Google +1 = Facebook Like + Twitter RT

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Ben Adam

On the 30th March, Google announced yet another foray into the social side of the web with the Google +1 button. The Google +1 button is a simple way for people to share and receive website recommendations, “right when you want them” in the search results page.

Below I take a look at the potential implications:

+1 and Paid Search

Google +1 won’t just be coming to Natural Search results but Paid Search ads too. +1ing a search result or on any publisher will impact the way the Paid ad is displayed. Advertisers can opt out using this form but Christian Oestlien, Google’s Group Product Manager for Ads, told SearchEngineLand how the +1 had the potential to significantly increase click through rates (CTRs) from Paid results.

A more Social Google

Google states “relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships”. Google +1 is yet another stage of evolution of Google to a more social experience. The recent Social Search update has seen an increase in the number of results ranking based on things your friends in your social circle have shared on Twitter, Flickr and other sites. If your logged into your Google account you can see what Google knows about your social circle based on your contacts and connected accounts.

The Impact of +1 on Search

Google is emphasising right from the start that this is going to influence search results as Tom Critchlow identified in the type of language being used by Google around the launch of +1. Currently you need to have a Google account and be logged in. This already is a limitation to the impact the +1 will have at least initially with Google looking to take capitalise on the approximately 170 million Gmail users. This is however far less than Facebook’s 500 million active users.

Our very own Lucy Freeborn sums up the struggle facing Google

“My main thoughts on it are that, even for Google, it’s fairly ambitious. As Facebook’s like button is universal it’s going to be quite difficult to get people to use another button that, in principle, does exactly the same thing. Also, almost everyone has a Facebook account that they log into everyday where as far less people have a Google account and not everyone is logged into their Google account all the time. As +1 will only work when you’re logged into your Google account I think this could be a big issue for Google.”

If you are not logged in and you click the +1 button, you won’t be able to recommend (you’ll be asked to sign up or login). However, without a Google profile you may still be subject to the influence of the +1. On Google’s official +1 post:

And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the web have +1’d your local coffee shop.

So even if other peoples +1s don’t affect rankings when your logged out (which I would expect they will) CTRs will potentially see a similar boost as is expected with the Paid Search ads.

+1 and Spam

A lot of comments around the launch of +1 have been about how easy it will be for people to manipulate. However, the nature of the Social Circle means Google has a lot of information from your connected accounts to help confirm your humanness making it potentially very hard to game.

What to do next?

Be prepared, get ready to add +1 buttons to products, blog posts etc. think about how they might best fit into your site design. There aren’t any

Currently only a small number of searchers on Google.com in the US will be able to see the +1 buttons automatically, but if you’re keen for an early preview you can enable it in Google experimental search. Just make sure your on Google.com for the moment.

Depending on whether Google is willing to share statistics related to users there is potentially a huge amount of demographic data available. Google has hinted at this in its Privacy Policy:

“We may share aggregate statistics related to users’ +1 activity with the public, our users, and partners, such as publishers, advertisers, or connected sites. For example, we may tell a publisher that “10% of the people who +1’d this page are in Tacoma, Washington.”

It’s still early stages and it’s very hard to guess the uptake of +1. Google has historically struggled with its attempts at being social so far (remember Google Wave and Buzz?)

At the moment it’s a wait and see.

Digital marketing benchmarking report for premium food and drink retailers

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Ben Potter

Last year, we conducted a survey of premium home and garden retailers, seeking to understand their use of, and attitudes towards digital marketing.

This year, we have looked at the food and drink sector, focusing on retailers selling premium/luxury products online. The basic premise remained the same as the previous home and garden study; to better understand the marketing tactics being employed by retailers, what they felt was working (or not, as the case may be) and plans for 2011.

This research was conducted over a series of one-to-one qualitative interviews. Out of a target list of 80 companies, a quarter were kind enough to take part in almost 40 hours of discussions.

