HotHouse makes brands work for people online

• The internet is poised to overtake newspapers as the second largest U.S. advertising medium by revenue behind television, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
• Search currently represents 50% of U.S. online advertising revenue with Google being the market leader strengthening the position they earned in 2006 as the largest media company in the world.
• Google earns the bulk of its US$24bn+ a year in revenue from paid search advertising which represents less than 10% of the clicks on search engines.
• SEO is about capturing the remaining 90%.

This seminar will be presented by Jeremy Tang, our Director of Search who has over 9 years experience in Search, most recently as Head of Search at Telstra Business. read more

By Simon van Wyk

Number one on Google – that’s the Holy Grail that search engine optimisation (SEO) was meant to deliver to savvy site owners.

SEO involves tweaking your website to appear in the first page of Google search results for the keywords your customers are most likely to enter and yes, it’s Google we care most about, because Google still reigns on the Internet.

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HotHouse managing director Simon van Wyk talks to Jeremy Tang, the newly appointed director of search at HotHouse. Until recently head of search at Telstra Business, Jeremy has also held senior marketing roles there and with Dimension Data. He also has extensive consulting experience through Oracle where he worked with clients including Merrill Lynch, Fosters Group & NRMA. Jeremy talks with Simon about SEO as an ongoing process, conversations with customers and the importance of focusing on what customers actually search for.

Listen to the podcast below.

 

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The oldest of all marketing techniques, word of mouth (WOM) has re-emerged as the most powerful selling tool of the 21st century, thanks to digital technology.

HotHouse is offering you and your team a singular opportunity to learn how to apply WOM to your business by attending a seminar by international WOM authority Justin Kirby

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By Simon van Wyk

How do you measure the impact of blogger engagement and other social media activities? Because you’re able to collect more hard data for online activities than for traditional marketing activities, there is an inherent assumption by management that online magically provides an answer to the old dilemma of “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the problem is, I don’t know which half.”

The thing is, it’s not nearly as simple as that. Although a lot of data is collected, it still needs to be harvested, organised and interpreted. And if you want to express the data in terms of return on investment (ROI), you need to be able to match the ROI framework used in other parts of the business.

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HotHouse has been named as a Leader in Australian Interactive Marketing Agencies in a July 2009 report by Forrester Research, Inc.: The Forrester Wave™: Australian Interactive Marketing Agencies, Q3 2009.

Forrester’s first-ever evaluation of Australian interactive marketing agencies looked at 36 criteria and revealed a market that is split between its roots in technology and its emerging focus on marketing strategy. Agencies were placed into one of four “waves”: Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders or Risky Bets. read more

There is an enormous amount of debate about how ‘value’ is defined and measured on web projects, particularly ROI on content. This thorny issue is still not resolved, so I’m going to point you toward some places where robust debate is going on, and you can make up your own mind.

Online Metrics Insider: This is a subsite of the MediaPost portal that deals with all angles of the web measurement and analytics debate, including content. Recent article titles include “It takes a village to measure social applications,” “Does content matter?” and “Does online metrics need a stimulus package?”

Web Analytics Demystified blog: Eric Petersen has written one of the seminal works on using web analytics in business. His associated blog contains interviews, comments and news of interest in this area.

Real Time Content blog:  This blog is dedicated to personalisation within online video advertising. This link is a compilation of all their articles about measurement of online video content.

American Marketing Association: Summary of a presentation by Jim Sterne, chairman of the Web Analytics Association and author of Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success, on how defining the right metrics leads to online success.

If you have any other sites you want to nominate, please add them below in the comments.

Earlier today Twitter launched a guide called “101 for business”. As the name suggests, it’s designed to explain to businesses how to use the popular Twitter service and  how to get the most out of it including  case studies.

“Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.”

Some of the case studies are facinating:

Dell - uses Twitter (@delloutlet) to raise awareness about the brand, increase sales by selling product through special Twitter-only deals, and connect with customers via any one of their 80+ Dell branded Twitter accounts. Read the case study here.

JetBlue the US arline was one of the first major brands to join Twitter (@jetBlue) in 2007. They set out to help customers with travel problems, and also to provide customer service. Today they have more than one million followers and are often pointed to as an example of “smart corpoate twittering”. Read the case study here.

Teusner Wines is a boutique vinyard in the Barossa Valley “producing kick arse wines from some of the oldest vines in Australia”. For Teusner, Twitter (@Teusnerwine) is about building trust and loyalty with followers - and not selling to them. Teusner reach out and connect with people talking about the vinyard. They find out what they like and don’t like.  They provide third paty reviews of the wines. Read the case study here.

Pepsi is using Twitter as a faster and more personal way to connect with soda drinkers (the brand twitters as @Pepsi; the corporation twitters as @PepsiCo). They use Twitter to listen and talk to customers in an attempt to humanise the brand “and make it more accessible to consumers”. Read the case study here.

Read more case studies on Twitter 101 for business guide.

As mentioned in our most recent podcast, LinkedIn can be used for personal and corporate branding. But does that translate into business? Here are a few case studies showing LinkedIn in action:

The Weather Channel – A video and article about how having a personal/business profile on LinkedIn can lead to an acquisition opportunity.

Comparing the marketing effectiveness of LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Stumbleupon – An e-business consultancy reports on the quality of traffic coming to its site and downloading whitepapers, etc. – LinkedIn stands out as the most productive feeder of traffic.

Networking with LinkedIn – If you’re into some offline reading, this page contains reviews of a few books that offer scores of case studies on how LinkedIn has been used successfully by businesses to “research prospective partners, find industry experts, locate and get background information on potential employees, perform research on competitors, contact media, and close sales.”

LinkedIn Blog – Yes, you’ll only hear positive stories here, but it’s a good place to read about the different ways LinkedIn is being used by its 41 million members.

Online brand communities take a lot of work and time to nurture and grow. How do you know they’re providing value for your company? Some recent work in this area includes:

• Online Community ROI (Return on Investment) TCO Analysis (Total Cost of Ownership) – this worksheet helps you work out ROI and TCO for implementing an online community or social network.

• Online Community ROI – A collection of statistics that build a solid case for building online brand communities. Accompanying PowerPoint here.

• Measuring Success in Online Communities – Summary of a presentation on the topic at the recent NewComm Forum.  Accompanying PowerPoint here.

• Measuring the Success of Online Communities: the academic view – a link to articles on this topic in Google Scholar.

• How do you measure success online? – A blog and robust set of comments on the topic on the Econsultancy website.