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Over the course of 2010, Leapfrogg is conducting a series of surveys investigating premium retailers’ use of, and attitudes, towards digital marketing. We are looking at a number of very specific niche markets beginning with home and garden. Further surveys will look at premium fashion, health and beauty, and food and wine.

This first survey was sent to 80 premium home and garden retailers with just over a quarter taking part. Respondents included well recognised high street brands and smaller retailers.

The full report is available to download here. Below we have included some of the key findings:

Use of marketing channels

The top five online marketing channels being ‘heavily’ or ‘partially’ used by premium home and garden retailers are articles and press releases (75%), email marketing (67%), search engine optimisation (67%), paid search (66%) and voucher codes (48%).

Respondents are ‘just getting started’ with social networking (38%), micro-blogging i.e. Twitter (33%), blogging (30%) and involvement in forums and communities (25%).

Interestingly, respondents have ‘no intention of becoming involved’ in the creation of audio (55%) or video content (35%), mobile marketing (33%) and shopping/comparison engines (33%). And although a number of retailers are adopting the use of voucher codes, a further 33% have no intention of using them.

It is suggested that premium home and garden retailers take the time to investigate the opportunities presented by video and mobile in particular. Video and the use of mobile technology to access the Internet, read product reviews and download coupons/vouchers are experiencing significant growth with consumers.

Importance of marketing channels

The top five online channels that are considered most important to the success of the business are search engine optimisation (76%), email marketing (50%), articles and press releases (33%), paid search (30%) and reputation management (25%).

The areas that are felt to be unimportant are voucher codes (33%), social networking (30%), audio (27%), mobile marketing (24%) and shopping and comparison sites (24%).

Understandably, premium brands may feel the use of voucher codes ‘cheapens’ their offering. However, Leapfrogg would consider it a concern that so few companies rate the importance of social networking and mobile marketing, in particular.

Channel rating according to return on investment (ROI)

The key channels that are claimed to deliver return on investment are search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, and articles and press releases.

In respect of the other 13 online channels the majority view is that the return on investment is indifferent.  Social networking is perceived to have a very poor return on investment by one quarter of the respondents, suggesting that premium home and garden retailers have not yet implemented appropriate systems to measure their social media marketing efforts with accuracy and in line with business goals.

Channel resource plans

The online activities where resource is being increased in 2010, compared to 2009, are social networking (65%), email marketing (60%), micro-blogging (58%), SEO (57%), activity in forums and communities (43%) and blogging (44%).

Plans to increase resource in social networking is interesting when it is considered that a quarter of respondents perceived social networking to have a very poor return on investment, whilst a lack of internal resource (see later section) was also deemed a significant barrier to the success of social media efforts. It is therefore suggested that premium home and garden retailers need to carefully consider objectives from social media activity, set up appropriate systems to measure performance and ensure adequate levels of in-house resource are dedicated to managing social media effectively.

Multi-channel marketing

Results indicate that respondents combine more traditional online activities, such as SEO, PPC and email when running multi-channel campaigns. Social media and blogging also represent popular channels, yet integrating mobile is very low, despite consumers growing use of smart phone technology to access the Internet.

It is recommended that premium home and garden retailers consider all the ‘touch points’ between brand and consumer and implement multi-channel marketing campaigns that ensure a consistent offering and message is present across all of them.

Management of marketing channels

Marketing is the department responsible for managing all online activities except PR, of which there is either a dedicated department or it is outsourced.  IT is responsible for search engine optimisation (SEO) in just over one third of the retailers who responded, which might suggest it is viewed as a technical discipline as opposed to a marketing activity.

Knowledge of customers

Generally, premium home and garden retailers feel that they need to know more about the behaviour of their customers online. 82% do not know how their customers behave on social networks and 66% do not know what their customers are saying about their brand online.

The latter is a particular point of interest as consumers are increasingly willing, and easily able, to share their thoughts with hundreds, possibly thousands of others through blogs, forums, reviews sites and social networks. In turn, purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by the positive and negative reviews a retailer may receive online. It is therefore suggested respondents investigate the use of buzz monitoring tools to quickly identify the conversations happening around their brand and products.

