Google Trends..Helping us to understand the present and predict the future

In its beginning, Google was created only as a Search Engine. Nowadays, it can help us discover new insights, compare brands popularity in different regions and even predict market fluctuations through Google Trends.


  Google Trends recognizes which are the most popular topics in the Internet  through the analysis of the most searched terms on Google.  Sir Francis Bacon quoted "Knowledge is power" and Google Trends is giving us the key to enter in the people most popular interests.


 For a marketer, Google Trends can give invaluable information to understand the health of a brand, discover insights to prepare a marketing campaign and follow the success of this last one. The analysis of the popularity of one brand towards its competitor can be a useful tool to discover in which regions a brand is more weak in order to take some actions. Some analysis show a strong correlation between the searches of a company name on Google and its sales. As an example, we can mention the connection between Ford's monthly sales and Ford Google trends during 2004-2009 period. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2013/04/26/big-data-gets-bigger-now-google-trends-can-predict-the-market/)
Furthermore, if a Company launches a new ad, a good way to evaluate its impact in the web is to analyze if there is an increase in the search of its brands name.  Even if Google Trends is not 100% reliable to predict the success of a campaign, it can give you a hint of what is going on.



Another area where this tool can be useful is the stocks market. Last year, three economists were able to predict the evolution of the stocks through Google Trends. How? They found a strong correlation between Internet searches for a Company's name and its trade volume. Additionally, the quantity of searches of the word "debt"  helped to predict the market up and downs. Even if this type of analysis is new, there is not doubt that this data collected by Google Trends will be in the future another parameter that analysts will take into account to study peoples' investment intentions.


Google Trend has been a great source of information to many companies, however, there is still more applications of this tool that we need to discover.

Maria Lourdes Peirano


Sources:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidleinweber/2013/04/26/big-data-gets-bigger-now-google-trends-can-predict-the-market/). 
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2292198/How-to-Use-Google-Trends-for-SEO
http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/08/use-google-trends-punch-up-content-creation/




 

 

What does Xiaomi and Tesla Share in Common?

What does Xiaomi and Tesla Share in Common?

My “groundless” assumption is that most people know what Tesla is,  “best car ever made”, “zero emission electric power” all sorts of buzz words that anyone can think of to describe the next-generation of motor car, which sells infectious online. Established in 2003, the company’s market cap is well above 30 billion, more than half of the General Motor’s.

What is Xiaomi? It is a Chinese locally-designed & produced cellphone with all the fancy gadgets that Apple 5s or Samsung Galaxy has, but somehow positioned at almost half of the price of its competitors. Founded only in 2010, it sold 7 million in 2012 and 20 million in 2013. In the newest round of private valuation, it is estimated to surpass 10 billion dollars, double that of Blackberry and half of Sony.

It will be rather challenging even to try making connections between these two companies by any means. Tesla started in San Carlos, California, a hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurship while Xiaomi launched its journey in the capital city of China where the power grip of the Chinese government is the most intact. Tesla is aiming at customers who are technology / environmentally savvy with upper-middle income; the typical image of Xiaomi users is the majority hardworking Chinese youth, fancying about high-quality of life but faced with with harsh realities on a daily basis.

Behind their overwhelming success stories lies their surprisingly similar marketing strategy – almost no dealership; no huge budget marketing spending in conventional channels; reliance on social media, celebrity influence (both of its CEOs are considered iconic figures beyond their industry) and mouth-to-mouth reputation; and most importantly, all sales done exclusively online.

There are two underlying principles that push two very dissimilar companies to adopt almost the same marketing approach in dramatically different cultural contexts with divergent spending habits. First, though aiming at two income levels, both companies are serving the rising young generation who are more technologically sophisticated and more ready to adopt new innovations. Second, the saving on conventional marketing by the company is directed at greater customer-centered service -- such as allowing individual choice in product design. Not surprisingly, both companies, though very young they are, are ambitious enough to prevail in both home countries’ fronts and beyond.

Therefore, the statistically odd coincidence of Tesla and Xiaomi in their marketing strategy only speaks aloud the imminent disruptive power of innovative enterprises which are ready to challenge the old schools in the business.

