Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/09/08/forget-anchovies-hold-the-ppc-seo-management-helps-pizza-company-deliver-to-its-bottom-line/

After traveling through Europe on vacation the past couple of weeks, nothing said I was home more than grabbing a slice of New York pizza!

Deciding to do a blog post on the topic, I wanted to find out who the “big cheeses” were in the pizza world and see if I could find some insight into their web strategies.

Using the Keyword Destination tool on Compete.com to get a list of sites referred to by a broad match for the generic keyword “pizza”, I quickly found that Pizzahut.com and Dominos.com were the hands-down winners.  Approximately 16% of all “pizza” related search referrals went to Pizzahut.com and 5.8% went to Dominos.com.

Both Pizzahut and Dominos showed strong consumer brand recognition, as seen by looking at branded vs. non-branded search referral data collected by Compete:

With similar patterns in historical UV traffic, these two brands were ripe for comparison:

You would think that two strongly similar brands would show similar ad spend profiles, but I was surprised to see that visitors referred to Pizzahut.com via a search engine were 1.8X more likely to have reached the site through a paid search link as visitors to Dominos.com.

What’s the difference?

Using Compete.com again to analyze keyword search referrals to the two brands provided a bit more insight:

For the sake of brevity I am just including a few keywords, but the general trend was the same.  Pizzahut seems to struggle to rank for organic traffic for long-tail phrases, even those containing their brand name. Paid search helps augment low SERP placement by artificially ranking Pizzahut ahead of the couponing sites vying for this sort of referral.

The Bottom Line:

While there are certainly more “slices to the pie” that this brief analysis can’t cover, the bottom line is that there is a constant struggle going on behind the scenes between large brands and third party sites looking to ride on their coattails through coupon offerings, referral links, and product reviews.  If you find your manager questioning the value of SEO, consider that the average CPC for a “pizza” broad-match term was $0.63 (source: google adwords keyword estimator), and in Q2-2011 approximately 5 million search referrals were sent to both Pizzahut.com and Dominos.com. Strong SEO efforts can translate into significant savings through reduced ad spend on paid search!

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Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/08/05/online-flower-traffic-blooms-for-mothers-day/

Photo Credit: muffet, flickr.

Online flower marketers experienced another great Mother’s Day season.   Traffic to these sites grew by a healthy 7% from May 2010 to May 2011. 

The online flower business is a great example of how small, mom and pop businesses might have been given new life thanks to the web.  A flower shop in a drab storefront can be re-energized thanks to sites such as Teleflora.

As you can see, the sites are hugely dependent on the Valentine’s and Mother’s Day holidays.  Outside of that, traffic is respectable but significantly lower.

One of the more fascinating trends to look at over this past Mother’s Day holiday is the range of cross-shopping that went on across online flower marketing sites.

FTD.com, which has the most loyal followings and largest volumes in the competitive set, saw it’s customer cross-shopping rate double this year.  Meanwhile, sites such as Proflowers, BloomsToday and 1-800 Flowers saw an improvement in customer loyalty during the Mother’s Day flower buying season.

You have to wonder just how much more these sites can continue to grow in their current form.  The seasonality issue is challenging.  Right now, the sites are all focused on delivering fresh-cut flowers and other gifts to celebrate a special occasion.

As a recent homebuyer, I would not mind seeing more attention paid to outdoor plants and trees.  The products are subtly marketed on sites, but the marketing is not prominently displayed.  Imagine being able to log onto 1800flowers.com and create a “gift registry” of plants and trees that you wanted for a housewarming gift.  Friends could log on and arrange to have them delivered the same day as a housewarming celebration.

What about ordering vegetable plants for mom’s garden during the upcoming summer as a Mother’s Day gift?  The opportunities are endless out there to either increase the average order value and to shift consumer mindset from holidays and birthdays to other life events / purposes.

Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/07/21/the-new-music-landscape/

It’s no secret that the music industry has undergone massive changes over the last ten to fifteen years. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, total US music sales have dropped an average of 8% each year since 1999, from $14.6 billion to just over $6 billion. Having heard this, you probably wouldn’t expect that in the first half of 2011, US sales are up by 1%. Okay, so it’s just 1%. But consider that in the first half of 2010, sales were down 11% year-over-year.

