On the go

If you're wondering if mobile computing is ever really going to "take off," check out these astounding statistics from a variety of sources:

• 1.7 billion people using mobile internet services by 2013.*
• By 2014, mobile internet is estimated to overcome PC internet use.*
• 56% of American adults are now smartphone owners. (Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2013)
• Mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans’ media consumption time, triple its share in 2009. (Source: Digiday, 2013)
• Twice as many web ready mobile devices today as PCs.*
• 700% growth in traffic on smart phones by 2015.*
• Of the 70 percent of shoppers who used a mobile phone while in a retail store during the holidays, 62 percent accessed that store’s site or app and only 37 percent of respondents accessed a competitor’s site or app. (Source: ForeSee, 2013)
• Retailers’ apps with store mode gather five times more engagement. (Source: Point Inside, 2013)
• Last year, only 12% of consumers bought anything through social media. (Source: PwC, 2013)
• By the end of 2013, there were more mobile devices on Earth than people. (Source: Cisco, 2013)
• Mobile internet is growing faster than desktop internet ever did.*
• Mobile data traffic is expected to increase by almost 4000% by 2014.*
• 25% of international media and marketing executives see mobile as the most disruptive force in their industry. (Source: AdMedia Partners, 2013)
• 65% of U.S. shoppers research products and services on a PC and make a purchase in-store. (Source: Cisco, 2013)
• 54% use or would like to use digital touchscreens in-store. (Source: Cisco, 2013)
• 48% use or would like to use a smartphone to shop while in-store or on the go. (Source: Cisco, 2013)
• 80% of smartphone owners want more mobile-optimized product information while they’re shopping in stores. (Source: Moosylvania, 2013)
• Nearly 50% of shoppers believe they are better informed than store associates. (Source: Motorola, 2013)
• Americans spend an average of 2.7 hours on mobile internet each day.*
• 75 percent of Americans bring their phones to the bathroom. (Source: Digiday, 2013)
• Mobile brand exposure can be more effective than other media messages. Mobile internet users are 60% more likely to be open to mobile advertising than the average mobile data user.*
• Mobile visits to Facebook increased by 112% and Twitter by 374%.*
• It took 20 years for the first billion mobile internet subscribers and only 40 months for the second billion.*

          *Data collected from Adobe Web Analytics, Omniture, Smart Insights, Mobile Marketing Statistics 2013 by eSchool.

The summary of all that data (and there was much more I could have included) is that mobile computing is exploding.  What that means, is that while many of us marketers are struggling to figure out how to make social media relevant and valuable to our marketing strategy, we must now also consider mobile computing.

Including mobile computing into your marketing strategy is more than just making sure your website looks good on a smartphone.  It is figuring out how to use the unique aspects of mobile computing to enhance the customer's shopping experience.  It might include promotions or strategies to lure people who are near your physical location into your establishment, or it might be ways to engage visitors once they cross the threshhold.

It also means you need to understand that customers are comparison shopping while in your store; with your competitors and with your own online presence.

Marketing and communications are changing.  The tools that we have to reach customers and other stakeholders are constantly changing as well.  And the speed of that change seems to ramping up faster than the speeds of computers.

The important thing to remember is that the key responsibility of marketing to communicate with and develop relationships with customers and prospective customers has not changed.  You probably won't participate in every new tech innovation that comes along.  You probably shouldn't.  But don't have your head in the sand either.  Keep yourself aware of what the opportunities are and identify those that are strong opportunities for your business.  Then try your best to take advantage of all the new opportunties to make your brand shine.

You need to adapt some of the new technology.  You don't want to stay in one place because your customers are obviously on the go!

Related articles

• 7 Ways Mobile Will Change Business In 2014
• Do you have a people strategy?

The ever-expanding collapsing world

There are a lot of amazing things about the information and capabilities the internet now places at our fingertips.  There is little that a curious mind can't access at a moments notice.  You don't even need to be in front of a computer anymore!  Phones and tablets and Google Glasses allow us to access the web from virtually anywhere!

