Generation Y can be defined as the children of the baby-boomers and have had access to technology their whole lives. They are requiring companies to change their hiring methods, strategies and most importantly to this blog their marketing methods (Tapscott, 2008).

There are several companies that have generation Y as their target market. For examples, Thomas Cooks 18-30s, Asos and NUS extra and they need to adapt their digital marketing strategies because of the below factors:

• Generation Y’s online consumer behaviour has an impact on how companies can digitally market towards them. (Lange, 2014) discusses how millennials have an innate need to be accepted by their peer group both offline and online and this drives why the act the way they do – especially on social media. 18-34 year olds spend 3.8 hours per day on social media including facebook, snapchat and instagram  (Marketing Charts, 2013) and companies should take advantage of this in an innovative way to increase positive brand associations. Nike did this particularly well by creating an app that focusses on the dreams of aspiring sports stars to get noticed and accepted and their use of social media  (Moreton Bay Digital Enterprise, 2014).

• Generation Y’s access to technology has allowed them to be leaps and bounds ahead of older consumer in terms of their knowledge and usability (Lange, 2014). This means that they are a lot more receptive to innovative and interactive digital marketing methods. In the same breath, they are willing to experiment with new products and this makes them a lucrative brand to target. A project by 303 entitled the ‘ME project’ allowed users to take photos of things that interest them, upload onto an interactive platform and 303 would attempt to come up with a plan for the future that interested them (Moreton Bay Digital Enterprise, 2014).

• However, Generation Y can be cynical and have short attention spans in terms of online campaigns and this makes it very important for companies to be transparent and use reputable methods (Lange, 2014).  Generation Y are also part of a strong online community and E-word of mouth (EWOM) is very effective making it essential brands keep this target audience happy  (Lin, et al., 2012).

• (Chester & Montgomery, 2008) discuss that generation Y are being used as guinea pigs to test new digital marketing methods. They talk that this market is less regulated than TV advertising for example and there is a threat that it may become more regulated in the future. Below is an example of a digital marketing campaign by Mcdonalds that plays on millenials need to be accepted and desire to win, critics say this campaign encourages child obesity. Companies need to ensure they do not take advantage of Generation Y or it could backfire.

This blog has summarised some of the key points that affect companies targeting their digital marketing to generation Y.

References

Chester, J. & Montgomery, K., 2008. Digital marketing to youth:an emerging threat. Consumer Policy Review, Vol. 18(No. 6), pp. Pg. 147-154.

Lange, K., 2014. Cracking the Youth Market Online. [Online]
Available at: http://www.quirk.biz/resources/article/4935/cracking-youth-market-online
[Accessed 22nd April 2015].

Lin, T., Lu, K.-Y. & Wu, J.-J., 2012. The effects of visual information in eWOM communication. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 6(No. 1), pp. Pg. 7-26.

Marketing Charts, 2013. Social Networking Eats Up 3+ Hours Per Day For The Average American User. [Online]
Available at: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/social-networking-eats-up-3-hours-per-day-for-the-average-american-user-26049/
[Accessed 22nd April 2015].

Moreton Bay Digital Enterprise, 2014. Connect with youth through digital marketing. [Online]
Available at: http://www.depmoretonbay.com.au/resources/connect-with-youth-through-digital-marketing/
[Accessed 22nd April 2015].

Tapscott, D., 2008. Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World HC. New York: Mcgraw-Hill.

Non-digitalised sponsorship can be defined as a fee paid to a property for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property (Cornwell, et al., 2005). When we apply that to digital marketing the property becomes a website or page collection.

This blog will explore the benefits of online sponsorship and how to operate it successfully.

Digital sponsorship is becoming popular due to it’s attractive medium and interactive and dynamic nature. It allows rich media such as video streaming and personalisation technologies.  (Drennan & Cornwell, 2004) discuss how these attributes make it possible for sponsors to target their market more effectively, heighten involvement of their target audience, and measure the effectiveness of their sponsorship activities.

