How Will Online Marketing Change During 2012?
The New Year brings lots of pontificating and lame attempts to predict the new trends for the year. 2011 saw substantial Online Marketing evolution and undoubtedly 2012 will see even more as the great seachange continues. This is our view on the issue that really matter.
The internet is encroaching so far into our society that to not embrace it wholeheartedly in your business is a massive oversight that will cost you dearly. Already we are seeing online lagards approach us very nervous that they have already missed the boat having ignored their online marketing until now or just paid lipservice to it by just having a mediocre website and thinking that is sufficient. The reality is that in most markets they are still early movers and are amazed at the advantage it has given to their business by simply focusing on it during 2011.
The 4 major Online Marketing Lessons for 2012
Mobile and The Exponential Growth Of Online Useage
So to 2012, well having just flown through Brisbane,Sydney,Singapore,Frankfurt,Heathrow and Hong Kong airports i saw a fairly dramatic difference compared to 6 months ago in how many people were using mobile devices(mainly iphones,ipads and macs) whilst waiting for their flights in the departure lounges and airline lounges. Heathrow were the only airport that showed they had considered their customers enough, by installing a pillar of electrical powerpoints. They covered a UK,European,Australian and American power source allowing people to recharge whilst waiting for their flight. Surely innovation like that has only just started because the thirst to be online 24/7 has grown dramatically.
The lesson for 2012, whilst consumers are not on average too far into the buying cycle when using mobile devices, their experience of your business is important so if they find you in Google when searching for the service or product they are looking for and the mobile version of your website does not satisfy them that is a lost opportunity to engage them as a potential customer.
The Big G
Google is becoming more dominant. Forget those commentators who simply don’t understand Business or the Internet, the suggestion that the internet has become Facebook vs Google is simply wrong. Yes Facebook offers an opportunity for young growing brands to leverage some viral ideas to expose their offer to a much wider audience,yes facebook advertising offers the very best targeted segmentation going on the internet BUT when people are using Google they are focusing purely on one specific thing at a time and their intent is clear by what they type into the search engine. For example someone typing in “Angelina Jolie movies 2011″ has very little Commercial intent(hence will attract very little advertising around it and being ranked well has limited appeal unless you run a commercial Angelina Jolie fan club!), however someone typing in “Divorce Lawyer Sydney” has a very considerable likely Commercial intent. Facebook offers advertising to people who are not looking for anything, yes they have identified their interests and that is a very strong start, for example they may say in their profile that they are active kitesurfers, well yes a well produced relevant Kitesurfing product ad on their facebook page may well get their interest and the interest of some of their friends………….but really the Commercial leverage is offered by Google with their highly qualified matching of searchers with Businesses offering what is being searched for.
The Lesson for 2012……..SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION AND GOOGLE ADWORDS CAMPAIGNS ARE KING! THE VALUE OF TOP RANKINGS IN GOOGLE IS GROWING DRAMATICALLY. THE VALUE OF TOP RANKINGS IN ADWORDS IS GROWING DRAMATICALLY
Panda and Quality Unique Content
Google rolled out new updates to their algorithm in 2011. They were named Panda, after the programmer who was responsible for their implementation. They weeded out a lot of dross in the results pages and refined the integrity of SERP’s. There was also some collateral damage of quality sites suffering though this was not a permanent state so we hear(all our clients benefited from PANDA). The single biggest issue that Panda brought home was that QUALITY UNIQUE CONTENT is the only type of content worth publishing. Rehashed,very short copy,pieces that rely heavily on large quotes are now very negative assets for your website. We now consider websites like a balance sheet of a company, there will be strengths and weaknesses and weightings attached to each but the big issue is that the big weightings are attached to positive assets and any negative assets be associated with low weighting factors.
The Lesson for 2012,Content is King…..do not produce worthless,irrelevant content,make every page of your website pull it’s weight.
Conversion Optimisation
Conversion Optimisation has now started to become vital. Split testing of ads,title tags,description tags,headlines,copy,images,intent,calls to action and many other variables will allow you to constantly ratchet up your conversion rate. A conversion for a website may be an enquiry or a purchase or a free download or a click through to a landing page. Conversion Rate optimisation has been around a while, the tools are getting more sophisticated to test more in one go but ultimately the interpretation of the human involved becomes the vital factor, making good decisions regarding what to test,how to test it,how long to wait for actionable results and how to move forward from there.
The Lesson for 2012? During 2011 we have achieved conversion improvements of upto 400% for our clients,less than 50% is rare. If you are in a competitive market place it is the very best way to make your traffic work a lot harder for your business.
Whilst the world economy continues to hit hard times, the internet holds gold that just simply needs to be mined with the right tools and manpower. If your Online Marketing is focused on the wrong things your business will not benefit from this effortless silent salesman that roams the world wide web on your behalf and finds new customers for you and delivers them to your door with their wallet open.
