Circus Festival – Commercial Creativity

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Joey

Last week I had the please of attending the first Circus Festival of Commercial Creativity in Sydney.  It was a great day with 9 speakers including

  • Jeffrey Cole from Centre of Digital Future
  • Angnello Dias from Taproot India
  • Jess Greenwood Contagious Insider
  • Marvin Chow from Google
  • Erik Vervroegen from GSP
  • Josh Spear from Undercurrent
  • Charles Wigley from BBH Asia
  • Rob Campbell from Wieden + Kennedy
  • Jose Cabaco from Nike

All of the speakers were amazing and made me sit bit and think about the solutions we provide our customers and how we can improve them.  Some of the highlights were;

Jeffrey Cole - His insights and analysis into the changing landscape of media and both offline and online habits.  Its great to think a bit further away than just this campaign, or this year, and his insights help you to do this

Marvin Chow – Google’s approach to marketing is much the same way in which we improve websites, launch early, launch fast, test, test, test, improve.  It’s great to get some insights into their marketing process.

Josh Spear – Josh’s insights into the bottom 80% of the web, and the trends they spawn were fantastic.  His insights into cultural meme’s were amazing and got people to think about the message and the communication rules of the medium and audience you are communicating with.

Charles Wigley - The anti-wind tunnel marketing movement is a great way to describe what Charles talked about.  Basically this presentation was about the homogenisation of marketing in many verticals such as Shampoo & AWD cars.  It’s kind of like Einstein’s famous saying ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’.  If agencies use the same research companies, to get the same insights, to drive the same processes to come up with the same single minded propositions the end result will clearly be the same.

Anyway, it was a great day and I would highly recommend it to any business and marketing professional.

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Adwords Automated Rules

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Joey

Adwords rulesGoogle have just released a new feature to Australia which allows you to automate some of your bidding processes.  You can set automated bidding rules for things that used to be manual such as budget running out, changing max CPCs for particular keywords and increasing and decreasing daily budgets based on daily performance.

Australia is always a little bit behind the rest of the world to get these new features, but it’s fantastic they have finally arrived.

I will be using these new rules for all clients to take advantage of cheap, high performing waves of traffic.  I will also be ensuring that Adwords providers I manage are using this feature to the full to ensure maximum ROI.

Adwords automated rules will not change the way we manage Search Engine Marketing campaigns in Australia, but the feature will help squeeze out that extra 10% out of many clients budgets.

Find out more about our Search Engine Marketing Service

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Dominos Embraces eCommerce

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Joey

Dominos iphone appIn early January Domino’s UK announced some amazing results of their iPhone ordering app and results of online ordering as a whole.  Check out these numbers..!

  • Online eCommerce sales were up 63% YOY to £128m
  • 35.8% of all delivery requests come from online channels (iPhone + eCommerce)

Domino’s are planning on expanding their mobile ordering to include an Android app in 2011.

It’s great to see more big companies embracing mobile and eCommerce opportunities… they are only going to continue to grow over the coming years.

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Changes to Google Local

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Joey

Over the past few weeks I have noticed Google playing around more with the way it presents the results for location modified searches.  Below is an image (you will need to click it to view it in full screen) of 2 Google local searches, both performed on the same browser on the same day.

New Google Local Search Results

The left image is the traditional way of displaying Google Local Search Results.  I like this display as the 7 pack of results along with the top ad results still leave enough room for the top 3 organic results.

The right image is the new way of displaying Google Local Search Results.  As you can see the place pages are not grouped together as they used to be and the organic results are mixed in.  I’m not how this works for normal users (i.e. non SEO’s) but this annoys me to no end.

I have worked hard over recent months to perfect Google Local Optimisations and feel that this new change is devaluing the work a bit.

What do you think about the changes to the Google Local Search Results?

 

 

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Google Instant Search – SEO Implications

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Joey

Google instant search popped up in Australia a little later than in many other countries in the world but it is already starting to have a big impact on both SEO and SEM campaigns.  What should you be doing about these changes?

Firstly I’d like to highlight what Google instant search is for those who don’t know.  This is Google’s new search technology that automatically shows ads as you are typing your query in.  This makes use of Google’s predictive search technology.

The below picture highlights a few of the key implications for marketers of Google Instant Search.

Google Instant SEO implications

Firstly look at the search term.  I started typing ‘iphone screen’ as my iphone screen was broken and before I could type in ‘screen’ I started to see some results for the new iphone 4.  I would not have normally seen these ads with such a specific query like ‘iphone screen’.

