Mabelline Tan

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of a search marketing

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is an internet marketing strategy used to optimize websites and essentially make them 'search engine' friendly. By conducting search marketing, it can result for businesses an increase in website ranking, better page rankings in a search page an possibly sales for the company.

Benefits

Search marketing can drive targeted traffic to your site all the time. When the site has a digital presence on internet searches, we can forget about selling our products by cold-calling or by knocking doors. We can depend on search marketing to give us leads. 

Search marketing allows businesses to reach out to a global audience. We can now do business globally as there is no geographical boundaries anymore.

Get more targeted traffic to your website. Search engine is the number one traffic referral source for most websites. Millions of searches are conducted every day as people look for websites, information, products and services. With search marketing, you can definitely get more targeted traffic to your website. 

Search marketing is cost effective. When compared to other traditional advertising media, search marketing is definitely more cost effective. Search engine traffic is more targeted which makes it easier for you to convert prospects to customers

Search marketing allows business to build their brand. When your website has high visibility on search engines, you are showing your prospects that your business is an authority brand. When earchers seee your website often, they will remember your brand. Even if they do not need the product or service now, they will still think of your brand first when they need it in the near future. 

(retrieved from http://www.webdynamic.com.au/references/search-engine-marketing/the-benefits-of-search-engine-marketing.html)

Disadvantages

The challenge of SEO is that there are over 8 billion pages in the search engine indexes with your position in the SERPs dependent on a constantly changing algorithm which is not published. So making your pages visible may require specialist knowledge, constant monitoring and the ability to respond. As a consequence, the biggest disadvantage of SEO is a lack of control. You are subject to changes in the algorithm.

Favours big players. For companies with a lower budget or a narrower range of products on which to increase lifetime value it may be not possible to compete. Large players can also get deals on their media spend through their agencies.

Search marketing can be time consuming. It can take a long time for page rankings to improve a notch. 

Advertisers may be prevented from competing on a level playing field, because competitors and even affiliates may use less ethical black hat SEO techniques.

In competitive sectors it may be very difficult to get listed in the top few results for competitive phrases. This is when PPC may have to be used, although this can be expensive in a competitive sector.

The loss of market share for both Samsung and Apple points very clearly to the fact that the smartphones has clearly entered the era of commodification. There are many implications for both companies

Bloody battlefield in emerging markets and continued fragmentation of market
In advanced economies, everyone who wants a smartphone already owns one. The emerging market is where the next battlefield will be. No everyone will be able to afford an Apple or Samsung but the emerging middle class in emerging markets will want smartphones of their own.

Nobody is wasting any time on this - So everyone already fighting for a foothold.

It will be interesting to see if Tim Cook bows to pressure to come up with "low-cost" Apple phone for emerging markets that goes against the grain Apple's long-held strategy of releasing only premium products (I am sure most people agree with me that Iphone 5c was a very blotched attempt - the phone wasn't "cheap" and most people who could afford an Iphone 5c would have bought an 5s for its superior features).

In China, companies like Xiaomi and Oneplus are already trying to eat Apple's and Samsung's lunch. We will continue to see fragmentation of the market and continued erosion of market share of Apple/Samsung. Overall it's great news for consumers when it comes to consumer choice (possibly means lower prices and intensification of innovation)


Continuation of the proxy war between (Google) Android and (Apple) iOS and it's importance
With Samsung's 63% or more share of Android, it's clear that this is clearly a proxy war between Andriod and iOS to be the dominant mobile operating system of the phone in people's pocket.

Why is this war so important?

Not too long ago, whomever owned the content won until Apple figured out that whomever owned the customer relationship that could deliver that content won - App Store/iTunes is a very good example ($10 billion is close to GDP of Mongolia)

Both Google and Apple have an eye is clearly going to be the next biggest differentiator in the mobile phone business - Mobile payments.

Apple already owns 800 million credit cards on file through the App Store. Imagine if one could walk into NTUC, authorise the purchase with your mobile phone (and still earn rewards points on your credit card) and they just take a cut of that purchase... (or they could negotiate their own merchant discount rate with the bank...)

This relationship is also key in helping marketers piece together information between online digital behaviour and physical behaviour. Marketers would like know if a purchase in a store was linked to a earlier web search, or a click on banner ad, or location-based promotions etc.

Different Operating Systems: Users' choices come first

Question: "What is the impact in digital marketing of the proliferation of different Operating Systems for Mobile, i.e. Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, etc.

In my opinion, with the proliferation of different OS for mobile, digital marketeers will face the main challenge of deciding the most optimal operating system to launch their digital marketing campaigns. This can vary with the  geographical, social, political, economical factors closely relating to their targeted audience.

(Photo Credit: Canalys)

Hence it is important for digital marketeers to be up to date with relevant data such as the factors mentioned above, consumers' mobile usage trends, major smart phone manufacturers moves, launch of new Operating Systems etc to ensure that our targeted audience will enjoy the most optimized users' experience across the various operations systems regardless of which mobile phone they carry. 

