Sector Reports_Online Dating

Transcription

The greenlight sector
REPORT
PRODUCT FOCUS
Age
Culture & Preferences
Generic
Location
Greenlight's SEO
predictions for 2014
revealed
By Adam Bunn & co.
Paid Media in 2014:
Putting the Audience at
the Centre
By Hannah Kimuyu.
After the Goldrush:
Counting up the cost of
social.
By Ciaran McManus.
An exclusive snapshot of the online Search & Social Media market
£££
DEC 2013
GREENLIGHT WELCOME
Recent Updates
A message from Greenlight’s CMO
Over the past few months, our reports have included
mobile search data, however due to the introduction of
Google’s Enhanced Campaigns, it is no longer possible
to monitor the search volume associated with specific
devices. Therefore, we have had to remove all mobile data
from the reports.
At Greenlight, we pride ourselves on being thought leaders
within the Search industry. Utilising our unique data
aggregation and visualisation platform, Hydra, we are able
to track, record and analyse consumer search behaviour
in any given market vertical, which in turn leads to the
creation of our industry renowned Sector Reports.
Each report gives an indication of the size of the potential
online audience and examines the most visible websites
and advertisers on Google UK.
We hope that you enjoy the updated versions of our
Sector Reports. If you have any suggestions on ways in
which we can improve our reports, please contact us at
marketing@greenlightdigital.com
Kind regards,
Alicia Levy
Get in touch to discuss your site’s specific performance | www.greenlightdigital.com |  +44 (0)20 7253 7000
2014
11
Greenlight’s SEO
predictions for 2014
revealed.
ARTICLE
Greenlight’s experts predict this year’s trends
and changes for the SEO landscape.
Contents
feature articles
E-COMMERCE
PPC
2
Foreword
6
Natural Search
11
Article SEO Predictions
for 2014.
15
Paid Media
20
20 Article Putting the
Audience at the Centre
22
Integrated Search
24 Article After the
Goldrush: Counting up the
Cost of Social
26
27
29
Social Media
Article 2014 - Evolution,
not Revolution.
About this report
Putting the
Audience at the
Centre
Article by Hannah Kimuyu
Greenlight Sector Report
27
2014:
Evolution
not Revolution
£Article by£Kevin Murray
£ £ £ £
24
£
£
£ £
£ £
£ MEDIA
SOCIAL
£
£ £
£After£the Goldrush
Article by Ciarán McManus
£ £ £ £
£ £
£
£
Report Overview
Executive Summary
This report profiles search behaviour for the online Online Dating sector. It analyses which websites, advertisers and brands were most
visible in the Google UK Natural Search and Paid Media listings, when consumers searched for Online Dating-related terms. This report
also assesses which brands interacted well on the Social Media networks. In our analysis we established that:
In December, 731,350 searches were made by consumers searching for Online Dating-related terms on Google UK.
Queries for generic-related keywords accounted for 70% of all searches made for the sector.
The search term 'free dating sites' was queried 74,000 times, accounting for 10% of all searches made for the sector.
match.com was the most visible website in the Natural Search listings, achieving a 49% share of voice.
top10bestdatingsites.co.uk was the most visible advertiser in the Paid Media space, achieving a 68% share of voice.
match.com ranked at the top of our Integrated Search league table, as it achieved a dominant share of voice in the Natural
Search and Paid Media listings.
Percentage breakdown of searches made for each subsector:
Online Dating Sector Report | December 2013 | The most visible websites and advertisers on Google UK
4
greenlight
December Overview
In December 2013, 731,350 searches were made for Online Dating-related terms. The graphs below show a breakdown of the number of
searches made for each of the subsectors analysed in this report, as well as an overview of the total number of searches made for the
Online Dating market in the past 12 months.
Number of searches by subsector
At a glance
In December, 731,350 searches were
made for online dating-related
keywords.
Searches for generic keywords were
most popular, accounting for 70% of
all searches made for the sector.
Retrospective 12 month view of the online online dating market
Get in touch to discuss your site’s specific performance | www.greenlightdigital.com | T: +44 (0)20 7253 7000
5
Natural Search
Online Dating: Overall
731,350 searches
In December 2013, 731,350 searches were made by consumers searching for Online Dating-related keywords. The league table below
shows which websites were most visible in the Natural Search listings on Google UK for the 1,178 keywords analysed.
