youtube community, and this is where social integration has been ramped up to encourage more users to use their Google + account.

Further methods of integration are also in evidence. Google + accounts can be easily set up from the popular Gmail service. Gmail then also ties in with Google talk and all are now available from the Google homepage which 90% of all searches are conducted from, and which is the main source of marketing on Google revenue. Furthermore, the Android mobile platform which now has a 52% majority in the smartphone market also acts as a vehicle to drive users to marketing on Google. The user account to download apps on Android is a Gmail account, the same as can be used for Google +. Of course, Google also provides 160 million users with the Chrome browser to also further enhance marketing on Google. With such popular services driving traffic to Google +, and more integration to come, it will not fail to gain users. Whether it retains their attention to further enhance marketing on Google is questionable.

Search Engine Optimisation to Change as Search Evolves?

There are few bigger monopolies in the world than the one that exists in the search engine market. Google has dominated since its inception and is believed to have a share greater than 90% for the worldwide market, making it essential for search engine optimisation. It’s once great rival Yahoo’s value has halved in four years, while other competitors like Ask or AOL are considered irrelevant.Search engine optimisation companies barely have to bother with these search engines now.

Of course Microsoft launched Bing to compete, but there is little reason to switch other than the convenience of having Bing as the default search in Internet Explorer browsers, though this is enough to be considered important in search engine optimisation. Even the IE browser is challenged by Google though, as they have caught up on IE with their Google Chrome internet browser facilitating more Google searches and making Google even more relevant for search engine optimisation.

However Googles dominance does not appear to put off other smaller challengers. Bitly, who provide shortened links that prove useful for microblogging sites such as Twitter, want to challenge Google by providing a search engine which searches based on what is relevant and trending now, allowing it to make use of the data it receives from users shortening their links on their site. This promises to give a more relevant search with links from the previous 3 days given priority. However a different algorithm for search means a different approach to search engine optimisation.

Siri on iPhone 4S is another that may disrupt the search engine’s status quo and methods of search engine optimisation. Currently if Siri can find the answers it takes the user to the site avoiding Google’s ads, and using voice and searching databases provides a new way to find answers via the internet. Should new methods of search become popular, it will also mean changes and challenges for search engine optimisationand online marketing.

Marketing by Goals

It is important when looking to achieve success in business that you outline targets and have a strategy to meet these targets. Marketing is one of the most crucial aspects of success in business and marketing by goals is a good way to achieve business success.

The first step is to identify the goals. What do you want to achieve? Marketing by goals strategies can have a variety of measures of marketing success. Do you want to simply increase revenue or do you want to increase market share? Will you do this by spreading product awareness and focusing on lead generation, or by targeting existing customers with a new range of products? Of course you can have many goals, or one larger goal such as lead generation can have many sub goals to achieve the overall aim.

Once the goals are identified a suitable strategy must be used to achieve them. Will you be using marketing online? Will it be an expensive targeted campaign, a wider reaching approach or a cheaper social media method? There are also many factors in the marketing environment, both internally and externally to consider. A thorough environmental scan is important even when marketing online as websites audiences will vary significantly in terms of location and demographics.

Once a strategy is built the next step is to measure whether or not marketing by goals has achieved the objectives set as this will help you to learn how to make a more effective strategy next time. This requires a feedback loop of some kind where you can measure how effective the marketing has been. When marketing online this can be from using website analytics to measure click rates or web traffic or in a store it could be an increase in footfall. Marketing by goals strategies are dynamic, and should the measurement not indicate your target is being met, then the strategy should be adapted to be more effective.

Social Media the key to Online Marketing Engagement

In a world before online marketing, advertising was based on predictions of interest due to likely demographics of the target audience. Television adverts were targeted in the sense that the advert was run between programs which were watched by a targeted demographic of the population, for instance beer commercials during sports matches, as both sport and beer’s best customers are predominantly male, and in the age range of 18-35.

With early online marketing a similar approach was taken, banner advertisements would be placed on sites relevant to the advert. However evidence suggests that this is not overly effective, with only 0.09% of visitors clicking on the adverts. Other forms of online marketing have proved intrusive, with pop ups often prompting a negative reaction.

Google provided one of the first effective methods of online marketing through the adverts that support its search engine in the sponsored results. The online marketing was targeted to the user as it responds to what the user searched for and displayed results which may be of interest. Social media has taken this one step further, with adverts based on the information a user has communicated about themselves. Furthermore, the way brands interact with users on sites such as Facebook is very similar to how users interact with each other, making it seem less like online marketing, and instead treating the user as more of a fan of the brand, which helps develop loyalty. Stores such as Wallmart now even provide applications to help Facebook users buy gifts for their friends, disguising online marketing as a helpful tool.

