Benjamin James Dyer

Rumblings from the world of IT and eCommerce

June 26, 2009 • 10:02 pm 0

How Are Your Customers Behaving?

Hop into my Tardis, I want to take you back to those heady, glorious, recession-free days of 2007.

Two of the largest deals that year were based around advertising. Google acquired online ad company Double Click for a $3bn. In the meantime, and keen not to be left out, Microsoft stumped up $250 million for a less than 2% share in FaceBook. Sure, these figures seem a little crazy today, but the truth is that online marketing really works.

Last year, online marketing accounted for 25% of total UK advertising outlay. Back in 2007 when those deals were going through, the British business was spending £3bn a year in this space. Now, in the midst of a recession, companies look like they will shell out more than £5bn. In 2008 Google made nearly $20bn just from advertising. That’s $50 for each man, woman and child in the US!

It is clear our appetite for online marketing is only getting bigger, but what are the current trends?

The hot technique at the moment focuses around behavioural targeting. In layman’s terms, you make your advertising more effective by targeting only those that are most likely to buy. It’s nothing new. There is a reason adverts for feminine hygiene products appear during Judge Judy and you don’t see them on reruns of Top Gear on “Dave”.

As a former website developer I used to spend hours dedicated to SEO. It is hard work and doesn’t always cut it. As a result, and especially in the world of ecommerce, PPC schemes continue to blow natural search out of the water.

Within this market Google doesn’t just dominate, it obliterates. However, if Google is Goliath, FaceBook is certainly making an attempt to be David. If it’s not doing so already, I believe FaceBook advertising will put a serious dent in Google’s finances. Looking at the HitWise reports for last month, one in every 20 UK web visitors ended up on Facebook. That’s staggering.

So, how do FaceBook ads stack up against Google?

I recently experimented with a five-day ad campaign on FaceBook as well as the more traditional PPC schemes of MSN and Google. This is my third attempt at advertising on FaceBook, and I am happy to report that it has significantly moved forward.

The very first thing to notice is the ability to segment your advertising into demographics. Usefully, the merchant I was testing this for had spent a lot of time analysing product sales and speaking to customers, and knew his core market – UK males aged between 20 and 30.

The budget for this experiment was low, but looking at the results, FaceBook managed to serve up ads a phenomenal number of times. In fact, I was frankly staggered that it was around one thousand times more than traditional PPC. The result is that both the average cost per click and the cost of visitor acquisition are significantly lower when compared with Google.

Diving a little into the results, I was very keen to understand just what had happened. Analytics tells me the visitors spent about two minutes on the merchant site. However the key stat turns out to be the percentage of visitors that instantly left the site, the bounce rate. Bounces from FaceBook visitors were 50% less than Google and 60% less than MSN!

The answer is simple; It’s all about behavioural targeting. FaceBook is delivering adverts to the most relevant people. No wonder Google wants to know more about all of its visitors!

So, looking back at 2007 again, maybe that $250M was the more sensible investment.

Filed under: E-Commerce, PR Activity, Web Tech , actinic, advertising, Ben Dyer, benjamin dyer, business zone, facebook advertising, ppc

• 9:58 pm 0

The Real Thing?

A post for Marketing Donut

You can argue that the aim of marketing is to build momentum. You need to raise awareness and establish how people perceive your brand. Traditionally this worked well, but I have news for you — attempting to set perceptions is becoming an increasingly dangerous strategy.

You may recall a marketing campaign that had the sole intention of altering your perception of a brand. A soft drinks manufacturer who specialised in blackcurrant-based drinks had complaints about the sugar content and related tooth decay. This caused it to launch a low sugar version. It even had the cojones to sell it as “Toothkind”. The rebranding promoted health benefits and claimed four times the vitamin C levels of rivals.

The inconvenient truth proved the product wasn’t good for your teeth and one drink in the range had negligible vitamin C! This little oversight cost the company significant sums of money. But the real stinker was the “corrective advertisements” it was forced to run on national television.

It’s always been dangerous to try to build a false perception. Now the rise of social networking has upped the ante. There has been a seismic shift in our abilities to interact and talk to each other, and to build or rubbish brands that annoy us. We are the mob, and the mob is now all seeing. If you are bluffing, it won’t take long for people to find you out.

It’s simple; the quality of your offering builds the perceptions. These will be based on fact and customer experience, not marketing spin. Ignore this at your peril.

Filed under: PR Activity, Web Tech , actinic, Ben Dyer, benjamin dyer, marketing, marketing donut

May 26, 2009 • 3:15 pm 0

Saving the Lemming

Listen to this blog post at AudioBoo

A post for marketing blog “Marketing Donut“, you can read the original here. If you agree or disagree with me, head over to the site and leave a comment.

Recently I have become utterly obsessive about ecommerce and business site design. This began after I spent a few hours reviewing a friend’s Pay Per Click (PPC) invoice. Apart from rivalling the deficit of a national bank his campaign was providing little success. Delving a little deeper, his problem turned out not to be traffic, rather his site has all the basics wrong.

While there are many techniques for running lean and successful PPC campaigns I want to take a step back to look at these fundamentals.

It’s easy to spend a bucket load of cash on PPC (trust me, I have done it). However, the very first objective for any site owner should be to create a site that achieves its aims. Using ecommerce as an example, this is about converting browsers into buyers. If you can get the principles right, driving traffic should be a secondary and relatively easy objective.

