Supplyant

Louis Vuitton is on a mission. It has singled itself out as the spearhead of campaign to manage its brand online, and the largely un-regulated search engines are its enemy.

Louis Vuitton has a  problem with the google adwords results. They hate the fact that google is profiting from allowing people to use the Louis Vuitton brand name in adwords. They also feel that Google is profiting from giving people who infringe trademarks, with fakes, the ability to promote.

Google generates $21 Billion a year from adwords so as you can guess they dont really want to change anything unless they have to.

What you will notice is that the words Louis Vuitton doesnt appear in the title. As you can see there are plenty of way to circumvent that if you need to.

Unfortunately for Louis Vuitton the European Court of Justice has ruled against them, so its business as usual. This issue is far from dead though with appeals already in place.

If you need help with working these methods into your adwords contact us today

I got sight of some interesting statistics last week showing that peoples use of the yellow pages is dwindling at its fastest ever rate.

The fact given was that the number of people using the book on a weekly basis has dropped by over 20% in the last 4 years.  Interestingly yellow pages advertising rates don’t appear to have changed.

So is it worth being in Yellow Pages?

As with every form of advertising it all depends on your return on investment. On that basis you shouldn’t do yellow pages unless:

• You monitor where your leads come from
• You monitor how many of these leads turn into customers
• You look at the lifetime value of those customers

Once you have an understanding of how much your yellow pages customers are worth to you its a far simpler decision.

What about Yell.com?

Yell.com is a good site for local search its worth appearing on there but:

• It will not give your own site any google friendly back links
• Its going to be under serious threat from Google Local which is free
• Its going to be under increasing pressure from other free providers

Despite this exactly the same rules apply its all about your return on investment. Spend a pound, get more than a pound back in profit then go for it.

Google local

Here’s an example of what google shows you if you search for decorator in Northampton.

This ones easy, its free, it gives you a really high position on google and its easy enough that you can do this yourself. You can do it here

Have you had any good or bad experiences with Yellow Pages. I would love to hear them, or you can tell us about them here

I read a great post over at practicalecommerce.com which looked at what leading money saving words that people use when searching google. It really indicates beautifully what consumers are looking for when trying to save a few pennies.

The report was obviously weighted towards America as the word coupon was the most searched for phrase over discount, sale and free shipping.

So In the UK we substituted those words with more UK centric words.

SALE v DISCOUNT v CHEAP v FREE DELIVERY v VOUCHER

There is one big trend here. More people are looking for sales and less are looking for cheap. Surprisingly thought this fits in with the normal marketing rules during a recession. A prime reason for purchasing better products in a recession is that they are less likely to go wrong, break or be of poor quality.

Reliability is a highly prized virtue at the moment and branded items on sale offer a percieved better value than cheap products.

Another indicator of this is the rise in popularity of big brand shops on the Internet.  Consumers have to feel safe in the knowledge that  the company they are buying from will last as long as the item they purchase.

FREE DELIVERY v NEXT DAY DELIVERY v SATURDAY DELIVERY

More people are looking for free delivery than next day delivery and its growing at a huge rate. In fact searches for free delivery at Christmas were a massive 80% higher than next day delivery.  Looking at the same report for Free Delivery vs Low Price its the same situation.

So what do I do?

In the minds of consumers

• putting themselves out waiting for a delivery is OK as long as its cheaper
• cheap products are not OK
• consumers are not prepared to risk  money with an unsafe retailer.

The numbers would indicate that a free delivery option is a winner, even if you offer an extended delivery option for free.

If you dont you may be missing valuable traffic.

When your starting a new project its important to do your research and due diligence to understand  whats going on out in the big wide world of the internet.  Luckily Google has a great tool for visualising search trends.

Google Insight allows you to look at how many people are searching for a particular phrase over time. What this tool allows you to do is gain some great additional information about the market, which in turn gives you great insider knowledge to use in your business plan.

• Seasonal ups and downs in particular niches become really clear
• Which of your competitors is growing and which is shrinking
• How different brands compare over time
• Is a brand or market segment you’re looking at, growing or falling.

Example 1: Supporting the good online retailers.

Two wheel brands have adopted very different strategies with online retailers marketing.

Dotz provide great support to high quality online retailers. They see the benefits to the Dotz brand by working closely with retailers, who are then able to present their products in the best light, adding further value to the brand. Nice work from the distributor.

Wolfrace continue to support online retailers that over-discount and show the products in a poor light. The upshot is that the poor representation and over-discounting has devalued the brand. Wolfrace are now trying in-house retailing and should use the extra control this will offer them to begin rebuilding their brand.

This graph shows growth in interest in the brands.

Example 2: Seasonal trends in the DIY sector

Its incredible to see how closely Homebase and B&Q track over the years

Do you have any good examples for you market? click here to comment online