Top level findings

In summary, we found that a lack of understanding, lack of resource and inaccurate reporting are key factors hampering online success in the premium food and drink sector. The research revealed many companies are seemingly hamstrung by a failure to map digital marketing activity back to their overall business and financial objectives. Indeed, fewer than 20% of respondents know the return on investment (ROI) they are seeing from digital marketing and only a quarter of our interview sample is measuring the lifetime value of a customer.

However, companies are seemingly willing to continue increasing investment in certain activities without setting clear objectives and having the tools in place to measure the impact. Social media, which includes social networking, forums and communities and blogging, is shown to be an activity that many of the respondents do not fully understand and, historically, have been unable to measure results with any degree of accuracy. However, almost half of respondents plan on dedicating greater resource to this activity in 2011.

You can download for full report for free. It also includes a number of key questions (page 6) that we believe premium food and drink retailers need to be asking of themselves if they are to achieve the following:

Link digital marketing activity to overall commercial and financial objectives

Invest, what is often limited resources (time and money), in the right areas

Measure the impact of activity back to the bottom line

Keep abreast of the new developments and shifts in consumer behaviour

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the report findings, please get in touch with Ben Potter.

ASA’s CAP Code expansion and how it impacts your social media strategy

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Johanna Hakala

The Advertising Standards Authority’s expansion of the Committee of Advertising Practice Code came into force last week to try help ‘legitimise’ social media.

According to NMA, the code now includes a brand’s non-paid-for online marketing, such as its website and social media space. This is an expansion from regulating only paid-for marketing communications, such as pop-up and banner ads, paid search and viral ads.

As the social media space becomes more monitored, businesses will need to ensure they are abiding by the new rules. The full guidelines can be found here, but we have compiled the key areas to be aware of when executing your social media strategy:

First and foremost, ensure that all your content is accurate. All copy and messages on your business website or in any social media channels must be legal and any claims must be backed up with statistical data which is properly referenced

You must not falsely claim or imply that you are acting as a consumer. You (and your business) must make clear your commercial intent if it’s not obvious from the context

Comments from consumers about your brand on your Facebook page or Twitter feed are a part of natural conversation and will not fall under the code; however, should you use these comments in your marketing activity, they will. You must check the customer source and legitimacy before using their content, such as when retweeting

Laws are already in place in terms of using paid endorsements – this includes any comments on blogs, Facebook and Twitter. It must be clearly stated if, for example, a celebrity has been paid or given free products in return for talking about your brand

These moves, whilst still a work in progress (the code is valid for two years with quarterly reviews), are looking to take social media into a more mature, controlled space.

In the end it’s also to protect the consumer even further in an area in which they share so much personal information.

Five questions to ask yourself before you open a Twitter account

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Rosie Freshwater

Despite the growing popularity of Twitter and the many cases where retail brands have demonstrated significant returns from the channel, there remain many companies that have not yet found a way (or the right way) of utilising it.

There are numerous examples of brands setting up Twitter accounts that then lay dormant because the company failed to understand the amount of resource that would be required to manage it effectively. Or, companies are using their feeds purely as a broadcast channel, not realising that Twitter is as much about listening and engaging with customers as it is about communicating special offers and discounts.

However, there are instances where the misuse of the channel has caused brands real damage. Take the recent Kenneth Cole debacle. The brand has suffered real damage from an ill-advised tweet relating to the Egypt crisis:

This tweet seemingly came from Kenneth Cole himself and is a great example of a brand or individual not fully understanding the channel or the ‘rules of engagement’.

As a business owner, I would never allow anyone to Tweet from our business account unless they understood how to use Twitter in line with Leapfrogg’s business strategy, company ethics, key messages and communication style. This makes absolute sense to me but is probably due to the fact that we are a digital agency and understand the medium. I’d guess Kenneth Cole’s tweet was innocent in its intentions but somewhere along the line the company’s core values and messages were forgotten.

I also find it alarming that there are high profile and traditionally ‘savvy’ companies who hand over the Twitter feed to their intern or junior employees as apparently ‘they get the web more’. I find it even more worrying that there are people out there recommending that they take such a casual approach. I only recently heard a “digital expert” recommend to a large conference room that they ‘get cracking with Twitter and see what happens as you should just be on it’.

