10 Digital Marketing Trends for 2013

This blog posting is one of my favorite series, I’ve been posting a list of 10 digital marketing trends in ’11 and ’12.

So what’s expected to happen in 2013?

Brazil has the FIFA Confederations Cup in preparation for the ’14 World Cup, the US has a fiscal cliff to climb and together with the EU an imbalance on revenues and expenses to address.  The NFL has some skulls to crack to fix their concussions problems, those employed in the US will hire the unemployed in foreign lands (read more outsourcing), more foreigners will purchase US land, buildings, businesses and IP, and of course, VP Biden is the newly assigned czar on gun control.

IMHO, 2013 will follow Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

So here they are: The top 10 digital marketing trends of 2013.

10. Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

9.  Cloud computing enables scalability to allow for new experiences in video games

8.  Digital Content across devices enables personalization that follows users across platforms

7.  TV is old.  It’s still king of the screens, but it’s content that folks want anytime, anywhere on all four screens. 

6.  The Smartphone begins its attack on plastic in mobile payments.

5.  Tag Management becomes a competitive imperative

4.  Users prefer mobile devices when reading magazines and shopping

3.  Social Media Mainstream and Niches continue to grow, especially in Emerging Markets except China

2.  Big Data will lead to consumer insights and smarter experiences at the speed of light

1.   The glory goes to the man in the arena and not their bankers and consultants.  

10.  Gamification – “All Play and no Work makes Jack a rich boy!”

So have you seen websites that try to encourage your behavior by offering you a little badge for doing something?  Foursquare gives you a badge when you check into the same place three times for example.  Dashlane offers badges when you save passwords in their password and credit card maintenance software, and Fitocracy makes working out with your friends a competitive game.  Users can Level Up by improving their bench press and earning a badge, post it to facebook and let the world know about their development.

As Daniel Pink will tell you in his book, Drive, human nature is best motivated by a sense of purpose, autonomy and self-mastery.  These types of immediate rewards for accomplishing small tasks might seem like it’s meant for grade school kids, but the data doesn’t lie.  Gamification increases engagement, helps users spend more time on site, and

that drives ad revenue and subscriptions since folks tend to develop a sense of being invested based on the recognition and the bragging they’ve done on social networks.

We’ve come a long way from that LinkedIn profile bar that showed 90%complete.

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The Value of CRT Positioning

Companies undertand the importance of  refining their CRT (click-through rates). This is because as the rates are improved with higher ranked keywords, the companies’ income can also greatly improve. Essentially, to determine the CTR, ‘number of visits’ is divided by ‘number of searches.’

In previous research, summarised by Chris Soames, an analysis of CRTs from Optify showed the importance of Page 1 and, in particular the top 3 positions.

Below are comparisons of Google click-through rates by position.

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Ensighten Provides Marketing Enablement for Websites

Interview with: Josh Manion, CEO and Founder of Ensighten

Ensighten is a partner of Lima Consulting Group and is the tag management software that we use to manage digital marketing services like web analytics, ad networks, content optimization, social sharing, conversion pixels and voice of consumer on customer websites.

Q: What made you start Ensighten?

I started Stratigent, a web analytics consulting firm, in 2002 to work with big brands with very complex tagging requirements. So I experienced the pain of managing tags first hand. We tried a couple of the tag management products on the market at that time, but their container tag approach didn’t scale well for enterprises and didn’t support all enterprise tagging use cases, like complex web analytics data collection and site content personalization. In 2009, I decided to solve the problem myself with a fundamentally different approach. The objective was to reduce, or in many cases eliminate, the need for IT / developer involvement in tagging while not limiting the functionality of any marketing service.

I had four key design requirements for the system we built which became the foundation of Ensighten:  it has to deploy in a single line of code, support any tagging use case or vendor without custom development by either party, support any device, and accelerate page load in the process.

Q: What is different about your tag management solution than others?

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The Internet in Brazil: Growth and Opportunity

Brazil’s sustained economic growth continues to be an example for economies in Latin America and throughout the world.  The Brazilian Ministry of Finance’s 2012 projections are once again very encouraging, predicting an estimated growth rate of approximately 4.5%.

These indicators have impacted internet consumption habits throughout Brazil.  In recent years, internet usage at all levels of society has increased steadily, reaching a high of 75 million users today.  In 2011, the number of mobile internet users nearly doubled.  And 99.8% of all new internet plan subscriptions were for mobile phones, tablets, and 3G modems. 

