Verizon’s droid marketing campaign

Google/Verizon have followed Bing’s lead in the go big or go home with their new $100 million marketing campaign for Droid.

When Microsoft launched Bing with their $100 million marketing campaign across the world agencies were being constantly critical for the big budget, not much seems to have been said from any agencies yet about Google/Verizon’s massive campaign.

What makes this interesting is that this is just for the US market which demonstrates how seriously they want to win market share off the Apple iPhone. How much would they spend if they launched a worldwide campaign?

The blanket $100 million campaign will likely so big that you cannot escape it online or offline if you live in the US, watch US television or visit US web properties.   The initial “anti-iphone” campaign appears almost to have an evil hint closer to a Skynet device used to take over the world. According to the AdAge article much of the budget will be spent before the end of the year.  Being halfway through November this is a direct pitch at the Christmas sales and maybe some change left over for post-Christmas sales.

It appears that this Android campaign started on the 6th November, first covered by TechCrunch in the image below, where they added a link to the frontpage of Google.com. This is a massive exposure for the new Verizon/Motorola phone as Google has around 2,500,000,000 visits a month according to Compete.com site statics for Google.

This homepage link leads Google visitors to a Droid campaign landing page which interestingly does not feature their partners logos but do mention them by name.  Even with the multiple step process to find out more it means that Verizon will likely not get too much of a free ride, but the sheer volume would make up for if it meant a lower conversion rates.

The Droid landing page has 3 features that they believe are the key benefits of the device:

• Search by Voice
• Quick Search Box
• Speak and Find Your Way

Some of the other features discussed in some of the videos discuss how Droid can do things that the iPhone can’t such as take photos in the dark.  It seems that the gloves are off between the two companies in promoting their mobile devices.

The Verizon page is very heavy around content for the product, with a lot of video and images but all built in flash.  It is interesting that Ajax was not used to build the such visual site.  The DroidDoes website has a heavy push around the benefits of the device that highlight some its key differences to the iPhone. One of the more annoying features is the strange crackle sound when you move the mouse over any of the items and the slow load times.

• 5 Megapixel camera
• Hi-Res Camera
• Speech Recognition
• Multitasking
• Tunes
• Turn-by-turn navigation
• Runs Andriod 2.0
• Notification Panel

If you want to watch the TV clip from the new Verizon campaign, check it out below before you see it everywhere…

Google offers a hosted eCommerce solution

Google has released a new product to its impressive list of hosted solutions which include Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Apps and Google Maps.  The new product Google Commerce Search seeks to fill the gap between website visitors “buyers” and purchase “Checkout” and capture a greater share of the market.

Google understands more than most the benefit of an optimised store designed to generate more revenue.  The new store seeks to roll out some of the features of Google SiteSearch into a hosted store product. The new store works to offer an improved shopping experience:

• find the right products faster
• filter results by category,price,brand
• user-friendly spelling options
• website optimiser
• boost or promote products in search results
• deploy solutions in days
• scale your online store

Google Commerce Search

works to take away the resources required to run a typical e-commerce site. But its first version appears to have been released into the market far too early. One of the most common features I regularly saw was error pages…

Currently you can see a live versions of its hosted Commerce product on the US version of Google Store and play with some of its filter and sort features.  Our initial review makes the community think they have placed design and google search optimisation as future feature to be added in a later version. From our agency consulting projects we have discovered that design and search optimisation is one of the most important features of any e-commerce store and one that should not be a left out.

Seo risks using it?

Another secondary issue that has been discussed is that if you are sending all your traffic to a Google hosted site using search optimisation you would be advised to be careful how aggressive you are.  If you are in a highly competitive industry and your agency is starting to move towards blackhat methods this product may not be the best solution for you…

Are you currently spamming for traffic?

Overly paranoid marketers are starting to wonder if even using certain affiliate marketing programs or paid referral links which are overly aggressive there is a chance that you might get caught out if you are sending all this traffic to Google.  Google has been working to weed out spammy or low quality affiliates in their rankings over the past few months.  So the initial feeling is that if you are breaking some of the many T&C set by the search engines it might not be the best product for you or your clients.

But i don’t live in USA

The biggest issues are that this product currently only has a small test audience and like most new products will take 1-2 years to be available to markets outside the US. There are existing solutions from leading providers like SLI-Systems that have a managed site search that can be deployed into an existing store, why rebuild your store in a Google Store?

Site search solutions

We like our readers to have some choice in what other solutions are out there that recommend to our clients to use for their projects.  So you can chose to wait for Google Commerce Search to catchup or you can look at a solution such as SLI Sytems that offer a 30 day free trial.

What is learning search?

Systems such as SLI-Systems are a tried and tested solution and we included below a diagram on how simple it is to use their learning search process, we suggest if you are looking to increase your current site conversion rates, you should give their product a try.