Gulp!

I would say that this is the last thing brands should do. It’s easy to get caught in a panic that you should have a presence on Twitter as everyone else around you seems to be there. However, launching into such a public and powerful medium without research and planning, can do more harm than good.

Take the case of Habitat who in 2009 put an intern in charge of their Twitter account. The maverick intern probably thought piggybacking the civil unrest in Iran was inventive. However, the backlash from Habitat’s followers and the wider community demonstrated a naivety of the medium and the audience, which again caused a PR nightmare for the company.

So with these examples in mind, what can you do to avoid making the same mistakes? Numerous blog posts are out there talking about specific tactics, how to grow your followers for example, but what should you be thinking about before you even open an account? Here are five actions to help you execute a more effective Twitter strategy:

Do you understand your target audience?

Ask yourself, is my target audience even using Twitter? It sounds obvious but we’ve spoken to dozens of companies who are investing a significant amount of time and resource in Twitter without having conducted the research necessary to understand the social media habits of their prospects and customers.

They have a US bias, but Pingdom has a number of demographic studies around Twitter users that you might be find useful to build a picture of the typical Twitter user.

Is your competition on Twitter?

Assuming you know your key competitors, search for them on Twitter. Are they active and how are they using the medium?

There is only so much you will be able to garner by seeing whether your competitors are active on Twitter or not but it will help to build your understanding of the medium and find inspiration on how Twitter might be used for your own business.

How will Twitter fit into your existing business activity?

What makes Twitter such a unique marketing tool is that it can be used to communicate with prospects and customers all the way along the buying cycle from sales through to customer service.

Too many companies however are using it purely for the former, shouting about their products, special offers and promotions. They then wonder why they see such limited returns from their investment in Twitter. Whilst direct sales activity can work, brands need to support promotional activity with content that delivers a more rounded experience between brand and customer.

Perhaps most powerfully, Twitter also offers brands the ability to listen to, learn from and engage directly with customers…all in a public environment, which when executed well is immensely powerful PR.

With the above in mind, think carefully about how Twitter can complement your existing sales, marketing, PR and customer service disciplines.

Do you have the resource to manage Twitter in-house?

We would argue that the day to day management of Twitter is best looked after by you, in-house. An external party, such as an agency can provide strategic advice, training and support but they will never fully grasp your brand or be able to respond with the immediacy that the Twitter audience demands.

With this in mind, do you have the appropriate level of resource available in-house? Is there somebody, or a team of people already using Twitter, or other social networks in their personal life that in turn can be empowered to develop the company feed?

Twitter demands almost constant attention if it is to truly deliver to the bottom line so consider the in-house capacity and expertise you have before opening an account.

Have you got brand guidelines and communication processes in place?

Providing the back bone to your Twitter strategy must be certain guidelines on its day to day use. A communication strategy, which might include brand guidelines, key messages, buzzwords and keyword targets, as well as processes that guide staff on how they should respond to common situations, a customer complaint for example, is absolutely essential.

Allowing a more junior member of the team to manage Twitter is fine but in doing so make sure you have guidelines and processes that negate the chance of him or her doing anything which is ‘off-brand’.

Conclusion

Hopefully, my advice will help you to be properly prepared before you get started on Twitter or realise that maybe it’s not the right tool for your business in the first place. I’ve posed just five key questions at this stage but what I hope to have demonstrated is that Twitter will only prove to be successful tool if you plan it’s execution with as much detail as you would any other marketing channel. Give Twitter the respect it deserves!

As Taco Bell proves, managing your social media campaign doesn’t have to be rocket science

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Nick Dodd

The beginning of 2011 has brought to light just how volatile branded social media presences can be. On the one hand you have Lush’s unfortunate handling of their recent website hacking, and the resulting tsunami of negative feedback. On the other hand, you have Taco Bell’s equally combustible taco beef filler swell that barely got a mention online. Both stories highlight how brands’ social media strategies, or lack there of, resulted in case studies to learn from.

