As I mentioned in my last post, I recently attended the Online Media and Marketing conference in London. I attended a seminar held by Alex Burmaster, a European Business Analyst from Nielsen Online. Here are some of the “lessons” he was offering:
1. Understand the bigger picture. You are probably a small part of someone’s online experience. While in previous years, there was room for every online business to grow, now you need to steal market share.
People are becoming more habitual and are visiting 10% fewer sites than they did last year. Some exceptions are coupon/reward sites – these have seen their audiences grow by 70% in the UK.
2. Know thy audience. There are twice as many people online who are over 50 versus under 18. According to Nielsen, this is how internet usage in the UK stacks up by age:
- 2 - 17 years old - 4.2 million
- 18 - 24 years old - 4.2 million
- 25 - 34 years old - 7 million
- 35 - 49 years old - 9.6 million
- 50 + years old - 9.2 million
It was also interesting to see where those with the highest incomes were spending time online. These are the top 10 sites visited by people with a household income of £50K+ in the UK:
- Holiday rentals
- Home web sites
- Toptable
- View London
- Bank of Scotland
- Companies House
- Monarch Airlines
- Hilton
- Inter Continental Hotels Group
3. Harness the power of video. Every product you have should have a demo video. Videos are viral, engaging, digestible and search friendly.
4. Harness the third screen – mobile. The average uplift for campaigns using mobile is 13%. For B2B, it’s 4%. Location-based GPS has an audience of 1,273,000 in the UK, and 2% of UK mobile subscribers.
5. Listen to what consumer-generated media tells you. It’s worth noting that 54% of people posting opinions about a brand first attempted to contact the brand by e-mail – so get your customer service right!
6. Act on it. Give people a chance to tell you what they think directly. Have a link on your site for customer testimonials.
7. Go the distance.
