The Adido Digital Blog

With the end of the year in sight, our attentions start to wonder to what the future will hold in 2010 online. The rate of change in the industry in 2009 was unrelenting with many new platforms coming to prominence and being considered for business use.

So what will be the key issue facing the digital marketing in 2010? Well, we've put our heads together and have come up with eight predictions that we think will be top of the digital agenda next year.

1. Video will become more widely used on websites
You could argue that video arrived in 2009. YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the UK (even bigger than Yahoo! and Bing) so the demand for video content is most certainly there. However, in the main, most businesses have yet to make video work for them, especially on their own websites or to build their brand. Video is one of the best ways of getting people to find out more about your business and to communicate with them in a much easier and faster way than text. We expect there to be more demand for video services in 2010.


2. Twitter, Twitter everywhere
Yes, we aren't sticking our necks out with this one, but if it's possible we think that Twitter will continue to grow even more in 2010. 2008 saw huge surges in usage in the UK, and 2009 continued this pace at a startling rate of knots.


However, if you asked the average person on the street if they have a Twitter account, the response would probably still be no. The typical profile of a Twitterer (if that's what they are called) is still unknown but from recent research is likely to be Female and aged in her mid 20's. Despite the near mass hysteria at points in the media about the usage of Twitter, it still hasn't 'tipped' and become a true mass market platform.

Our prediction is that 2010 will be the year when Twitter grows up and gets near to the usage levels of Facebook which is the de facto for social networking in the UK. Now that Twitter seems to have finally figured out how it will make money, and it has a partnerships with Google & Bing, it could be a good year for the business. Whether the hype will be justified remains to be seen, because we've seen in the past that what is todays Internet darling, could end up becoming a footnote in history alongside other sites such as Friends Reunited.


3. Real time search is here
According to Moores law, the power of technology doubles in speed every 18 months. In the early days of the Internet, search engine spiders crawled the web and pulled data back into its data centres for analysis in what at the time seemed like a blink of an eye. A real time web wasn't possible due to the technological issues of the time (slow connection speeds, lack of people online, web publishing barriers etc). However, the speed at which the web now moves means we have now come along way since those early days back in the late 1990's.

Users have become more demanding in their needs online and as a result need information faster than ever before. Thanks to the likes of Twitter and other social platforms, information exchange has sped up and is now near real time (where people are now 'lifestreaming'). Users can swap information with their friends whenever convenient at any time of the day and as a result expect the same from their search engines.

Bing and Google have both recently done deals with Twitter to integrate 'Tweets' into their search results to bring real time information to searchers and although the fruits of this integration have yet to be seen, it is expected that real time search will be very prominent in the search results pages (SERPs) in 2010. If ever there was a reason to start up a Twitter account, the need to be part of the real time web could be the most convincing argument yet.


4. Personalisation and behavioural targeting will increase
Thanks in part to social networking sites, more and more information about users is now being captured about you and what you do. Got a Google account or Google home page? Google knows what you search for and the context of your searches. Got a social media account with Facebook? You've probably entered enough information about you and your details to allow advertisers to target you.

Privacy online is still a huge issue but advetisers are already finding ways to use the data available to them to serve up the best adverts they can using behavioural and personalised advertising. By knowing more about users, advertisers can pin point the people they show their adverts to and as a result see better returns on their online investment. Makes sense so why isn't everyone else doing it? At the moment there is still along way to go before these systems and platforms are robust enough to get enough of the advertising dollars and pounds. 2010 should be the year that these form of digital marketing finally realise their potential thanks to better information sharing and more sophisticated systems in place.

5. The end of last click wins?
If you've ever used Google Analytics to anywhere near its potential, then you would have set up goals, funnels and ecommerce tracking on your website. If you've not done this for your website, then you NEED to start. By monitoring when conversions, or events that are important to your business happen, you get to find out more about what is working online and what isn't.

While this information can be a true revelation to your digital marketing efforts and help shape campaigns to maximise the returns achieved from budgets, it doesn't tell the whole story.

The industry standard for website analytics packages (such as Google Analytics) is 'last click wins'. This means the conversion you record, is attributed to the last click that generated it. Sort of makes sense, I guess. If someone makes an enquiry then surely it was that visit which was the most important one?