Secondly, you will now notice that you can only see 2 or at a maximum 3 organic results above the fold as the predictive search area takes up about 1 or 2 places.

What do both of these two items mean for advertisers.  Well the first change means that many of our negative keywords need to be adjusted to ensure we are not missing out on potential impressions.  And the second issue means that it is now far more important to be in position 1 or position 2.

There is also a large amount of data around already that is showing that click throughs on 2 and 3 word search terms are decreasing, and click throughs on 4/5/6/7 word phrases are all increasing.  This is going to change the way many businesses approach long tail search and will provide big benefits to those who get on board with the changes early.

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How important is time of day for Google Ads?

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Joey

Time of day – Google Ads

This is a question that I have been asked quite a few times and I can safely say that it depends on your individual business.  Think about it, would Pizza Hut have more conversions between 9am and 11am or 5pm to 7pm?  The answer is obvious, but what about less cut and dry businesses like typical B2B businesses.

As with any problem in the land of online the first step to figuring out the problem is solid data analysis.  So crack open your favourite tool, mine is Google Analytics, and start crunching.  Some fancy SEM tools such as Kenshoo run this analysis for you on the fly, whereas Google Adwords / Google Analaytics need a little bit of massaging.

Start off by creating an advanced segment for paid traffic.  Then go to the visitors tab and select a date range that will be large enough to give you heaps of data for each of the 24 separate hour blocks.  I tend to do this over a 3 month period, but if you have more or less traffic you can do shorter, or longer periods.  The caveat here is that your website hasn’t changed considerably over the time period as this would impact the results.

In the visitors tab change the view to ‘by hour’. and export.

Next create another advanced segment, but this time do paid traffic + Converting traffic.  Go back into the visitors tab and select ‘by hour’ and export.

Now match up these 2 charts and you have paid visits by hour of the day, and conversions by hour of the day.  The chart below is what you receive and if the visits and the conversion rate are not lining up then you have a problem.  This client received about a 200% increase in productivity from this change alone.

Adwords time of day

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Growth of online marketing

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Joey

Everyone talks about the growth of online marketing but you really know there is a shift when a stalwart marketer like Proctor & Gamble say it “has set itself the target of reaching one billion shoppers around the world using digital media”. They have identified the need to shift from one way communications to media that allows them to engage consumers and online fits the bill perfectly.

WARC also reports that brands now need to ensure that their vision and values are communicated clearly as these are becoming more and more important to consumers.  Online is the most flexible and measurable communication medium and lets brands have deep connections and engagements with consumers.

Online marketing growthLast year Booze & Co did a research project talking to hundreds of CEO’s and CMO of major companies and asked them about their marketing spend intentions over the coming years and the results were very interesting.  According to Booze & Co (see picture) most major companies are intending to shift their marketing spend away from one way mediums such as TV and Radio, and move it into two way communications with a focus on Online marketing.

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Conversation @ Masani – Andrew Bassat

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Joey

Last week I had the privilege of attending a Melbourne University Alumni event at Masani where Andrew Bassat, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Seek.com.au.  This was a fantastic event and was great to tap into some of the thought processes behind the building of one of the great Australian success stories… particularly online.

Some of the highlights from the discussion for me were;

  • Online is far more of a winner takes all game as opposed to the offline world where 4 to 5 big players can survive
  • Classifieds are even more cut throat with it difficult to even sustain 2 main players.
  • Thus, getting to critical mass is one of the most important aspects of success in the online world.
  • It is important to have investors that have faith in the vision of the company.  Often, early on, there is pressure to start delivering profits and these need to be resisted until the businesses position has been solidified.
  • For online ventures it is far more important to get the critical few right than getting 4 projects out of 13 right.

It was great to spend some time listening to Andrew’s thoughts and I have to say thank you to Melbourne University for holding the event and Andrew for his open and frank discussion.

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Welcome to Online Strategy Solutions

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Joey

Welcome to the Online Strategy Solutions blog and company website.  Over the coming months and years I will publish my thoughts and experiences in the broad area of online strategy in Australia.  For too long this industry has been shrouded in secrecy but I am very honest and transparent with my clients to ensure you that understand where your money is being spent, and most of all, you have an accurate idea of your Return on Investment.

Please feel free to browse the site and get in touch via the contact us form.

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