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How mobile has changed the way we search, based on 10+ years of eye-tracking studies

How has the rise of mobile changed the way people view Google SERPs? Contributor Kristi Kellogg summarizes a session from SMX East in which Mediative's Chris Pinkerton discusses the results of eye-tracking studies.

Chris Pinkerton, the vice president of business development at Mediative, has been tracking the ways viewers look at the Google search engine results page (SERP) since 2003. In that time, Mediative’s eye-tracking studies have revealed major shifts in the way users consume the SERP.

At SMX East 2016, he explored the ways the proliferation of mobile devices have deeply impacted user search behavior on both mobile and desktop searches.

Pinkerton asserts that search activity, psychologically speaking, is mindless activity. It’s mindless because of the habits that form with the devices we use.

Chris Pinkerton

Habits are a very powerful thing to start to understand. Developing a habit of consuming information on a desktop in a certain way changes the way you consume content.

Looking back at 2003, Google became the dominant search engine because it drove people to find information faster than its competitors. That created habitual behavior — people found content the fastest on Google and kept coming back.

(As an aside, Bing has implemented programs to pay people for their search behavior in an attempt to break these deeply ingrained habits and introduce a new behavior.)

In 2005, there was a Golden Triangle pattern when it came to eyeballs on the Google SERP. But in 2016, this pattern is vastly different (see below), due in large part to mobile. It’s changed the way people consume the SERP and the speed at which they consume it. Users spot-scan and find what is contextually relevant for them.

Mobile devices have habitually conditioned searchers to scan vertically more than horizontally. This has translated to desktop search as well. People are viewing more search listings during a single session but are spending less time viewing each one.

Users are looking the front end of search listings, so make sure your main message comes first. While it used to take a user 2.6 seconds to consume a SERP, that time has been cut in half, to 1.3 seconds, Pinkerton said.

Regardless of mobile’s impact, the No. 1 organic listing captures the most click activity, regardless of what new elements are presented. However, it takes 87 percent longer for the No. 1 organic listing to be first seen on a mobile device vs. desktop, he said.

Statistics that will impact your digital marketing strategy

Knowledge Graph

  • With a Knowledge Graph panel on the SERP, almost 22 percent fewer clicks went to the top No. 1 organic listing.
  • 93% of searchers look at the Knowledge Graph panel.
  • 49% of searchers click on the Knowledge Graph panel.

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MKTg Robot @themktgrobot

19% of mobile SERP clicks on average went to the top 2 sponsored ads, compared to 15% on desktop. #smx #sem @Mediative

3:58 PM - 28 Sep 2016

Local listings and map

  • 47% more clicks on the map and local listing occur when positioned above the organic listings.
  • 10% of clicks on local listing on average.
  • 51% more searchers view the local listings and map when positioned above the organic listings.

Star ratings

  • Listings with star ratings capture 24% of page clicks on average.

Sponsored listings

  • Top sponsored listings are viewed after 0.36 seconds on average.
  • 2% of clicks on the top two sponsored listings on mobile vs. 14.5% on desktop.
  • The top organic listing gets 10% fewer clicks when three sponsored listings are present vs. one sponsored listing.

Organic listings

  • Top organic listings capture the most search activity (33.2%).
  • 5% of searchers on average look at the top organic listing.
  • 57% of clicks go to the top four organic listings on average.
  • Only 7.4% of the clicks that occur are below the fourth organic listing on mobile vs. 16% on desktop.

Read Mediative’s full eye-tracking report (registration required). See how user behavior has changed in just the last two years with my reports from SMX East 2014 and 2015.

Source : http://searchengineland.com/mobile-impacted-way-search-based-10-years-eye-tracking-studies-260052?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTURJeU0yUm1NV00wTm1RMiIsInQiOiI2aUtEVXVQWWZHTEtkQkZIODNKR3ZzZDVrRkE1MDUxWUpyMGFtTW14MDEzVGxBSXNHYzA0QXp5TFRyVjFMQ1pxSXpZQzFLKzBuek1BZU5iMnZhNmdhNnV1cmdBRFlyc0FOMXgwZ3pDXC94Mkk9In0%3D 

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The Need-to-Know Stats of Social Selling

Everything we do generates data. Data that can be interpreted, analyzed, visualized, scrutinized, and lauded over. We can then apply what we learn through that data to distill an activity down to a precise science with specific and measurable statistics.