Top 10 search terms:
Overview:
In December, the keyword ‘free dating
sites’ was queried 74,000 times,
accounting for 10% of all searches
made for Online Dating-related
keywords.
match.com was the most visible
website, achieving a 49% share of
voice through ranking for 461
keywords, including the search terms
‘dating’ and ‘online dating’.
The 20 most visible websites:
eharmony.co.uk attained a 46% share
of voice through ranking for 527
‘free online dating sites’ and ‘dating
sites UK free’.
6
greenlight
Online Dating: Generic
512,530 searches
In December 2013, 512,530 searches were made by consumers searching for generic-related keywords. The league table below shows
which websites were most visible in the Natural Search listings on Google UK for the 524 keywords analysed.
Overview:
In December, the keyword ‘dating sites’
was queried 74,000 times, accounting
for 14% of all searches made for
generic-related keywords.
match.com was the most visible
‘dating’ and ‘online dating’.
freedating.co.uk attained a 59% share
‘free dating sites’ and ‘free dating’.
7
Natural Search
Online Dating: Age
48,010 searches
In December 2013, 48,010 searches were made by consumers searching for age-related keywords. The league table below shows which
websites were most visible in the Natural Search listings on Google UK for the 86 keywords analysed.
Overview:
In December, the keyword ‘mature
dating’ was queried 22,200 times,
made for age-related keywords.
maturedatinguk.com was the most
visible website, achieving a 53% share
‘mature dating’ and ‘mature dating UK’.
plentymorefish.com attained a 52%
share of voice through ranking for 25
‘mature dating’ and ‘over 40 dating’.
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greenlight
Online Dating: Culture and Preferences
105,840 searches
In December 2013, 105,840 searches were made by consumers searching for culture and preferences-related keywords. The league
table below shows which websites were most visible in the Natural Search listings on Google UK for the 281 keywords analysed.
Overview:
In December, the keyword ‘polish
dating’ was queried 27,100 times,
made for culture and
preferences-related keywords.
facebook.com was the most visible
voice through ranking for 117 keywords,
including the search terms ‘Chinese
dating UK’ and ‘amputee dating’.
match.com attained a 31% share of
voice through ranking for 74 keywords,
including the search terms ‘Latino
dating’ and ‘black online dating’.
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Natural Search
Online Dating: Location
64,970 searches
In December 2013, 64,970 searches were made by consumers searching for location-related keywords. The league table below shows
which websites were most visible in the Natural Search listings on Google UK for the 287 keywords analysed.
Overview:
In December, the keyword ‘speed
dating London’ was queried 8,100
times, accounting for 12% of all
searches made for location-related
keywords.
speeddater.co.uk was the most visible
‘speed dating London’ and ‘speed
dating Birmingham’.
onlineandspeeddating.com attained a
37% share of voice through ranking for
107 keywords, including the search
terms ‘speed dating Nottingham’ and
‘speed dating Birmingham’.
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Feature Article
2014
SEO PREDICTIONS
1. INVESTING IN THE WRONG TYPE
OF SEO
Adam Bunn,
Director of SEO.
My prediction this year is about companies investing
effort in the wrong thing when it comes to SEO. Specifically, I predict far too much emphasis on schemas and
not enough on authorship. After I’ve talked about that,
I’m going to open the floor to some of the other smart
folk here at Greenlight to talk about what they think
will happen in 2014.
SCHEMAS
Schemas, at best, are what I’d call a “best practice” –
the sort of checkbox exercise you tick off when building or optimising a site. They are easy to grasp and
relatively easy to implement and consequently there
is a schema bandwagon rolling through town. Google
has put a lot of effort into promoting them, founding
schema.org and rather effectively establishing them
as a part of SEO to the point that I see a lot of “A-List”
SEO’s espousing schemas as the next big thing (in fact,
it was a 2014 SEO prediction from one of them that it
would be essential to optimise your site with schemas
that prompted my prediction).
The problem is that, except a tiny few that have some
proven CTR value, schemas have so far done absolutely nothing positive for ranks or traffic. It is questionable whether they can even be considered anything
to do with SEO and if I had to put money on it, I’d say
that the biggest impact of schemas is that Google
gets to harvest a lot of information for free and reuse
it in the knowledge graph (hence why they promote
schema use), which sucks traffic away from brands!