The benefits of online sponsorship when done right are many and the return on investment can be great. Similar to offline sponsorship, brand awareness is improved within a select target audience and the relationship with consumers can become more dynamic.  (Arts & Business Northern Ireland, 2010) state that there is also a benefit in building long term relationships and that these relationships often last longer than the initial project. In a more digital marketing approach sponsorship is really good way of building inbound links which will ultimately help search engine page ranks.

Now let’s look at some successful online sponsorship partnerships.

a) Made in Chelsea and Rimmel

Technically Rimmel sponsor this TV programme but the sponsorship deal continues on to their online space as you can see by the logo. When the logo is clicked it takes you to Rimmels home page providing a high quality and reputable inbound link. Made in Chelsea and Rimmel are both focused towards the young, female audience and therefore are highly relevant to each other. The only improvement I could suggest is the adding more value to the banner rather than just their logo.

b) Vue cinema and First Choice

This sponsorship adds value for the consumer as it is a unique all inclusive package. It also works well by drawing on brand association of First Choice whose tag line is ‘The home of all inclusive’. It is relevant as they both target families and provide a leisure experience. However this example does not link back to the First Choice home page anywhere and so does not provide inbound links therefore not helping SEO.

c) Chelsea and Rotary Watches

This is an offline and online partnership. Chelsea sponsor a select collection of Rotary watches and in return they get exploitable commercial space on their website and access to their consumers. The sponsorship adds value for the customer as both brands have positive emotional responses and it extends the watch range. When the sponsor logo is clicked it takes you to a Chelsea FC landing page providing them with reputable inbound links.

Based on the analysis above, here are some points in order to ensure your online sponsorship works as a digital marketing tool.

• Measure the emotional responses to the brand you are sponsoring. A positive emotional response will transfer to your brand and improve your brand equity  (Smart Insights, 2015).

• Ensure relevance between the two brands. Search engines put more emphasis on inbound links that are relevant, so one way to make sure of this is to choose a company with the same target audience.

•  (Sports Revolution, 2013) discuss one way to maximise the impact of your sponsorship is to interact with your sponsorship consumers on social media with engaging content for example giveaways and experiences.

• It is also important that the online partnership providing links is a reputable and recognised site as this will attract a greater weighting from search engine (Green, 2003)

• Online sponsorship requires more than just plonking the logo on a platform. It requires building a dynamic relationship with the company and consumer and adding value for both parties. (Arts & Business Northern Ireland, 2010)

• Digital sponsorship should be measured to ensure success.  (Drennan & Cornwell, 2004) case study of 6 companies identified several ways to measure the success of an online sponsorship strategy. These were: n.o. of visitors registering for more information, n.o. of click throughs and whether the target audience were indeed the audience reached.

References

Arts & Business Northern Ireland, 2010. Successful partnerships: Collaboration and Innovation, Belfast: Arts & Business Northern Ireland.

Cornwell, T. B., Weeks, C. S. & Roy, D. P., 2005. Sponsorship-Linked Marketing: Opening the Black Box. Journal of Advertising, Vol. 34(No.2), pp. Pg. 21-42.

Green, D., 2003. Search Engine Marketing: Why it benefits us all. Business Information Review, Vol. 20(No. 4), p. Pg. 195–202.

Smart Insights, 2015. An example of the power of sponsorship. [Online]
Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/internet-advertising/online-sponsorship/example-sponsorship/
[Accessed 16th April 2015].

Sports Revolution, 2013. HOW DIGITAL MARKETING IS REVOLUTIONISING SPORT SPONSORSHIP. [Online]
Available at: http://www.sportsrevolution.co.uk/how-digital-marketing-is-revolutionising-sport-sponsorship/
[Accessed 16th April 2015].

Using online optimisation requires deciding on the right keywords for your target audience. Google recommends that keywords should be relevant to the customer, specific and that there should be the right number (Google, 2015).

