#SASCHOOL11 - Digital, Search and Social Media Marketing Event

Our DMCM (Digital Marketing Communications Management) group attended Search and Social School Manchester yesterday at MMU Business School where we learnt lots of interesting information about digital, search and social media marketing.

James Hanson and Simon Alexander from MediaVest spoke about PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - Below are some of the points they mentioned:

Google currently holds 70% US market share and 90% of the UK's market share. With other search engines such as Yahoo and MSN holding less than 10% between them but slowly growing their share is set to rise with the future merge of MSN and Yahoo.

A quote from Eric Schmidt (Google) "Microsoft, not Apple or Facebook, is the biggest rival Google has right now" - even though Google hold the largest search engine market share they still feel threatened by the smaller search engines as they are all constantly bringing out new tools and competing against each other to gain bigger market shares.

They also talked about how mobile is going to be big in 2011 - this was very useful because one of the aims for our Digital Marketing Communications Management project, based on Canal Street Manchester's LGBT community is to create a mobile friendly website.

All in all the event was very useful to help with our current Gay Village Manchester project and it has also given us an insight into how PPC, SEO and Social Media Marketing work within companies which will be useful for us once we have graduated and hopefully start working for a Digital Marketing agency.

Company Bar, Canal Street Manchester

Company Bar
Originally uploaded by PimmsMMU

Company Bar, Canal Street Manchester

Company Bar
Originally uploaded by PimmsMMU

Gay Manchester, Company Bar

Company Bar
Originally uploaded by PimmsMMU

Canal Street

Canal Street
Originally uploaded by PimmsMMU

Canal Street

Canal Street
Originally uploaded by PimmsMMU

It is nice how Canal Street is pedestrianized. It would be great if more streets in Manchester were this way

How can marketers make the most of mobile search?

A new study provides more evidence of the growth of mobile, with the use of search on mobiles growing by 247% over the last 12 months. In the same period, desktop search fell by 15%.

The Tamar Mobile White Paper shows a rapid increase in mobile search use, especially among the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups with 14% of both searching on mobile every day. Last year the figures for the same groups were 5% and 8%.

The stats from the study show an overall increase in search usage, but the growth of mobile search shows how rapidly mobile internet adoption is growing:

While mobile search is still relatively small, at 3% of total search traffic, the data shows how rapidly it is growing.

So what can marketers do to make the most of mobile search?

• Take note of Google changes. For example, the introduction of Google Instant on a mobile could have a significant impact. It could be very useful for mobile users since fewer keystrokes would be required, and marketers would need to target 'early words' in search terms.
• Since many mobile searches are likely to revolve around local specific phrases, marketers need to incorporate this into keyword research and SEO strategies.
• Make sure you have mobile optimised landing pages. The hard work on attracting mobile search traffic will be wasted if you send users to a desktop site which provides mobile users with a poor experience. These pages should also be optimised for a range of mobile devices.
• Add a phone number to PPC ads, and prominent numbers on landing pages. This way mobile users can easily make contact for bookings etc. A freephone number would also help.
• Add prominent store locators / directions to local businesses. Multichannel retailers can drive customers into local stores by making it easy to find the nearest outlet.
• Separate mobile and desktop search campaigns. The data learned from desktop search campaigns will not necessarily transfer to mobile search, so campaigns need to be tailored to mobile users.
• Target local searchers with mobile AdWords. Restaurants and other local businesses can pick a location and target a radius around it to take advantage of local searches.
• Retailers need to follow mobile commerce best practice, including simplified navigation, nice big call to action buttons and, crucially, a checkout that has been optimised for mobile users.

Source: e-consultancy by UK editor Graham Charlton (2010)

As one of the objectives we set out at the beginning of our Digital Marketing Communications Management (DMCM) project was to develop a mobile friendly website for Canal Street Manchester we found the above report useful for us to gain an insight into how Canal Street can make the most of mobile marketing.

Purple Papers

Less dressed up than white papers, but with all the information you need. For those that like to have the full story

View it here on Scribd Canal Street

Merging Convenience and the User Experience

When we first met up with the client he was eager to discuss implementing a mobile strategy for the Canal Steet website, which is justified as 91% of users in the UK have a mobile phone that can access the internet. Furthermore, the LGBT community as a whole tend be early adopters of new technology.

What was troubling for us though, was that there were some critical problems for the usability of the main site that we needed to avoid in the development of a mobile strategy. We wanted to give the client a strategy that would be easy to amend and easy for the user. From that we decided that a modular layout would be a great option. Each module holds a summary of information and can be expanded, collapsed, or moved. This has great implications for the end user and their experience as well as for the client and the future progression of the Canal St website offering.

The Ball is Rolling...

Things have started kicking off for us this week! We met the client, Iain, at the bar he co-owns on Canal Street.

We discussed the history of the Canal St website and it's future and where Iain would like to go on holiday! We've amassed pages on pages of notes and currently sifting through them to figure out how to get from here to there with the information we've got. Ironically, all of our note-taking has left us with more questions than answers and searching to define a clear set of objectives to move our project forward.

What makes Canal Street unique is that it's not just a geographic district like The Castro in San Francisco, or Greenwich Village, NYC, but its also very symbolic of  the LGBT community-at-large and the website acts also as a resource. This make devising an inclusive strategy a bit more complicated than we first thought.

It's a laborious process, but if when it gets Iain onto a white sandy beach in the South of France then we'll know that we've done a good job!