Welcome to FWD Digital’s summary of what’s happening in digital marketing – some of the big digital stories that affect the UK and what’s going on in the financial services and insurance markets.

General News

Regulator to probe Apple developer agreement

The FTC will examine whether the terms unfairly exclude mobile app developers from using third-party ad networks that rival Apple’s own iAd network. (14/06/2010)

NMA.co.uk

YouTube gets highest VOD views in May

YouTube saw a 3% rise in traffic to 17.4m unique users in May, nearly triple the BBC iPlayer’s traffic. (14/06/2010)

NMA.co.uk

Five million UK adults will watch World Cup online

More than 5m UK adults plan to watch the World Cup online, according to research by Starcom Mediavest Group. (11/06/2010)

NMA.co.uk

Facebook ‘quadruples’ number of advertisers over a year

Facebook’s vice-president of global sales Mike Murphy has said that it more than quadrupled the number of its advertiser clients since the start of 2009 and claimed it has become “absolutely core to marketing campaigns”. (03/06/2010)

MarketingMagazine.co.uk

Research: Most Americans start day with email- not search or social networks

According to a study released today by ExactTarget, 58 percent check their e-mail, while 20 percent go first to a search engine or portal site and 11 percent start with Facebook. (14/06/2010)

NetImperitive.com

Coke cuts websites to focus on contact via social networks

Coca-Cola is slashing its number of websites to two online hubs and will instead be focusing its brand activity on social networks. (09/06/2010)

MarketingWeek.co.uk

Financial Services Digital Marketing News

Visa rolls out first UK social media campaign

Visa has launched its first major UK social media drive, as part of a competition allowing customers to describe and win their ultimate football-viewing experience. (09/06/2010)

MarketingMagazine.co.uk

Aviva launches ‘Tell us your story’ campaign

Aviva has unveiled an integrated marketing campaign called “Tell Us Your Story” that aims to engage consumers by associating with their lifestyles. (08/06/2010)

FinancialMarketing.co.uk

The FSA is watching you

In the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) latest review of new media, the FSA found that some financial promotions lacked risk warnings. (10/06/2010)

FTadviser.com

Start-up claims motor insurance first with Moneysupermarket

A new motor insurer which claims to be the first in the world to charge all its customers solely by the number of miles and the way they drive, is targeting young, newly-qualified motorists and their parents. (14/06/2010)

PostOnline.co.uk

Corporate activity online is growing with social media and blogging seeing large growth in 2009

Todays blog from emarketer.com shows that big business is starting to realise the benefits of digital marketing. It looks at the Fortune 500 group of companies and analyses their pick up of blogging and social media. The findings indicate that the larger organisations are coming round to the idea of social media as a marketing tool.

It has been SMEs that really adopted this space early on and it has helped them punch above their weight by driving traffic to their site, making them more visible in the public eye and engaging their target market in conversation. This level of activity has helped them bond with their audience, even encouraged advocacy in some instances, and led to a more transparent relationship. It is this relationship that will keep customers and clients coming back time and time again to buy products and services.

Big business has been nervous of social media. The idea of losing control of the conversation and engaging with public opinion has put many marketers and CEOs off. However, if managed properly online communications can enhance your brand reputation, client satisfaction and ultimately turnover. It seems that in the US atleast these benefits are being seen:

- 35% of the Fortune 500 companies are Tweeting

- blogging increased from 16% in 2008 to 22% in 2009

- Three in 10 Fortune 500 blogs include video blogging

- 19% of blogs feature podcasts

As a digital agency in London we are seeing a greater desire among UK Financial Services organisations to build their online activity and we sense that the industry on the whole is on the brink of adopting social media and blogging in a big way.

If this is the case for your organisation please contact us on 020 7623 2368 to discuss how your business model can benefit.

Making links work for you

Much search engine optimisation activity is concerned with link building – adding text links (such as SEO and Web Design Agency) to other websites. This has two purposes.  Firstly it increases the “page rank” values on your site through the mere fact that you have links (of whatever relevance and value) pointing to your site, which helps to push you up search engines. Secondly, it’s a way to increase traffic to your site – people on the sites that are linking to yours, may well come to your site via your text link.

“Contextual” link building takes this one stage further.  This focuses on building links from sites that are relevant to your business and/or have higher page rank values.  If you supply office stationary, for example, a link from a site that helps people set up a small business should be relevant and is more likely to drive people interested in office stationary to your site.  Google may spot that the key words used in your link text also appear on the page where it sits, which is a further plus from a link value perspective.

Many people don’t think of it in these terms but creative online advertising – using banners, MPUs, buttons and the like – are also simply links.  Their primary purpose – like contextual links – is to drive more, relevant, traffic to a website.  They are, however, only temporary links and will be broken when the advertisement is taken down.  Because of this, when negotiating rates with the website you are advertising on, it’s a good idea to ask for a permanent text link or at least one that will site on their site for a period of time after the creative has been removed.

Benchmarking is an important practice in digital marketing

Being aware of the online strategies and technologies your competitors are adopting is essential. This activity will make sure you do not get left behind in the digital space, but will also highlight where the opportunities are online.

An opportunity we feel is underutilised but suited to the Financial Services industry is Twitter. Just by running a basic search on Twitter for anything related to Financial Services will show the increasing number of FS companies on the site and the wealth of content that’s now available.

Before considering setting up a corporate Twitter account, however, you need to fully understand how and why people use it. There are two ways of doing this. The first is to set up a personal account and simply start using it to interact with people, follow accounts, set up lists and understand what RT, hash tags and Follow Friday mean. Alternatively sit down and talk it through with a digital agency that understands the opportunities it presents for business. With either method the basic areas for consideration are:

• What areas of your business could benefit from it?
• How many of your competitors are on Twitter?
• How many clients or potential clients are on there?
• How should you use it?

Twitter: Now more than 1 billion tweets per month

According to recent research Twitter passed 1.2 billion tweets per month, averaging 39.5 million tweets per day in January. Twitter’s growth has been huge, and despite showing some signs of slowing down, the figures show how important it has become:

• January 2010 had 16 times as many tweets as January 2009
• The activity on Twitter has doubled since August 2009
• January 2010 saw more tweets per day (39.5 million) than the whole of September 2008

This data includes Twitter use on 3rd party applications, which most reports do not, so this is a very accurate analysis. Check out Pingdom’s blog for more information.

Social media should not take over your digital marketing

Being online is about the people, not the technology.

This quote is from Penny Power’s book, ‘Know me, like me, follow me’. Penny is the founder of the UK business networking website Ecademy. This quote should be the driving force when approaching digital marketing. It is very easy to get carried away by the number of fans on your Facebook page or the number of Twitter lists you have been added to. While these are important factors in the success of social media activity, it is important not to focus solely on this to the detriment of other online efforts.

Social media activity will drive traffic to your website. This is the one area you have full control over the branding, content and communication methods used. Having a Twitter account and a YouTube channel is all well and good, but any positives will be undone if your website is unappealing, out of date and static.

The most effective method of keeping your website relevant and engaging is to generate regular, updated content. This could take the form of a newsletter, research piece or a corporate blog – all of which if used in the right way will help with SEO and create content for your social media activity.

Regular readers of our blog will notice that we have redesigned our site since our last post. The reason for this was to better portray our services and capabilities through design, improved navigation and imagery. It was through regular monitoring of our site, understanding the technologies available to enhance it and by carrying out a benchmarking exercise that we highlighted weaknesses and addressed them effectively. Your website is your online shop window and therefore needs to be as welcoming, well designed and as organised as it can be.