This blog will look into the process of finding the right keywords and give a few examples for illustration purposes.

(Shih, et al., 2012) have identified an implementation process for keyword research and selection which in my own experience I found really useful so we’ll start with that!

 We’ll use the example of a holiday business catering for 18-30 year olds providing cheap, clubbing package holidays. (Not mentioning any names)

Step 1 – find keywords.

There are many ways to find key words, the most common being Google trends, Google Adwords and Keyword planner tools. However, as times change I think it is important to use innovative ways that make the most of resources available to you, after all this could give you an advantage over competition. (Patel, 2014) identified using Google autocomplete, Google related searches or looking at competitiors keywords.

Step 2 – create a keyword table

Below are some anticipated broad search terms for the youth holiday market. Keywords need to be ranked by value, for example; number of visitors and conversion rates.  This then clearly shows the expected return on investment and can help deciding which ones are the most valuable. As can be noted from the table, the keywords that are more specific and ‘long tail’ may have fewer number of visitors but a higher conversion rate.

This is just a snippet of possible keywords, as you can imagine there are lots more to choose from. Which leads me nicely on to step 3!

Step 3 – Decide on keywords

Keywords should provide a return on investment specific to the target audience. (Joshi & Motwani, 2006) identified two main strategies which could be used. Selecting many non-obvious keywords at a lower cost or selecting only a few obvious and more expensive keywords.

In an ideal world, you’d want a keyword that has high searches and low competition. So, based on the example table above we shall choose ‘What are the best party holidays’and ‘cheap party holidays’ because they are relevant to the product and provide the best conversion, visitors ratio.

Step 4 – Decide where to place your keywords

This is something that (Shih, et al., 2012) doesn’t pick up on in his framework but something I believe is incredibly important to page rank.

(Green, 2003) states that the most important keywords should appear near the top of the page, or in bold, or as hyperlinks. Search engines index according to the location and frequency of terms, so such words receive a higher weighting than plain text words further down a web page. The locations to consider are:

• Headings
• Content
• URL
• Meta tag
• ALT text

So with the two keywords we selected previously we shall decide where each would be appropriate.

Cheap party holidays would work well as a heading & it’s something users would expect to see. It could also work as a URL, for example: www.holidays4u.co.uk/cheap-party-holidays.

‘What are the best party holidays’ in contrast would work well as a rhetorical question in the actual content.

Step 5 – Observation and Maintenance

Search volumes and search terms are dynamic and change regularly. So in order to keep on top of your keywords game the table must be regularly monitored and updated with correct figures.

(WordStream, 2015) states keyword research should  be an ongoing and ever-evolving part of marketing to evaluate old keywords and to find new ones.

…

So that’s the end of my guide to choosing your keywords. I hope you’ve found it useful, check out the references below for further reading.

References

Google, 2015. How to build the best keyword list. [Online]
Available at: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453981?hl=en
[Accessed 11th April 2015].

Green, D., 2003. Search Engine Marketing: Why it benefits us all. Business Information Review, Vol. 20(No. 4), p. Pg. 195–202.

Joshi, A. & Motwani, R., 2006. Keyword Generation for Search Engine Advertising. Hong Kong, IEEE.

Patel, N., 2014. Back to Fundamentals: 6 Untapped Keyword Sources that Will Boost Organic Traffic. [Online]
Available at: http://moz.com/blog/untapped-keyword-sources
[Accessed 25th January 2015].

Shih, B.-Y., Chen, C.-Y. & Chen, Z. S., 2012. An Empirical Study of an Internet Marketing Strategy for Search Engine Optimisation. Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing & Service Industries., Vol. 23(No.6), pp. Pg. 528-540.

WordStream, 2015. SEO Keywords: How Better Keyword Research Gets You Better Results. [Online]
Available at: http://www.wordstream.com/seo-keyword
[Accessed 12th April 2015].