55% feel informed about their customer’s behaviour on their website suggesting respondents have implemented, and are using analytical tools to good effect. However, 45% appear not to be using tools, such as Google Analytics, to great effect therefore limiting the opportunity to make informed decisions on optimising site performance.

Knowledge of search engine ranking factors

Premium home and garden retailers rate keyword placement (67%), website architecture (57%), Meta tags (55%), the user experience (48%) and external links (43%) as crucial to achieving high search engine rankings. Rich media content and blogging were considered by the majority as important but not crucial to improving search engine rankings.

A quarter of respondents were unsure of the impact on search engine rankings of choice of technology and social media activity. Concerning the latter, it is recommended respondents investigate the relationship between search and social media as these channels cannot, and should not, operate in isolation of one another.

Goal setting

Half of premium home and garden retailers used past performance as a benchmark for setting goals for digital marketing activity along with basing predictions on financial goals.

One third of respondents do not currently set goals for digital marketing activity. It is highly recommended that premium home and garden retailers work to establish objectives using SMART methodology to ensure there is direction and focus for digital marketing activity. In addition, appropriate tools and processes should be put in place to measure goals accurately.

Ability to track goals accurately

Respondents rated their ability to track search engine rankings (57%), online conversions (48%), email marketing performance (47%), behaviour of site visitors (35%) and affiliate marketing (33%) as good.

Areas not being tracked accurately include conversions from social media activity (74%), mobile marketing (73%) and customer lifetime value (71%).

59% do not currently track overall return on investment from digital marketing activity.

This would indicate there is still a great deal of progress to be made in the area of measurement. Retailers should be implementing the appropriate tools and processes to measure the impact of each online channel. Better tracking will not only enable return on investment to be calculated from each channel but also provide invaluable data for forecasting and developing future strategies.

Agency relationships

The split between managing work in-house and the use of external agencies is 50:50 with a slight preference for conducting more of the work in-house but using specialist agencies where needed. Those that use external resources use specialist SEO agencies, full service digital agencies, web designers, affiliate marketing and PR companies.

Premium home and garden retailers rated the ability to deliver results (95%) as the most important factor when working with an agency. Specific knowledge of the customers’ market (76%), and having open lines of communication (67%) also rated particularly highly.

Premium home and garden retailers believe it is ‘crucial’ that an online agency has knowledge of the clients’ target audience (80%), their key performance indicators (73%) and knowledge of the business plan (53%). Yet only 40% believe an agency should have knowledge of the clients’ offline marketing strategy (40%).  This indicates that premium home and garden retailers need to better communicate offline activity with their agencies therefore ensuring a consistent, and properly integrated online/offline marketing strategy.

Barriers to success

The barriers that prevent premium home and garden retailers from maximising their online marketing efforts are lack of internal resource, lack of budget and a lack of understanding.  Board approval and not having an appropriate measurement tool are also cited as significant barriers.

The ‘lack of internal resource’ is of particular interest as a high number of companies choose to manage digital marketing in-house yet do not appear to possess the necessary capacity to do so to maximum effect.

Download the full report here. If you would like to discuss any aspect of the report findings, please get in touch. And remember to keep a look out for future reports covering premium fashion, health and beauty, and food and wine.

With ever-increasing competition online and the demand to deliver a multi-channel shopping experience, online retailers have a never ending list of actions they need to take in implementing a successful digital marketing strategy.

Add to that the growing sophistication in how search engines display their results; the introduction of blended search, personalised search, social search and real-time search demand a much more holistic approach to search engine optimisation (SEO); an approach that combines traditional activities, such as keyword selection and link building, with more contemporary tactics in social media and content marketing.

A successful online retail strategy is therefore made up of many parts that are continually growing and repeating throughout the customer buying cycle. This can at times be overwhelming as retailers struggle to find the resource, time and skills to succeed in every necessary area.

Understanding this, we thought we would lend a helping hand to online retailers by creating the infographic to end all infographics; the online retail wheel of fortune. This is a graphical representation of the main elements to be incorporated into your online strategy to maximise success.

And here it is! Now being rather large, and very detailed, you will need to download the pdf version to digest it fully, which you can access by clicking here.

As you will see we have split our graphic into four main sections, representing key stages of the customer buying cycle as follows:

Reach
Covering the top line projects and tactics aimed at maximising your online exposure, therefore enabling you to connect with as many prospects as possible, which in turn drives more of the right traffic to your website.