Well, not really. Imagine if you ran a shop an attributed success purchases through your till because people said they saw your banner outside. What if the only reason they were near your shop was because they heard about saw an advert somewhere else first? Wouldn't that be important to know?

Consider this journey of a typical online buyer (from econsultancy.com in 2008!)



The last click model only tells one version of the story when it comes to online conversions. Many more tools are now available which help to attribute online success to all visits to your website and help understand more about the typical customer journey your buyers will take before converting. By understanding this we can make better use of budgets and increase the chances of success in the shorter and longer term. We expect there to be big growth around this subject in the digital marketing industry which will then filter through to end clients throughout the year.

6. Augmented reality - a reality?
When it comes to mobile, 2009 may well be remembered as the year of the App. When iPhone launched its app store in 2008 it was launched as way of making additional revenue for Apple as well as building a community around the product. In the last year or so hundreds of thousands of apps have been created for numerous needs from the ridiculous to the now sublime.

Part of a growing trend of apps has been to build extra layers of information on top of the world that we see. This use of digital data applied to the real world has lead to the development of what is known as augmented reality; applications which look to enhance our day to day lives as much as possible by combining digital data with the real world. An example is shown below;



While many of the apps which have been developed have yet to take off in a big way, we think that 2010 will be the year when the technology will finally reach the mass market. You only have to look at applications like Layar (which allow other developers to build on their platform) to see the potential of what can be achieved.


7. Brand: Me
We've already had several differing views on what we like to call Brand:me ranging from 'I'm not sure I want me to be famous online, I'm happy being normal!' through to those who are determined to make themselves the most famous person of their industry.

The growth of individuals as brands has been accelerated thanks to the low cost and high targeting of Internet communications. The only investment you need to make is your time, rather than your money.

The difference between those that succeed and those that don't isn't that great. If you've got a famous face from TV such as James Caan (image credit LondonSpeakerBureau), then it's obviously a lot easier. James, seems to be putting his face to many companies at the moment to help build them, his brand and longer term his already large bank balance.

If like most of us you're not on TV then getting everyone you know to add you as a contact on LinkedIn or Facebook isn't that hard and it is most defnitely the first place to start if you are going to go social for your personal brand. However, after this initial boost of followers or fans has been exploited the hard work begins and it takes a bit more strategic thinking to work in the long term.


We expect to see many more personal brands being launched and pushed online next year. If you're thinking of starting, there are many places to get help from a speaking to a great digital marketing agency (shameless plug) to viewing some of the great presentations on Slideshare.



8. Website owners will realise that all content is important
We've discussed the omnipresence of Google in most of our online activities many times before, but the one thing which is pivotal in their continued dominance of search is their advancement in all areas of content. The roll out of universal search has been pretty successful thus far. Universal search is where Google brings in other content such as video, maps, product listings, news, blogs, images and anything else which it things is useful to the searcher. An example is shown below;



As yet, most low volume searches don't have anything else showing for their listings apart from map listings. We expect this to change as Google continues its Universal search roll out to all search results pages as its technology gets better and more consistent. Smart website owners will already know about universal search and have started acting already, but for those who are slightly behind the game, this will become a bigger issue.


If you've got any other predictions of how the digital market will go in 2010, please let us know in the comments.

For many website owners wanting to get more sales from Google, many different approaches can be taken. Quite often the assumption is that SEO is the only way to go. After all, everyone clicks on the left hand side of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)?

While all of the research which has been conducted seems to point to 'Yes', there are still many ways that Google can deliver qualified traffic to your website without having to wait weeks or months. Having given talks to thousands of people over the last year, many of these new features and tools are often underused, if known about at all (as mentioned on SEOptimise recently)

In a recent talk I gave, I outlined some of the ways that Google can be used for short term and long term gain for improving online sales. For everyone who reads this blog, I've outlined them below :)

Using Google for short term results
With the run up to Christmas, many website owners are looking to cash in while the UK starts to spend their pounds online. Last year online sales went up 15% compared to 2007, and this year will only be bigger. Here are some quick wins, that can be used to get sales quickly.



Google Adwords (PPC)

Setting up a Google Adwords campaign can be achieved in under an hour. Creating an account and entering your advert and target phrases you want your website to appear for is pretty straightforward. Google has made it easy for even novices to start their own advertising and now have the biggest advertising platform on the Internet. Create your campaign and within an hour, visitor will be on your website. You can't get more instant than that!

