Out-Smarts Internet Marketing

As someone who can fritter away hours on Google analytics looking at web traffic patterns and trying to understand them, I was over the moon when the opportunity arose to review a book for the Mini Book Expo for Bloggers about just that.

Click - Unexpected Insights For Business and Life by Bill Tancer takes a very close look at online patterns: specifically what millions of people search for online and turns up a number of unexpected and interesting parallels.

Bill is the general manager of global research at Hitwise, a company specializing in online competitive intelligence and as such has vast amounts of data available at his disposal on how and where people click. He loves finding patterns and predicting outcomes, some of which he shares in the book and, as I found out, he has an uncanny knack at uncovering search habits one wouldn’t expect.

Did you know, for example, that searches for “Prom Dresses” peak early in the year or that on-line sports gamblers like to play poker in the close season. These are some of the first discoveries Tancer discusses in the book. He goes on to analyze celebrity addiction and what we really fear as opposed to what we say we fear. Tancer makes the valuable point that people are more transparent and honest when they search online. They see it as a forum providing anonymity and are therefore more comfortable using online search to find out about touchy subjects than they would be face to face or in “real life”. By tracking who searches for what, where they click and when, patterns emerge that tell us a lot about the habits of our society and the way we use both traditional and new technology.

As a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, it was interesting to find out that Bill was able to track their meteoric rise to fame through as small number of “super connectors” spreading the word in MySpace and that TV also plays a major role in driving online traffic patterns.

This book is full of case studies and interesting anecdotes and has many gems of information such as the fact that Pareto’s 80/20 rules doesn’t apply online where 1-9-90 one does: 90 percent of people online are lurkers, 9 percent are intermittent contributers and 1 percent active collaborators. A kick in the teeth to the web 2.0 ideal of everyone participating.

As an Internet marketer, this book is invaluable and effectively displays the value of data mining online to hone in on your target audience but its not simply a book for the internet or marketing professional. It provides an entertaining analysis of online habits written in laymen terms that would be applicable and valuable to anyone interested in the habits of our society.

Thanks to Hyperion and the Mini Book Expo for the advanced reading copy of this book and especially to Bill for sharing his insights. I look forward to more in the Hitwise blog.

Recent articles in the Vancouver Sun highlight the growth in popularity of social networks as a means for disgruntled consumers to get back at corporate giants and even smaller businesses like the one in the coffee debacle.

Wednesday’s article about Telco customers using Facebook to bite back at Bell and Telus and June’s article on Gas Tax protest numbers soar on Facebook both showcase how these mediums are quickly catching on as a means by which the ordinary person on the street can have their say. They depict dire results for companies.

Rather than a threat, I look on these forums as an opportunity for companies to do vital research. Gripe groups provide a vital pulse on customer sentiment. Every company should be constantly monitoring the Internet and social media forums like blogs, microblogs and social networks to hear whats being said about their company or industry in these forums.

The more consumers gripe the better - its the perfect way for companies to find out what people like and don’t like about aspects of their product or service and to make it better.

Traditionally organisations have expended substantial sums to research their target audience using focus groups, surveys and questionnaires. Now there’s data available for free online. Granted the flow of gripes may not be controlled in the same way a focus group or survey would be but you cannot ignore the value of this information.

Use Google alerts, regular searches (on different search engines) and tools like Tweet Scan to monitor these forums and keep an ear to the web for what is being said. By doing so you will have the opportunity to act quickly to respond to adverse criticism and you will gain great insights into your customer opinions so that you can improve your offering.