Online optimisation has long been a digital marketing strategy to improve search engine page rank. This involves crafting the information architecture, content, design and usability of the website to a way that search engine algorithms like and feature highly on a search (Killoran, 2013). Companies do this to improve website traffic, be worthy of links and general brand awareness.

This blog will focus on keyword optimisation and try to simplify the complex algorithms used by search engines (in particular Google) to identify the most key, keyword points!

Page title

• This is extremely important and the target keyword should have a place in it preferably towards the beginning.

Page content

• There is a growing importance on long-tail keywords which are longer and more specific phrases that customers may use later in the flow of the website. Google Hummingbird understand how those words work together, making it have a more human approach  (Wordstream, 2015)
• Google Hummingbird has placed importance on all page contents to provide users with better results than just a home or landing page. This means that all pages of your website should have optimised content that will attract a high page rank, not just the home page.
• It’s key to avoid keyword stuffing. There are various suggested keyword density figures – most seem to say around 2-4% per page is desirable. (This can be checked using Google’s tool www.googlerankings.com/kdindex.php). However a video on youtube by Google suggests it’s more important to create natural and unique content than the % of keywords. (What is the ideal keyword density of a page?, 2011). Below is an extreme example of keyword stuffing:

Headlines

• The headline and the keyword do not have to match exactly but most visitor will expect a similar headline to what they have searched. Google recognises this and will look at the relevance of your H1.

URLs

• These should be relevant and not spammy.

Images & ALT text

• Including images in a keyword page is wise as it helps to improve page rank. First of all it allows your website to appear in an image search but it also improves site structure and Google places an importance on the descriptive ALT text that goes with it. A good ALT text will be desciprtive and link back towards the target keyword. For example:

To illustrate my points, below is a good example of all aspects of keyword optimisation. This page has a relevant URL and description, strong title and headline and interesting and unique content on all pages without keyword stuffing.

I shouldn’t need to tell you this, but obviously all of the above is dependent on your own research and should be taken with a pinch of salt as there are many different opinions on the best ways to use keyword optimisation.

To read more on keyword optimisation this is a very useful article – http://moz.com/blog/visual-guide-to-keyword-targeting-onpage-optimization 

References

Killoran, J., 2013. How to Use Search Engine Optimization Techniques to Increase Website Visibility. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, Vol. 56(No. 1), pp. Pg. 50-66.

Masters, S., 2013. What is Google Hummingbird – new algorithm explained. [Online]
Available at: http://www.stevemasters.co.uk/seo-tips/what-is-google-hummingbird/
[Accessed 10th April 2015].

What is the ideal keyword density of a page?. 2011. [Film] Directed by Google. California: Google Webmasters.

Wordstream, 2015. Long-Tail Keywords: A Better Way to Connect with Customers. [Online]
Available at: http://www.wordstream.com/long-tail-keywords
[Accessed 10th April 2015].

Link building can be defined as a form of SEO which involves placing your  link on other websites and vice versa (Duk, et al., 2013).  This boosts web traffic and helps page rank.

This blog will explore 4 different ways of link exchanging and whether they are white hat or black hat. Black hat methods are short term fixes that search engines frown upon. Algorithms are becoming more savvy about showing relevant content and the consequences of using black hat linking could be a search engine ban.

Buying or selling links – Black hat

This involves exchanging money or goods/services for links or posts with certain links in. A quick google search reveals several websites offering page linking services. This is against search engine guidelines as Google prefers sites to build links by having quality content in order to keep their search results relevant (Duk, et al., 2013). Although this may be an easy and quick way to build links it will harm your websites page rank long term so avoid at all costs!

Link Farms – Black Hat

Link farms are a clique of websites that all link to other websites in the group. These are normally automated services and do not provide relevant content. Link farms are a way of bypassing search engine algorithms and to improve page rank. Link farms violate search engine guidelines and can result in penalties being imposed (SEO chat, 2015).

