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THINK WORKS
2013 REVIEW AND PREDICTIONS FOR 2014
THINK WORKS
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP SPARKING EXCEPTIONAL RESULTS www.latitudegroup.com | 1
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
CONTENTS 03 Looking back, looking forward 04 2013: innovation and cross-channel marketing 04 The rise of the ‘pay-per-tap’ 04 Users over devices 05 The spring of innovation 06 Audience takes centre stage 06 The debut of Enhanced Campaigns 06 Remarketing and video 06 Cross-device tracking 07 Content is still the new black 07 How content strategy changed in 2013 08 Events review 2013 09 2014: big things ahead
www.latitudegroup.com | 2
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING FORWARD
W
hat a year it has been. In some ways, a lot of the big developments in 2013 have been very predictable; Google pushing marketers to focus on users and content over devices was hardly a shock to anyone. As for buzzwords, big data and cross-channel (not to mention omnichannel) marketing are still doing the rounds and will most likely continue to do so in 2014. 2013 also saw a few developments that grew in popularity and advertisers’ take-up faster than perhaps predicted. Social Media Marketing saw no signs of slowing down, as more and more advertisers discovered the value of real-time engagement through likes of Twitter and Facebook, particularly when partnered up with other promotional channels such as TV advertisement. The acceptance of the ‘sponsored post’ as a standard ad format was also very fast, despite initial scepticism.
In this report, we’ve put together a brief review of the biggest marketing developments in 2013 and our predictions for 2014.
In this report, we’ve put together a brief review of the biggest marketing developments in 2013 and our predictions for 2014. We also took some time to review some of the marketing events we’ve been to this year. Hope you like it! Richard Gregory Managing Director Latitude
P.S Keep an eye out for Latitude’s new look and feel in 2014…
www.latitudegroup.com | 3
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
INNOVATION AND CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING
2
013 was a year that rewarded nimble marketers. PPC professionals saw Google introduce a host of upgrades and new features into Adwords. We have seen the move to Enhanced Campaigns, the rise and rise of Product Listing Ads and much improved targeting across the Google Display Network – to name a few. As we race into the festive season, we’re also optimising our PPC adverts for the rising flow of mobile traffic; at the end of September 2013 desktops were accounting for just 60% of clicks, while smartphone had climbed to 25% and tablet to 15%. It seems reasonable to expect that by February next year, the greater part of our audience will be tapping on ads rather than clicking them.
It seems reasonable to expect that by February next year, the greater part of our audience will be tapping on ads rather than clicking them.
UK paid search: device click share n Computers click share n Smartphone click share n Tablet click share 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%
No v11 Ja n12 M ar -12 M ay -12 Ju l-1 2 Se p12 No v12 Ja n13 M ar -13 M ay -13 Ju l-1 3 Se p13
The rise of the ‘pay-per-tap’
Source: Latitude Digital Marketing
Users over devices The start of 2013 saw the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns for Adwords, with Google asking (or in fact telling) marketers to focus on users rather than devices. While Google has been telling SEO marketers to focus on content that users want to read above anything else since 2011, this was a new-ish move for the PPC channel. Desktop and mobile targeting merged and PPC managers adapted to the new bid multipliers and ‘mobile preferred ads’ options. Advertisers with mobile optimised ads and landing pages have since been rewarded with improved quality scores as part of Google’s emphasis on multi-device user experience.
Advertisers with mobile optimised ads and landing pages have since been rewarded with improved quality scores as part of the emphasis on multi-device user experience. Bing on the other hand declined to follow the Enhanced Campaigns path. The ability to target mobile devices separately from desktop in Bing Ads is seen by many as a USP for them.
www.latitudegroup.com | 4
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
2013: INNOVATION AND CROSS-CHANNEL MARKETING
The spring of innovation
S
pring 2013 saw a sweep of new Google beta products into the market, including image extensions in search ads (as seen in Fig.1), providing an eye-catching click-through rate booster for those prepared to bid to the top of the auction. Google Display Network advertisers opting in to Enhanced Campaigns were rewarded with new powerful bidding options. The options to bid up or down based on combinations of demographic, interests, content topics and placements allowed a new level of targeting precision. Some of the demographic groups include luxury shoppers, travel buffs and even fashionistas, as seen in Fig.2. Meanwhile, Product Extensions were officially sunset as Google’s move to Product Listing Ads was completed. The new PLA ads get prominent positions in search results pages in addition to shopping results and have quickly become a top spending format for most retailers. The ads appear when someone searches for a product on google.co.uk and google. co.uk/shopping. Google will then show the customer a picture of the particular item, its price and the name of a retailer you can buy the product from. An example of a Product Listings Ad can be seen in Fig. 3.
