Are Computer games bigger than the film industry

Everyone knows Hollywood, so how can we get to a point where a Hollywood blockbuster making less than half the profit of the latest games releases? The answer as ever is about the money. New games retail at between £45 and £50, yet the game will inevitably cost less to produce than the latest film. These production costs can still be in excess of £100 million but that is small change when your unit price is £50 and you sell 6.5 million copies on release day in the UK and US alone. That’s a 350% ROI on release day alone.

So why does this happen? Well it all revolves around the human desire to win. These high grossing games have detailed competitive multiplayer modes, each with it’s own idiosyncrasies that require hours of practise from the player to perfect. This means that even if a game drops in price from £50 to £20 after 3 months, the vast majority of players will still pay that £50 release day price tag just to get those few extra weeks practise. Thus ensuring they can get to their potential as quickly as possible and keep on winning.

Unfortunately, it is a trait that the film industry has no answer to. With the increasing number of plots being taken from the story lines of the latest ‘great read’. People are more than prepared to wait for prices to come down or take advantage of offers when going to see a film. They already know the story line so there is no desire to find everything out on day one. Waiting a few days ‘til Wednesday just to get 2 for 1 seems much more logical than paying double the price to see a film with a plot you already know.

Utilising Facebook Pages for Businesses

Why would a business want to get involved with Facebook? For starters, they have over 500 million active users, with 50% of them logging in daily. Their users spend 700 billion minutes per month on the site, and they share 30 billion pieces of content per month. Chances are, your customers are on Facebook, and if you aren’t then you may be missing out on a great opportunity to connect with customers and build your brand. Also, pages (unlike profiles and groups) are indexed by the search engines, and the search engines love Facebook. It is the epitome of fresh content they look for.

Pages vs. Profiles

The first concept you need to understand is the difference between pages and profiles on Facebook.

A profile is for a person, and businesses cannot have profiles.

A page can be for a business (or a band, product, or about anything else).

Facebook also has groups, which can be set up by anybody for any purpose. These are nice if you want to restrict access, but are limited in functionality.

So to start creating a page, you’ll first need a profile. This could be an administrative contact or anybody in the company, but be sure the company doesn’t lose control of the page if the person with the profile leaves. The profile really doesn’t need to be used or filled out with every detail, it really acts as a user account which is necessary to set up pages.

Create Your Page

Once your profile is set up, you can create a page by going to Advertising -> Pages -> Create a Page or by using this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Choose your category and make sure to fill out the form completely.

Set Up Your Page

Your page can be set up to operate much like any other web page, and can be enhanced with;

• Content you create elsewhere on the web (like feeds of RSS or Twitter)

• Custom FBML, Facebook Markup Language (patterned after HTML for websites)

• Facebook Applications – many useful and many distracting apps allow custom functionality, but don’t go crazy and keep your goals for the page in mind

You may want to focus as much on cleaning up the clutter around the page as adding to it. Then decide if you intend for the page to be an online representation of your business and way to contact you, a place to share content with your customers, or even a lead generation source (by embedding a ‘squeeze page’ in your page to collect emails).

Grab Your Username

The last step in setting up your page is to grab a custom URL for your page. Facebook will give you a URL for your page that looks like http://www.facebook.com/yourusername/. Get yours by going to: http://www.facebook.com/username/

If you would like to find out how we can help you contact us on 0191 257 8380 or visit www.armadillo-creative.com

The Importance Of Search Engine Optimisation

Nearly 16,000 searches are conducted in the UK every minute, which is a huge opportunity to attract customers, who are already interested in your products or services, to your website. A recent Google study revealed that 88% of UK searches use Google, and only 7% of users go on to the third page of results. This highlights the importance of achieving the highest search engine placements possible. If your business has achieved the number one ranking on page one, 100% of your potential customers will find you, but if you are on page 3 only 7% of your potential customers will find you, dramatically decreasing your exposure.

Armadillo Creative offer dedicated SEO solutions which will help your business achieve the desired ranking and increase your site traffic and hopefully business.

If you would like to find out how we can help you contact us on 0191 257 8380 or visit www.armadillo-creative.com

We can’t live without mobile phones

Mobile phones in general, and smartphones in particular, have a place in our pockets, purses and bags, wherever we go. Consumers have never before been so attached to a device that allows us to reach them wherever they go. While we leave behind our television, computer, newspapers and magazines, our phone almost never leaves our side.With the portability of phones and technologies like geolocation and high-speed mobile internet, our phones are uniquely positioned to be our primary data device. Mobile commerce is just a natural extension, and now the ability and convenience to shop anywhere has arrived. In addition to convenience being an oft cited reason for using m-commerce, other interesting observations by the IAB of m-commerce behaviour include:

• Average m-commerce spend is high, with an average transaction of £12.20.

• Mobile customers are spontaneous, with 31% reporting that their purpose was spontaneous or impulsive.

• 35% of mobile users that reported having not yet used m-commerce were simply unable because of limitations with their equipment. This number will decrease rapidly, as technology improves by the day.
The IAB’s Alex Kozloff goes on to appeal to businesses: “Whilst m-commerce is on the radar for many retailers, our research highlights the need for more urgency in terms of developing a mobile presence and ensuring the user experience is as smooth and secure as possible. Almost half of mobile users are making purchases, and of those who don’t, half again are certain they will in the future, so investment in a solid mobile retail presence is essential.”This echoes the findings by other industry experts that businesses are not moving fast enough to meet the demands of mobile consumers. This leaves huge opportunities to businesses willing to invest in their mobile presence.

