unique visitors
How Grey Goose is Capitalizing on Luxury Using Social
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2012/10/03/how-grey-goose-is-capitalizing-on-luxury-using-social/
Image from: Grey Goose Hotel Noir / GreyGoose.com
People love to advertise their experiences. Social media is more or less about the marketing of the self, and so the move of Grey Goose to host its interactive Hotel Noir campaign on social upstarts Pinterest and Instagram makes complete sense.
Luxury is embedded in this brand’s story, and they know it. Just watch the film paired with the campaign; it’s that coy and elusive drama that intrigues you and convinces you that you’re missing something crucial. It’s romantic. It’s private, captivating, and calculating. This aura is designed, and it’s the same aura many people seek to create about themselves through social media. But is it working for Grey Goose?
It very well may be. The 3rd and 4th highest volumes of incoming traffic to GreyGoose.com are off Facebook and Pinterest respectively. Looking at the unique visitors to the site, we can see a distinct upward trend coupled with a rise in the average stay on the site. More people are spending more time on GreyGoose.com over the past three months. This speaks to engagement, content, and interaction.
The reason this campaign could be working is because Grey Goose knows who they are appealing to. Looking at their online demographics (below), it’s clear their audience is predominantly young, between the ages of 18-34. This generation loves social media, but more importantly knows how to use it and collaborate across platforms. That’s why a campaign that uses Pinterest in tandem with Facebook in tandem with Instagram in tandem with a branded site can work.
Essentially Grey Goose has found a way to captivate its audience and inspire them to advertise for the brand by generating a story that is alluring to online consumers. The campaign asks users to submit photos within the motif (an elegant black and white motif, accents blushed to crimson) through Instagram that can then be displayed on other platforms (like Pinterest and Facebook).
People are promoting themselves in the same instance that they’re promoting Grey Goose. All Grey Goose had to do was create that crucial air of mysterious luxury, and the need to partake in the exclusivity would propel the rest of the campaign.
This is already the draw to Instagram, where users select only the most delightful aspect of their lives to be photographed, filtered, gussied up and shared. Each photo is part of a meticulously constructed online identity, handpicked and refined so that it more-or-less represents how a person prefers to be represented rather than the actual person themselves.
And that’s fine! It’s already how people behave in most in-person social situations, so why shouldn’t the phenomenon of self-construction exist online? And since it is online, why shouldn’t a brand already exquisite in its classy aura take ahold of it? Good show, Grey Goose, good show.
Groupon settling into new steady state – lower users but more usage per user
Facebook Fatigue vs LinkedIn Lift
Facebook Monthly Unique Visitors and Pageviews are down. Interestingly, the use of Facebook dropped over the holidays, implying that many people use it at the office and during work.
A Retailer
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/03/pinterest-a-retailers-best-friend/
Last May, we wrote about the new kid on the block, Pinterest. A self-proclaimed “virtual pinboard,” Pinterest allows users to collect images, quotes, recipes, etc. from across the web and organize them onto their own “pinboards” which can be shared with other Pinterest users. Examples of common pinboard inspirations are Wedding boards, Food & Drink boards, Travel & Places boards, & Home decor boards.
Although Pinterest had shown promise back in May, there would have been no way to predict the type of success they have seen since. Having grown 84% in Unique Visitors since we last wrote about them and 50% from October to November alone, it seems that Pinterest has piqued the interest of more than a few.
Having recently joined Pinterest myself, I was curious to see how Pinterest might play into the role of marketing. I noticed that a lot of my friends were posted clothing & material items they liked in almost a “wishlist” sort of way, so I was curious to see if this could double as a sort of targeted social advertising.
I decided to look at incoming and outgoing traffic to and from Pinterest.com to see how virtual pin boards might affect consumers.
While most of the Top 10 Referrals to Pinterest.com are among the top sites on the Internet, the more interesting data starts at #11. Etsy.com, Amazon.com, Craigslist.com and Ebay.com all bring at least .39% of all traffic to Pinterest.com – not to mention their growth in referrals this past November. Etsy.com increased its referrals to Pinterest.com by 7%, Ebay by 23%, and Amazon by 50%!
Looking further into the data, we see that Walmart, Toys R’ Us, Target, Zulily, Baby Center, Kohls, Houzz, JC Penney, Best Buy, and Zazzle are all within the Top 100 Referrals to Pinterest.com. What could this all mean? In the context of Pinterest, it would seem that users are inspired and excited by the products they see on these websites and want to add them to their visual collections and share them with friends. But once users leave retailers for Pinterest, are the retailers benefiting?
Well, one could argue that the impressions made on Pinterest users who view the shared item are enough value in themselves. Viewing a cute dress for a little girl on Zulily.com might inspire a Pinterest user to visit Zulily in the future or even make a purchase at a later date. But could there be any retail sales that start directly at Pinterest.com? I checked out outgoing traffic from Pinterest.com to get the scoop.
As you can see, Etsy.com is the #6 destination from Pinterest.com, swiping 1.5% of all outgoing traffic. Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, & Houzz are all in the Top 30 destinations users immediately visit after Pinterest.com. Target, Walmart, & Anthropologie are also among the Top 100 destinations from Pinterest.com. Interestingly enough, Anthropologie wasn’t among the Top 100 incoming destinations which means that the content from Anthropologie shared must be expectionally engaging with Pinterest users.
Are you on Pinterest? Have you ever been inspired to buy something after looking at a friend’s virtual pin board? If you are a retailer, or online marketer, what do you think the future holds for Pinterest in this context?
Leave your comments below!