Sources:

http://business.time.com/2013/10/14/xiaomi-chinas-threat-to-apple-and-samsung/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDi4Lym-Y0

http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/how-xiaomis-hip-inexpensive-smart-phones-conquered-china/280803/

The Future of Digital Marketing Is You

It is an information explosion ear. Tons of information is exchanged, posted, or uploaded every minute and everywhere. This article points out who can benefit by acquiring personal information and what digital marketing trend will be in the nearly future.

Obviously, companies, such Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, etc., having easy access to acquire and control personal information can benefit the most. Within these companies, the core work is to analyze their huge data base which helps them figure out customer’s preference, test business models, and make the prediction more accurately. For example, huge database enables Google to go further research about its users and customers (advertisers) and then provides better services. Furthermore, U.S. government is the biggest player in the data market which might not be so apparent. By holding the data base, U.S. government can prevent terrorist attack or do something evil (Who knows!?).

The improving digital marketing brings people convenience. It helps consumers find products they need much easier than before (maybe just 1 week ago), blocks unnecessary information, such as spam, etc. However, there are always trade-offs. Every motion you made, like every click, like, is recorded in their data systems (companies or governments). Although there are some laws protecting consumer privacy, the line is still ambiguous. You will never know what they are going to do. So watch out even you are reading this article!!

Sources: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/media/generation-like/the-future-of-digital-marketing-is-you/

World Cup 2014: Digital marketing explosion

Given how close the World Cup is I wanted to post about how digital media and social networks have shaped the way companies use this amazing sporting event to shape their brand and reach consumers.

Coming from Argentina, where football is serious business, I live the World Cup in a special way and witness heavy marketing spending every time this major event is around. In the past, only big brands with targets audiences similar to those of the World Cup (males, basically) used to create this really emotional big TV advertisement that aired through out the whole month of June. Adidas, Quilmes (local beer) and Gillette have always been the big players in this category.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZZiIEyxnG0

However, this last couple of World Cups, the low cost of social media advertising and the self-generated content have open up the fields for smaller players to capitalize on this huge sporting event. In addition, it has allowed the big official sponsors to globalize their campaigns, passing through a unique brand positioning and a consistent global message.

This VISA campaign is a good example. It has invited 32 film-markers from the 32 competing countries in the World Cup to make a short movie of how the event is lived in their country. http://worldcup.visa.com/#

In addition, some other companies have leveraged their social media platforms and encourage football fans to share through their Facebook page how they live the World Cup, not only generating traffic but also helping these companies understand more their consumers and how to reach them.

Digital marketing merges with brick & mortar stores

Google recently announced that it wants to take the integration of their digital platform Google Now with the real world a step further. A new feature on your Android phone alerts you when you walk by a store that sells a product that you have researched before.

Location based advertising has been around for some time. Also Facebook is using location data to allow better targeting of their ads. However, location based ads are not yet used as a tool to reach large masses in order to increase walk-in traffic of particular store locations. Google's new feature could be a step in that direction.

While it seems pretty scary to what extent Google or Facebook are already involved in our everyday activities, it becomes even more obvious how much they know about us when location based alerts are linked to our past online searches. This obviously leads to the question whether consumers are willing to engage in such a personal relationship and activate such a feature on their phone.

Despite such privacy concerns, location based advertising is a great opportunity for brick and mortar stores. If they manage to win consumers trust (e.g., through clear privacy and opt-in policies), it opens up great new advertising and consumer engagement opportunities. More targeted ads are of higher relevance to consumers than an average mobile ad, especially when they offer a discount code or other benefits at the right time in the right place.

The technology is getting there. It is up to the marketers to keep pace with this development and leverage this technology for their brick and mortar stores.

Sources: https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/gqipsEeLcvg,
https://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/new-ways-to-reach-the-right-audience

Product Hunt - Cutting through the advertising

Email chains are back. 

Product Hunt is the results of a cluttered, over-advertised Internet and is rapidly growing according to TechCrunch.

Prior to the emergence of google and facebook, email chains were a common method of communicating but they died since they were very inefficient - each individual had to be added and then the information itself wasn't organized. However, the hurdle was also an advantage as you were able to limit the distribution and as a consumer of content, you knew that the content came pre-filtered.

Today, the internet is saturated with advertising. It's nearly impossible to tell if what you are reading is sincere vs. someone trying to get you to buy something. This is especially true when to comes to evaluating products and services.

Re-enter Web 1.0 email chains and individual, trusted recommendations. Limited reach to trusted individuals creates better content than just letting the entire internet bring us to crowd-sourced mediocrity.