If you would like to find out how we can help you contact us on: 0191 257 8380 or visit www.armadillo-creative.com

Did You Know? 10 Interesting Digital Marketing Facts

1. Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 4.1 billion user images.

2. 51% of journalists read blogs for story ideas.

3. 77% of the online shoppers read consumer product reviews and ratings before purchasing a product.

4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

5. Time spent on blogs and other social media sites increased 210 percent year-over-year, and the average time spent per person increased 143 percent.

6. 88% of people in the world are aware of Facebook

7. 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life

8. 47% of youngsters said they find out about the news through Facebook

9. There are more women users than men on Facebook

10.47% of mobile users browse networking sites

Mobile App vs Mobile Website

Mobile App or Mobile Website? Which to choose? Here is a comprehensive guide to the pros and cons of both routes. Many times clients ask us for an “App” when in fact all they need is a mobile website, and vice versa. Many clients don’t know the difference.A Mobile App is a piece of software built specifically to run on a particular device – whether that be an iPhone, Android, Blackberry etc where as a Mobile website is a standard website formatted to display on mobile device web browsers. These mobile websites tend to be cut down versions of the “desktop” website.Whilst these two approached used to be very different, the advances in mobile and web technologies in the past 2 years has allowed mobile websites to look and function much more like a mobile app, without the need to download and install software on your mobile device.

Who is your target audience?

When choosing between a mobile app and a mobile website you need to consider your audience and whether you want to target a niche or the mass market. If you wish to reach a wider audience then a mobile website would be better as it allows a larger user base to access the content as it’s available through any mobile device with a web browser. If you prefer to target a niche user base on a particular device and operating system then a mobile app is the way to go.

Identifying Keyword Opportunities

Identifying Keyword Opportunities

A keyword is a word included in a web page which matches a term entered into a search tool like Google by a searcher like your customer.  Based on this simple definition, your goal as a business is to have relevant content which contains keyword phrases matching your customer’s search. It sounds simple enough, but there are 2 common pitfalls:

1. Focusing on keyword phrases which are too broad. While a broad phrase like ‘estate agent’ gets a lot of traffic, it also has enormous competition for the top spots. With over 29 million results, your chances of reaching the first results page are slim.

2. Focusing on keyword phrases which are too specific. While you could, in contrast to the example above, optimise for ‘Newcastle UK estate agent,’ hyper-targeting your customers, you’d soon experience disappointment as there is no measurable search traffic for that phrase.

So, on one side is a phrase so popular you are unlikely to rank high enough to be seen. On the other is a phrase with no competition, which occurs because nobody is searching for it. The secret lies in the “sweet spot,” a balance of searchers actually searching and competition reasonable enough to get results. So how do you identify these keyword opportunities?

New Brand Campaign Development for the Fish Quay

As part of the Fish Quay Business Hub and with support from North Tyneside Council, Armadillo is working on a campaign to promote the North Shields Fish Quay. The work involves a range of digital and offline media to highlight the historic Quay both as an area for tourism and as a desirable business location. A website design and build that was launched in December http://www.thefishquay.com/ includes a variety of media such as original and archive photography, video clips, stories, property downloads and desktop calendars. The site has a huge range of content that details the rich history of the Fish Quay alongside spotlighting the modern, working Quay and its new business opportunities.

Caddy Charger’s positive launch

Armadillo was appointed to create the web and brand identity for Caddy Charger, a revolutionary rechargeable battery unit for motorised golf caddies. The new technology has been developed in conjunction with Newcastle University and was launched into the market in December. Armadillo created a brand identity for Caddy Charger, as well as developing packaging, an e-commerce website, product labeling and national advertising. The work communicates the innovative and unique qualities of the product, along with its great value.Caddy Charger MD, David Bainbridge said of his decision to work with Armadillo “I’m delighted to have Caddy Charger’s launch in the hands of such an enthusiastic and skilled team. Armadillo get what we’re about and I’ve been really impressed with the way they work and the suggestions they’ve made to get us to market.” 

PPC or Organic SEO – Which Works Better?

As challenging as the competitive field of search engine optimisation (SEO) is, it might seem as if a large spend on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is the answer. Organic SEO has its own costs, in education and time, or in hiring an expert. Possibly PPC would offer a better return?

While the best strategy for many businesses is to do both, ultimately the answer to our question of the better value comes down to costs per click (CPC) and conversion percentages once a visitor arrives at the site.

Some conventional wisdom has stated that PPC works better for business-to-business offerings, while organic SEO works better for business-to-consumer offerings. While this may have held some truth in the past, one thing is now clear… paid search traffic is on a continuing decline.

As none of the inner data from search engines is public, SEO experts have long been left to cobble together estimates using leaked data and market intelligence.

A few years ago, estimates were that roughly 30% of clicks went to paid listings, leaving 70% for organic. Part of the reason for this was that the public wasn’t crystal clear on the difference between paid and organic results. By 2008 this number had dropped to closer to 11%, and in 2009 dropped 26% more to 7.25% (Source: Experian Hitwise). This means that organic results are receiving almost 93% of all clicks.