The sheer volume of information available has prompted a plethora of tools to help us manage the information we are bombarded with.  From news to music, friends to movies, there are websites and web tools that will evaluate what we have read or watched or listened to in the past and tailor our news feed or internet radio stations accordingly.

This is amazingly appealing!  No longer do I have to scroll past the latest exploits of Justin Bieber or the dust up in Syria to get to the football scores or the report on the city council meeting.  No longer must I suffer through the latest alt- country hit to listen to my favorite dub step tunes.  Netflix will even tell me what movie I should watch!

But like so many things, there is a cost to that convenience.  A cost that I often worry about being higher than most of us believe.

I worry that we are greatly reducing the opportunity for accidental discoveries.  When you read the newspaper, you cannot help but see an article or two about something you never knew about.  And if you never knew about it, you probably didn't have it in your pre-programmed news feed that pops up on your screen each morning.  When you listen to the radio, you have to listen to a lot of music that you would never have picked.  Since traditional radio doesn't have a skip button, you have two choices.  Listen to the song or stop listening to the station.  Occasionally, one of the tunes strikes your fancy.  Occasionally, you will run into an artist, or a genre that you you love but would have never considered listening to previously.

Ultimately, however, I am not worried about people's exposure to music and literature as I am to their awareness of the world.  We have seen example after example of the powerful things that happen when the internet opens up the world to a community, a country or a culture.  There are wonderful stories of people expanding their horizons and achieving great things despite their age, physical limitations, geography or previous education because of the resources of the internet.  We have seen people around the world respond instantly with words of support and donations of dollars, euros, yen and rubles.

It seems ironic then that this same powerful tool that has done so much to expand the world for so many seems to be intent on collapsing it on many of us, all in the name of convenience.

I am not arguing against recommendation lists.  I use them regularly.  The danger lies in relying on them and them alone to identify what parts of the world you interact with.

Its a wonderful wide world.  Don't close the door on it!

Related articles

• Debatable

Too much of a good thing

I made a mistake a while back.  I contributed to a political party.  The reason that was a mistake is now they will not stop calling me.   On a recent weekend (not during an election mind you), I got four calls asking for donations.  I have asked to be taken off of their call list.

(Photo credit: :: Wendy ::)

In a similar mistake, I signed up for something online that is supposed to support my high school alma mater. Very soon I was getting emails every day trying to sell me something.  I have stopped even looking at those emails.  They now get deleted as soon as they show up in my inbox.  I haven't yet taken myself off of the distribution list out of some sort of alumni guilt.  That is probably going to change soon.

With the cost of reaching out to customers and prospective customers falling to almost nothing, it is more important than ever that companies and organizations remember who bears the greatest cost every time they reach out to a contact.  The contact does.

Even with permission marketing, you can reach out too much.  Even with those who are already your fans or supporters or customers, if you call four times in one weekend, you are going to annoy them.

Organizations need to understand that there is a cost of time and attention every time they call or email someone.  They need to be sensitive to the fact that both time and attention are in short supply for most people.  IF they are going to contact you frequently, they should provide you something of value with that contact.  IF they are going to contact you frequently, they should recognize that it is easy to cross the line into annoyance and get put on the don't call list.

In the best of situations, organizations create reasons for their customers and supporters to reach out to them!  It's hard to overdo it when you have your customers contacting you!

The Broken Promise of the Internet

"As an advertising medium, the web is like communism. It's never very good right now, but it's always going to be great some day."        Bob Hoffman, The Ad Contrarian

The promise of the web is intense, amazing, awe-inspiring, breath-taking, mind-blowing, [insert wonderment adjective of choice here].  The reality of the web depends on who you are and what you hope to get out of it.

To the casual user who likes that disputes can be instantly settled with a Google search on their smart phone, the internet meets its promise and then some.

