I have graphed some Country (as well as specific USA state) average internet connection speeds (up until June 2011) and the results continue to show a wide range of service delivery.

We used the Akamai tool to produce these – it’s an excellent source of data and if you use the tool live from their site there are many more countries and US states to analyze (you can also sign up for their highly detailed reports on fixed line and mobile data stats).

Fastest Average Connection Speeds by Country

The figures above run from Q3 2007 until Q2 2011 for USA, China, South Korea, UK, India, Japan and Australia. These are only averages within a country of course and the speeds that any one individual will enjoy will be influenced by a very wide range of factors, not just technical, but many of which are regional or geographic such as distance from network hubs and density of user population.

For those of you who really want to understand more and dig deeper into the detail then the Akamai reports have a load of information. These are averages and more can be learned about the performance of broadband (greater than 2 Mbps), and “high broadband” ( 5 Mbps or greater). They classify narrowband for connections slower than 256 kbps.

Speed isn’t everything of course however there are not many who would disagree that investment in infrastructure reflects the determination of a country or region to be leaders, not followers, in these digital days… 

Fastest Average Connection Speeds by US State

Looking at a selection of US states (if you don’t see your State here then just check out the live tool for yourself) you can see the significant variations in average internet connection speed. The ranking may have been fairly predictable however there is an argument to say that equal access to the internet for all should become something of a right. After all, it’s not just your social viewing habits being disadvantaged by substandard access times – Businesses as well as government agencies need to be able to rely on fast access for all – and slower speeds affect the usability of certain sites, especially those rich in multimedia.

When you consider that even within individual U.S. states there are significant differences between cities then you will appreciate that individuals’ personal experiences will vary from the averages shown above. The graphics do however demonstrate that access to the web is certainly no level playing field and if legislators are looking for something worthwhile to throw some stimulating investment at in these days of lower economic growth – then this might be a good place to start? 

Aristotle knew a thing or two about quality. He even wrote a catchy maxim about it: “Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” Indeed, it is a habit which online marketers would be wise to pick up if they’re going to stand a chance of making an impact on their target audience. Today’s consumer expects premium media, so let’s take a look at a few ways to ensure that you’re on the right track to providing content that soars above the rest of the pack.

THE POWER OF STORYTELLING
He has 138,469 followers on Twitter … and he’s a completely fictional character:  the Old Spice Guy. Why would any human with an inkling of sanity desire to get constant updates from a person who doesn’t really exist? Old Spice managed to create an emotional attachment through the consumer’s funnybone, then created rich online content to further the storyline.  

We want to know what the Old Spice Guy is going to say next, or even better, what he thinks about us (“Clearly you are a man of great smell, Jeremy,” he recently informed a lucky deodorant user). Old Spice figured out they had stumbled across a good thing, and has therefore devoted every element of online content to furthering the mythos they so hilariously brought to life.

MAKE IT SHARABLE
These days, most of us are marketed to by the people whose opinion we value most: our friends.  Social networks like Facebook have given enormous potential to any online content you create, provided it’s something that others will want to share. A glance at Nike’s Facebook page reveals that they’ve made it their mission to provide premium sharable content to their followers, which has in turn led to millions of views from consumers who would not have otherwise taken the time to visit a Nike website.

TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
Most Americans aren’t tuning into C-SPAN on a regular basis because most members of Congress lack the fundamental quality necessary to hold the average audience’s attention: brevity. Whatever media you’re providing, make sure you’re able to communicate it as swiftly as possible, as other options are always just a mouse-click away.

FINAL THOUGHTS
By focusing on succinct, sharable content that tells a compelling story, an online marketing campaign can distinguish itself from the competition and set itself up for a deeply rewarding relationship with its intended audience.

A practical business guide to developing a Digital Marketing Strategy

So What is Digital Marketing?
Businesses face many challenges when it comes to marketing on the internet. From the dynamic rate of change on the web to the multitude of different suppliers offering various online marketing services, sophisticated ecommerce web design tools and platforms it all adds to the choices, options and potential confusion. The sheer volume of online information available on these subjects means that it’s becoming very difficult for businesses to make informed decisions about how to market their business on the internet.