Lush’s misplacement of presumably thousands of customers’ credit card details highlights the increasingly complex customer relations driven online world. Whilst in itself the loss of more than three months’ worth of online credit card information is grave for any brand, what compounded the issue is Lush’s somewhat lacklustre response to its social media following.

Having identified the hacker’s attack on Christmas Day, Lush decided to see what happened (as if there was ever any doubt of the thief’s intentions) rather than inform its customers of the attack. As customers were informed 106 days after the initial attack, Lush’s official Facebook page offered some support and advice to its disappointed followers.

Indeed, Facebook offered the ideal environment for Lush users to share their horror stories of calls from the bank and suchlike – it seems the hackers were actively using the stolen information for their own January sale shopping. It is not yet clear why Lush chose to not limit their website sooner as they have now done by relying on PayPal’s evidently safer transactional systems. Perhaps the lure of a January revenue kick-start to 2011 proved to be too tempting.

Taco Bell, conversely, were honest and timely in their response. Faced with the breaking news that their taco meat contained a little more than just pure beef, Taco Bell grabbed the bull by the horns and addressed the issue.

It may have come as little surprise that their menu contains a little filler (read: oats and water, essentially). However, Taco Bell took the issue very seriously and immediately jumped on Facebook to reassure their fans of the facts; resulting in an appreciative and overwhelmingly positive reaction, the likes of which Lush can now only dream of right now.

These two differing outcomes to breaking, negative news illustrate the importance of having a social media strategy in place. What’s clear is that customers expect real-time responses when using channels such as Facebook from informed spokespeople. Do you have your emergency PR / crisis management strategy prepared? Facebook offers people, consumers, advocates and brand ambassadors the perfect soapbox when your brand is doing everything right. But when things go wrong, you need to ensure you have systems and processes in place to communicate openly and honestly with customers, which in turn will help to negate the impact.

What we’ve learnt in 2010 (and what we look forward to in 2011)

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Ben Potter

With contributions from various members of the Leapfrogg team, we take a look back at what we’ve learnt this year in digital marketing and online retail. We also look forward to 2011; what we’ll be keeping an eye on and how we expect 2010’s developments to evolve.

Google continues to innovate but at what cost?

Leapfrogg’s natural search team, Suzanne and Ben Adam, comment on the significant changes Google has made to both its back end architecture and search experience:

“2010 saw Google roll out its new indexing system, ‘caffeine’, which updates their search index on a continuous basis and therefore should provide more up to date results to users. The Mayday update, placed more emphasis on authority sites for long tail searches. Sites that create fresh, useful, original content, in a range of formats (i.e. images, video) and optimise for long tail searches will benefit most from these updates. These are good practices that we’ve been advocating for many years so from our point of view the changes have had little impact on the recommendations we make to clients.

The typical Google searcher would probably understand little of ‘caffeine’ and ‘Mayday’ but 2010 has seen an unprecedented number of changes to Google’s search engine results page (SERP) that certainly would not have gone unnoticed, most notably Instant Search, Previews, the somewhat pointless blue arrows, and Google Places.

In 2011, it will be interesting to see if the increasingly cluttered Google results page turns users off OR will the changes to back end architecture counter this by reducing the amount of spam and therefore making search results more relevant and fresh? With Bing increasingly offering a viable alternative to Google, will we see users jump ship? Or is ‘Googling’ just too synonymous with the act of searching in the mindset of most search engine users? 2011 is shaping up to be a pivotal year in the search engine wars, not to mention the threat posed by the big social networks, such as Facebook”.

The growing influence of social signals on search engine rankings

Social Media and Content Executive, James Mortimer, comments on the continued convergence of search and social:

“2010 has seen Google and Bing confirm that tweets and Facebook ‘likes’ have an influence on search rankings. In 2011, I expect to see the continued convergence of search and social. This will demand that companies take a much more holistic view of SEO; an approach where traditional activities, such as keyword optimisation and link building are combined with more contemporary tactics in social media marketing, an approach we’ve been advocating for a long time. I am sure more and more companies will adopt this more holistic approach now that the major search engines have confirmed a direct relationship between search engine rankings and social media activity, particularly on Twitter.