A word of warning though. While it is certainly quick to get started on Adwords, it isn't necessarily easy. Choosing the right key phrases to target can be a bit of a minefield, let alone creating your adverts and selecting your landing pages. We recommend that anyone trying this for the first time should either speak to a Google Adwords Professional or at least watch some of the Adwords learning centre videos before you start spending your pounds.


Google Base
If you are an ecommerce website owner, then this one is for you. Google Base or Google Shopping (or Google Product search) is a very powerful yet underused way to get quick sales.

Google Base is a repositiory of product information which has been loaded onto their databases by website owners / advertisers. To start create an account with Google Base and then upload an XML file of all of your product information such as sizes, features and of course price to your account. Once this information has been uploaded and verfied, your products can be listed in the Google Product search within a day and you will then start to appear in the listings which attract millions of searches each day. It's then up to you to improve your product listings as much as possible to get them noticed in front of your competitors.


Using Google for long term results
Once you've covered off the short term wins and have maximised their results to get more sales or enquiries online, there are several things that you should look to cover off as part of your longer term strategy. Quite often the investment which needs to be made in your long term strategy is time. If you don't have the time yourself, or can't afford to pay for someone elses time, then your chances of success are minimal.


Assuming you do have the time, here are some of the best things to concentrate on.

SEO
When it comes to Google, achieving high rankings on the 'free' (or organic) listings is the holy grail. Most of search engine users click on the left hand side of results (6 out of 7 users click on these listings before clicking on the PPC ads according to Jupiter research) and around 71% of users trust these results more when compared to the paid (Adwords) listings.

To get high rankings on the phrases that you want your website to appear for will always take a significant amount of time. To get high rankings can take anything from a month or two to over a year of experienced SEO effort, depending on the industry you are in, the phrases you want to target and the quality of your current website.

In very basic terms, the websites which rank highest on the free listings have the following things associated with them;

• High 'trust' with Google (this can come from the domain name /age as well as many other things)
• Good number of regular updates made to the website content
  
• High quality content on website
• A high number and quality of links pointing to your website

These things take time to build up and can not be achieved over night (if they are Google will get suspicious!). Google and other search engines monitor a majority of websites online today and are able to see how much effort has been put into a website against this and their own check lists (Google has over 200 factors it considers when ranking a page).


Google Local
As part of Googles mission to take over the Internet and all forms of advertising organise the worlds information, they have invested a good amount of time putting together the Local Business Centre to allow small businesses to advertise their company on their target phrases (e.g. web design bournemouth).

The local business centre can be easily set up once you have completed the registration forms and verified your listing using one their very cool automated facilities (we recommend going for the phone verification option).

Although quick to set up and activate, the time lag getting your company listed in the results is notorious. Due to the (still) mystery over how the maps and local business centre work, there isn't a massive amount that can be done to improve this time lag so it is a matter of sit and wait before your rankings appear and you start to see results. The wait can sometimes be very well worth it though. We have seen businesses drive thousands of pounds of orders using these listings.

Blogger
The Google owned blogging platform (which we use incidentally) Blogger allows anyone to create their own blog for free. Like most Google services, you can create your own account by filling in a few forms and once completed, your blog is born.

Blogs are great for sharing knowledge and expertise (like this one :) and also helping with the SEO effort by allowing content to be published with minimal effort and cost.

Of all Google marketing techniques mentioned here though, this is probably the longest term method you can use to get results. Putting effort into your blog to create new content each week is a manual task which can sometimes take hours. In addition to this you need to tell people about your blog. This is best achieved by getting involved with your industry community online. Guest blogging, posting comments on other blogs, participating in forums and using social media tools like Twitter are all efforts you will need to consider before you start to get users following and linking to your blog. If you're going to be one of seven million blog owners who make it a succes and not one of the 95% who fail, you'll need to put a lot of effort in over a long period of time.


Summary
For most business owners, Google is still a massively under exploited sales tool and if worked in the right way can generate significant results. Whatever the goals for your business, the most important thing to consider before investing in any online marketing is choosing the right tool(s) to fit your strategy. Hopefully we've outlined just some of the ways you can improve your results in the short term and the long term.

Anything we've missed? Please let us know in the comments.