But, because schemas are something solid to grab
hold of in an otherwise quite ephemeral marketing
discipline, I predict companies will continue to invest in
their implementation. Fruitlessly.
AUTHORSHIP
Conversely, Authorship will be under-invested in,
largely because outside of the technical set up of an
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CONTENT SPINNING?
Fig 1 : Google Hummingbird
technology will be used to evaluate
and clamp down on inline text links
within spun blog posts.
author in the Authorship programme it’s actually very
difficult, even intimidating, to approach taking advantage of it. You have to develop a reputation for creating good content within a particular field, and have
other people who have a history of being interested
in and/or also having expertise in that field interact
favourably with the content you produce.
Like schemas, Google also promotes the Authorship
programme quite heavily but unlike schemas that is
because they genuinely want to use it as an algorithmic signal (as well as, of course, driving more Google+
members and content).
If you have any doubt about that, you need only look
at the sheer number of patents Google filed and was
granted in 2013 to do with the identification and scoring of authors, topics and experts.
2014 will be the year of Authorship, but it’s going to fly
right by most companies.
2. HUMMINGBIRD FOR SPOTTING
UNNATURAL LINKS
Graham Ridley, Lead SEO
Consultant.
The Google Penguin algorithm update has caused
quite a stir since its release in April 2012, as it’s the
first regular update that looks at a website’s backlink
profile. This algorithm has struck fear into blackhat
SEOs, however, some websites still appear to be
immune to this update. What do they have that others
don’t? A very diverse anchor text profile, that’s what.
Spun contextual links within blog posts (fig.1) appear
to still work from reviewing some website backlink
profiles and although Google has been clamping down
on the networks providing these links, is there anything
else Google can do to identify these poor backlinks?
My prediction for 2014 is that the Google Hummingbird technology will be used in evaluating inline text
links within spun blog posts. Hummingbird looks at the
way a sentence is structured and the words used in a
Google search query. So why is Google not using this
technology in evaluating contextual links, to see if the
words prior and after make sense or are as expected?
This can then be used in the fight against spam on
networks that aren’t as easy to find as ones on Blackhat World or Wicked Fire forums. This is what I hope
to see implemented in 2014.
3. MOBILE SEARCH, HUMMINGBIRD & PERFORMANCE METRICS
Matt Hayford, Head of SEO
We all know that Hummingbird was introduced to help
bring back more relevant results for longer phrased
search queries, including those conducted on the ever
growing number of smartphone and tablet devices.
Whilst there probably won’t be any significant change
to the way Hummingbird functions, the close affiliation
the algorithm has with mobile search will be refined
further, to the point where I can see mobile search
12
Feature Article
queries operating once again separately to desktop
searches.
Alongside Hummingbird, response times for websites
will become even more crucial for mobile search
results. Google has championed responsive design
sites for a number of years and Matt Cutts recently
said that responsive design is the better way to go for
SEO. This means that if you have an all-in-one website
using responsive design you better make sure that
it’s optimised for its maximum performance, as we
all know mobile SEO is significantly influenced by site
speed.
Performance, coupled with Hummingbird, means that
mobile SEO may once again have to be treated separately from desktop SEO and our reliance on similar
SERP results on desktop listings and mobile/tablet
listings may start to differ.
4. THE YEAR OF CONTENT
MEASUREMENT
Victoria Galloway,
Lead Copywriter
Take a literary classic like Charles Dickens’ Great
Expectations and try to quantify not just how popular it is, but how it has resonated, permeated and
filtered through multiple social histories. Tracking how
popular it is might be considerably easier than tracking
anything else; statistics surrounding sales and ebook
downloads are relatively simple to get hold of, but how
would you go about explaining the influence of Pip and
Miss Havisham in the novel’s wider context – numerically?
of content marketing is easy, but justifying our efforts
and quantifying them isn’t. Whether subjectivity, taste
and perception can ever truly be measured is yet to be
proved.
Your target audience might click through onto your
content piece but if they don’t share it, like it or
retweet it then how do we know how they processed
it? Even if they did share it, did they genuinely find the
content useful? It’s a bit like measuring the success
of an advertising campaign where you can only really
measure profit.