On top of all this we have the jargon to contend with; PPC, SEM, SEO, CPA, PPC, CPC, CMS, wiki, blog, mash-ups (you know I could go on). You might have a good understanding of what all this means if you are active in the internet marketing world, however if you are a typical managing director (or even a  traditional marketing manager)  this is highly likely to completely confuse you. This post attempts to discuss a business focussed approach to marketing on the internet and key steps involved in developing an internet marketing strategy or a digital marketing strategy as it’s becoming more commonly known.

The Changing Nature of the Internet
So the web is growing (yes I am stating the obvious) and the growth statistics are staggering. The ‘Build it and they will come’ philosophy has never worked when it comes to websites and while that message has taken a long time to permeate the business world another myth has arisen – ‘facebook it’ and they will come’. The hype around social media has now led many business to believe that there is a panacea of traffic and customers they can access by simply ‘getting involved’ with the big social media sites. This is again myth and while the evolution of the web has opened up great new opportunities and new routes to market for businesses the reality is you need to act smart to get results and acting smart online means you need to be more well informed than ever.

The way the web works has changed. New web technologies have made it possible for non technical users to interact with the web in all sorts of ways and this interaction is what we typically call ‘social media’ a term which actually does a pretty poor job in defining the range of interactions happening online from business chat, support channels, consumer feedback, reviews, online video, blogs etc.  It’s not just about the big social networks. As these levels of interaction go up, the volume of content online is increasing exponentially and there are many ways to access information in many different formats.

Google and Digital Marketing
This change in the web has led a myth that search engine rankings (Google Rankings) are no longer as important as they once were and ‘social media’ interaction should be the main focus of online marketing. While you do need to look wider when planning your internet marketing efforts,  Google is still an absolutely fundamental piece of the puzzle and actually still the best place to start when thinking about marketing on the web. Sure there are lots of Facebook users but if you think about where you typically go online when looking for a product, product review, researching a topic etc then Google is still the main starting point for most web journeys. Just by looking at the Google search results these days you can see how they are blending in video, blogs, news, social results etc thereby putting their search engine right in the centre of multiple content channels and acting as a conduit to the ‘social web’. Their social search - functionality takes this one step further by personalising user search results based on their social network connections.

Online Market Research
The research phase of online marketing is possibly the most important yet probably the most overlooked step in most online marketing efforts. It’s important for business to understand the landscape they are trying to compete in before entering into a space online. The outputs from an online market research exercise should  include all kinds of information, from data on how people search for related products and services, data on specific keywords and key phrases used in search, profiles of web properties associated with target markets, Industry sites, blogs, forums, social groups and so on. This is what I would call the digital profile for a market . Once this has been mapped out the next stage becomes much clearer

Online Market Research  – Practical Steps
Simply think like a user/customer – Start with Google and start searching on keywords and key phrase related to your business/products etc and focus on your user journey. Take note of the type of sites which are ranking and also the types of content (video, blogs, forums, shopping feeds results, social results etc). After a while you will find most of the highest ranking (high authority) sites in your market as well as the sort of content which seems to rank such as video content and so on. Use the sidebar on Google to break down results into different types of content (blogs, discussion etc) and see what ranks in these sub sections, click on related searches to help you brainstorm different keywords related to your market etc.

Keyword Research – Use the  Google Adwords Keyword tool to get some real Google data on how often terms are actually searched for on Google.

Social Media Analysis – There are  lots of specialist social media monitoring/analytics tools available but you can learn a lot by just exploring what others are doing on social media sites. Check your competitors presence on Facebook and sign up to follow them on Twitter. Look out for best practice. You will know what best practice is when you see active user engagement. It’s not about the numbers of fans/followers its about how engaged they are.

Competitor Analysis – Use sites like Alexa, Semrush and Compete to get great data about competitor sites, ranking details, demographics of visitors etc. There are advanced paid options with most of these sites/tools but free versions still give you lots of good data.

More advanced toolkits are available from reputable companies such as the excellent Seomoz toolkit which I use myself and the Hub Spot products which are also very well regarded.

