DaveChaffey.com

The Backlash against Google Glass has rightly started - you can...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:26:41 +0100

The Backlash against Google Glass has rightly started - you can prepare with these badges from Stop The Cyborgs.

They’re not technophobes, but want to call out the challenges of this technology - for example most wouldn’t want to be a victim of Glass image recognition as they walk down the street…

"We present results from a series of large-scale ﬁeld experiments done at eBay that are designed to..."

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:02:48 +0100

“

We present results from a series of large-scale ﬁeld experiments done at eBay that are designed to detect the causal effectiveness of paid search advertisements.

Results show that brand-keyword ads have no short-term beneﬁts, and that returns from all other keywords are a fraction of conventional estimates.

”

- Just taking a look at this new research from eBay on PPC investments.

It shows the importance of questioning and testing media investments.

But I think it’s dangerous to read too much into the research since eBay’s brand strength is such that they have limited competition for the type of purchases made there and you would expect PPC ads to cannibalise the organic listings. I’ve seen tests from UK brands that show that brand-bidding DOES drive incremental business. You will also notice that Amazon continues to bid aggressively on AdWords and I know they test AdWords ROI extensively.

You may also know that eBay used to advertise on a huge range of keywords in a less targeted way than most businesses. The report acknowledges that eBay advertises on over 70 million keywords - you maybe saw the eBay ads for “nuclear fission”?

What businesses want from paid search is to drive awareness and sales from people who don’t know a brand and behind the main headlines and articles written about this report there is evidence that PPC is effective:

”_We ﬁnd that SEM accounted for a statistically signiﬁcant increase in new registered users and purchases made by users who bought only one or two items the year before.

For consumers who bought more frequently, SEM does not have a signiﬁcant effect on their purchasing behavior_”.

This review of the research in Search Marketing Standard Does eBay’s Research Reflect The Effectiveness Of Paid Search? reminds us that other general studies such as that by Google (naturally) showed that across their advertisers “89% of paid search clicks are “incremental,” while roughly 66% of all ad clicks occur in the absence of an associated organic search result”.

"V2MOM: A planning mnemonic from Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com: Vision: What do you want? Write it..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 12:08:05 +0100

“

V2MOM: A planning mnemonic from Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com:

Vision: What do you want? Write it down in 10 to 15 words
Values: What is most important about that vision? What are the values of the vision? Is it growth, is it quality, is it excellence? Write those things down and prioritize them.
Methods: How are you going to achieve it? What are the actions that you’re going to specifically take? In priority, write them down.
Obstacles: What is preventing you from achieving that outcome – right now? Write it down. What other obstacles may occur?
Measures: How will you know if you’re successful? What are the measurements of success? Write it down.

”

- Focus… is tough! These ideas on how to get it in this post on Marketing Focus from Danyl Bosomworth were new to me and look useful.

V2MOM is a clunky acronym, but I like the focus on Obstacles - often when setting objectives we don’t look at what will get in the way. When I used to manage software dev, looking at project risks was a big part of planning, so why not in business/marketing strategy:

We’ve been talking about the potential of scannable...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:31:00 +0000

We’ve been talking about the potential of scannable clothes for a long time - here’s a new example where scanning with a mobile plays a “How we made video” - so making it part of the experience.

Burberry have integrated it into a campaign. It’s part of the Made To Order campaign with Smart Personalization. Customers are able to order products straight from the runway, and have them delivered in nine weeks with personalized engraved nameplates.

They’re similar to RFID but a new technology developed by Burberry - read more on PSFK.

Some time before Primark has this for how their products were made…

How 50 of the top online businesses make money - a cool...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:45:55 +0000

How 50 of the top online businesses make money - a cool interactive tool for lecturers and students of digital marketing.

The most popular CV in the World right now

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:27:33 +0000

The most popular CV in the World right now

Also from Google… emergentfutures: Google: Self-driving...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:21:57 +0000

Also from Google…

emergentfutures:

Google: Self-driving cars in 3-5 years. Feds: Not so fast

The self-driving car could be available to consumers in 3-5 years, the head of Google’s autonomous driving project says. That’s the most optimistic timeframe yet. Other projections have been for 2020 and beyond,

Full Story: ExtremeTech

Google Glass in action… looks great! Google Glass (and...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 09:20:00 +0000

Google Glass in action… looks great!

Google Glass (and Wearable Computing more generally) has to be the biggest new digital tech development for 2013 - and for several years.

Where do I sign up?

If you want to Beta - then Google is looking for Explorers.

"Amazon soon to give customers money (virtual) - watch out from May onwards"

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:37:28 +0000

“Amazon soon to give customers money (virtual) - watch out from May onwards”

- Introducing Amazon Coins - the official announcement

_Coming in May, Amazon Coins is a new virtual currency for purchasing apps, games, and in-app items on Kindle Fire

Amazon Coins is an easy way for Kindle Fire customers to spend money on developers’ apps in the Amazon Appstore, offering app and game developers another substantial opportunity to drive traffic, downloads and increase monetization even further

Amazon will give customers tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Amazon Coins to use on developers’ apps in the Amazon Appstore-apps and games must be submitted and approved by April 25 to be ready when Amazon Coins arrive in customers’ accounts_

Read more from the FT

"Digital contributed half of all ad revenue at Wired magazine in the final three months of 2012, a..."