“ 2014 WILL BE ABOUT FINDING WAYS
OF EFFECTIVELY MEASURING CONTENT’S
SUCCESS. KNOWING THIS IS CRUCIAL
WHEN DESIGNING PENGUIN-FRIENDLY
CONTENT PLANS AND JUSTIFYING MORE
CREATIVE CONTENT. “
2014 will be about finding ways of effectively measuring content’s success. Knowing this is crucial when
designing Penguin-friendly content plans and justifying
more creative content. We’ll need to think smart with
all the metrics we can gather – from likes, shares, EAV
(Equivalent Advertising Value), tweets and sales – and
the true content champions will weave these into useful
and penetrative narratives that will be able to predict
what content should be produced, when and who for.
Explaining and rationalising online content faces
exactly the same challenge. We can’t just generate content anymore in the hope that it will simply
do well. We need to ensure that what we’re creating
connects and prompts discourse because in 2014
the emphasis will be on generating quality conversations and tracking engagement. Measurement lies at
the heart of content marketing but ironically it’s the
hardest part of the process. Discussing the benefits
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Feature Article
5. FULL USE OF PERSONAL DATA RETURNING CUSTOMERS BECOME
RANKING FACTOR
Britt Soeder,
SEO Campaign Director
Google says in its Policies & Principles overview, that
it improves services to all users by using data shared
with Google, e.g. by using a Google Account. This
goes from name and photo to hardware and operating systems as well as how you use their services. The
latter is the interesting part.
Amongst others, Google knows:
What brands or people you like and interact with
What online shops you use
What you like to read and what you dislike
Google officially says, that it uses this data to “provide,
maintain, protect and improve […] and develop” their
products and services. This of course includes a better
search experience. So since Google can officially use
our data, what are the main criteria they are looking at
to determine how high a page should rank?
Bounce rate – already used
Time on site – already used
G+ signals – already used
What do you do if you really like a site? You come
back, don’t you? You might not like sharing things on
social networks but you will come back to a site you
appreciate. Google Chrome bookmarks are certainly
noted but not used to a great extent when it comes
to rankings yet – and not all users want bookmarks
because they think they share important data with
Google (yes they do!) or they are not a sharing generation. So in addition, could Google look at all returning
traffic to a site, not only when bookmarks are used?
Why would Google make the effort? It would be logic
because a website with lots of shares and links – both
of which you can kind of influence despite the site’s
quality – shouldn’t be worth ranking if visitors never
return. Surely, if it was any good and worth the ranking
position, visitors would come back. And it would be a
fantastic strategy for retargeting and thus increasing
Paid Media spend – a nice side effect to say the least.
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greenlight
Online Dating: Overall
731,350 searches
In December 2013, 731,350 searches were made for Online Dating-related keywords. The league table below displays the most visible
advertisers and ad creatives on Google UK for the 1,178 keywords analysed.
The 30 most visible advertisers:
At a glance:
In December,
top10bestdatingsites.co.uk was the
most visible advertiser, achieving a
68% share of voice through bidding on
706 keywords, at an average ad
position of 3.
match.com achieved a 51% share of
voice through bidding on 574
keywords, at an average ad position of
4.
15
Paid Media
Online Dating: Generic
512,530 searches
In December 2013, 512,530 searches were made for generic-related keywords. The league tables below display the most visible
advertisers and ad creatives on Google UK for the 524 keywords analysed.
At a glance:
In December,
most visible advertiser, achieving an
position of 2.
match.com achieved a 63% share of
voice through bidding on 292
4.
plentymorefish.com displayed the
most visible individual ad creative,
achieving a 26% share of voice.
The 5 most visible ad creatives:
16
greenlight
Online Dating: Age
48,010 searches
In December 2013, 48,010 searches were made for age-related keywords. The league tables below display the most visible advertisers
and ad creatives on Google UK for the 86 keywords analysed.
At a glance:
In December,
maturefreeandsingle.com was the
55 keywords, at an average ad position
of 3.
seniorsizzle.com achieved a 46% share
of voice through bidding on 3
3.
seniorsizzle.com displayed the most
visible individual ad creative, achieving
a 46% share of voice.
17
Paid Media
Online Dating: Culture and Preferences
105,840 searches
In December 2013, 105,840 searches were made for culture and preferences-related keywords. The league tables below display the
most visible advertisers and ad creatives on Google UK for the 281 keywords analysed.
At a glance:
In December,
161 keywords, at an average ad position
of 5.
anastasiadate.co.uk achieved a 27%
share of voice through bidding on 25
5.
polishhearts.co.uk displayed the most
visible individual ad creative, achieving
a 26% share of voice.