If, as suspected, one of the factors the search engines focus on is the number of followers on Twitter, will we see an increase in the use of auto-following tools to artificially inflate followers? Personally, I refuse to follow anybody who has an unnatural looking Twitter profile (i.e. following 23,984 people with almost the same number following them back!) but will the search engines be able to spot this kind of activity?

The importance of having a local ‘footprint’

Analyst, Andy, and Client Services Director, Greg, have been paying particular attention to the growing importance of local search:

“In October, Google updated how it displays local search results; they are no longer restricted to a specific section at the top of the SERP. Instead, local results on Google are now integrated into the main ‘natural’ listings. With Google placing more and more emphasis on local listings, we expect 2011 will see an increase in online shoppers entering phrases such as “designer dresses” and being served results that includes listings for nearby retail stores (regardless of whether they use a location term within their search query).

What we find most interesting about this change is the potential impact it has on retailers without physical stores, for example ASOS. Herein lies a somewhat ironic dilemma for online retailers in 2011 – an online brand could start to suffer in the search results because it DOESN’T have a physical store(s)”. Do not be suprised to see brands that have traditionally traded online, for example ASOS and Amazon, develop some form of high street presence in 2011 (note; this will not be necessarily be purely as a result of Google’s change to local listings).

Joining the dots

Paid search manager, Amelia, saw huge benefits in the use of software and advanced tracking tools to measure the success of multi-channel marketing campaigns:

The growth in mobile highlights the key challenge faced by brands; ¾ of consumers use two or more channels to browse, research & purchase products. Not only does this demand that brands have a presence where consumers expect them to be (online, mobile, the high street and so on) but it makes analysis and optimisation of the path to sale absolutely essential. We’ve really seen the value of investing in software to better understand the user journey. The ability to measure the first click to the final sale visit (whether this is online or in-store) is crucial when evaluating the returns from digital marketing activity. We have been amazed with some of the insights we have found when looking at sale journeys, particularly for retailers where the path to sale is more likely to involve a number of channels over a period of time. Seeing the overall sale path journey enables us to quantify the success of specific keywords which contribute to sales via brand terms or via different traffic sources”.

The year mobile finally took off

MD, Rosie, comments on how the year when brands finally saw some measurable returns from mobile commerce:

“It seems that every year, for as long as I can remember, analysts have claimed that ‘this will be the year mobile commerce’ takes off. Well 2010 might just be the year that this claim was finally justified. Smart phone adoption still represents a relatively small percentage of the overall market, however, the number of people subscribing to smart phones this year has been significant enough for a number of brands to finally see tangible benefits of investing in mobile enabled websites and applications.

2011 will see this trend continue as more and more brands learn from the early adopters and invest in mobile commerce. However, it is vital that marketers understand the difference between the conventional browser and mobile experience. With mobile, there is an even greater emphasis to give people exactly what they want as smaller screens make it difficult for functionality, such as dynamic merchandising, to work effectively. Keeping things simple will be key to success for mobile websites and applications”.

Don’t run before you can walk

Head of Social Media and Content, Lucy comments on the need to ensure tactical execution is linked back to commercial objectives:

“Everyone seems to have embraced Twitter and Facebook this year, but we’ve sometimes pushed back on briefs because we didn’t believe social media was really going to deliver to a brands commercial objectives. It’s all too easy to jump on the social media bandwagon. However, when a marketing team has limited budget, often the more tried and tested direct marketing or more quantifiable and measurable link building and online PR activity can be proven to deliver more.

Although we love it when our brands want to experiment, we always need to ensure campaigns deliver to the bottom line. If you’re selling to a target audience that isn’t highly active in social media, then sometimes it is not the right medium to use. But even if it is, we very much advocate that clients get the basics right before they start investing in social media, for example. Very much a case of learning to walk before you run”.