Google Privacy Dashboard

As Google expands the number of products, they also vastly increase the amount of data they collect about your online behaviour and activities. So they launched Google Dashboard to help you control the vast amounts of data you generate through your online activities.

Every email you send and receive, blogs you subscribe to, google news stories you prefer to read, what YouTube clips you watch, websites you visit and even what you buy with Google Checkout. Some of these actions may not be associate with your specific Google profile and you have to grant Google permission to associate much of this data with your profile.

Even Google understands that it is hard to keep track of everything so they now offer their users Google Dashboard which allows a top-level summary view of all your Google products that you use.

You can drill down to specific products to view more detailed data and to increase security they do not duplicate the database of all the data. This is a massive step forward for transparency of what data Google products have collected and also allows for notification of what is publically visible. This privacy dashboard appears to be a measure to reduce the growing worries about online privacy for consumers and how it maybe commercialised by some companies.

Google use a simple icon shown below to indicate any items in your Google Dashboard is visible to others. Using Google Dashboard can be a faster way to discover if any unwanted private or personal is public.

As TechCrunch points out you this Dashboard does not include any of their cookie-based data collected through DoubleClick or their other ads. You need to use their separate Google Ad Preference Manager

Many of the ads you see online are based on ad networks such as Google, and they now allow you to ensure these ads are more relevant. By selecting your interests categories they can deliver more interesting ads but you can also elect to be opted out so ads are no longer associated with your browser.

You can also elect to expand this opt out to include some of the many other ad networks outside of google by selecting to opt out of the NAI member network.

By opting out of an ad network program using the NAI Opt-out Tool this should not affect other any services provided by NAI members that rely on cookies, such as email or photo-hosting.

The Network Advertising Initiative has adopted a policy that all NAI member companies set a minimum lifespan of five years for their opt out cookies.

By opting out of a ad network does that mean that you will no longer receive online advertising but these ads will no longer be tailored to your online usage patterns and web preferences. The Opt-out Tool was developed for the express purpose of allowing consumers to “opt out” of behavioural ads delivered by NAI member companies.

Your ads preferences only apply in this browser on this computer, so that if you use a different browser or delete your browser’s cookies these preferences need to be reset.

Event Cinemas fail to understand Search

Australia’s largest cinema chains Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union is in the process of being relaunched and redeveloped but have they started their online move too early or without an effective digital strategy.

We understand that the process of rebranding a company is very expensive and time consuming but we don’t believe that AHL successfully planned to get the best benefit from their online campaign with Event Cinemas.

AHL is promoting Event Cinemas as a new concept in entertainment, that seeks to deliver the ultimate cinema experience. The Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union cinemas are in the process of being redeveloped and relaunched as Event.  The other problem is that many of the Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union cinemas will continue to operating throughout Australia.

It seems atleast online the Event Cinemas is now the sole online brand which seems to conflict with their offline marketing which still heavily promotes Birch Carroll & Coyle and Greater Union, which seeks to compete against Hoyts.

It appears that some improvements have been made in the last few weeks, but there is still a lot of quick wins for Event Cinemas.

How do they handle Event Cinemas visitors?

To prove that the online campaign has not being successful a branded search for Event Cinemas shows Greater Union in the #1 result.  The issue is that any visitors to GreaterUnion.com.au is redirected to EventCinemas so it is a wasted and unnecessary step for their visitors.

How do they handle Birch Carroll & Coyle visitors?

It appears that in the search results that Birch.com.au has completely disappeared but it is still being heavily advertised offline. This can potentially lead to confusion with consumers as they expect to see Birch.com.au in the results and Greater Union diverts to EventCinemas anyway.

You can see that yourmovies.com.au is taking some of that branded search traffic already.

Technical Analysis of their SEO

They appear to have started the process but have cut corners and failed to understand what they are doing, its benefit and why they are doing it. This is how they treat their visitors through redirection requests.

#1 Server Response: http://www.birch.com.au

HTTP Status Code: 301 Moved Permanently

Location: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/

Redirect Target: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/

#2 Server Response: http://www.greaterunion.com.au/

HTTP Status Code: 302 Object moved

Location: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

Redirect Target: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

#3 Server Response: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

HTTP Status Code: 302 Found

Location: /?ReDirect=True

Redirect Target: /?ReDirect=True

#4 Server Response: /?ReDirect=True

Wrong service type or malformed URL

How do they handle Greater Union visitors?

Event Cinemas has started showing up in some branded search results for “greater union” but are they following best practice?

The move from the existing Greaterunion.com.au domain to the new Eventcinemas.com.au has not been done effectively and provides an opportunity for their competitors and other websites such as yourmovies.com.au to take their branded “greater union” traffic.

Technical Analysis of their SEO

They appear to have started the process but have cut corners and failed to understand what they are doing, its benefit and why they are doing it. This is how they treat their visitors through redirection requests.