18
greenlight
Online Dating: Location
64,970 searches
In December 2013, 64,970 searches were made for location-related keywords. The league tables below display the most visible
advertisers and ad creatives on Google UK for the 287 keywords analysed.
At a glance:
In December, elitesingles.co.uk was the
position of 4.
top10bestdatingsites.co.uk achieved a
position of 5.
plentymorefish.com displayed the
most visible individual ad creative,
achieving a 25% share of voice.
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Feature Article
2014 Will Be About Audience Targeting…
Putting the Audience at the Centre
By Hannah Kimuyu,
Paid Media Director
of our target audience, beyond
the search query (keyword), and
allows us to adapt and target our
digital strategies accordingly.
A
ccording to the IAB, the biggest
trend in Advertising in the next
seven years will be audience
targeting and furthermore, it will
be bigger than Search. In fact
the IAB has gone as far to predict
that ‘In 2020, audience targeting
investment is projected to exceed
Search spend”. [Source: IAB, 2013]
Google believes this is a massive
opportunity for performance agencies and their clients ‘because the
skills needed to do audience well,
like auction based real-time bidding
expertise, have already been honed
in Search. Complex, data driven
strategies that have been developed for Search will translate to
audience. Where you have been
experts in keywords, you now need
to be experts in cookies. Keywords
and cookies together is a powerful
combination to power all your digital investment including, of course,
Search’. [Source: Fintan Gillespie Google, 2013]
And at Greenlight, we believe audience targeting is set to be one of the
biggest trends for 2014. Audience
targeting reduces the speculative
costs of advertising and allows
you to invest directly into the right
customer segments, advocates,
engagers and friends of fans.
What is audience targeting
exactly?
When we refer to audience targeting, we’re effectively relating to
using audience signals to target the
most relevant customer segments.
In other words:
1. Who they are, i.e. gender, age,
demographic.
2. Where they’ve been, i.e. site
visit, location.
3. What they like, i.e. interests,
preferences.
Collectively, these signals allow
us to have a better understanding
As well as putting mobile first,
audience targeting was also one of
the main drivers behind Google’s
biggest change in ten years,
Enhanced Campaigns. Although
an initial sceptic of Enhanced
Campaigns, ten months on I
personally love the way Enhanced
Campaigns has turned the Search
world on its head, making us think
beyond the keyword and about the
person behind it.
Google is using this new focus on
AdWords to push out betas such
as Remarketing for Search Ads
(RSLA) and Demographic Targeting; two very exciting initiatives
that bring a whole new layer of
efficiency and testing options to
our campaigns. RLSA as a standalone beta has removed the fear
factor when bidding on generics
because we already know if the
customer is engaged and willing
to purchase, thus improving our
return on advertising spend and
overall efficiency in campaign
20
management.
The proof is in the pudding as
according to Google ‘RLSA shows
48% lower CPAs than the rest of
Search spend’. [Source: Google,
2013)
Audience targeting isn’t new in
Search, though...
Think about it, audience targeting is also social media advertising: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,
Instagram and so on. As users,
we tell these platforms everything
about us, making it far easier to
target us even at an individual
level, if we really wanted to. Social
media advertising and audience
targeting is playing a vital role in
the wider digital strategy pushing
brand, growth and acquisition and
we’ve definitely seen the benefits
for clients at Greenlight.
Thinking about the wider digital
landscape, audience targeting is
ironically what Display has been
doing all along, yet we’ve criticised
the lack of results Display delivers.
However since Real-time Bidding
(RTB) was introduced into the mix,
Display has taken some massive
leaps in growth and performance.
Now Search is doing the same,
putting the audience first and
targeting multiple customer
segments. The keyword ironically
is now secondary to the process.
Google pushing audience targeting
reaffirms its dominance in Search,
but also helps push other channels such as Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram who haven’t see
the same growth from their own
advertising programme. Audience
targeting is fitting for retail, finance
and travel and particularly for
luxury brands where the inclusion
of audience targeting via Social
Advertising is delivering an uplift
in Search (and in some cases is
actually seeing a greater return on
investment (ROI) than Search).
2014 is here and it’s only a matter
of time before we’ll all be talking
about audience targeting…putting
the audience at the centre of our
digital strategies.
By Hannah Kimuyu,
Paid Media Director.
“In 2020, audience targeting investment
is projected to exceed Search spend....”