As sales and marketing departments become better integrated, they look to these statistics to run their business more efficiently. But what stats matter most? Organizations can quantify just about anything, and a quick search of sales or marketing stats renders hundreds of results. Layer in social selling and social media statistics into your search and the results only increase. So what social selling statistics matter and why should sales leaders care? Here’s the top three stats you need to know.

Social Selling Statistic #1:

73% of sales reps that practice social selling outperform their peers and 64% of teams that practice social selling hit quota.

Yes, these are technically two statistics, but they prove this point: social selling works. Reps and teams that leverage their social channels throughout the sales process close more and win more than those that do not. Want to go to club? Want that promotion? Want to be the number one rep, district, or region? Start social selling. People buy from people they know, like and trust. Social channels are the perfect space to start and build relationships with prospects away from sales emails and sales calls. When used effectively, social selling can help warm a lead, earn a sales call, nurture that lead, and help close the deal.

Social Selling Statistic #2:

92% of buyers will delete emails and voicemails from people that they don’t know.

If your sales team is just cold emailing and cold calling prospects, then they are missing out on one of their most important channels. Leveraging social media can help you learn about your prospects and engage with them around a shared topic of interest, answer a question, or provide a valuable insight. Using social allows you to start a conversation and remove “cold” from your initial emails and calls. Sales reps and teams that leverage social to become a person that buyers know, like and trust are more likely to succeed.

Social Selling Statistic #3:

82% of prospects can be reached via social media.

As a sales rep or sales leader, having access to your target market is one of the first steps toward success. If social media is where your prospects are, then that is where sales reps need to be. On top of that, reps need to be visible, searchable, and accessible. Social allows you to build your personal brand, build your product and services credibility and build the relationships that will help you close more business. The social sphere gives reps unparalleled information and access to their target prospects. Leverage it!

Social selling provides sales teams with countless data points that can all yield valuable insights and statistics into their social selling strategies and tactics. By focusing on the a few key statistics, it’s easy to see why market leaders like Oracle, IBM, ADP and BMC are investing resources into social selling training and strategy—because it works.

Source:  https://insightpool.com/the-need-to-know-stats-of-social-selling/

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Ten Steps to Surviving a Start-Up

                   Ten Steps to Surviving a Start-Up

 

When reflecting upon my last 10 months in the auto industry I’ve found it necessary to write a short re-cap of what I’ve learned working for two different start-up companies, so that in the future those of you who find themselves working for a start-up, has some sort of step by step process to help you succeed.

 

The following 10 steps may not apply for every start-up, but the core lessons learned are here and can be tailored to your particular situation.

 

 Steps:

 