So what’s responsible for reversing this trend? Ever-increasing broadband speed has enabled mass media consumption on the web, paving the way for music discovery services like Pandora, Last.fm, Grooveshark and iLike. Because of these services, the average person can now find and listen to a more diverse body of music than ever before – and it’s catching on. Unique visitors to radio category websites has increased by nearly 19% since last year, with Pandora leading the pack at 11,824,629 in June 2011 – that’s 81% yearly growth.

Over the last few years, Pandora has made decisions to support growth of their user base and help them stay ahead of the competition, even if just barely at times. In 2008, the Pandora app became one of the most consistently downloaded apps in the Apple store. By 2010, Pandora was present on more than 200 connected consumer electronic devices ranging from smart-phones to TVs to Blue-ray players. It was in 2010 that Pandora began to break away from the other music discovery services and would attract more than double the unique visitors of Last.fm, traditionally Pandora’s toughest competitor, by year-end.

In February 2011, Pandora officially filed with the SEC for a $100M IPO, piquing even more interest in the service in the months leading up to their pricing announcement on June 15^th. The company’s future may not be as bright though, as innovative alternatives to radio-style listening like Spotify, Music Beta by Google and Apple’s iCloud are beginning to gain traction. While these services are very different than Pandora – and from each other – there is no doubt that they pose a threat to the current music landscape. You can be sure we’re keeping an eye on it.

So, have you tried Spotify? Music Beta? iCloud? What do you think? Are you ready to abandon Pandora?

Source: http://blog.compete.com/2011/07/15/scion-seeks-soul-and-souls/

The Scion brand was among the first “alternative” automotive youth brands in the US.   Highest-ever monthly sales were 19,252 units in August 2006, but Scion may have lost its soul since.  In 2010 (before any earthquake-related shortages), sales averaged 3,800 units a month.  Compete assessed key drivers of Scion sales (shoppers and conversion) to help reveal the drivers of Scion’s off-pace results, and fielded a survey on consumer perceptions of Scion.

Missing the Shopper Recovery

The number of unique Scion shoppers at the brand level has trended down over the past 30 months.  (Unique means shoppers of more than one Scion model are counted only once at the brand level).  Fewer shoppers in 2009 could be related to the recession, which impacted everyone.  Through the first half of 2009, Scion’s Share of Market Interest (SMI) was fairly steady, meaning its shopper volumes tracked with the market.  But as market shopper volume has recovered since then, Scion’s has not: its SMI was near a period low in June 2011.  Keep in mind that vehicle shortages impact sales, not shopping.

Scion More Quirky than Youthful?

To shed light on possible reasons for Scion’s SMI decline, Compete fielded a digital general population survey in June on consumer perceptions of the brand.  Over 60% felt they did not know enough about Scion to have an opinion.  Of the 39% that offered an opinion, “quirky” and “economical” led results.  In a recession, “economical” would seem to help shopping and sales; perhaps “quirky” is overpowering “economical.” “Youthful” was a distant third, potentially leaving Scion with a market hinging on quirky but economical products not quite geared toward younger buyers.

Scion Soul in Context

Kia’s Soul was one of the models that followed in Scion’s footsteps.   It has distinctive styling in the boxy genre and a low base price, and its advertising has argualbly been youth-oriented.  For context, Compete compared shopper volume for Soul against Scion overall.  The volumes are surprisingly similar (meaning that Soul alone has about the same number of shoppers as Scion overall).   The strength of Soul may mean that some would-be Scion shoppers instead shopped Soul, or may have shopped Soul in addition to Scion.

Showdown in the Showroom

Despite similar shopper volumes, Soul monthly sales have averaged 37% higher than Scion’s, and have exceed 10,000 units in each of the past four months; Scion averaged 4,850 in the same period.   So while Scion and Soul each had the same potential for sales, Kia has been more effective at converting Soul shoppers into Soul buyers.  Soul conversion has better Scion’s in all months but one since February 2010.