Anyone that’s played the popular 90’s computer game Lemmings will know that leaving these suicidal creatures to meander as they please will result in disaster, usually of the dead Lemming kind. The problem isn’t the lack of Lemmings — there are enough for everyone — the problem is the route you have devised for them generally ends up in the spiky pit of doom. Business websites sites have the same tendency, but we just call it ‘goal conversion’.

Ask yourself, what are the goals of your site? They could be anything from a sale, contact form submission, lead creation or a click somewhere. These goals are the foundations of your site — the routes for the Lemmings — and anything else is secondary.

Once you have identified these goals you need to optimise for them. It’s an essential and often painful process, but one where you need to be ruthless. Anything detracting from a goal conversion needs stripping away without mercy. Conversely, the message for any areas that need strengthening, is fix them now!

It’s only when you are happy that your site meets its goals that spending on PPC makes sense. Just press that button and let the Lemmings jump!

Filed under: E-Commerce, PR Activity, Web Tech , Ben Dyer, benjamin dyer, e-commerce site design, lemmings, marketing donut, pay per click, ppc, seo, site design

• 3:06 pm 0

Six top tips for building an online community

A posting for the marketing site Marketing Donut, you can read the original here. If you agree or disagree with me, head over to the site and leave a comment.

A community is an enabler; it allows you an unparalleled level of access to your user base and empowers the otherwise voiceless consumer to feed back to ‘the man’.

However, setting up and running a community is not easy. The Actinic Community was established in 2002 and today has more than 10,000 members. This provides our company with a daily insight into our customers and their views on our products and services, while highlighting both our strengths and weaknesses.

1. Don’t rush in, have a plan

An online community is a little like a building project – you provide the bricks and mortar to build the environment where your members will reside. Once built, however, you need a plan to get people in. The traffic you attract – or don’t attract -will be the measure of your success or failure.

Ideas to do this could be as simple as including details of your community at every ‘touch point’ you have with your customers, such as outgoing email signatures, phone messages or literature. Do your research and discover where your customers currently reside online; this could be Twitter or Facebook, so establish a presence there – but make sure you refer back to your own community.

I have seen hundreds of communities start up and turn into ghost towns because the basics of how to attract members were not in place. If you are unsure about starting a community, why not test the water with a decent blog. If you start to get a good level of comments then it’s a good indicator that your customers are ready to talk.

2. Dedication’s what you need

Community building takes time and commitment to make happen. If you are confident that your strategy is correct, stay the course. For every community I have seen fail due to lack of traffic, two have the plug pulled because of a perceived lack of progress.

For your community to be a success, you need to look after it. You need to dedicate resource, especially in the early days to help it grow. The Actinic Community is amazing as we have so many subject matter experts, but it wasn’t always the case.

3. You’re the boss

Communities need leaders — it’s a tough job, requiring many hats to be worn including politician, preacher and even policeman. You need to define how you will approach each role, but it needs to be consistent.

Community leadership is all about engaging and inspiring others. Constantly ask yourself ‘Am I doing a good job?’. If not, ask for help. Good leaders will help set the tone for the rest of the community so it is vital you get it right.

4. Know your demographics

I like to divide community members into three camps: newbies, casual users and the hardcore fanatics. It’s clichéd I know, but it’s true. These camps tend to play out distinct roles: newbies ask questions, fanatics answer them and the casuals move up the scale, or get bored and go elsewhere.

Be very careful about getting too hung up with the fanatics: while anyone passionate about your offering is valuable, they probably represent only a small slice of your community pie. The trick is to work with the most dedicated posters to help engage with the casual browsers. Your goal is to build a community, not pander to the whims of a small minority, however tempting.

5. Set some rules, but don’t invite Stalin

If you want to build a successful community, you need rules. These rules need to be the cornerstone of the community’s existence. Without rules governing how your community is run, prepare for Armageddon. Trust me, nothing devalues a brand more than your own customers slugging it out on your public space.

However, the very purpose of a community is to empower your customers to talk. Don’t stifle conversation just because it is going against you, or exposing a potential weakness with your offering.

We all screw up; what matters is how we react when we do. Be honest and open with your community – this is your chance to learn what your customers really think. Listening to comments and engaging with criticism proves you want to be proactive and create better solutions for your customers.

6. Don’t let the haters get you down

At some point you will get a good kicking, whether justified or not. Due to the disconnected aspect of an online community, people act differently than if you met them face to face or even on the phone.

Managing aggressive criticism while maintaining freedom of speech requires a careful balance, so never respond badly in a public space. It can be a humbling experience. However, if your efforts to engage with your customers are being derailed by abusive members, you need to act. Exclude them if they persistently ignore your requests to be more moderate.

Running a community is hard work, but it can be a fantastically rewarding experience for both you and your customers. The reality is that if you have a successful company, product or service, your customers will be talking about you anyway. What you need to decide is whether you are willing to facilitate the conversation.

Filed under: PR Activity, Web Tech , Ben Dyer, benjamin dyer, building a community, community, marketing donut, online community

May 15, 2009 • 4:09 pm 0

Media 140 Live Blog

I will be live blogging from Media140, the first Real Time News / Twitter conference, it all kicks off from 1400hrs on 20th May. The live blog page can be found here, or you can follow me on the .net magazine event Twitter account (link coming soon).