[Source: IAB, 2013]
Get in touch to discuss your site’s specific performance | www.greenlightdigital.com |  +44 (0)20 33261929
21
Integrated Search
Which websites/advertisers were most visible overall on Google UK?
The graph below analyses the Integrated Search performance of 20 different websites. By taking into account each websites Natural
Search and Paid Media visibility, the graph below shows which websites obtained the greatest overall share of voice on Google UK.
Strong Natural
Search visibility
Strong Integrated
Search visibility
Poor Integrated
Search visibility
Strong Paid
Media visibility
No website achieved strong
No website achieved strong
match.com and
Integrated Search Visibility.
visibility in the Natural Search
top10bestdatingsites.co.uk
listings.
achieved strong visibility in the
Paid Media Space.
22
greenlight
The visibility obtained by each of the websites and advertisers featured in this report have been added together and ranked according to
their total visibility in the Search space. The league tables below, therefore, show which websites achieved the greatest share of
Integrated Search visibility on Google UK.
The 40 most visible websites overall:
At a glance
match.com featured at the top of our
integrated search league table, as its
combined share of voice was most
dominant.
top10bestdatingsites.co.uk ranked
second in our league table, as it
achieved a sizable share of visibility in
both the Natural Search and Paid
Media listings.
23
Feature Article
AFTER THE GOLDRUSH
COUNTING UP THE COST OF SOCIAL
By Ciarán McManus,
Social Media Strategist.
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Social media predictions tend
towards superficial chatter about
the rise and fall of channels - with
every self-proclaimed social media
‘ninja’ or ‘guru’ claiming the inside
line.
The tides will surely come and
wash away the underperformers
with predictable regularity, but the
next social tsunami will appear
with little warning. Social media is
a field with creative disruption built
into its DNA, nigh on impossible
to predict, and trying to do so is an
exercise of little actionable value.
Besides, that misplaced focus
is really sidestepping the more
important questions about social
media’s development. Agencies and their clients aren’t really
interested in whether Google+
is going to grow or shrink; this is
populist social media reportage
for the Mashable generation. It
has little effect on strategy – fluid
24
Feature Article
strategies allow for focusing and
refocusing on channels as their
relevancy fluctuates. Instead, it’s
a much safer and sensible bet to
think about what applies across all
these channels, as the big names
of Facebook, Twitter et al represent
an established industry that, sure
as any other industry, now has
discernable trends and patterns
developing across it.
For Greenlight and our social
media team, the biggest shift has
been towards social advertising.
Nothing too extraordinary, you
might say, but it’s starting to get
interesting. It was once considered a fact of inconvenience that
social media return on investment
(ROI) was some foggy, obfuscated,
unachievable holy grail of marketing. It was often sold to clients
as such – don’t expect any sales
gains; social is just about branding. But any other above-the-line
branding exercise would still
expect to generate an accountable sales lift, or at least a marked
increase in enquiries or footfall, so
it’s no surprise to see social is no
longer exempt.
Measuring ROI has come on a
great deal since the costs of social
have risen. Facebook has slowly
depleted the natural reach of fan
page posts which has increased
brand reliance on paid activity, and
Twitter’s sponsored tweets model
is starting to bed in (the jury’s still
out on whether this is good for
brands, though. See http://www.
theguardian.com/money/2013/
sep/03/businessman-promotedtweet-british-airways). Complacency, reluctance, ignorance
– whatever it might have been that
initially delayed the better justification of social media spending has
since been shaken up as the viral
gold rush, the social free market
has slowly dried up.
The challenge presented
by paid social
advertising will
only make us even more
economical
with copy, even more
creative with our
messages and even more
focused on producing the
best content
strategy for the
highest possible ROI.
Whilst we at Greenlight would
hardly complain if offered greater
natural reach for free, our role as
digital marketers is to communicate the optimum message
through whichever method is
dictated to us by the market. The
challenge presented by paid social
advertising will only make us even
more economical with copy, even
more creative with our messages
and even more focussed on
producing the best content strategy for the highest possible ROI.
It’s sometimes a disappointment
to see wonderful content fall short
of expectations because natural
reach limitations impinged on its
progress too soon, but even this is
a fresh challenge to be savoured.
The goalposts have moved for
everyone, after all. Sure, the big
spenders out there will dominate
when they can afford more social
ad space than you, but there’s
nothing to stop a great campaign
matching them step for step in
terms of ROI. Social media marketers can never be scared of change.