This kind of growth doesn’t happen by chance.  In fact, the UN believes that expanded use of the internet is a key factor in reducing poverty and promoting economic growth.  This could be because the internet plays a fundamental role in modernizing traditional economic activities.  And Brazil as a nation is definitely in line with development and innovation.

The way that development and innovation plays out in reality is this: A broader range of high quality services is created to meet the population’s needs.  More research is conducted within the country’s borders, more businesses are established, more jobs are generated, and the number of people with access to banks increases.  Consequently, Brazilians have greater access to buying and selling mobile phones, resulting in both the creation of new media and the expansion of existing forms of communication. 

Ultimately, it seems that Brazil is currently walking the path already taken by other nations with developed economies.  The country’s vision is oriented towards adopting, improving, and transforming the way work is done, business is conducted, and personal interactions take place.  All this allows Brazil to successfully face the challenges of being an information-driven society in the 21^st century.

SOPA: A Closer Look

Seemingly overnight, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) proposed by the U.S. Senate has rocked the online world.  The controversial bill inspired a 24-hour outage of numerous U.S. websites, including Wikipedia, and has even been criticized by President Barack Obama.  Many of the president’s advisors claim the bill will only make online businesses more vulnerable to lawsuits, while also impeding legal activities and endangering freedom of expression.  In the midst of all the emotion, it’s important to ask…What are the arguments against this “soup”?

First and foremost, under SOPA, the U.S. Department of Justice would have the power to investigate, prosecute, and shut down any individual or company accused of uploading copyrighted material, both inside and outside the country.   The law would also compel U.S.-based search engines, domain hosts, and advertising companies to block services to any site under investigation by the Department of Justice for breach of copyright.  As a result, many analysts predict that this legislation would prompt cloud computing and web-hosting companies to move their operations outside the U.S., in order to avoid lawsuits.   In addition to the economic consequences, all the above would also pose serious threats to Americans’ first amendment right to freedom of expression.

The public outcry and numerous protests surrounding these concerns have so far had one major consequence: the Senate has decided to indefinitely delay its vote on this controversial bill.  For now, SOPA will have to wait.

Why did Microsoft buy Skype?

What did Microsoft really buy in this deal?

Code? Nah…

The Skype technology code base is similar to a version 1.0 of a microsoft product and is notoriously known for having been riddled with technical inefficiencies.  The Microsoft Lync product has relatively similar features to Skype.  So if Microsoft really wanted better code, I would guess that they could have out-coded Skype for say a budget of about $1 billion and still have saved 7.5 billion dollars.  So lets take technology and source code off the table.  That’s not it.

Affiliate Relationships? Nope… read more

Tips For Targeting Latinos Online: New at #SESNY

Day 2 at #SESNY kicked off with a groundbreaking keynote. But wait. Let’s rewind. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Lima of Lima Consulting on the topic of Digital Marketing To Latino Users. The Q&A was an eye-opening peek at the opportunity represented by the growing online Hispanic market, and a serious appeteaser to the inaugural launch of the Focus Latino track at Search Engine Strategies New York.

The keynote was introduced & moderated by Mike Grehan, Chair SES Advisory Board, Global VP Content, SES/Search Engine Watch/ClickZ, Carlos Vassallo, CEO, LatinVision Media Inc., Carlos Manzano, Executive Director, Latin Media & Entertainment Commission, City of NY, and Paul Lima himself. Mark López , Head of U.S. Hispanic Audience, Google, took the stage for the main event, which was jam-packed with awesome stats about Latino users. Oodles of them live below the fold, in addition to a hearty helping of takeaways from the follow-up session, Reaching Latinos through SEO, presented by Rafael E. Hernandez, Sales Manager, AudienceScience and Matias Perel, Founder and CEO, Latin3. aimClear live-tweeted both of these fascinating sessions. Read on for the goodies.

Mind-Blowing Stats, Brian-Nuggets  & Best Practices
Mike, Carlos V. & Carlos M, Paul, and Mark took turns sharing a slew of stats & targeting tips regarding the Hispanic Market. (Rad full write up in Bruce Clay Blog.) Here’s a sample platter of the main attractions:

