Author: Sally Hooton

A major enterprise Search Engine Optimisation software company has launched a new, free eBook which offers insight into the state of SEO in 2014.

A Complete Guide to SEO, provides an extensive overview of everything you need to know to be successful at search engine optimization today.SEO is a fast-paced and dynamic field. It can also sometimes be frustrating, especially if you’re relying on outdated tactics that no longer work, and the updated methods to actually make it work, such as when Small businesses often find that Local SEO services can provide them with a powerful sales channel with the new Google maps exposure.

The eBook includes contributions from industry experts and well-known figureheads from leading brands, who aim to demonstrate how to make a brand both visible and persuasive in search engines.

SEO Now is a free eBook in which many of the industry’s leading thinkers are featured, from digital marketing pioneers to search industry experts. Offering interested readers the chance to gain an insider perspective of the SEO world, the eBook provides a valuable barometer both in terms of where brands are and where they should be with their search engine optimisation activity, all with great tips from the Link Fire SEO company.

Linkdex, the enterprise SEO software company behind the new 335-page digital eBook, has brought together contributions from 27 leading industry minds around the world in order to create a resource that includes sought-after insight and which reveals the conversations going on within the search industry; focusing on the evolution and growth of SEO.

In addition to insights from members of the Linkdex team, the eBook contains lessons from leading brands such as Microsoft, SurveyMonkey, Adobe and ABC News; alongside SEO and digital specialists including leading thinker Bruce Clay, DigitasLBi, Resolution Media and Stone Temple Consulting. All of these famed figureheads provide their own unique views on the state of SEO.

The eBook also features the fictional but highly insightful story of Third Space Travel, a global travel company that finds itself falling foul of the algorithm updates, in order to exemplify the theories behind the SEO learnings of the eBook. The company goes on to build a framework for an organic strategy designed to win in the organic space. The presentation for Third Space Travel’s Organic Strategy is included and readers are encouraged to discuss and add their own ideas on how to develop the best SEO strategy for 2014.

The eBook is now available for free download, here. 

Matt Roberts, chief strategy officer at Linkdex said: “This eBook is more than just an exploration of the current state of SEO. Together, these conversations with experts, search professionals and industry leaders, redefine and modernise the very meaning of the discipline.”

Average spend via tablets now exceeds desktop PC levels.

A new report from Juniper Research has found that the value of global payments via mobile devices will reach around $507 billion this year, a rise of nearly 40% year-on-year.

The report – Mobile Payment Strategies: Remote, Contactless & Money Transfer 2014-2018 – found that growth would continue to be driven by purchases of physical goods via mobile devices. Average transaction sizes over tablets are already exceeding those via desktop PCs in many markets.

It also observed that while spend via smartphones was increasing sharply, their primary function in retail was as search and discovery devices with the final purchase being made on the tablet.

Meanwhile, it argued that the scale of digital transactions was receiving a significant boost through the adoption of mobile ticketing applications, with metro and transit authorities in Europe and North America, that have already deployed services, experiencing high levels of adoption.

Mobile contactless progress ‘slow’

However, the report observed that progress in contactless mobile payments had been slow, with few commercial launches. Nevertheless, it argued that the prognosis for the medium term was brighter, following the emergence of cloud-based SE (Secure Element) solutions which offer the opportunity for reduced time-to-market for NFC (Near Field Communications) solutions.

According to report author, Dr Windsor Holden: “The prevalent business models for NFC have been unattractive to banks and left them dependent on multiple network operators, each of which may have its own approach to mobile wallet management. HCE (Host Card Emulation) solutions have the potential to revitalise a market which has struggled to gain traction.”

Other findings from the report include:

• The opportunity for contactless mobile payments has been bolstered by contactless infrastructure deployments, with the majority of POS (Point of Sale) terminals now shipping with contactless.
• In a number of emerging markets such as Kenya and Uganda, the imposition of service taxes threaten the buoyancy of domestic mobile money transfer.

The whitepaper, Making Mobile Pay, is available to download here, together with further details of the full report and the attendant Mobile Payment Strategies Excel.

Mobile Magic, The Saatchi & Saatchi Guide to Mobile Marketing, by Tom Eslinger, published April 2014, by Wiley: £20.99.

With 75% of the world’s population having access to a mobile phone, marketers are scrambling to understand how consumers might invite them onto their devices.

A new book, Mobile Magic: The Saatchi & Saatchi Guide to Mobile Marketing (Wiley), written by digital communications expert Tom Eslinger, offers a roadmap for creating effective mobile marketing campaigns.

From creative concept to campaign maintenance, Mobile Magic draws on the experience of Saatchi & Saatchi’s major digital practitioner. Tom Eslinger is worldwide creative director of digital at Saatchi & Saatchi, based in New York.