Engage
The tools and techniques you can use to ‘talk’ to your audience once you have found them.

Convert
How to turn those engaged prospects into customers by optimising the user experience on your site, for example.

Retain
The actions you need to take to encourage repeat sales and develop advocates of your brand.

For each key stage of the buying cycle, we have detailed areas of attack, top level projects, specific actions within those  projects and some of the key benefits you will experience. Start with ‘reach’ before working your way out and then around to the next stage.

We realise it is a lot to take in…but this should also highlight just how much is involved in researching, planning and implementing an integrated digital marketing strategy for retailers.

We’d love to hear from you with your comments.

In my recent quest to introduce you to the latest developments shaping how search engines display their results I have already talked about personalised search and social search. This time, I’m turning my attention to perhaps the most exciting (and potentially game-changing) development; real-time search.

What is real time search?

First off, ‘real time’ refers to something that occurs immediately. In the online world, the most obvious example of where content is published in real-time is Twitter. Compare how long it takes to write and publish a tweet compared to say, a blog post. With the latter, it takes minutes, hours or possibly days to research, write and publish an article to a blog. With Twitter on the other hand, content is written, published and visible within seconds.

The benefits of real-time information from sources, such as Twitter, have not been lost on the major search engines. In recent months, both Google and Bing announced agreements with Twitter to include tweets (real-time data) in their search results.

This means that for certain searches carried out on Google or Bing, users will be presented with search results that contain information published just minutes, or even seconds ago. This is very different to how search engines traditionally display their results where there is a reliance on spidering content, storing it in a database and then presenting it back to searchers. This process takes time meaning information can be out of date quickly.

How are results featured?

There is a difference between the two search engines and their integration of real time results into their respective search engine results pages (SERP’s). If a user wants to view Bing’s real time results they go to www.bing.com/twitter. However, Google is different in that real time information is incorporated right into its normal search results, and often at the top of the page.

It is important to note that you won’t see real time results on Google for every search you carry out. Real time search is only triggered if Google believes information in real-time will be seen as valuable to searchers. A great example is the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland. Searchers want the latest information on what is happening. They cannot wait for Google to spider content in the traditional fashion (although Google is pretty quick at doing so these days). Instead, searchers want the very latest news as it happens.

Check out the screenshot below for an example:

As you can see, Google considers the volcanic eruptions to be a “hot topic” (I imagine all those people stuck in foreign climes unable to get home would agree!) due to the mass spike in information being published online. Therefore, in the “Latest results for volcano news” section you can see a scroll of real-time information, from sources such as the Guardian and most notably Twitter.

Why has real time search been introduced?

In theory, real time search means that both Bing and Google can provide their users with the most up-to-date information around a search query, therefore increasing the relevance and usefulness of their search results.

It means that when searching for information on key events, such as the Icelandic volcano, users can see what happened minutes or even seconds ago. And this information is present right where searchers want it to be; incorporated into the search experience.

This is obviously fantastic for accessing news as it happens but what about the impact on brands. If, as expected, real-time search continues to move beyond news related items to be more widespread, a disgruntled customer venting their anger on Twitter, may not only be seen by their followers on this specific social network but their tweet may also feature in Google’s actual search results…and all in real-time!

Next time, I’ll be looking at this issue in more detail, as well as the other means by which real-time search impacts your digital marketing efforts. Until then…

Please note, this post was written by Catherine Pryce before she left the company.

Social media done properly can increase brand advocates (fans and followers), sales and brand visibility. However, when a social media campaign backfires it can leave a bitter taste with prospects and customers for a long time after, therefore having a potentially damaging affect on the brand.

Since hearing about the ‘Outnet £1 designer sale’ I have been watching with intrigue how this will pan out. Working in social media one can become both cynical and fascinated in brands and their efforts in social media. For example, I am a fan of Harrods (despite not being able to invest in much more than a new potato in the shop) because their Facebook fan page is well run, they have dynamic campaigns and it’s always good to be armed with a case study and examples when delivering training to my clients.