• The U.S. Hispanic market is a $1 trillion market! That cannot be ignored.
• New York City has the most diverse Hispanic population than any other city in the U.S.
• By 2040, it’s predicted that 100% of the U.S. Hispanic market will be online. Searching, socializing, etc.
• There is no real divide between online & offline engagement. Online engagement, video & mobile usage is on par with the overall market.
• 53% of Hispanics use the Internet for shopping (searching to learn more about brands, find products,purchase products, etc.)
• Search prompts action, meaning search generates distinct offline action for U.S. Hispanic advertisers
• TV is an effective trigger for search – 78% of Hispanics have used search engine to find more info about something they saw on TV.
• U.S. Hispanics are Googlers! 93% of Hispanics use Google as their primary search engine.
• Mobile search drives store traffic. 1 in 3 mobile search queries have local intent.
• 15% of iPhone apps are local-based
• 24% iPhone users are Hispanic (they rely on mobile to stay connected with friends & family)
• Mobile is already an important component in the purchase funnel. 40% of Hispanics compare prices & find retailers via smartphones.
• Search dominates smartphone usage.70% of Hispanics use smartphones to search– in other words, search engines are most popular sites they visit.
• 8% of queries entered in Google today are in Spanish. This opens a huge pot of inventory that many companies haven’t tapped into yet.
• Regarding Spanish keywords vs. English keywords — there’s a substantial discount for Spanish KWs.
• 80% of Spanish KW queries are done in the English Interface of Google. This suggests bilingual users, who can be targeted by both Spanish & English KWs. #Winning

Mark Lopez, Head of US Hispanic Audience for Google presents with Mike Grehan, Head of Content Development for Incisive Media, the SES conference organizers, and Paul Lima, CEO of Lima Consulting Group and Carlos Vassallo, CEO of LatinVision Media

Best practices:

• Develop search capabilities for this market. You have to test your creative across languages. Keywords, images, copy– what you serve to English-speaking users may not resonate with Spanish-speaking users.
• Have an “Always On” strategy for search. Your target audience is searching 24/7.
• Make your offline marketing strategy a digital one. Ensure you are present as users search for their favorite offline content (such as TV shows).
• Extend to mobile search. It’s there, & it’s growing! Hispanics rely more heavily on their mobile devices.

Reaching Latinos through SEO
The following session focused more on SEO, and ways to optimize your site for Hispanic searchers. Rafael was up first, reiterating that Google has 72% of search traffic in Latin America. If Latinos are a part of your target audience, Google should factor into your SEO tactics.

Another significant tactic Rafael touched upon the importance of understanding how your audiences describes you; your business, brand, products, services, etc. What are the keywords they use to find you? Those are the keywords you should use to advise your SEO strategy. And, newsflash– they might not be the words you use to describe yourself.

Where to find keyword ideas:

• Your own content
• Your Analytics (high quality terms driving small traffic? low-hanging fruit!)
• Your competitors’ pages
• Your PPC data

Discover what’s working, and use it!

Matias took the stage next, set to dig deeper into Reaching Latinos through SEO.

Some stats:

• 30 mil U.S. Hispanics are online
• 89% search share in Latin America on Google
• 112 million Internet users in Latin America
• 6 million new web users in Brazil last year alone

Factors in SEO & Other Fascinating Takeaways

• Indexing - take note, is every page indexing?
• Contextualization (KEY in Latin America) – what’s the page about?
• Reputation is huge. Influences people to click, or… not.
• Think globally…. who owns your local domain? Use it!
• Sub-domains & sub-folders – separate your Spanish content from your English content. Avoid query string parameters /session variable.
• Language - how does your audience think & search online? How do they expect to find your content?
• Server - not the biggest deal, but having local IPs for your server can help add context to your site.
• Local links are more relevant, a better sign of trust & reputation to Hispanic users.
• The new social factor: social defined relevance. Sharing is the new linking! See how Google understands your social connections.
• As always, CONTENT IS KING. According to Matias, it’s also president & prime minister . The same rules apply. Create unique content worth sharing and linking.
• “Latinos love to share! Latinos love great content!” Leverage cool videos, infographics, thoughtful posts, incredible photos.

“Viva la diferencia!”
The biggest takeaway from this session (and perhaps the track in general)… Be mindful of the different ways Latinos say the same thing. Latinos have a lot in common – but every culture has some slight differences in how they express themselves. The same word (for example, “lightbulb”) can be expressed differently from Argentina, to Mexico, to Colombia. This is huge in terms of KW research and how you go about stemming. There are so many ways to say the same thing… within and between these cultures.

Thanks to all of the moderators & speakers for two terrific back-to-back sessions. These presentations certainly set the bar for future Focus Latino tracks to come. Stay tuned in aimClear Blog for more conference coverage– follow along with @beebow, @Matt_Peterson, @aimClear & @KJalivay for live-tweets straight from the floor.