Mobile Magic is a resource for brand marketers and small business owners, focusing on the strategic opportunities and practical implications of mobile marketing. The book presents a wide range of insights into the mobile market, a field that is getting bigger and more complex every day. In a noisy market, Mobile Magic helps navigate the mobile market process.

The book includes advice for defining success in mobile marketing, understanding audiences, search and social, location-based services, hiring vendors, advice on budgeting, potential legal issues and ideas for creating impactful campaigns to make emotional connections. The book includes real-world case stories from Saatchi & Saatchi clients Lexus, General Mills’ Lucky Charms and P&G’s Gillette Venus.

The core principle of Mobile Magic is the MIST – Mobile, Intimate, Social and Transactional. These four principles are core to all successful mobile marketing campaigns. Without them, any mobile app, website, augmented reality project, game or texting campaign will never reach its full potential.

Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, wrote the foreword to Mobile Magic. He said: “Tom Eslinger is a Saatchi & Saatchi digital pioneer and someone who really walks the talk.

“This book takes his many years of experience and translates them into a something that should be on the desk of every business interested in engaging customers through their mobiles. If you need a guide to communicating and transacting on mobile – Mobile Magic is your new best friend.”

Tom Eslinger said: “Mobile is the fastest-growing arena of marketing, but it is also a space that can be intimidating for all types of business, because the customer is in total control and brands have to be invited in.

“We’ve pulled back the curtain and show that it doesn’t need to be scary.

“Start with a creative idea, understand the executional options, manage your budget and resources and plan for every step of the process. We think businesses are going to get a lot out of Mobile Magic.”

With the continued exponential growth in social media, keeping up with constant changes is a challenge. Not only for businesses of all sizes recruiting talent, but also for professionals who are trying to stay up to date with all the platforms and the best way to use them.

Learning these new skills is made complicated by the lack of specialised training schools, the pace of change and unreliable information found on the Internet.

According to Adobe’s Digital Distress Report, 82% of digital marketing professionals learn on the job, but many businesses and agencies lack adequate employee training programs and resources to effectively diminish the talent gaps in their workforce.

Because of this void, there has been steady growth for companies that provide formal training on social media and digital marketing.

One such company, Chicago-based Instant E-Training, says that the market for individuals and companies needing this type of training is continuing to expand. Founder Bob Tripathi said: “We constantly see mid-level professionals and job seekers looking for formal training to keep up with the changing landscape and shifting priorities of social media.

“Social media certification, in particular, has become a major priority as many want to distinguish themselves throughout their career or as they look for new job opportunities.”

Additionally, there is an increase in the number of jobseekers looking to leverage their job search through social media outlets and improve their skills to do so.

Katrina Pardi, a human resources professional for the Chicago Hire Company, said: “As a recruiter, I regularly use social media to find job seekers. It’s obvious from LinkedIn pages whether someone is passive or active in their search, whether they have good communication skills and grammar, etc.

“For us, it’s clear; LinkedIn and Facebook are both a top source for jobseekers, and excellent sources for referrals.”

Tara Farnsworth, who took one such course through Instant E-Training was able to take her skills to a whole new level: “It was a dynamic experience, if you can imagine a master’s level style program with the leaders of each industry giving you insight and tips to develop a detailed social media business plan.”

Rocket Fuel reveals results of research into what leads a consumer to click and convert. Financial worries keeping people up at night? Conversion rates peak at between midnight and 6am.

What makes a financial services digital advertising campaign successful? Rocket Fuel, a major provider of artificial intelligence (AI) advertising solutions for digital marketers, asked that question.

Its study analysed 2,300 distinct ads from more 200 credit card and financial services campaigns run with Rocket Fuel during October and November last year.

By looking at the sample of creatives from credit card and financial services campaigns a number of trends were revealed:

Consumers convert on weekends, late at night

Consumers are significantly more likely to convert on financial services campaigns on Saturdays (+16%) and Sundays (+30%), and are most likely to convert late at night, with conversion rates peaking between midnight and 6am.

Offers are more compelling than pricing

Consumers are 10x more likely to convert on financial services ads featuring a special offer than those that don’t. Similarly, they are significantly less likely to convert on ads featuring regular pricing.

Green backgrounds, animation draw interest

Animated ads tend to draw lower click-through rates but significantly higher conversion rates, while ads with a green, white or yellow background tend to generate higher conversion rates than ads of other colours.

Human faces drive more conversions

Consumers are slightly more likely (+8%) to click on credit card ads with a human face and are 2x more likely to convert on ads with human faces in the creative.