I can’t even remember where I first saw the Outnet campaign mentioned, but I signed up for the newsletter, had a mooch around the site and mentally noted that today was the day. Not being the most cutting edge fashionista (you try and get size 9 feet into Vivienne Westwood pumps!); I followed the progress of this campaign to see how it would be executed (honest boss!).

Which takes me to my first shot of the server fail.

With much hype and marketing activity leading up to this key date, it should have given the marketing/IT department ample time to prepare for such an event when increases in traffic to the website is surely a given. From a distance I can only speculate that they simply do not have the bandwidth to cope with the massive influx of traffic. Whilst you can’t just ‘move servers’ on the day (DNS settings, etc need to be changed), there are options such as speaking to your hosts in advance, increasing bandwidth or worse case scenario, changing hosts well before the event if they cannot accommodate the additional bandwidth.

Due to this basic error, hundreds, possibly thousands of expectant customers are unable to access the website. The result; well by 10.00am there is already an “Anti” Facebook group; ‘the Outnet stole my Friday’.

And much discussion on Twitter (#outnet) with wails of frustration from women that had gone as far as taking a day off work to bag a…er… bag!

I had not heard of the Outnet before but I certainly think that a lot of people will have heard of it now…unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. I will revisit this and look at the sentiment surrounding the campaign later on. But in the meantime, I think it is fair to say if the purpose of the campaign was to raise positive awareness this has been a massive fail.

This smacks of a rather ‘gung-ho’ attitude to marketing, and social media in particular; an approach which is dangerous to say the least - the frustration that many women have experienced from this will not be easily forgotten. Potential sales will be quashed by a bad user experience…it’s the same as a bad experience in a shop with sales staff or products. Word of mouth travels fast, especially when it comes to social media.
And all of this, from email, faulty servers, to a Facebook group and me writing this blog happened before 10.30 am this morning!

So, what can brands learn from this?

Well, most importantly, be prepared. From inception to execution every possible scenario needs to be considered. What happened this morning had the potential to be a massive success in regards to awareness, but it seems to the website was ill-prepared to handle the influx in traffic so it fell over. So before embarking on mass promotions of this kind, companies must plan for expected increases in traffic and ensure they have the appropriate server capacity well in advance. And then if there are issues, at least put up a 404 error page to explain what is going on.

And if things really do go as badly as seemingly they are for the Outnet, be prepared to communicate with the community through appropriate social media channels, such as Twitter, as well as a blog post and press release; all with the aim of openly apologising for mistakes made and offering alternatives, such as another day when the sale will be held.

So far I have seen nothing from their HQ but promotion. Social media and marketing needs to be two ways, a crisis PR package needs to be in place for moments like this. If you promise the earth, you need to deliver it. Therefore, have your staff prepped not only to deal with the influx of purchases, but to be monitoring social media and equipped to respond to people dissatisfied with their experience.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this one so stay tuned for further developments.

Please note, this post was written by Catherine Pryce before she left the company.

Last time, I introduced you to the idea of buzz monitoring where companies can use tools, such as Radian6, to quickly identify where their brand name is being mentioned online and by whom. Such insight is invaluable as consumers are increasingly willing, and easily able, to share their thoughts with hundreds, possibly thousands of others through blogs, forums, reviews sites and social networks. Those companies that understand the need to engage with their customers through social media channels can use buzz monitoring tools to quickly identify disgruntled customers and respond to them in a public environment. Equally, buzz monitoring tools allow companies to see the positive conversations happening around their products and services, allowing their biggest fans (evangelists or advocates if you like) to be identified.

I’ve been a user of the more sophisticated tools, such as Radian6, for a while now. For most brands I have been monitoring the tool works fantastically well. However, what I have realised is that the use of a buzz monitoring tool is a great deal more difficult if you have a brand name that contains a generic word or phrase.

Let’s take the well-known chemist, Boots, as an example. On the high street Boots is an instantly recognisable brand with a store in most towns. However when it comes to social media, and in particular tracking their brand name, they are not just lost in the noise but effectively buried. Why? Because their brand name is a generic term. Finding mentions of ‘Boots’ (the chemist) is virtually impossible as it struggles to fight through the thousands of conversations happening online everyday on the topic of ‘boots’. Using Addictomatic, for example, I found just one Tweet mentioning Boots (a poor soul felt like their head was on fire having just washed their hair using tea tree oil – ‘going to Boots to get some head and shoulders’ was their plan of action!).