Online Partnerships – White Hat

Requesting links from relevant business partners can provide inbound links. It is key to find a partner with the same target market or offering a complimentary service, especially one with a high page rank itself. Search engine algorithms take more notice of links that will provide value to visitors and so this method is seen as white hat and will successfully boost page rank if done right  (Bourne, 2013).

E.g. The Telegraph and Superdry. The Telegraph has provided a highly ranked inbound link to Superdry by forging a strategic partnership with them. This giveaway obviously costs Superdry more than other link building methods but would have been very successful in improving web traffic and page rank.

Linkbaiting -White Hat

Linkbaiting is the process of providing quality content that encourages links to it  (Wuebben, 2012). This could be from reviews, blogs or other websites.  (The Moz Blog, 2012) has identified 10 top tips for successful link baiting.

1. Get influencers involved.
2. Make it easy to understand.
3. Give away free stuff.
4. People love lists.
5. Choose a highly desired topic.
6. People like personalized content.
7. Establish it as the go-to resource.
8. Make it visually appealing.
9. Segment large lists to make them readable.
10. Use social share buttons.

Search engines like link-baiting because it provides natural links that add value for visitors.

A great example is Skybets ‘look busy’ campaign. It was creative and funny and therefore provide Skybet with lots of shared and inbound links. http://www.skybet.com/cms/bet_boss.shtm

Helpful points to avoid when link building – courtesy of  (Anderson, 2015) & 

This blog as only covered 4 types of link building and of course there are many more but it gives you an idea of what links are black hat and what search engines are looking for. I will finish up with some helpful tips.

• Avoid unnatural links
• Avoid spammy HTMLs
• Don’t include links below footers
• Avoid links from unethical or explicit websites
• Avoid irrelevant links
• Avoid repetitive links or using too many links
• Avoid purchased links

If you want to read more about building links Google provides guidelines as to what they do or do not allow here

References

Anderson, S., 2015. Free Link Building Tips For 2015. [Online]

Available at: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/link-building-strategy-for-beginners-a-month-of-free-tips/
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Bourne, J., 2013. Understanding Reciprocal Links and How to Use Them. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bourncreative.com/using-reciprocal-links-the-right-way/
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Duk, S., Bjelobrk, D. & Carapina, M., 2013. SEO in e-commerce: Balancing between white and black hat methods. Opatija, IEEE.

SEO chat, 2015. Reciprocal Links: Are They Really So Bad?. [Online]
Available at: http://www.seochat.com/c/a/link-trading-help/reciprocal-links-are-they-really-so-bad/
[Accessed 18th March 2015].

The Moz Blog, 2012. 10 Extraordinary Examples of Effective Link Bait. [Online]
Available at: http://moz.com/blog/10-extraordinary-examples-of-effective-link-bait
[Accessed 19th March 2015].

Wuebben, J., 2012. Content is Currency. America: Nicholas Brealey.

What do your Facebook likes say about you?

Jennifer Golbeck explains how companies are using the data you voluntarily put out there onto social media sites as a way to found out more about your patterns of behaviour. She explains how companies can find out your:

• political preference
• personality score
• religion
• intelligence
• sexual orientation

She explains how a study by the National Academies found one of the strongest Facebook indicators of intelligence was to like the page for Curly Fries. (now you understand the title, right?)

If companies can grasp which “likes” are associated with which attributes and characteristics it means they can use this data to better market their products or services. This big data source shouldn’t be overlooked by organisations, as the worlds internet population and in turn Facebook population continues to grow the research available will become ever more important to digital marketing.

Jennifer Golbeck, (2013). The curly fry conundrum: why social media “likes” say more than you might think. [Online Video]. 01 October. Available from: http://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_golbeck_the_curly_fry_conundrum_why_social_media_likes_say_more_than_you_might_think

[Accessed: 23 October 2014].