Credit card images need not apply

Ads featuring an image of the credit card itself performed considerably worse than ads without an image of the card, regardless of whether or not those ads featured a human face. Consumers were nearly twice as likely to convert on campaigns for a credit card after exposure to ads that did not feature an image of the card compare to ads with an image of the card.

‘Learn more’ is a more effective call-to-action

Among calls to action for credit-card and financial-services ads, “Learn More” drives the highest conversion rates by a considerable margin, as does content mentioning a special or limited-time offer, regardless of the benefit.

Points are more rewarding

Consumers are 1.5x more likely to click or convert on ads showcasing reward points (eg, frequent flyer points) over any other type of incentive.

Dominic Trigg, Rocket Fuel’s VP and managing director Europe, said: “A consumer’s attention span fluctuates between numerous digital channels like never before, resulting in a major challenge for financial-service providers – how to attract the right audiences in a competitive marketplace with the appropriate products, services and advertising creative.

“According to eMarketer, financial services companies spent over $5 billion in digital ad spending globally in 2013. We developed this body of research to shed light on key consumer preferences, behaviour and habits, and provide innovative financial marketers with the insights needed to develop more impactful, tailored ad initiatives.”

Joel Christie, Client Strategy director at Rocket Fuel, addeed: “This is the kind of insight that we are really excited to offer to our clients across verticals, and the reason why we have brought on board vertical specialists to leverage these insights and provide the relevant information across the sectors.”

To download the complete financial services research study — including recommendations for how advertisers can best reach consumers with financial services advertising, click here.

90% of marketers are not trained in marketing performance and marketing ROI, Fournaise study finds.

Ninety per cent of marketers are not trained in Marketing Performance & Marketing ROI and 80 per cent struggle with being able to properly demonstrate to their top management the business effectiveness of their marketing spending, campaigns and activities.

These are two of the findings identified by The Fournaise Marketing Group – through its Global Marketing Effectiveness Program, in which it measures the performance of marketers each year, via interviews with more than 1,200 CEOs, management and marketing decision-makers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Fournaise also tracks the actual effectiveness of 2.5+ million B2C/B2B marketing strategies, campaigns and ads across all media channels (traditional, digital, direct, mobile) across 20+ countries worldwide each year.

At a time when CEOs are putting even more pressure on marketers to generate (and prove they generate) incremental customer demand for the companies’ products/services (i.e their ability to generate more sales, more market share, more prospects and/or more conversions), Fournaise tracked four results:

1. 67% of marketers don’t believe marketing ROI requires a financial outcome (these are marketers who struggle to give the correct mathematical formula for marketing ROI), demonstrating a lack of understanding of what ROI is all about.
2. 64% of marketers use brand awareness as their top marketing ROI KPI, 58% place Likes, Tweets, Clicks and/or CTR in their top five marketing ROI KPIs, and 31% still believe simply measuring the audience they have reached is marketing ROI.
3. 63% of marketers don’t include any financial outcome when reporting on and presenting marketing results to their CEOs and top management.
4. More than 80% are unable to write a P&L and balance sheet correctly when given a simple business scenario. These marketers are unable to give the correct definitions of basic financial KPIs used daily by CEOs and boards (such as EBITDA, P/E ratio or ROE), and are unable to correctly explain the impact marketing can have on a company’s balance sheet – demonstrating an inability to understand and speak the finance and accounting language.

Jerome Fontaine (pictured), global CEO and chief tracker of Fournaise, said: “It’s an education problem, at two levels:

“1. We analysed the content of hundreds of marketing degrees/diplomas around the world and noticed that 90% do not have any specific (and proper) training on marketing performance and marketing ROI – so we can’t be surprised if marketers with a marketing degree/diploma struggle with marketing performance & ROI;

“2. We tracked that 85% of marketers are well educated, but unfortunately more than 50% have degrees/diplomas in a non-marketing-related field such as English, history, economics, journalism, sociology and foreign languages – these marketers do not know enough and do not master enough the critical marketing techniques and formulae (79% of these marketers struggle to correctly state what the basic 4Ps & 5Cs of marketing are – in the right order), and are lost when it comes to marketing performance & ROI.

“In other words, every Tom, Dick and Harry is a marketer, lacking the scientific and financial knowledge necessary to inform and optimise the creative side of marketing.

“CEOs have told us again and again: they want ROI marketers, i.e 360-degree performance machines trained to deliver (real) business results and prove/optimise ROI.

“As long as marketers continue to fail to get trained in, master the use of and optimise marketing performance and marketing ROI, they will struggle to demonstrate to CEOs that they are not ‘money spenders who jump on (and hide) behind the latest fads and blow smoke’, but real business generators.”