  1. When researching the company that has extended an offer to you. Make absolutely sure that you whole-heartedly believe in the product or solution the company has to offer. Don’t just simply take the job out of necessity, because all that is going to do is cause you more pain and potentially cause you to garnish your relationships with your current book of business. Unless you’re a self-proclaimed seller of ice to Eskimos, selling a product that you don’t necessarily believe in, is almost impossible to do.
  2. If you have found your way past step 1 and landed on step 2 then more than likely you are encouraged that the product and or solutions that the company has to offer is solid, but you still have some work to do. Do your due diligence and make sure that the people that you will be working for and with are on par with the people whom you normally like to surround yourself with. What I mean by this is simple. Before you take the offer of employment, research the CEO. Find out what he or she has done in the past. Are they cutting edge? Find out how the CEO has treated his or her employees in the past. Research the current staff that is in place, these are the people that you will be working with hand in hand on a daily basis. Find out how they handle themselves under pressure, because when you work for a start-up there are going to be days when the pressure can be insurmountable.
  3. So if you have found yourself on step 3 then you have completed some heavy research and have liked the results that you come up with. Now you need to see what processes the company has in place. Every start-up has a business plan that will include a process and or processes that circle around how the product or solution is to be sold, maintained, handled, and executed. Depending on the position that you have been offered these processes may vary, but the idea still stays the same. A company without a process/plan is like a car without wheels. The car may start, but I guarantee its not going to go nowhere.
  4. If you have made it this far you’ve probably established one of two things. You are either a good fit for the company or you’ve decided that the company may not be a good fit for you. So now you have reached the pivotal moment of truth. Do you take the job or do you pass on the opportunity for something better. If you have decided to take the job, then proceed on to the next steps.
  5. No matter what position that you have been hired for, more than likely you have been hired because you are a subject matter expert in a particular field that in some facet pertains to the companies plan. Now this is great because in some way you have established yourself in the industry as a leader in your particular field, but remember when you are hired on at a start-up you may or may not be asked to perform tasks that doesn’t pertain to your field. Now I am a firm believer that you should always be learning new things and stepping outside of your comfort zone is always a good way to broaden your intellect, but remember that you have been given a task and even though you may be asked to do other things to help the company, don’t loose site of what you were hired for in the first place. If you are not a seasoned at multitasking then I would say a start-up is not the place to further your career path.
  6. Staying motivated is key when it comes down to making or breaking the start-up. You not only need to be motivated 24/7 but you need to learn how to motivate others as well. When working for a start-up you can almost guarantee that there are going to be days when you feel like licking your wounds and going home. Being motivated and motivating others through these rough patches can really make a difference when you or one of your colleagues are having a bad day.
  7. Being persistent is always a good trait to have, but when working for new start-ups persistence really plays a key role in business development. A new start-up has a core business plan with a product and or solution they want to present to the core audience. The only problem is sometimes the niche needs crafted into a diamond and that comes from persistence. You have to constantly take your core product or solution and evolve it into something that is constantly making sense to your audience.
  8. Don’t be afraid of change! No matter what industry you are in, you have to be able to adapt to change. In order for a new start-up to survive, change is has to be a constant and if you are not susceptible to an environment that is always changing then destination frustration is just right around the corner and its going to reach out and smack you square in the face. There is a great book that I read a long time ago called “Who moved my cheese?” that I recommend all young business students and anyone who is thinking about joining a start-up or starting a business of their own read. The book really puts into perspective how important it is to be able to adapt to change.
  9. No matter how well you think you may be doing, you always need to have reports to back up your results. This can be simple excel sheets or ornate, robust power points with pie charts, bar graphs, or whatever you seem fit to show your progress. Having these reports, whether they are asked for or not can really be great tools to not only help you develop, but help the company develop as well, because when its all said and done results are the only thing that matter when it comes down to getting the start-up off the ground.
  10. Last but not least, put in the time! Working for a start-up is not a 9 to 5 job. Be prepared to start early and work late, because you are going to have deadlines that need to be met and depending on how many projects have been assigned to you, you always have to make sure everything is done right, and done on-time, which may require you to put in more hours than what you initially thought would take to get the task completed.

     

Please remember that I am basing these steps on what I have learned working within the auto industry, but can be used and adapted to whatever industry that you may be in. The core principles are the same, just try to follow these steps and I am sure you too can survive a start-up.

 

If you have any questions or would like to comment on this article, please feel free to do so, also if you feel the need to share I welcome you to share with your networks and pass on what I have learned.

 

Thank You

Jason Parman

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Americans viewed more than 11 billion video ads in June, representing a 9.2% increase from May’s previous high of roughly 10.1 billion views, per July 2012 comScore VideoMetrix data. To put the rise of video ad impressions this year in perspective, June’s 11 billion views is almost double the 5.6 billion views from January of this year, though January had seen a rather substantial drop from the previous month’s 7.1 billion.In June, video ads accounted for 25% of all videos viewed, up almost 16% from 21.6% in May. Ads accounted for 2% of time spent viewing video online, compared to 1.9% in May.