For digital marketers, this next wave of products is a sign that the system is broken. They have been so successful in reaching consumers that the blur between content and advertising is complete. If the resulting backlash is successful, marketers will need to think of new ways to penetrate these new walls. Authenticity is key but if these products are successful, digital marketing will become harder than ever.

When the time is right : Permissible marketing as a solution for sensory adaptation

"Sensory adaptation" due to heavy doses of marketing has already left the public desensitized. Most of us don't even notice these banners and flash pages anymore. 

Solution: permissible marketing. Search for "tie a bow tie"; top results come up from unknown sites.  Instead firms (like Brook Brothers, Jos A Bank) could build pages to drive traffic to their sites and use the real estate in their own ground to promote products. Instead of merely asking users to like  their page, companies should start interacting with users.
How to get the goose: once the company wins users' trust, then they may move to the "harvest post". To use farming as a metaphor, only crops that are ripe enough can be monetized. Getting "likes" might bring in good numbers for a few days but is not a viable long term strategy.

Source:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/value-harvest-social-media-marketing

The Future of Shopping

As my first contribution to this blog, I would like to point out to an article by Darrel Rigby published at HBR: The Future of Shopping.

Rigby describes what trends to be the future on online retail, and how it will impact us as consumers -- involving how big data will be used to shape our shopping experience and how online and "real" channels will merge (omnichannel).

This relates to digital marketing in several dimensions -- the merge of both channels will increase relevance of digital marketing versus traditional medias, as day to day inclusion of it will increase impact of new and creative online marketing campaigns in our consumptions patterns.

Link to the article: http://cormolenaar.nl/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Future-of-Shopping-Harvard-Business-Review1.pdf

Bruno.

Social gambling

Social gaming and gambling are beginning to merge into a very interesting new category. Gamblification: social games have the reach, gambling has the money. Social games reach out to 500 million active players a month, while the online gambling industry is estimated at a mind blowing $30.3 billion.

The stakes for mastering the business and technology of successful mobile social gambling are very attractive. By 2015, the social gambling market is predicted to grow to $2.5 billion and the mobile app market is predicted to top $38 billion. The global total spend on virtual goods is expected to reach $4.1 billion by 2016.

Many casino and card games make use of a human’s gambling instincts to lure people into deep engagement. Although real money is used to purchase chips to be used in these games, the chips are not redeemable for money. However, some social games provide venues where in-system virtual currencies can be exchanged or raffled for virtual goods. In 2012, gambling equipment company IGT bought Double Down—a designer for Facebook casino games—for $500 million.

This is certainly a growing area to watch and I hope that my company Forever|NOT the relationship betting app successfully makes a mark in this segment.

Social gaming

According to Wiki, Gamification is the concept of applying game-design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. It has proven to be very successful in attracting large numbers of users. Taking age old games and adapting them to the net with extra social sharing features built in have helped King the makers of Candy crush build large audiences and earn up to $1 million per day. Beyond games, Gamification can apply to education (Khan Academy), pricing models (Uber), and Loyalty plans (Aeroplan).  It doesn’t stop there; corporates are using Gamification to create a sense of competition within organizations. For example, concepts such as leaderboard status can be applied to marketing individuals who are trying to get the most followers or to sales teams who are trying to sell the most volume.

Social network-based gaming has exploded in recent years, facilitated by Facebook. Social gaming is increasingly becoming a key focal point within the gaming community due in large part to the higher average revenue per unit through monetization of global social networks, local social networks, mobile social networks, and second screen social gaming.

For more examples refer to: http://www.gamification.co/

A bunch of stats are available here: http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/social-gaming-industry/

Video focused start-ups

Video content is pegged to be one of the most effective ways to get mobile traffic conversions. How do we increase the mobile. Video can be created in house or even curated through user generated content submissions.  

Online video watching is starting to make the television executives nervous. Awesomeness TV was so successful in getting traction using in house and UGC content that Nickelodeon purchased them for over $200 million. Online Video is easy to search, shorter in length and typically offers humor or shock entertainment in bite sized doses.

Online humor publisher Cheeseburger Inc., whose strong user base and viral content have been so significant that Bravo TV network produced a reality show about the company's employees. The Seattle Company, which has roughly a hundred employees, publishes more than 60 humor sites. The sites receive an average of 15,000 photo and video submissions a day.