Fig 1. Extensions in search ads
Fig 2. Google Display Network Enhanced Campaigns
Fig 3. Product Listings ad
The new Product Extensions ads get prominent positions in search results pages in addition to shopping results and have quickly become a top spending format for most retailers. www.latitudegroup.com | 5
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
AUDIENCE TAKES CENTRE STAGE The debut of Enhanced Campaigns
S
ummer 2013 saw the end of mobile-only campaigns in Adwords and 22nd of July marked the final migration to Enhanced Campaigns. The push towards an audience-centric marketing model continued throughout the year though; Google introduced options for advertisers to import offline conversions into Adwords in September 2013 – a sign of things to come, as further moves to link offline results to Adwords followed towards the end of 2013.
The push towards an audience-centric marketing model continues.
Remarketing and video Google Display Advertising campaigns received a boost in the form of dynamic remarketing in 2013. With Adwords now linked to Google Merchant centre accounts, advertisers can retarget website visitors with ads related to the pages visited. This update offers a flush of cookie-based targeting options, allowing advertisers to develop more advanced cross-selling and retargeting tactics. Video has enjoyed steady growth and popularity in 2013. As the format evolves, interactive elements such as social buttons, ad selection or embedded calls to action are being combined with video to increase the potential impact. Video is also becoming more personalised. Features of the video ad are being altered and served to individuals based on elements such as location, behaviours online, product interest, and demographics. This is all in a bid to increase in the impact of this format. Whether it’s traditional video, native ads with video content, or video-enabled display ads — we predict this will be a format which sees a growth in adoption rates through next year.
Video is also becoming more personalised. Features of the video ad are being altered and served to individuals based on elements such as location, behaviours online, product interest, and demographics.
Cross-device tracking The end of the year featured the release of cross-device tracking in Adwords. The update aims to give advertisers more insight into their always-connected audiences, giving estimates of conversions starting on one device and concluding on another. Google have also expressed their intent for further updates – beta testing on Adwords conversions in bricks-and-mortar locations is already under way in the US. This signifies a wider cross-channel trend which is no doubt going to be a hot topic of conversation also in 2014.
The end of the year featured the release of cross-device tracking in Adwords. The update aims to give advertisers more insight into their always-connected audiences, giving estimates of conversions starting on one device and concluding on another. www.latitudegroup.com | 6
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
AUDIENCE TAKES CENTRE STAGE
Content is still the new black
G
oogle continued to improve its link spam identification via new Google Penguin updates throughout 2013, providing new ways to penalise sites who over optimised their websites via manipulated and manual link building. Google hit sites in the following ways: l I dentifying sites with a high percentage of target keyword anchor text links in their link profile l I dentifying sites that gained links from submitting to ‘just for SEO’ web directories l I dentifying sites that had previously gained links from a large number of article directory and article spinning sites l I dentifying sites that had keyword only site wide links on blogrolls and website footers
How content strategy changed in 2013 Writing better content for your website continue to be the most important thing Google valued on a website in 2013 and beyond. The art of copywriting became an increasingly important part of an SEO strategy, as websites needed content that provided more value for the user to engage with.
The art of copywriting became an increasingly important part of an SEO strategy, as websites needed content that provided more value for the user to engage with. Promoting great content via Google + and using Google authorship also helped websites to leverage SEO authority and gain page one rankings. Whilst a number of Google Panda updates continued to occur in the early part of 2013 - which affected more sites with thin and poor website content - the big talking point was indeed the release of Google Hummingbird in August 2013. Google have described Hummingbird as ‘a new engine’, however the algorithm is in fact a mishmash of elements from Panda (related to content quality) and Penguin (related to spam and linking attributes). The key new Hummingbird feature revolves around search query types. Rather than analysing search phrases in a more traditional boolean (word by word) manner, Google is now evaluating all keywords together within a search query phrase to understand the context of the search phrase, therefore enabling better quality search results to be returned.
Google is now evaluating all keywords together within a search query phrase to understand the context of the search phrase, therefore enabling better quality search results to be returned.
www.latitudegroup.com | 7
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
EVENTS REVIEW 2013
B
eing a marketer is all about learning, developing and trying new things. However, it’s never an easy task to keep up to date with everything that is happening in the industry. At best, events can leave marketers feeling inspired with a good knowledge on the latest technologies and trends in the industry. At worst, you spend a day out of the office, hearing about the same old clichés with no real tangible takeaways. There are many (too many?) marketing events out there, but here’s our pick of the best ones from 2013 and a key session from each.
1. SAScon
There were many fantastic speakers at SAScon, however Jeff Coghlan’s presentation was a favourite of many, including us. Jeff is the Managing Director at Matmi; a digital production company that specialises in creating experiences across multiple digital platforms. Jeff’s keynote session looked at how the boarders between the physical and digital worlds (phygital, if you will) are blurring and what marketers could be doing to take advantage of the trend. Many brands are already doing ‘phygital’ well. Mulberry, for example, have made their flagship store into an extension of their website by allowing customers to interact with their clothes both digitally and in the store. Shoppers are also able to follow live events, such as fashion shows, and experience audio visual takeovers in the store. This is a trend marketers will be seeing much more of in the future.
