How to conduct audience research with Google’s Consumer Barometer

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I just discovered Google’s Consumer Barometer and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it until now.

It basically allows you to visualise various data sets to learn more about consumer behaviour. Variables are divided into Topics, Products, Countries and Audience. Under these you can then select from:

Topics

  • Purchase Behaviour
  • Research Behaviour
  • Research & Purchase Behaviour
  • Device Usage
  • Internet Usage
  • Consumer Attitudes

Products

  • Automotive
  • Finance & Real Estate
  • Groceries & Healthcare
  • Media & Entertainment
  • Retail
  • Technology
  • Travel

Countries

First separated into Continents then into countries.

Audience

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Education
  • Internet Usage

In this visualisation you can see what percentage of UK consumers purchase their car insurance online.

consumer abarometer - car insurance

In this I can see the percentage of people in the UK that purchase cinema tickets online on the left and on the right I can see the percentage that research films online before purchasing tickets.

consumer barometer - cinema tickets

Here I can see device usage across UK consumers

consumer barometer - device usage

 

Finally, here I can see on the far left the percentage of UK consumers that purchased a package holiday online, followed by the percentage that did research online before purchasing offline and on the right I can see this data for the USA.

consumer barometer - package holidaysThe data was collated between January and May 2012 so is slightly out of date now however I would hope that this is updated sometime in the near future as it is certainly useful. You can find out more about the collection of the data here.

There are many uses for the data from using the country/product fields to plan new countries for expansion, using the research & purchase fields with products to see whether a content strategy would benefit i.e. if a high percentage of consumers do research online before purchasing the chances are this would be beneficial.

Also, in the browse section you can see the role that search engines play in the purchase process, this visualisation shows me the percentage of UK consumers that used a search engine when purchasing various products & services. By hovering over the percentage I can see which product it relates to.

consumer barometer - role of search engines in purchases

This just further makes the case for why a solid SEO & Content Marketing strategy is needed.

 

By Laura Crimmons

HMV learns not to underestimate the power of an intern (or social media)

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Today HMV learned a powerful lesson, do not underestimate the power of an intern, or of social media. Forced into administration HMV had to fire a large number of employees however it could never have expected the firings to be broadcast live from its own social media channel. You see the channel was set up originally by then intern Poppy Rose who, angry at the way the firings were taking place decided to live tweet them to HMV’s over 73k followers.

You can see most of the tweets here in this screenshot:

hmv tweets

 

HMV then decided the best thing would be to delete the tweets without realising that it had already gone viral. Poor form.

I for one hope that Poppy gets a fantastic new job soon!

Social Media in the Financial Sector (Presentation)

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Yesterday I presented with a colleague at Branded3′s SEO, Social Media & CRO seminar. I was talking about social media in the financial sector, you can see my presentation here:

Calls to action on Social really do work

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It’s not exactly rocket science to be fair, and we probably all could have expected it but anyway Dan Zarrella from Hubspot has conducted some research and proved that including calls to action on Facebook actually does encourage more engagement. He’s even done a nice infographic to detail the results.

Having said that I think I must buck the trend because I don’t really like being told what to do and in fact I’d be less likely to like/comment/share a post if it told me to just on principle. If I want to like something I’ll like it, not just cos someone tells me to!

Barclaycard Social TV

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What happens when you combine a credit card, toys, X Factor, Shazam, charity and social media? Well apparently Barclaycard decided it wanted to find out with its latest campaign.

In case you haven’t seen it Barclaycard’s Pick a Toy campaign is centred around its advert which you can be viewed on its YouTube channel here

Barclaycard has also teamed up with Shazam (you know that app you use when you don’t know what song you’re listening to) and ITV to allow you to win prizes when you see the advert at certain times, the first being during last week’s X Factor.

As soon as I saw the advert I loved it, but then that’s probably because I’m a total big kid and the idea of a big cuddly Monkey walking me around a toy shop really appeals to me. But the whole campaign to me is awesome. Its combining online and offline so well which I think is crucial these days.

But anyway back to how it works so if you’re watching the advert at one of the specified times you use the Shazam app during it which brings you to this screen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You then go to the ‘Barclaycard Lift Lottery’

Then if you’re unlucky like me you get told you didn’t win this time

But you do get told to like Barclaycard on Facebook for the chance to win other prizes.

However if you do win you win one of the toys from the advert and Barclaycard donates £5 to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity. Pretty cool huh?

So has it worked?

Well in the last week the video has received well over a quarter of a million views on YouTube with over 275k at the time of writing this post and 4,728 likes on Facebook. The Barclaycard Facebook page has also gained an impressive Talking About figure of 8,497 and take a look at this chart from Socialbakers which shows the increase of over 4k fans over the last week.

So all in all I’d say the campaign has been a fantastic success so far and  that’s all been achieved in just one week.

Facebook gearing up for the Festive season

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It seems like just recently Facebook has been rolling out update after update, some with a big push and others more subtly.

I just noticed now that I now have the ‘share’ option for posts on the updated iOS Facebook app which I think is great for marketers. Sharing is the ultimate in engaging with a page’s post and since the majority of people log on to Facebook via mobile it was a massive frustration for me that users couldn’t share on mobile. Yet it doesn’t seem like the new share update has had much talk out there. Perhaps that is simply because it has been overshadowed by the other recently announced new Facebook features which are the focus of this post; Gifts, Collections and Purchase Tracking. And I don’t think that its a coincidence that all of these ecommerce oriented features are being rolled out in the lead up to the festive season.