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Most Valuable Pitchman
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/10/25/tom-brady-most-valuable-pitchman/
I had been eagerly awaiting the start of the Patriots season since their heartbreaking loss at the start of the year. The first Monday night game in September I got to see my favorite team back in action, along with my favorite player. What I wasn’t expecting was to see Tom Brady off the field as well, advertising footwear during one of the game’s commercial breaks.
I loved the commercial, and not just because it made walking around aimlessly look incredibly cool. It brought a new dimension to a brand that I remember seeing only on girls walking around campus in the winter. Forgetting their origin as Australian surfers’ footwear, Uggs are now so tied to their classic boot look for the female demographic that I can’t imagine them breaking into the male market significantly.
Well after a month of walking around Boston seeing Brady’s image posted on buildings (and I’ve heard they’re in other cities, as well) I wondered what kind of boost the brand is getting from the campaign.
While the trend looks the same, with the traffic starting to pick up for the holiday season, uggsaustralia.com has a whopping 237,887 more unique visitors than it did in September last year, a 48% increase. There has been an overall increase in traffic year over year, but that difference was only 23% in July before the ad campaign started.
Also, more people online seem to be going to the site. The trend has steadily been on the rise, with some significant peaks since the commercial started airing in September.
The most important question, though, is what kind of effect is Brady having on driving the male demographic to the site? There isn’t a major increase during September, but it’s up 2% year over year in the male demographic. The beauty of the campaign is it may be targeting females just as much to get the shoes for their guys as gifts during the upcoming holiday season.
After all this, it’s still hard to tell if the campaign is having a significant effect—the next few months will give us a better idea.
But I think I might get a pair. If Tom wears them they must be cool, right?
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drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Fight!
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/10/26/tumblr-vs-wordpress-vs-blogger-fight/
Image from: Digital Genetics/Shutterstock
Tumblr has been in the news a lot recently because of their huge user numbers (there’s also been some question of whether or not they are a “bot fest” – but I’ll leave that for others to analyze.) Back in 2009, I compared Tumblr to Posterous – but since that time Tumblr has just pulled away. So much so that Posterous seems to have seen the writing on the wall and is now pivoting in a new direction. But I thought it would be good to take a look at how Tumblr fairs against the larger, more established blogging networks – namely WordPress.com and Blogger.com (now part of Google).
In terms of unique visitors, there isn’t any comparison – WordPress continues to dominate. Blogger has seen attrition in their numbers and has now fallen to third place (maybe the recent move to integrate Blogger into Google+ will help here).
In terms of visits, while Tumblr passed Blogger more than a year ago, it has now moved into a tie with WordPress.
But while Tumblr has many fewer unique visitors, those visitors are viewing a lot of pages. In fact, Tumblr is now completely dominating WordPress and Blogger in this area.
And in terms of attention, Tumblr is once again dominant.
I think the reason for the higher level of engagement on Tumblr (as measured in Page Views and Attention) probably comes down to a couple of key properties of Tumblr:
1. Tumblr functions more like a social network – thus people that use Tumblr tend to also subscribe/follow other Tumblrs – creating a strong network effect.
2. Cross-blog tagging – this brings a bit of Twitter to the blog network – allowing people to easily aggregate content, by tag, across blogs. This also, no doubt, aids in content discovery.
3. Tumblr reduces barriers to publishing content – unlike a traditional blog, where people feel the need to provide richer content, Tumblr tends to encourage simple posts.
What do you think? Are you using Tumblr now in place of other blogging networks? How do you decide which one to use, and for what purpose?
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drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Evidence for Increasing Online Use that is also Accelerating
If you sum up the total unique user sessions in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, and Jan 2010, you get
Jan 2008 – 285M
Jan 2009 – 337M
Jan 2010 – 413M
That is a year-over-year increase of 18% and 23% respectively. Assuming the population of the world does not change that much year to year, the change in total unique sessions leads to the conclusion that online usage continues to increase noticeably.
The Compete.com chart below shows nearly identical number if unique users monthly — Google at 148M uniques and Yahoo at 132M uniques. And Facebook alone achieved another 134M uniques. So while the unique visitors across these 3 sites are not mutually exclusive, there are 414M unique user sessions in the month of January 2010
Well, this is strange. January 2010 numbers from Nielsen reveal Google has 66.3% of the search market, while Yahoo has 14.5% and Microsoft has 10.9% across its various properties. Google is 4x more than Yahoo and 6x more than Microsoft.
the problem with online metrics – it’s estimated, approximated, or extrapolated
TechCrunch based the following post on ComScore numbers, which shows “MySpace currently has 124 million monthly unique visitors, compared to Facebook’s 276 million” in Feb 2009.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/23/facebook-hockey-sticks-while-myspace-languishes/
But checking Compete and QuantCast the numbers are not just slightly different, they are way different.
Compete: Facebook 74M; MySpace 53M in Feb 2009
QuantCast: Facebook 79M; MySpace 66M in Feb 2009
Given the huge discrepancy, the only thing that can really be concluded is that Facebook has overtaken and is larger than MySpace now and continuing to widen the lead.
Sign of the times – “garage sale” sites all seeing increases in unique visitors
re: Craigslist More Popular Than MySpace : Sign of Economy Says Hitwise
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/craigslist-search-hitwise/9391/
the comparison to MySpace is irrelevant for the conclusion; furthermore, the report uses search volume for the comparison and people search for “craigslist” and “myspace” for entirely different reasons. And MySpace continues to have 8X the unique visitors as Craigslist — so it is not that Craigslist is more “popular” than MySpace.
A sign of the times is that “garage sale” type sites are all seeing increases in traffic — e.g. Craigslist, OLX, Backpage, etc.
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
http://twitter.com/acfou
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