#1 Server Response: http://www.greaterunion.com.au

HTTP Status Code: 302 Object moved

Location: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

Redirect Target: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

#2 Server Response: http://www.eventcinemas.com.au/Redirect/Home

HTTP Status Code: 302 Found

Location: /?ReDirect=True

Redirect Target: /?ReDirect=True

#3 Server Response: /?ReDirect=True

Wrong service type or malformed URL

Event Cinemas Social Media Campaign

They don’t even to take the extra steps for the Event Cinemas Facebook page, as there are a number of options available which have not been utilised. Some of the many Facebook username options that are available:

http://www.facebook.com/eventcinemas

http://www.facebook.com/cinemas

http://www.facebook.com/event.cinemas

So the key factors that are being ignore are refinements to their social media campaign and more effective search optimisation. Event Cinemas seems that they are being complacent online because of their domination of the industry, but their competitors can potentially steal their lead.

Some of the current competitors that can start to take market share away from Event cinemas include:

Dendy

Wallis

Movie Masters

Cineplex

Luna Palace

Hoyts

AMC

Reading Cinemas

Village Cinemas

St George shows how to own Search Results

Today I noticed a new campaign running by St George and was interested to see how effective their online strategy would match and if it even existed. At The Lost Agency we often see large offline marketing campaigns are launched without an effective or even any complimentary digital campaign.

Since there are other banks who have similar products overseas, we thought we would review their product message and how at a basic level they performed in Google search result.

St George performed well above my expectations around the product name controlling the first 6 results and also the single AdWords displayed.

Often product reviews or investment websites will show up high in the results but St George effectively controlled all the results shown above the fold.

To test a very generic single product keyword “Sense”, did not show St George in the organic results but was visible as the single AdWords displayed.

St George Bank’s new saving product “St George Sense” and this product is similar to a product Lloyds TSB released several months ago called “Save the Change” where users of its debit card can save easily.  In the US Bank of America has its own similar saving product “Keep the Change“.

The St George product is quite broad in its offering covering FreedomCard, ATM Cards, and BPay will be rounded, but limits purchases made in Australian dollars to merchants in Australia. This means that you won’t be able to get the double benefit of overseas shopping cashbacks offered by PayPal.

Lloyds TSB has had their product in the market longer and you would expect more control over the search results in Google.co.uk but this was not the case.

The first two results were controlled by Lloyds TSB but the 3rd result was for a Money Saving forum and the 4th result was for Microsoft Windows. This showed that they have not effectively controlled the organic rankings.

The Lloyds TSB product appears to be marketed slightly better with a simple message of that they will round up the amount to the nearest pound and transfer the difference into your savings account.

The product name selected by Lloyds TSB also explains the product in simple terms that consumers understand and match the digital message.

The product names chosen by Lloyds TSB and Bank of America also seems to be better suited to being easily remembered by consumers.  To reduce the risk of becoming a generic term they have both registered trademarks of the product name.

The Bank of America product seeks to further improve and indirectly with its 5% matching of your savings transfers.  Offering 100% for the first 3 months with a cap on this bonus limited at $250 per year.  While these are great they make the product much more complicated to market and more confusing for consumers.

Bank of America’s results on Google.com showed that like Lloyds TSB they only control the first 2 results with random results showing that are not related or discuss Bank of America’s products. There is also a state specific landing page that means inbound links are split and their competitors could easily rank well for their product stealing their potential customers.

The problem is consumers can be easily confused so companies need to work to ensure they have more control over the search results when building new brands or products. Also since they are marketing and building a new product they should be following St George’s lead in reinforcing the message with Google AdWords.

From a product perspective Lloyds TSB wins for a simple message but St George seeks to win the most from its campaign with total control of the search results and we like that.

The St George product is quite broad in its offering covering FreedomCard, ATM Cards, and BPay will be rounded, but limits perchases made in Australian dollars to merchants in Australia.

The Lloyds TSB product appears to be marketed slightly better with a simple message of that they will round up the amount to the nearest pound and transfer the difference into your savings account.

The Bank of America product seeks to further improve and indirectly with its 5% matching of your savings transfers.  Offering 100% for the first 3 months with a cap on this bonus limited at $250 per year.  While these are great they make the product much more complicated to market and more confusing for consumers.

The product names chosen by Lloyds TSB and Bank of America also seems to be better suited to being easily remembered by consumers.  To reduce the risk of becoming a generic term they have both registered trademarks of the product name.

The problem is consumers can be easily confused so both companies need to work to ensure they have more control over the search results. Also since they are marketing and building a new product they should be following St George’s lead in reinforcing the message with Google AdWords.

From a product perspective Lloyds TSB wins for a simple message but St George seeks to win the most from its campaign with total control of the search results.