As you can see, this was nestled in a page full of conversations around UGG boots, cowboy boots and Wallmart. This makes it very difficult for Boots to fight through the noise.

Another example is to look at two of the giants of the mobile phone world, Vodaphone and 02. ‘Voda’ doesn’t necessarily mean anything (but if you are interested it means water in Russian!) but combined with the word ‘phone’ is a brand name that is highly distinctive, thus much easier to monitor using tools, such as Radian6. As a result, Vodaphone are well placed to monitor where they are being talked about online before responding promptly and accordingly. O2 however is a letter and a number, still a distinctive combination but seemingly more difficult to track in online conversations. A few months ago, Sales Director Ben and I, had become tired of the constant barrage of unsolicited text messages from O2. On a number of occasions we tweeted about our frustrations. Did we hear back from O2? No, we didn’t. Is this because they didn’t ‘hear us’ through the noise? It is difficult to know for sure in this instance. But bear in mind it only takes a space between the ‘O’ and the ‘2’, or a zero instead of the ‘O’ for tracking of this brand to be infinitely more difficult thus underlining the perils of generic branding, buzz monitoring and therefore reputation management.

Now you might say in the above examples; why not track more specific phrases, such as ‘Boots the pharmacy’, ‘Boots the chemist’, or ‘02 phones’? However, few consumers are likely to use such phrases when talking around the brand, particularly when using Twitter where the user is restricted by the 140 characters that a tweet allows. Equally, you could use the available filters in buzz monitoring tools but these are not always effective, particularly with a term such as ‘boots’ where there are potentially hundreds of associated words that would need to be filtered out. And using too many filters can almost have the opposite effect and leave you with very little noise at all!

What’s the solution?

For companies like Vodaphone, their choice of company name all those years ago, in the context of buzz monitoring, has to be considered more accident than design. However, in 2010, new companies coming to market need to carefully consider their choice of brand name. If you have aspirations of growing a successful business you need to accept that the Internet will play a pivotal role and inevitably customers will talk both positively and negatively about you online. It is therefore vitally important that you have the ability to track these conversations. A company name that uses one or a number of commonly used words may cause problems for you when it comes to monitoring the brand online. Should you dictate your entire branding strategy around the ability to track mentions of your company name? I perhaps would not go as far as that, as every situation is different, but it must certainly be a major consideration.

If you are a well-established company finding it difficult to track the conversations happening around your brand, you need to find ways of influencing the target audience to describe you in a way that makes it much easier to monitor noise. My solution is to use associated keywords in the information you push out to your community with the aim of encouraging the community to also adopt these keywords when talking about your brand.

To do this, you need to understand very clearly what it is that you stand for, what it is that makes you different to your competitors. Begin by creating a powerful message or tag line. You need to be crystal clear, able to sell your product, its features and benefits in a quick, keyword-rich, one-liner. Try and stick to around 140 characters or so. Think about relevant keywords that describe what you do and incorporate them into this description.

Online and offline strategies then need to be tied together so that the same, short, succinct message is used across all media. Online, a description of this kind should be consistently used in Meta data, anchor text, directory submissions, social media platform descriptions, press releases and so on.

Once you have established your message you can begin to use the closely associated keywords in online campaigns, promotions, hashtags and so on. Going back to our real life example, with Boots there are a number of keywords that you would closely associate with their products and services, ‘health’, ‘beauty’ and ‘pharmacy’ for example. Specific streams might be set up on Twitter when discussing certain product lines:

“Boots Health: Blog post from Boots on vitamins for winter colds”

“Boots Beauty: Get bikini beautiful in time for summer with these products (link) “

“Advice on quitting smoking from the Boots pharmacy #quitsmokingwithboots“

By doing so you are encouraging your audience to also talk about Boots using commonly associated keywords. The conversations happening around ‘Boots’ become a great deal easier to monitor because you have encouraged the target audience to use associated keywords in how they describe the company, which in turn makes the use of filters in Radian6 a great deal more effective.

It is worth adding this is a longer term solution to the issue faced by companies like Boots as and by no means fool proof. But in my ealru experiments with Radian6 it does work.

I’d love to hear from anyone at Radian6 with their thoughts.