Potential Impact(s) in Digital Marketing of the Proliferation of Different Operating Systems for Mobile

2013 seems to be the year of the Mobile OSes as several companies announced their foray into this space currently dominated by Android and iOS. (Source: BSN - New Mobile Operating Systems) The entry of new players into a duopoly market seems to send a signal that there are still opportunities to segment the market as well as to differentiate against the incumbents by providing a new level of experience for the fickle minded consumers who ain't really loyal at all. 

It is true that the smartphone has become one of the most personal devices of consumers today, the role of digital marketing is still evolving and trying to establish proven methods in reaching out to the right audience at the right time. Let's discuss what are some of the potential impacts to digital marketing. 

Extending the Reach to More Consumers

The introduction of Firefox OS might allow digital marketers to reach out to more consumers, particularly in countries where smartphone usage is limited as compared to developed countries. Firefox OS fills an untapped where Android and iOS have not reached, i.e. consumers who are not using smartphone and unable to pay expensive data charges of smartphone usage (Source: Phonedog - Why Mozilla's Firefox OS is important to the mobile industry). Leveraging on HTML5 technologies, marketers can potentially target a brand new segment of consumers that installed apps and NFCs technologies have not exploited. 

Splitting the Advertising Revenue Pie Further 

With new entrants into the crowded Mobile OS space, this potentially will further split the current advertising revenue. Digital marketers and advertising agencies might be attracted by the offerings of new technologies to reach out to new consumers. This may benefit the industry as stiff competition will encourage innovations and the players will try to outdo each other. 

Complicated Offerings & Packages 

If the telcos and companies start to adopt the new Mobile OSes, this might lead to the rise of complicated product offerings and packages, especially for consumers. Creative product marketers may design complicated and confusing plans for each Mobile OS, potentially leading to a bad consumer experience when one has to figure out which plan is the best. Hidden landmines in the packages may also lead to unexpected mobile charges for the consumers, thus discouraging usage.  

What is the impact in digital marketing of the proliferation of different Operating Systems for Mobile?

Digital marketing uses all digital media, including adoption mobile devices, to develop communication and exchanges with consumers. The proliferation of digital marketing has created a new challenges for marketers today and also created opportunities for highly interactive, rich communications between consumers and brands.

There are many different mobile devices operating systems currently being used. Some of the most well-known include IOS, Windows Mobile, and Android. Most of them are associated with specific brands of phone made by specific companies while others are open-source and are available on a variety of platforms. All of these have their own unique features as well as areas where consumers demand.

The impact in digital marketing of the rapidly growth OS on the mobile devices, it is the key factor that focusing on which operating system that driving to move the digital information to your consumers will fit your target market  and then building mobile applications that not only add value to your consumers, but increase the awareness of your brand or products 

Companies have more channel to let consumers to access their information by using different OS in their mobiles device. Indeed, the OS on the mobiles devices is giving rise to a new multi- platform to all companies for their consumers, people who accesses the information through a combination of different OS in the mobiles devices, enabling them easy to get information's whenever they want and wherever they might be. Today, the mobiles device are more affordable for the connectivity, inexpensive devices that make mobile devices cheaper, the OS are easy to use, and all apps using on mobile devices that provide both better communication for consumers to consumers where they are.

  

What is the impact in digital marketing of the proliferation of different Operating Systems for Mobile?

The impact will be the cost of designing different campaign that needs to works well with different platforms. The monetary cost, efforts and time need to be invest to ensure the different campaign works well as well as maintaining it.

As a digital marketer, we may need to do extensive research to find out the profile of the users that used the different platforms so that we are aware of the audience we are targeting. People will behave differently in different platforms at different times.

To overcome the above, we need to put in metrics to figure out the audience’s behaviour, analyse the metrics and adjust or drop the campaigns accordingly.

However, I believe in the long run, there could be a standard for all the platforms to make life easier for everyone.

What is the impact in digital marketing of the proliferation of different Operating Systems for Mobile, i.e. Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Firefox OS, Ubuntu, etc

In my personal view, the biggest impact on digital marketing of the proliferation of OS for Mobile would be the need for speed to catch up with synchronizing the compatibility and optimization for the different mobile platforms.

In today’s market, most companies are still resistant or slow in optimization for the different OS platforms for customers who are using different mobile devices. Hence, when more and more different type of OS starts to surface in the market through the different mobile devices, and at high speed rate, consumers may not be able to enjoy full optimization on their mobile devices when their OS is the newest in the market. This is especially so with the latest trend in “multi-screen” users in every household, where consumers uses multiple mobile devices at the same time at home or at work and the different mobile devices are of different OS.

However, it is also due to the above trending of fast growing mobile devices with latest OS that will greatly contribute to the higher demand in digital marketing. This is especially so for news and publications sector, where the demand for creation and maintenance of news for consumption on more mobile platforms are exceptionally high, which in a way generates demand for digital ads placement as well.

According to many different reports, mobile ads grew 80% in 2012. At $2.6 billion, mobile now accounts for more than 7% of total digital ad spending. eMarketer projects it will hit 21% by 2016.35. At the end of the day, although conversion rates vary by mobile operating system, it is still important for digital marketers due to continued rapid growth in mobile search traffic. Therefore, rapid optimization for mobile platforms across different OS will definitely lead to greater ROI for digital marketers.