Media companies are realizing that they need to stay abreast of the digital world. Turner Media has started an accelerator to nurture companies and also identify the next big ideas in the space.

Mobile web for digital advertising

With over 75% growth in mobile advertising in 2013 (AdAge Mobile Fact Pack) mobile is no longer an emerging channel. Even real time bidding which changed online ad buying is becoming a common tool for the mobile advertising market. Advertisers have realized that customers are spending more and more time on their mobile phones and must find ways to capture their attention.

There are a number of players competing for a slice of the fast growing mobile ad space and consolidation will likely begin as the dollar values start to increase. Google’s acquisition of Admob catalyzed the mobile marketing space and many new companies emerged.

With half of all email being opened on mobile devices, email continues to be a big aspect of mobile marketing. Other areas that show opportunity are in app advertisements. Mobile app revenues are driven by gaming apps and advertisers should explore ways in which they can display their logos on such apps.

Video is another aspect of mobile marketing that shows growth potential in 2014. With high speed access and larger screens on telephones, users prefer watching videos over reading. Shorter videos are the key. Taking 30 seconds down to 10 or 5 will make a huge impact.

Nearly 90% of time spent on twitter was on the mobile phone so advertisers need to come up with strategies that engage users without disrupting their experience.  Even Facebook is taking its Facebook exchange and adding features that are customized for advertisement buying on the mobile phone.

It’s clear that mobile advertising cannot be ignored and it seems that the technology is finally catching up to enable marketers to connect with potential customers without disrupting their overall experience.

Content Strategies

Content driven marketing strategies are becoming increasingly important as companies battle it out for consumer attention and brand recognition. Gone are the days where a simple advertisement was enough. More importantly advertisements cost a lot of money. Content driven strategies not only engage the customer with quality information that is relevant to their interests but also have a stronger impact with regards to brand recognition and overall purchasing conversion.

Return on marketing is propelled when there is great content involved. Content is the corner stone of all marketing strategies:

Social media marketing: Content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy.

SEO: Search engines reward businesses that publish quality, consistent content.

PR: Successful PR strategies address issues readers care about, not their business.

PPC: For PPC to work, you need great content behind it.

Inbound marketing: Content is key to driving inbound traffic and leads. Emails must be thoughtful.

Content strategy: Content strategy is part of most content marketing strategies.

Content is a tool that every company needs to be thinking about in the market.

The role of PInterest

Pinterest is a great site for sharing images and tagging them. Visual search is a wonderful tool. Pinterest takes visual search and adds a layer of curation that is done by individuals in contrast to Google images which is algorithm based. The ability to follow people who have an expertise in particular areas enables a user to identify visual images that are much more customized to their areas of interest. This is a powerful tool for retailers. The larger the number of products being added on the pages of people who are broadly followed the larger the number of potential consumers who will see the products. To increase the return, it’s important that retailers make their branding obvious through hashtags or labels in the photo. This way the image always reminds the viewer who sells the product. Coming up with interesting images to promote products can lead to strong sharing and significant exposure for brands.

Smart marketers are using the sites to drive "social shopping" and inspire people to collect and share pictures of their favorite products. Pinterest has over 53 million monthly unique users globally, with three quarters of usage coming through its mobile app. All companies with consumer products should be interacting with Pinterest given the majority of users are women who typically make the household purchase decisions.

Some brands have embraced the opportunity. For example, the Martha Stewart brand has a huge Pinterest profile with more than 126 boards and almost 13,000 pins. This has helped them reach almost half a million followers. More is better when it comes to Pinterest. For large numbers of boards and pins, organization is key. Each pin needs to serve a purpose and be visually interesting.

The model of shared clothing and accessories

If you can’t buy it, rent it!

A number of online tie and jewelry companies have entered the market to allow us to subscribe to a new tie or necklace on a regular basis. They dub themselves as the Netflix of ties. Given the low barrier to entry many copy cats have followed. In the tie business there are already three notable companies that are building market share: freshneck.com, tiesociety.com, tie-man.com. If you are a man looking for a fashion update, check out the Tie Society website. It costs $10 to $50 a month, depending on how many ties you rent at a time. With this service, you choose the ties you want.