We say, bring it on.
By Ciarán McManus,
Social Media Strategist
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£
£
£
£
£
£
£
“We say,
bring it on.”
25
Social Media
Social Media Marketing
The league table below analyses the 15 most visible website in Integrated Search (laptops/desktops) and lists the number of followers each
brand had on several of the main Social Media channels in December 2013. Brands in this league table are ranked according to a Klout score,
which bases its calculation on brands' influence and ability to drive actions on social networks.
No
Twitter
Followers
Brand
Google+
Followers
Facebook
Fans
YouTube
Views
YouTube
Subscribers
Klout
Score
1
Telegraph.co.uk
383,616
599,299
116,090
209,188,912
71,902
93
2
Match.com
25,149
42,964
7,688
915,199
246
84
3
Zoosk.com
129,877
13,445,538
29,519
4,259,122
8,439
66
4
Eharmony.co.uk
2,864
23,612
1,544
1,220,797
1,023
64
5
Pof.com
3,544
26,914
177
2,500,476
1,768
54
6
Mysinglefriend.com
3,491
2,227
171
1,104,459
251
51
7
Elitesingles.co.uk
83
1,225
0
0
0
47
8
Oasis.com
12,761
10,000
2,950
0
0
40
9
Plentymorefish.com
1,069
1,197
3
12,961
6
34
10
Freedating.co.uk
62
128
0
0
0
16
11
Top10bestdatingsites.co.uk 33
25,226
1,194
35
n/a
13
12
Naughtydating.com
0
0
0
0
0
0
13
Maturefreeandsingle.com
1
28
0
0
0
0
14
Smooch.com
22
315
637
10,707
1
0
15
Love2meet.com
0
65
0
0
0
0
Telegraph.co.uk ranked at the
Zoosk.com had the highest
Telegraph.co.uk had the highest
top of our Social Media analysis
number of fans on its Facebook
number of subscribers to its
as it attained a Klout score of
page (13,445,538).
YouTube channel (71,902).
93.
26
Feature Article
2014: Evolution, Not Revolution.
Looking to the year ahead, I
believe that 2014 will be a year of
evolution rather than revolution, as
I do not think we will see anything
radical per se, rather a maturity of
ideas that have been talked about
over the last few years that are
only now becoming realistic for
retailers today.
BIG DATA
The term “big data” has been
talked about a lot, yet nobody has
really illustrated what it means
for the eCommerce world or how
to use it in a realistic and nonabstract way. So, the term became
another irrelevant technical phrase
that was mostly ignored, as it was
never positioned in a way that
meant anything real. My view on
“big data” is that the “big” element
will be taken away and made more
relevant to those who want to use
the behavioural data they have
available to them to help grow
their business. The main concept
of “big data” is that enterprises
are capturing and storing so much
information now in every interaction, that it can be harnessed
for other uses (although most
evangelists championing the term
don’t really show how exactly to
do that). However, as there is so
much data available, how do we
know what is useful and what is
not?
tough. While we saw some brands
disappear from the high street,
we also heard a lot of our customers talk about very competitive
trading conditions online. Recently,
the headlines spoke about the
best “Black Friday” and “Cyber
Monday” recorded, but usually
these figures talk about turnover
rather than profit. Furthermore, it
seems there were more retailers
with an online presence than ever
before, making it difficult for those
looking to capitalise on digital
trading with so much competition around. There were some of
the usual big names claiming they
were capitalising on more people
going online to shop, but I believe
these retailers were the ones who
had already decided what information of their “big data” was useful
to them and so began to leverage the data they had about their
customers’ shopping behaviour to
target them.
PERSONALISED CAMPAIGNS
These aforementioned retailers are
mining the “big data” they have
on each customer and grouping
them to build relevant campaigns
to target those customers with.
They are able to look at their data
and decide, for example, which
customers do a lot of shopping,
or those who have an increased
‘average order value’ (AOV) in
October or November and so they
begin to target them with promotions and vouchers before the main
Christmas rush. These retailers are
able to look at the specific product
categories that customers have
bought from in the past and decide
if there are particular products
they will then recommend to them,
with a combined promotion or
voucher. This proactive approach
to relevant merchandising can
have a significant impact on AOV
and revenue in general.