Meanwhile, in June, each of the top 5 video ad properties delivered more than 1 billion video ads, led by Google Sites (1.41 billion), closely followed by BrightRoll Video Network (1.39 billion), and Hulu (1.33 billion). Rounding out the top 5 were Adap.tv (1.15 billion) and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform (1.04 billion).

Time spent watching video ads totaled 4.6 billion minutes during the month, up from 4.5 billion in May. BrightRoll Video Network delivered the highest duration of video ads at 805 million minutes.

Video ads reached 53% of the total US population an average of 68 times during the month, up from 64 in May. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 52, while ESPN delivered an average of 34 ads per viewer.

Facebook Grows Video Audience; Vimeo Cracks Top 10

comscore-top-online-video-properties-jun-2012-july2012.pngAmong the top 10 US online video properties in June, Facebook reported strong month-over-month unique viewer performance gains, rising almost 11% to 49 million, and in the process leapfrogging Microsoft and Viacom into the 3rd spot. Yahoo maintained its second ranking, with close to 51.5 million viewers, but dropped 11% of its viewers. Whereas in May, Yahoo’s audience was roughly 13.5 million larger than Facebook’s, by June, that gap had been whittled down to just 2.5 million.

Google remained the top online video property once again, with about 154.5 million viewers, up close to 2% from 151.7 million the prior month. VEVO dropped a slot to the 4th ranking in June (46.2 million), while Viacom Digital moved up from the 7th spot to enter the top 5 with 38.9 million viewers. Vimeo entered the top 10 for the first time, in the 10th spot, with 21.4 million viewers, while News Distribution Network and Hulu dropped out of the top 10 rankings.

Google again demonstrated the highest viewer engagement, with an average of roughly 7.7 hours per viewer.

Top 5 YouTube Partner Rankings Intact

The June 2012 YouTube partner data shows that video music channels VEVO (roughly 45.1 million viewers) and Warner Music (26.1 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 23.6 million viewers, relatively unchanged from May. Maker Studios (21.2 million) and FullScreen (16.2 million) both maintained their rankings from the previous month.

Among the top 10 partners, Machinima displayed the highest engagement again, at 76 minutes per viewer, ahead of VEVO, at 50 minutes per viewer. VEVO streamed the most videos (567 million), followed by Machinima (447 million).

Other Findings:

  • 84.8% of the US internet audience viewed online video in June, up slightly from 84.5% in May.
  • The duration of the average online content video was 6.8 minutes, up from 6.5 minutes in May, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes, unchanged from the previous month.
  • More than 180 million US internet users watched online video content in June for an average of 20.64 hours per viewer.
  • The total US internet audience engaged in 33 billion video views, down from 36.6 million in May.

Source - http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/online-video-ad-views-continue-to-reach-new-heights-22712/

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Car Information Databases

As a brand new Internet Coordinator, one of the most daunting elements of my job is knowing the cars and the “car lingo.”  I’ve never been very interested in cars in general, even though my father was not only a fantastic mechanic, he trained mechanics all over the SE United States for American Oil Company.  I do have a marketing background, and I love helping people, so those aspects of this position are a perfect fit, but I have to work extra hard to learn the facts about the cars our customers are interested in.

In order to help me gather that information and to have it at my fingertips, I am compiling a database of info about the cars we sell.  It’s in Excel, and I have a separate page for each type of vehicle.  That way when a customer wants to explore SUV options, (or Trucks, Vans, or Cars) I have all those choices in front of me.  I have columns for the current MSRP, the MPG, the pros (and some of the options), the cons, and comparable vehicles. 

I’m no expert, and I’m finding that, at times, I misunderstand the data and enter it incorrectly, so it’s by no means the end-all and be-all of databases.  In fact, if someone else has a great database that’s similar to mine, I’d love to exchange info with you!  I can use all the input I can get!

But I am finding that with this information in front of me, when I have a customer that is truly doing research, I can provide much better assistance.  I’m also learning the data much more quickly as I enter it into the database.  Just the concentration and input I get from going through the research and entry process is helping me become more knowledgeable!  It’s all good, and I can’t wait to feel more confident in providing facts for my customers and helping them make good decisions about the vehicles they end up purchasing.

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