2. Festival of Marketing
Year 2013 saw Econsultancy combine their usual annual events into a week-long celebration of marketing. The week was rammed with different types of presentations, fringe events and official after parties. One of the most interesting presentations included American Express talking about their partnership with TripAdvisor. The partnership allows users to connect their TripAdvisor review accounts with their American Express credit card accounts, giving individual reviewers credibility and access to special offers.
Interestingly, the majority of card holders had opted out from email communications previously but they did not mind linking their TripAdvisor account with their American Express account. The company has been and experimenting with different social media platforms, such as Twitter, to allow two-way communication with their clients through the platforms of the client’s choice. This highlights the significance of establishing a twoway, mutually beneficial relationship with your audience, rather than expecting them to engage with your business just because you want to engage with them.
3. Brighton SEO
Brighton SEO has quickly turned into a yearly pilgrimage for many SEO marketers. While the event was once again filled with great speakers, the presentation by Dynamo PR’s Lexi Mills on secret weapons of successful content and outreach gave tangible tips that helped the everyday content creators think about content marketing differently. A key takeaway was using 80% of your time targeting the key influencers within your industry and using a personalised approach to get your content in front of them, rather than going after everyone and anyone on your target list.
4. The Drum – Brief Encounters It’s rare to find an event dedicated purely to discussing the pitch process and the client-agency relationship. Both clients and agencies spoke at this one-day event and revealed successes and frustrations around the pitch process from both sides. It’s clear from the day that the pitch process is at times very time-consuming for both parties but there are things that can be done on both sides to make the process easier for both, such as communicating clearly and honestly as well as giving direction on what is expected and possible from both sides.
5. Interdependence Latitude Client Summit We hate to blow our own trumpet but Latitude’s Interdependence Day client summit included some great speakers from companies such as Google, Post Office, Webcredible, Microsoft and the Metropolitan Police. Phil Barden, the author of the book Decoded, who spoke about the decision making process of the consumer and how marketers can better use behavioural data to better market to their customer was a clear favourite for many attendees.
www.latitudegroup.com | 8
Think Works Mobile Review | December 2013
2014: BIG THINGS AHEAD 1. Data and its many uses
4. Content is overlord
2. The rise of the cross-channel brand
5. Mobile and tablet SEO
As marketing and sales technologies continue to evolve, the use and adoption of data by marketers will grow. The analysis and planning that can be done with data is where it gets interesting and exciting. We believe the data can grow revenues and assist efficiency, if used in the correct way. The next phase of ‘big data’ will be actually using it efficiently, going beyond just recognising its importance.
In 2013, there has been a 137% global increase in brands that advertise across multiple digital channels (mobile, display, social and video), according to a report from Turn. 2014 will be about integrating online channels with offline marketing efforts in an intelligent way, as well as continuing to make all online channels work together effectively (which is already in itself quite the challenge for most businesses). There will also be a sustained focus on crossdevice tracking. Google’s recently launched an ‘estimated total conversions’ column in Adwords is already helping marketers to get estimates of multi-device conversions. Next year we expect Google to bring ‘in store conversions’ and ‘desktop phone conversions’ into the reporting mix as well – this will help marketers to estimate the offline impact of online campaigns as well as measuring online conversions.
Content marketing strategies will continue to evolve and websites with the best content plans encompassing all areas of their brand will perform significantly better in the search engines compared to their competitors. Having an agile PR team aligned with SEO efforts and a content support network externally will be vital to ensure your content marketing efforts provide benefits in relation to organic visibility. Mobile and tablet design compatibility and user friendliness could be become a bigger search quality issue in Google. Whilst Google currently does not have a separate mobile and tablet algorithm in its search engine, there have been examples in recent Google history where it has penalised websites that provide users with a poor mobile and tablet user experience. These occurrences could become more widespread and could potentially hint at a potentially seismic shift towards a defined separate algorithm for mobile and tablet.
3. Smartphone and tablet click volumes will surpass desktop
With tablet devices expected to out-sell laptops this season, it’s reasonable to expect that next year we will be serving ads almost equally distributed across the three devices. Optimised landing pages will be essential, rather than optional, as users demand seamless journeys.
www.latitudegroup.com | 9
CONTRIBUTORS
BEN WIGHTMAN HEAD OF PPC
HOLLY WILDE HEAD OF DISPLAY & PERFORMANCE MEDIA
LLOYD COOKE SENIOR SEO STRATEGIST
About
Latitude Digital Marketing has pioneered the use of digital channels in the UK and internationally for 10 years. Areas of expertise include search engine optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), social media marketing, online display advertising, affiliate marketing and conversion analytics. The business works across a range of sectors including retail, gaming, leisure and travel with clients such as Post Office, bet365, Effortless Skin and Haven Holidays.
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To talk about your digital strategy, contact us now. E: info@latitudegroup.com T: 08450 212 223 W: www.latitudegroup.com www.latitudegroup.com | 10