Digital Marketing Activity
So once your company better understands its space online and has done the ground work on online market research, competitor research etc. the next step, in theory is simple. You want to put your business, your products and your key messages right in front of your target customer audience. This means you want to rank on Google for the main keywords you have researched and you want your content to be placed on many of the relevant sites and web properties that you found when you were running through your customer journey  exercise. All of this can be summarised by the following phrases – ‘Develop great content and do very smart things with that content’ . The video below explores what this might involve in terms of what needs done on your website and what you need to do off-site (interaction around the web, social media etc).

Outsource Digital Marketing?
The decision on whether to outsource all digital marketing or bring in-house (or blend both) is an important but difficult decisions for many businesses to make. The video below explains some of the key factors that companies should consider before making this decision.

Digital Marketing Recruitment
If the web is important enough for you to bring thet relevant skills inhouse by recruiting for online marketing people or upskilling internal staff then visit our Online Markting Jobs UK section. These pages have  information on digital  marketing job roles & descriptions, key definitions & job specs.

** Our most recent update for 2011 can be seen here **

One of our more commented on posts included a table showing how the countries of the world ranked according to fastest Internet speeds. This report is published by Akamai every quarter and the findings taken from data gathered across Akamai’s global server network. In our previous post,  data from Q3 2009 had been reviewed so we felt it was time to get an updated report.

Attack traffic
The stats for attack traffic include denial of service attacks and the report highlights one customer that had a peak request rate of over 9,000x normal levels. Last year’s fourth quarter was reported to return a lower concentration of attack traffic compared to the third. It will be interesting to see what the figures are like for the first half of 2011 as there appears to be a higher number of both DOS and compromised security hacks, although it could just be the profile of the companies being targeted.

Key changes within the Originating Countries table for Attack Traffic were Russian moving to the top of the table for originating countries with 10% of attack traffic, while the United States dropped to fifth place with 7.3%.

Global Mobile Connectivity
Although not included in the previous post, we thought this was worthwhile including here given the growth in Mobile Connectivity.

• The highest average connection speed was from a mobile provider in Greece, at just over 4.5 Mbps. The speeds on known mobile providers around the world ranged from this high down to 134Kbps.
• The highest average peak connection speed was from a UK mobile provider, at nearly 21.2 Mbps while the global lowest was barely more than 1Mbps.
• Content consumption grew quarter-over-quarter for 62 of Akamai’s listed providers, with 89 providers experiencing increased content consumption compared to the previous year’s final quarter.

Connection Speeds
So without further ado, here’s the updated tables for Q4 2010 showing internet speeds by Country!

Akamai measure in two ways:

• Average Connection Speed
• Average Peak Connection Speed – this is more representative of the capacity of the Internet connection as it is an average of the maximum measured connection speeds

In the report, the first tables are ordered by country but in later papers Akamai details cities. Akamai reported that there was significant growth in some countries e.g. Belgium grew by 14% and while some countries saw declines these weren’t by significant values. It is worth noting that all of the countries within the top ten, and including the United States are recorded as maintaining an average connection speed higher than the “high broadband” threshold of 5Mbps. Other countries are not as fortunate and Mayotte is Akamai’s slowest country, with an average connection speed of 54 Kbps.

How fast are you?

Why not check out your current connection speed and let us know how fast you are. To get the ball rolling, here’s a test from our office location using the free tool from http://www.speedtest.net/

“The particular importance of both branded and non-branded organic search, together representing over 60 percent of the purchase influence factor for retailers, was probably the most surprising result from the initial Retail AAI,” says Randy Smith, ClearSaleing’s co-founder and President. “What was also noteworthy was the cumulative impact of multiple marketing and advertising touches from a range of media sources that cause retail customers to ultimately purchase. These sources work synergistically. Remove any one and you can impact the relative influence of all,” he adds.

ClearSaleing and Vetra will publish the Internet Retail version of the American Attribution Index (AAI) on a quarterly basis using a widget application. They will also publish relevant retail attribution management news and items of interest along with the Index. Subscriptions will be available beginning in the 4th quarter to the Internet Retail AAI.

Customized Indices

ClearSaleing can also provide etailers with a custom AAI that will take into account the etailer’s operation size, its customers’ behavioral patterns in the past, its price points and other factors to enable etailers to have an optimum analysis of their ROI performance.