Marketing Pilgrim

Experian Hitwise has just released their December report which shows that Google overwhelmingly accounts for most of the searches conducted on the web in the US. 69.97% to be exact with the nearest competitor, Bing, coming in at only 25.77%.

But while Google is still the chosen search engine of the masses, it’s not the most accurate. According to Experian’s numbers, 81% of the searches on Bing and Yahoo! Search resulted in a trip to a web address. Google only showed a 65% success rate.

In case you have been living in a cave or are already in line for the iPhone from Verizon there is trouble in the world of customer service and support these days. The Internet has obviously created a legion of well-informed consumers but the surge in mobile Internet usage and apps for mobile has created a legion of super informed customers at the point of sale.

This can be troubling for retailers as you can see when they answered the question whether they believe that shoppers are better connected to product data than store associates. The study was conducted by Motorola Solutions (thanks to Marketing Charts for bringing it to our attention).

NOTE: We will choose the five winners at the close of business on January 21 and announce them on January 24th.

With Facebook being in everyone’s faces 24 / 7 these days it’s no wonder that every marketer feels like they need to be there. Of course, having the desire to be there and having the knowledge to be there in a way that impacts business are often two very different things.

We had a chance to talk with Dan and Alison Zarrella, the husband and wife authors of the book titled appropriately enough, The Facebook Marketing Book (not an affiliate link). Alison is a social media consultant and Dan is a social media scientist. Considering they were editing this book on their honeymoon it is safe to say that they are dedicated to their craft. Here’s what they had to say about Facebook and marketing.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone — sometimes it seems like it’s the only game in town, but according to ad network Millennial Media, it’s Android for the win, at least at the moment.

Tech Crunch says that Millennial reaches 81% of the mobile web users in US, so their numbers are a pretty solid gauge for mobile as a whole. When they revealed their stats for December usage, Android accounted for 46% of the impression share, with iOS’ (iphone, ipad, etc.) coming in at only 32%.

It shouldn’t be surprising because back in August of 2010, Android outsold iPhone for the first time in history. Now here’s Millennial saying that ad requests on Android have grown 3130% over the year and that sounds like reason to celebrate.

It looks like the online space may have pushed the envelope just far enough with logins, memberships and requirements that the customer is pushing back. As a result companies and agencies alike are listening. Or at least they say they are in a survey conducted by Econsultancy, the 2011 Customer Engagement Report 2011 (Study for purchase here. Marketing Pilgrim receives no compensation for sales of report).

According to both companies and agencies surveyed, simplicity is the most important customer attitude regarding marketing to them. Please note that the majority of the respondents are in the UK followed by the rest of Europe then North America. The chart below is from the companies point of view. Of note, agencies had 61% reporting it as most important consideration.

In the online deal space there is no doubting that Groupon is the 800 lb gorilla of the bunch. They have just received a whole lotta cash for their operations and their shareholders and are busy buying up competitors.

Every space, however, has its initial competitors that put up a fight for a piece of the pie. In the case of location based services, Foursquare has (or better said had?) Gowalla to push them. In search, there is Ya-Bing trying to play the well-funded David to Google’s Goliath. In social there is Facebook and….well, forget social. So anyway, in the online deal space LivingSocial is trying to stay in the game against Groupon. They have received a healthy $183 million investment themselves and it appears they are putting it to use.