Agencies need to evolve

Sales and Marketing Director, Ben, comments on how the role digital agencies need to take with their clients:

“In 2010, I’ve seen a noticeable shift in what clients expect from their agency partners. Clients are looking for much more than tactical delivery…and so they should. We’ve really seen the value of more closely aligning digital strategies to a client’s commercial objectives and completely changed the language we use to communicate with prospects and clients as a result.

It highlights to me how the SEO industry needs to evolve in 2011 beginning with a rebrand. SEO is a dated term that fails to represent the remit of the job undertaken by forward thinking agencies. The convergence of search and social, the need to be creating useful and unique content, and the strategic and analytical value added by an agency is much more than SEO. In 2011, I’d like to see less emphasis on somewhat dated language such as ‘rankings’, and especially those agencies still making ‘guarantees’, to instead focus on messaging that more closely reflects the landscape and the expectations of clients”.

What were you key lessons from 2010? What are you going to be keeping a close on in 2011? We’d love to hear from you?

eCommerce and social media – what do customers really care about?

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Lucy Freeborn

We had a really interesting conversation with one of our clients about ‘social commerce’ recently. (Social commerce or sCommerce is the use of social media in the context of e-commerce, for example user ratings and reviews, recommendations and referrals, forums and communities and advertising across social networks).

We were discussing a number of brands seemingly doing it well and although we had great examples of activity and experimentation, mostly in the fashion sector, it’s still a challenge to single out brands where social media is making a consistent and measurable difference to the bottom line.

Last month, Ted Baker’s Take on Ted online marketing campaign tapped into all of the latest trends in eCommerce and sCommerce.

The campaign combined Facebook activity, an advocacy programme, Twitter and the Ted Baker website to deliver a campaign live to an international audience. The campaign involved seven US based bloggers, who tweeted @ted_baker instructing stylists how to dress models based in the London headquarters.

The bloggers, including Brit abroad, Karen Blanchard, were briefed on looks they were to create and given 15 minute slots live online to deliver the looks. The team at Tedbaker HQ, then styled the models while the video of the looks being put together was streamed live on Ted Baker site. Images of the final looks were then uploaded to the Ted Facebook page – which at the most recent count, has more than 22,000 fans – for their comment and feedback.

So far, so creative…it’s a heady mix of super cool US blogging, live action and social media; BUT…what did it achieve?

As a PR stunt, it was great, providing followers with genuine entertainment and with an aggressive US store opening strategy in the pipe line (New York and Chicago stores both opened in the last 4 weeks), it’s tapped into the fashionista US blogosphere at an important time.

In terms of fan engagement, although there were some tweets and comments around Take on Ted, the most popular look received about 60 comments or votes on Facebook – a small drop in the ocean, you could argue.

But in terms of sales, was Ted Baker missing a trick? We loved the Ted Baker campaign, the brand took risks and experimented, but we think having a couple of digital marketers in the room at brief stage could have made this campaign work harder for them.

The campaign was crying out for a way to enable fans to buy parts of the outfit direct through Facebook. There’s a lovely swizzle VT piece on the Take on Ted page, but we’d have recommended using this great content to gain wider coverage, build links from relevant websites and perhaps most importantly, worked with the footage to ‘hotspot’ it to encourage sales.

Our view is supported by Google. Their retail blog had a interesting post earlier this month, which is real food for sCommerce thought. Google claims that shoppers have been conditioned to primarily engage with a brand through social media for the purposes of receiving offers, coupons and discounts (certainly Google’s recent interest in Groupon supports their point of view and in terms of the sheer volume and popularity of voucher sites tells a positive story for eCommerce). Therefore, as creative as the Take on Ted campaign was, it perhaps failed in understanding the audience and their primary goal in engaging with the brand; the opportunity to purchase the products on show (and ideally at a discount).

So how do we link up the two disciplines? How do you develop a relationship with an audience to foster and encourage demand and repeat purchase when all they seem to want is discounts?

Making sure your digital marketers are in the room when you’re briefing out the creative is key – make your fabulous and exciting PR and online engagement stunt work harder in terms of sales and search. Think holistically and not only will your audience love your brand, but you’ll also love the sales you’re making as a result!