San Francisco-based Rocksbox, is an online jewelry rental business that has seen some decent success. There is also the well-known Bag, Borrow or Steal that even got a shout out in the Sex in the City movie. A lot of people purchase jewelry and have nothing to wear with it or never wear it when they bring it home. Another San Francisco startup called Le Tote has a similar business model, with both jewelry and clothes. The pricing is usually between $19.99 to $49.99 for these businesses. Moreover, if you really fall in love with the item, you can buy it at a discounted price. Adorn.com offers high end rented jewelry for people to wear at weddings or special occasions which is also a large market. Renttherunway offers jewelry rental but at a different rice per piece. I much prefer the monthly subscription price at different tiers. There are a lot of copycats out there from Bling Yourself to Bags to Riches. Investors have put real money behind these ideas. Bag Borrow or Steal, received $15 million in venture funding, bringing its total take from investors to $27 million. The investment enabled the company, which has reported steady revenue growth in each of its four years, to expand into high-end jewelry.  

I’m curious to understand how large this market of men who are willing to rent ties really is? I tried to do research but was not able to find enough stats. In general, I think it’s a great idea. Especially for people who want new styles often but don’t want to purchase them all the time. Moreover, storage is becoming an issue in smaller urban dwellings so the rental model has many beneficial attributes.

e-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is still the most powerful tool to build traction and keep customers engaged. Many companies have lost the art. Like an e-mail, the content should be fun, engaging and useful. Short and sweet is also a key theme. Customers have short attention spans but always value learning something new. The idea of starting with a quick tip was smart but has become overused. The fact that any email can now say your first name has lost its personalization flavor. The catchy subject hooks are also too obvious. Nevertheless, there are number of other strategies companies can deploy.  I think the first thing a company should strive for is sincerity. Each company should assume that the email is the equivalent to a customer walking into their store. How would you communicate with them?

Rather than using general statements the access to big data can help you tailor your emails in much larger ways. If I went to Sephora and purchased eyeliner, Sephora should know this. Perhaps their email to me should be asking if I like the liner and suggesting related products. If you presume you are the shop keeper in a mom and pop shop trying to upsell to a customer you will be better at drafting creative and personalized emails.

Email remains a powerful way to connect with customers and influence their buying decisions: 66% of online Americans say they have made a purchase as a result of an email from a brand, more than three times the percentage of people who have purchased in response to a message delivered via Facebook (20%) or text message (16%), according to a study by Exact Target.

 

Real time bidding of display ads

Before the digital age, ad space on television or radio was done in a very non transparent process where full understanding of the types and quantity of viewers you were purchasing. High barriers to entry meant that access to traditional mediums for advertising were for the big players only. Moreover, planning for advertisements happened months in advance and any last minute purchases cost a massive premium. The internet changed this. With big data, marketers can narrow the scope of their campaigns to a defined audience and also interact with the audience to ensure that the message was transmitted. Any small business can purchase ads on google or Facebook alongside the big players such as Coke or Pepsi. Moreover, given the additional big data available, advertisers can quickly test shift their strategies and fine tune them on an ongoing bases to ensure the desired results are achieved.

Programmatic buying enables advertisers to use complex algorithms to purchase ads based on prespecified parameters. Marketing is no longer a touch feely topic. There is a high degree of data and statistics involved. Real time bidding is to digital advertising what high-frequency trading is to Wall Street. Computerized, algorithm-driven trading allows for quick buying of ad impressions according to pre-set parameters. Twitters purchase of MoPub, an ad exchange with a real-time bidding platform, reinforces the market movement towards such platforms. It will be interesting to observe how Twitter continues to monetize its platform using advertisements powered by the MoPub technology.

Facebook social graph

I’ve been working with Facebook’s social graph and am quite luke warm on the results. First off, It’s quite slow and tends to crash my browser. Second, the results are not very extensive. I think the non keyword approach is interesting but they need to do a lot of work in getting the social aspects to work better. According to Facebook's Newsroom, Graph Search runs on search inquiry phrases (such as coffee shops my friends like), rather than key words (such as coffee shops) like traditional search engines. Facebook users can enter queries that fall into the categories of people, photos, places, and interests. The social network then strives to answer these search inquiries within the social network, rather than directing users to an outside source.

Social Graph enables users to Identify fans, Learn about the fans interests, Identify interests of competitors’ fans, Identify potential business partnerships by seeing similar fans liking complimentary products, Improve the quality of Facebook contests.

Facebook social graph is also great for targeting friends of fans who like [X]. By doing such searches the company can target people based on their networks and previous likes.