“ we will see (...) a maturity of
ideas that have been talked about
over the last few years”
During 2013, many retailers found
the market in general to be quite
Get in touch to discuss your site’s specific performance | www.greenlightdigital.com |  +44 (0)20 33261929
27
Feature Article
However, recognising trends in
data is only one part of the issue.
The other, using it in an easy and
effective way, is also very important. Many eCommerce solutions
have now made it easier to offer
personalised journeys within their
systems using business configured
rules, content and data. Personalisation is not new, but what has
been problematic is for retailers to
understand how they can use the
tools available to them to create
relevant personalised offerings. The
combination of having the data and
easily using it has been a breakthrough for some, but I believe
it will be realised for many more
retailers in 2014.
Those retailers doing it already are
being quite targeted about which
data in their enterprise they want
to mine and so calling it “big” I
think makes it scarier than the
reality. Just focusing on a small set
of data that will have a real impact
will be realised by more retailers for eCommerce in 2014 when
trying to grow their businesses.
Looking at the little sets of “big
data” across the customer touch
points will allow for much better
targeted data and growth. We
will start to see a convergence of
more relevant data across different
channels becoming more important and being tied together, where
the behaviour of one channel is
allowed to affect the others. For
example, what a customer browses
for and buys in store will have an
effect on how they are engaged in
the digital world.
consider secure), the influence of
the data on these social channels
will play a big part in 2014. For
those who “Like” a brand or who
“hashtag” a phrase will be letting
retailers and brand merchandisers know a lot more about what
they actually want, so they can be
targeted with more relevant ads
to tempt them to buy, rather than
providing very generalised offerings about what other people may
be buying.
“Social networks will
begin to have a much
bigger influence on
what and how the
customer buys in
2014.....”
In the past year, a lot of these ideas
have been executed by those very
few retailers who have the budgets
to make significant investments
in these areas. While very large
investments may not be necessary, those who do make some
investment in the infrastructure to
capture the data, the analysts that
can interpret it and the ecommerce
frameworks that can surface the
merchandising, will capitalise on
the retail opportunities of “Grey
Thursday”, “Black Friday” and
“Cyber Monday” in 2014.
Furthermore, social networks
will begin to have a much bigger
influence on what and how the
customer buys in 2014. While I
think these networks are not quite
at the stage where a shopping
transaction will occur (or at least
in a way that a customer would
By Kevin Murray,
Director of Ecommerce
& Technology
28
greenlight
About this report
How this report was created
Disclaimer:
Greenlight’s Research & Insights team collected 1,178
Online Dating-related terms queried by online
consumers. The keyword set was then uploaded to
Greenlight’s Hydra platform, which collected volumes
for the associated keywords. Hydra then analysed which
websites and advertisers appeared for the keywords
analysed and from there, ranked websites and
advertisers based on their share of visibility in the
Natural Search listings and Paid Media space on Google
UK.
The information provided in this report is for information
only and should not be relied upon to enter into any
business transaction or to make any commercial
decision. Whilst Greenlight has made every effort to
ensure the accuracy of this report, Greenlight cannot
accept any liability for any error or inaccuracy found
within this document and no warranty is provided
regarding its completeness or its suitability for any
purpose. The content of the report is the copyright of
Greenlight Marketing Limited. The reader may use and
circulate the report within its own business organisation.
However, it is not permitted to exploit, distribute, sell or
otherwise make use of the report for commercial gain. It
is permitted to reproduce extracts of the report for
public interest, provided that the publisher credits
Greenlight as the source of the work.
All data displayed in this report is based on a wide range
of keywords, and therefore aims to provide readers with
a generic overview of the online Online Dating sector in
December 2013.
Bespoke Sector Reports
Get in touch
If you can’t find a report which analyses the online industry you are
interested in or if you want to analyse a specific keyword set, get in
touch and find out more about Greenlight’s bespoke reports.
Greenlight currently creates bespoke reports for a wide range of
online brands, providing Marketing teams with the insights they need
to make informed decisions about their online strategies in the UK
and abroad.
Contact
Ian Hucklesby
Business Development Director
T: +44 (0) 20 3326 6237
Email: ian.hucklesby@greenlightdigital.com
Download free reports
Greenlight’s Research & Insights team produce Sector Reports analysing more
than 20 different online industries. To view and download all FREE reports, visit
www.gossip.greenlightdigital.com
29
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