Facebook Gifts

At the end of September this year Facebook announced the launch of its new feature Facebook Gifts off the back of its purchase of gift app Karma. This week at its Facebook Gifts event at FAO Schwarz in New York it announced a raft of new retail partnerships for the gift applications, conveniently just in time for Christmas. Although currently only available in the US I don’t think it will be long until the service rolls out over here as well. You can see a great visual of how to give a gift on Mashable here and if you want to make your product available through Facebook Gifts you can find information here.

Facebook Collections & ‘Want’ button

Back at the beginning of October this year Facebook began testing its new Facebook Collections feature and ‘Want’ button with seven retailers (Pottery Barn, Wayfair, Victoria’s Secret, Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, Smith Optics, and Fab.com), again in the US. Then around the 25th October the ‘testing’ seemed to stop and many speculated that it had been scrapped, Facebook then confirmed that they had completed their testing and were now moving into further stages of product development to roll it out. It may be likely that the actual launch could happen in the next few weeks to capitalise on the festive season especially as the wishlist element fitted so perfectly with the idea of someone Christmas list.

Purchase Tracking

And finally we come on to the latest announcement of Facebook’s purchase tracking as part of its advertising platform. As this was only officially announced yesterday there still aren’t many details surrounding how the tool will work, however the tool has been tested by Fab.com who apparently managed to reduce its cost per new customer acquisition by 39% so it sounds like a great development. More information on the new tool can be found on Mashable here.

So, as I said a lot of great developments here from Facebook in the run up to the holiday period personally I can’t wait to try them out when they come over to the UK and see just how valuable they will be.

Top 7 Social Media Blogs

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Social media is one of those exciting industries for me because there is always something happening. Hardly a day goes by when there isn’t a great new social media story; be that an exciting new development on a social media platform, a great social media case study of success or failure, a new tool being developed for social media listening & monitoring or anything in between.

But the hardest thing for me starting out was knowing which are the top social media blogs and where to go for my news, I don’t have time to be checking a hundred blogs a day for the latest news (as much as I’d like to). So here’s my list (in no particular order) of my social media must-reads that are all in my Feedly and Twitter lists.

  1. HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog - more than just social media this covers everything from social media, SEO, blogging and lead generation. Great source for getting useful data and case studies.
  2. Our Social Times - Fantastic for all social media news, also have great events throughout the year.
  3. Kissmetrics Blog - Another great source especially if you like data, often has great infographics and insights. Also covers wider topics than just social media.
  4. Jeffbullas’s Blog - Covers social media and blogging,  often has useful step-by-step guides and tips to follow.
  5. Social Media Examiner - Another that usually has step-by-step tips to follow and case studies.
  6. Social Media Today - Similar to Our Social Times – has the top social media stories from a range of contributors usually with opinion mixed in.
  7. SocialTimes - Another similar one, slightly more of a US/Worldwide focus.
Another of my favourites to check which isn’t a blog but more a source for all inbound marketing news is Inbound.org this is especially great for me as I can get my social media and SEO news in one place.
Of course as well as these top social media news sites, I do also follow the official social media platform blogs to keep on top of any updates or developments.
  1. Facebook Developer Blogx
  2. Twitter Blog
  3. Instagram Blog
  4. LinkedIn Blog
  5. Oh, How Pinteresting!
  6. The Google+ Developers Blog

I’m by no means saying that this is an exhaustive list of the best social media blogs, however its a good enough starting point and you can generally find the stories you need to know about on one if not all of these sites.

Over to you, are there any you think I’ve missed off the list that you check on a daily basis?

Space Jumping and Social Media: Setting Records

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On October 14, 2012, a man named Felix Baumgartner got in a balloon, cruised to an altitude just before going into space, put on his parachute and jumped. Not only was this event broadcasted on multiple TV stations, but it (of course) found its way onto the Internet. Oh, and it broke a YouTube record.

According to a blog post from YouTube, at the peak of the event, there were 8 million live streams occurring at one time. This set a YouTube record. But another interesting tidbit of information is that Baumgartner broke ANOTHER YouTube record on the same day, well before he jumped. At the same time, 7.1 million people turned to YouTube to watch the event, and it eventually climbed to 8 million.

Felix Baumgartner is an Austrian diver, and his stunt on October 14 captivated a very wide audience. Along with breaking two YouTube records, he also managed to break some other world records. He set the record for highest jump, which took place from a platform at 128,100 feet above ground. He set the record for longest freefall, which went 119,846 feet. He also set the record for fastest free fall velocity, in which he managed to break the sound barrier.

Why did he do it?

Aside from the recognition, there’s no real reason why Baumgartner performed the stunt. He has been a partner with Red Bull, the jump’s sponsor, since 1988 when he was only 19 years old. He has been a partner ever since and over the years, has performed many skydiving jumps and exhibitions on behalf of the company. And while Red Bull generated revenue from the event, Baumgartner will not cash in on any of it. Instead, this jump simply solidifies his role as a Red Bull partner.

What does it have to do with social media?

Aside from breaking two YouTube records, Baumgartner’s jump resonated on other social media sites too. After he had successfully completed the jump, Red Bull posted a picture of him on Facebook. In less than one hour, the picture was shared just under 30,000 times, received 10,000 comments and was liked by over 216,000 people.

During the jump, half of the trending topics on Twitter had something to do with Baumgartner’s jump, beating out every NFL game that was taking place and even trending topic frontrunner Justin Bieber.

The topic of the jump also generated two threads on Reddit that landed on the front page.

This event goes to show how social media can be impacted by one event. It can easily generate interest on multiple social networking channels, and be the reigning topic on every single one.

Red Bull has been using extreme sports as a marketing tactic for years, and the jump by Felix Baumgartner was truly exceptional. It makes you wonder what extreme event Red Bull will come up with next that will have the same type of impact on the world…and social media.

This article was written by Joshua Reynolds in tandem with SEOMap.  Visit SEOMap to download free learning resources.