Scion Redemption

The good news is that Scion today has the potential to sell more vehicles, based on current shopper volumes (or souls).  The bad news is that it has lost shoppers over time in absolute terms and relative to the market, and its ability to convert shoppers into buyers trails potential rivals, like Soul.

Of course there’s more to the story.  Logical next steps Scion can investigate to restore sales include the following.  These same steps can be used by others looking to launch Scion-compatible products to better understand Scion’s trajectory to date:

• Understand why the market’s shopper growth is not reaching Scion
  • Ad effectiveness: Compare SMI to share of voice: coincident drops in both may simply mean Scion was outspent.
  • Avoiders: Field a shopper avoider study to in-market consumers of Scion rivals that are not shopping Scion and ask why (lack of awareness, lack of familiarity, etc.).
  • Spillover demand: Quantify reverse-cross-shop trends to reveal which rivals’ shoppers are cross-shopping Scion and which are not and how that has changed over time.
• Understand Scion conversion inhibitors
  • Benchmarking: Compare Scion conversion trends by model against target rivals.
  • Influences: Evaluate conversion relative to core conversion influencers, such as inventory levels, incentives, and other conversion influencers.
  • Rival refinement: Evaluate Scion cross-shop data to help reveal the extent to which Scion’s actual rivals are not target rivals, and the extent to which conversion by target or true rivals is impacting Scion conversion.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/12/idc-tablet-shipments-drop-28-percent-in-q1-2011/

Whether you believe we’re living in a post-PC world or not, there’s no denying the overwhelming growth of tablets in the past few years. Just this March, IDC put out figures saying 2010 saw the sale of 18 million tablets, but despite the recent boom, the outfit’s now reporting a 28 percent drop in tablet shipments in Q1 2011, bringing first quarter worldwide shipments to 7.2 million. IDC’s latest report points to “slower consumer demand, overall economic conditions, and supply-chain constraint,” but nonetheless estimates that total tablet sales will reach 53.5 million by year’s end, up from IDC’s original estimate of 50.4 million. Once again, Apple’s come out on top of the slate game, with the iPad 2 leading the market, despite its own dip in shipments. E-readers have apparently also seen a decline in the first quarter, with shipments dipping to 3.3 million units. Despite a slow start to the year, however, IDC’s optimistic about future sales, but you don’t have to take our word for it — full PR awaits you after the break.

Continue reading IDC: tablet shipments drop 28 percent in Q1 2011

IDC: tablet shipments drop 28 percent in Q1 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 21:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-hp-apple-notebook-pc-shipments-2011-7

Here’s another look at the impact of the iPad on the PC industry, courtesy of Jefferies analyst Peter Misek and Dan Frommer of SplatF.

Misek initiated coverage of HP today with a hold rating, and included this chart showing the drop in the growth of HP’s notebook shipments, as well as the drop in the growth PC notebooks overall. (Frommer added the data on Apple’s growth in notebook shipments as a contrast.)

As Frommer points out, “A market that was growing 20% to 40% year-over-year per quarter just a couple of years ago is now basically flat.”

Misek says it’s thanks to the growth of the tablet market: “We believe tablets are cannibalizing consumer notebooks and are the biggest driver in the deterioration of HP’s consumer notebook shipments. We expect tablets to cannibalize more enterprise notebooks as we get into 2012.”

Until someone delivers a credible iPad rival, this trend will continue for all the PC players.

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See Also:

• CHART OF THE DAY: How Much Apple Is Making On The App Store
• CHART OF THE DAY: In-App Payments Have Totally Changed The Business Models Of iOS Games
• Apple Is Ready To Release An "iPad HD" With A Better Screen

SOURCE: http://www.emarketer.com/blog/index.php/numbers-major-media-ad-spending/

Bed Bath and Beyond is blocking RetailMeNot — possibly because their blended average margin is relatively low and it cannot afford giving “expensive” coupons to everyone.

Macy’s is advertising on RetailMeNot — see “Featured Discounts”

OldNavy is advertising AND shutting off user-submitted coupons

Retailmenot.com started later than Dealcatcher, but quickly overtook them and continues to increase — it is simply more useful because of real time consumer feedback on whether the coupons/codes worked or not.