I wanted to share some interesting tid-bits with you all from a recent Ipsos Reid presentation (June 18th) on Social Network Marketing.

This presentation was made to BC Hydro, the major Power authority in British Columbia (that’s in Canada, dummy).

The average Canadian:

• 5.4 hrs/week spent on Social network sites, about 1/3 of total Online time.
• LinkedIn captures 70% of the share of Social Networking in the workplace.
• The stuff teens do online is very different from adults, and VERY limited: socializing, music, and gaming.
  • 88% of Adults use the internet to visit a new or informational website, versus only 44% of teens.
  • 68% of Adults have clicked a website advertisement versus 28% of teens.
  • 70% teens are weekly social network users, versus 36% of adults

Highlights:

• Advertising budgets are not aligned to where people are spending their time – online expenditure lags significantly behind traditional mediums
• 58% of Canadians receive 51+ unsolicited commercial emails a week (17% don’t even know)
  • 64% of people don’t open ANY unsolicited emails
  • of the people that do open unsolicited emails, 53% do so out of curiosity, 28% because they thought it was legitimate
• Permission-based (opt-in) emails are still one of the best ways to market to your websites audience. Be diligent about collecting them
• 77% of Canadians are registered to receive some kind of opt-in email (2008 average number of sites registered with: 15.3)
  • Top 3 reasons for opting-in: Personal Interest (42% ), Entertainment (38%), New and Information (32%)
  • It’s worth noting that E-Commerce and Retail is the 7th most common reason (27%)
• Activities resulting from opting-in to an email list:
  • 60% entered an advertiser’s contest
  • 52% visited the advertiser’s website
  • 17% purchase or received products at a later date
• 68% percent of Canadians are willing to provide their email address depending on reasoning

I’ve uploaded the full presentation for you all, which can be viewed here:

Frank Lee, Senior VP of Client Services, and his team found that their paid search clients are seeing dramatically improved results on Bing compared to Live Search.  Even though impressions in the first 3 weeks of Bing have dropped 22% compared to the last 3 weeks of Live Search, Microsoft now seems to be serving far more relevant ads on each keyword.

The result for The Search Agency’s advertisers:

Click Through Rate up 15%
Conversions up 6%
Conversion rate up 18%
Cost per acquisition down 3%

Until now, all the industry reports on Bing have covered the increase in search volume, share of search, or total clicks.  Their data is the first analysis of Bing’s impact on paid search advertising performance.  With this growth in search volume, along with these improved metrics, advertisers might want to consider shifting more of their paid search spend to Bing.

You can read Frank’s full post their their blog The Search Agents.

I suggest you subscribe to their blog, as these guys really know what they’re talking about.

While many agencies seem to base marketing strategy on the sole-opinion of some conference-hopping SEO ‘guru’, The Search Agency always surprises me with their dedication to gathering real, actionable & measurable market data. They are one of those rare Search Marketing agencies that build strategies based on real, hard-earned market research, not a magic eight-ball.