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:20:00 +0000

“

Digital contributed half of all ad revenue at Wired magazine in the final three months of 2012, a first for the title and an encouraging sign for an industry where most big brands still rely overwhelmingly on the difficult business of print.

Across the year as a whole, digital ads comprised 45% of total ad sales at Wired, according to the magazine.

”

"… Zip drives ate floppies. CDs ate Zips. DVDs ate CDs. SD cards ate film. LCDs ate..."

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:00:01 +0000

“

… Zip drives ate floppies.

CDs ate Zips.

DVDs ate CDs.

SD cards ate film.

LCDs ate CRTs.

Telephony ate telegraphy.

Text messaging ate talking.

Tablets are eating our paper …

”

- Challenging + interesting times for traditional publishers written up in this excellent post by Craig Mod on Subcompact Publishing.

New study on companies worth $100M shows how much of a lie the Web 2.0 fad was

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 15:07:57 +0000

New study on companies worth $100M shows how much of a lie the Web 2.0 fad was:

There were only 472 companies they could find worth more than $100 million. I know, that sounds like a lot. But it’s really not. There are thousands of companies started every year, and the companies in this group were funded as early as 1998.

What’s more: They took a huge amount of cash to get to this point. In aggregate $40 billion has gone into funding these 472 companies. The median amount was $75.8 million per company and the average was $84.7 million. Now a lot of these companies are worth well over $100 million. But on average that’s not exactly a stunning return on investment.

Let’s look at that 20 percent in the consumer space. Out of some 80 companies, 34 of them were in the ecommerce space. Again, companies with a model for making money. Out of every company valued at north of $100 million since 1998, roughly 50 are building a business off of advertising. That’s astoundingly low, and kicks the grab-eyeballs-and-figure-it-out-later ethos right in the teeth.

I don’t agree with the “Fad” term, but perhaps not transformational in opportunities for new businesses.

It was nice to receive this Twitpic from Sarah Woodman of the...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:50:00 +0000

It was nice to receive this Twitpic from Sarah Woodman of the new edition of Emarketing Excellence in use for serious bedtime reading.

View 5th edition of Emarketing Excellence on Amazon

I thought it might be interesting/useful to share my experiences...

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:24:41 +0000

I thought it might be interesting/useful to share my experiences of how I created my first infographic. Dan Bosomworth has been the brains behind most of our Marketing Infographics for Smart Insights although I have reviewed and shaped them.

This was the first statistics-based infographic I’ve been involved with producing. It took around 3-4 hours to research with assistance from a researcher - thanks Louise! I aimed for it to be both useful and to look good (thanks to Rich our designer at First10). I also wanted to make the source of the data clear for anyone following up on it - infographics are often poor at crediting their sources, sometimes making them look good, but useless…

We also wanted to link to the objective of promoting Rene Powers new Ebook, so had a clear call-to-action for this. I wondered whether this would affect sharing, but it seems to have been shared quite well with Pinterest the highest thanks to my including the sharing button in the post. Shares so far for the B2B infographic according to SharedCount - a good, quick way to prepare a summary are:

Facebook Likes: 24 Shares: 40 Comments: 0 Total: 64

Twitter Tweets: 191

Google +1 +1s: 15

Diggs Diggs: 0

Pinterest Pinned: 226

LinkedIn Shares: 158 Delicious

Bookmarks: 3

StumbleUpon Stumbles: 0

It took a couple of weeks overall with the design revisions, so infographics aren’t “cheap, quick or easy”.

I hope this is interesting for others thinking about creating infographics?

QR code usage doubles in last 12 months in Europe - new Comscore...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:49:00 +0100

QR code usage doubles in last 12 months in Europe - new Comscore data

Source: [Smart Insights Digital Marketing]

As our post explains, you don’t see process diagrams for...

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:19:00 +0100

As our post explains, you don’t see process diagrams for inbound marketing so often. This post has a useful way of describing steps to create an inbound marketing strategy. Source: [Inbound marketing infographic from Smart Insights]

Benchmarking Facebook Page Engagement Some interesting insight...

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 13:04:00 +0100

Benchmarking Facebook Page Engagement

Some interesting insight was published by Social Bakers this week where they look at engagement rates of Facebook pages in the UK.

Source: [Smart Insights Digital Marketing]

The essentials of today’s marketing inspired by Seth...

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:04:00 +0100

The essentials of today’s marketing inspired by Seth Godin.

Source: [Smart Insights Digital Marketing]

What matters in marketing? Loads of people “Liked”...

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:42:00 +0100

What matters in marketing? Loads of people “Liked” this when we posted to our Facebook, it’s from SethGodin - he has a great skill in simplifying what matters.

Source: [Smart Insights Digital Marketing]

Interested in learning more about SEO? Daniel Rowles and Ciaran...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:31:32 +0100

Interested in learning more about SEO? Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers, our friends from the Digital Marketing Podcast have a new E-book introducing SEO. I’m alerting here since they have a free launch promotion.

You can download it free from Amazon until 8pm Sunday 29th July.

As the title suggests, it’s comprehensive, covering all the key areas of SEO. It’s up-to-date with short sections on Google+ and YouTube Marketing and the latest tools. It also gives advice on working with agencies. I recommend it as introduction for marketers or students who don’t have a detailed knowledge of SEO.