New Zealand Government mandates tech giants pay for news

Some people argue that social media sites, such as Facebook and Google, should pay for the news content that they use, as it helps to support journalism and the production of high-quality news. Others believe that such a move could be harmful to the free flow of information on the internet and could lead to less diversity in the news. Ultimately, the decision on whether or not to make social media sites pay for news would need to be made by individual governments based on the specific circumstances and considerations of their own countries.

However The New Zealand government has now announced that it will introduce a law mandating that big online digital companies like Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms pay New Zealand media companies for the local news content that appears on their feeds.

https://thenewamerican.com/new-zealand-mulls-over-law-to-make-facebook-and-google-pay-for-news/

The little secret most SEO agencies still don't want to acknowledge.

Its time to confess all folks!

The little secret that most Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) agencies still don't want to acknowledge is that SEO still works even when you stop employing the agency... but with one huge caveat. 

Yes, unlike paid digital marketing, which stops delivering new visitors almost immediately after it is turned off... the SEO efforts made to improve a client's website ranking in search engines won't be immediately reversed when you stop using that agency*. 

So in the same way that organic rankings improve over time from effective optimisation efforts, sites tend to take time to drop lower and lower when SEO is ignored.

How quickly these rankings drop depends considerably on the site, the competition and a number of other factors. And my experience has been that continual sustained SEO efforts have better success that turning that optimisation effort on and off over time.

*Unless they have used paid inbound links and stop these straight away. In which case, you shouldn't have hired that agency for SEO in the first place!

European Interoperability Framework and transport & mobility

Yesterday I posted (for the first time in ages) that I had found a useful diagram called the "European Interoperability Framework" covers different levels of interoperability.

This work from the European Commission in March 2017 gives specific guidance on how to set up interoperable digital public services. https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en 

It documents 47 clear recommendations on how to improve governance of interoperability activities and ultimately improve the quality of European public services. And in my opinion this includes the transport & mobility sector.

The "European Interoperability Framework" diagram clearly makes the distinction between four layers of interoperability governance: legal, organisational, semantic and technical

Legal interoperability:
This is from legislation that suits not only the physical but also the digital world. Its purpose is to facilitate interoperability between public services at the lower levels

Organisational interoperability:
This provides consistency of processes for optimised data exchange 

Semantic interoperability:
This ensures that the precise format and meaning of the data and information exchanged is preserved and understood between each party.
In other words that data entities & elements and the relationship between them are clear.

Technical interoperability:
Ensures that systems are linked to each other correctly for the exchange of data. This ultimately requires the use of formal technical specifications.

What do we actually mean by Interoperability ?

I not only run a digital strategy & marketing consultancy (Ideal Interface), but also chair a transport data standards organisation (The Open Transport Initiative). 

Unsurprisingly I do speak a lot about Interoperability and its benefits. However I recently found this very useful diagram in a document from the University of Ghent (or Gent, if you speak Dutch):
https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8504205/file/8504206

The diagram, annotated as the "European Interoperability Framework" covers different levels of interoperability.

Getting the best value from your marketing in 2022

Marketing efforts to get new customers cost money, either in the form of resource budgets or media budgets (or both). This metric, known as the Customer acquisition cost [CAC] is an important commercial metric that calculates the total sales & marketing effort used by the number of visitors that convert or buy a product / service. This figure, along with Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), are probably the two most effective and comparable marketing metrics used.

Understandably most digital marketing managers also like this overall average cost to be broken down by each acquisition channel. This allows them to assess the effectiveness of each, with the usual groupings given by digital analytics applications including: 

• Paid Search - visitor clicks on a paid advert in a search engine results page
• Organic search - visitor clicks on a link in a search engine results page that can be improved using Search Engine Optimisation techniques
• Referral - visitor clicks on a link (usually not paid for) in another website

Note: when explaining this topic I should always mention the Direct channel. This is when no channel can be identified by the analytics application used  e.g. the visitor types the URL director into the browser or when the source cannot be determined). For some sites a large percentage of Direct visits can either be an indication of brand recognition or a reflection of significant offline marketing activity; but for others it could simply highlight a tracking issue with a few key inbound links.

Organic search can have the lowest CAC

Typically Organic Search still delivers a lower CAC than other marketing channels, such as paid search or display advertising. 

This has been explained in detail in many posts, e.g.

https://www.growthcollective.com/blog/customer-acquisition-cost-ads-seo

https://firstpagesage.com/seo-blog/seo-roi/average-customer-acquisition-cost-cac-by-industry-b2b-edition-fc/

Although my own word of caution when calculating CAC is that all costs must be counted (e.g. media, agency management, in-house staff coordination, etc.) not just some, if you are to properly compare "apples with apples".