The internet also allows more interactive media, with games and contests available to facilitate online marketing and give the user more involvement in the advert. Yet this is not the pinnacle of social media, the growth of location as an element of social media has great potential for facilitating geo marketing as does the migration to smartphones for mobile marketing. Online marketing will only continue to grow with new innovations in the social marketing field.

Facebook to fund new smartphone through mobile marketing revenues

Rumours have grown stronger in the last month that Facebook is set to enter the smartphone market currently dominated by Apple and Google by producing an operating system of it’s own.

The new Facebook phone project, supposedly codenamed ‘Buffy’ will develop a Facebook customised user interface based upon the Android system, to run on an HTC device. Other wilder rumours have suggested Facebook may even sell the phone for free, and this may not prove bad business sense due to its mobile marketing potential.

Google currently gives away its Android operating system to handset manufacturers for free, with the revenues coming from online marketing on Google’s online services which are integrated with the operating system. Facebook could increase its revenues from online marketing in a similar fashion by increasing web traffic to Facebook through integration with the phones operating system. There are further opportunities inmobile marketing and even geo marketing for a potential Facebook phone as the social networking site makes location more of an important factor in sharing.

Google and Apple have built many high end phones, so Facebook’s strategy may well be to target the lower end of the market knowing they can make a return from online marketing. The Amazon Kindle Fire has a similar low end strategy, undercutting the iPad on price and features, but through mobile marketing the revenues can be recouped from the sales of ebooks for the device, and also from online marketing advertisements subsidising the lowest priced Kindle.

While Apple may produce all aspects of their product in house and receive the largest share of profits in the smartphone industry, its rivals have shown that the value of online marketing as they generate profits through technology by using devices as tools for mobile marketing and online marketing in their primary businesses.

Social Media tools to track Online Marketing

Keeping up with what’s trending on the internet is an essential part of managing online marketing and geo marketing. Advertisers must keep up with what is popular and topical across the internet in order to make sure their online marketing and mobile marketing remains relevant.

Trending on Twitter is the main way to keep up with what is happening on the net, however there are many tools to help make even greater sense of the wealth of topics being discussed online. Trendmaps.com allows users to see to see what is trending by location, showing a map with popular topics associated with different countries and regions, which proves very useful for geo marketing, as online marketing efforts can be tailored to individual countries depending on the hot topics of that country.

There are also further domestic sites such as What’s Trending which will provide explanations of the latest trends, and help marketers to understand why topics are popular. Geo marketing requires an understanding of individual territories however it is impossible for individuals to keep up with news in all targeted territories across the world so sites that provide help towards understanding are useful in online marketing.

Groups of users can also be targeted on Twitter by using a variety of search engines to find key words or hashtags for online marketing. This is not only limited to Twitter, Google provides a dedicated blog search engine much like it does for news or shopping.

If you want to evaluate your online marketing influence by your social media profile, one dedicated application is Klout, which measures how influencial you are online by your social networking followers and activity. However don’t expect to score a Klout of 100 unless you are Justin Bieber, the internet’s most influential personality, whose online marketing potential has recently been highlighted with fees paid for his tweets about Spotify.

Merry Mobile Marketing

Smartphones look set to play a key part in many consumers Christmas shopping as online marketing and new methods of mobile marketing play a greater role in product decisions. In America, two thirds of shoppers said that their smartphone would have a role in purchase decisions during the back to school shopping period.

For the much more lucrative Christmas period advertisers will look to increase their online marketing and mobile marketing efforts ever further. QR codes are one such methods of engaging customers though mobile marketing. The codes are displayed in store, on billboards or in a variety of media which can be scanned by a smartphone’s camera. The scanned code then links to a website, application or text message which can offer the user discounts or other ways to engage with the brand. The method has been around for a while but is growing in popularity as the hardware to engage with the codes becomes more readily available.

Most of the population of the US and the UK are unaware of QR codes and their mobile marketing intentions however in larger cities their presence may become unmissable. Ebay have launched a ‘pop-up’ store in London for five days over the Christmas period which will contain products with QR code links to their online marketing. There will be no over the counter purchases as the store simply acts as a vehicle to promote the online auction site. Larger retail stores such as Debenhams and John Lewis are also keen to make use of mobile marketing by displaying QR codes, while Starbucks teamed up with Lady Gaga to promote their online marketing efforts with a scavenger hunt to promote her new album.

While QR codes provide a convenience and a thrill from using the latest technology, many customers will simply be responding to online marketing from manually entering product information to their phones in store as mobile marketing offers a wider choice and greater price competition than the high street can.