To the teacher who is looking for new tools to excite his students with, the internet meets expectations, even though bandwidth doesn't always.

To my Dad, who knows that he would enjoy the wonders of the internet, but he is a little afraid of doing something wrong and breaking something, the internet represents a tantalizing mystery.

To businesses, who are trying to figure out how to use it as a promotional tool, the internet is often more than a little frustrating.  Banner ads and pop up ads don't usually live up to their promised effectiveness.  Facebook page "likes" and Pinterest "pins" often (usually) don't translate into sales.  

For a business, its all about generating sales.  For businesses born in the time of the internet, like Netflix and Amazon, the internet has been awesome.  For most businesses that had a brick and mortar existence before the era of Google and You Tube, the internet, while awe inspiring, has been less than awesome.

Many companies that were around before 1980 that have had financial success on the internet have basically moved their catalog operation online (think Lands' End).  A few industries have transitioned to providing their services online (such as H&R Block).   

Regardless, the internet hasn't been the land of milk and honey that so many were predicting in its infancy.   It HAS transformed business and the way we communicate and gather information.  It HAS transformed whole industries and created new ones.  It just hasn't been the advertising panacea that some were claiming it would be in the 80's.    

And it certainly hasn't proven itself as an advertising powerhouse as many expected and some promised.  Clicks and likes haven't translated to dollars and cents.  For many, if not most online advertisers, the promise of internet advertising appears to be a broken promise.

The incredible long-term cost of charging for doughnuts.

Yesterday, NPR ran a story about how a brief period of charging for doughnuts has forever sullied the reputation of the Red Cross among many veterans.  It is worth a listen and, as the story suggests, it is worth consideration as companies and entrepreneurs try to figure out how to make money off of the internet.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret?utm_source=fp&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20120716

The Timelessness of the Internet

Internet Curmudgeon time. 

I know that the Internet is forever, but that doesn't necessarily mean  that everything that everyone writes online is timeless.

Why does it seem to be so difficult for writers or search engines or web designers (or seemingly anyone) to attach a date of original publication on pages?  All I want is to be able to tell the timliness of blogs and essays that I find in doing internet research. 

I was recently doing some research and found a report that seemed to nicely meet my needs.  Then, about 5 paragraphs into the document, there was speculation about how President Bush would react to the issue.  A seven year-old document has much different relevance than one written in the last few weeks.

This doesn't seem like a hard thing to do.


Some other posts you might enjoy:
Primary Elections and Local Ads
After Midnight
Put a Stamp On It 

4.6 Billion People Can't Read This Blog

My wife and I came home from a trip recently to find that our land line and Internet service were not working.  A call (on my cellphone) to the phone company indicated there was "a break in the line."

In addition to wondering why it was going to take them 4 days to get someone out to look into it, this has made me realize just how dependent we have become on the Internet.  We use it to look up phone numbers, recent news, movie show times; to Skype with our kids in college; to retrieve documents from our computers at work; to write and post blogs...a lot of things.  Is it any wonder that marketers want to be online?

Statistics from the US Census Bureau, Nielson Online and others indicate that Internet usage in North America has reached 78.6% and 32.7% worldwide.  That is a lot.  But is also means that means that 21.4% of North Americans (including us last weekend) and 67.3% of the population worldwide are NOT plugged into the Internet.  That is more than 74 million people in North America  and 4.6 billion worldwide who can't read this blog.  Would you mind printing it out for them?  

I can't think of any companies that would consciously thumb their noses at a market of more than 4.6 billion people.  Not even Wal-Mart.  I think that companies would be wise, as they engage their enthusiasm for the bright, shiny social media, to take a careful look at their market and make sure that a good portion of it isn't a part of the 4.6 billion.

11 year old boys

Everyone in marketing and public relations knows that they should be involved with social media and the internet.  Every company that markets (which means every company) knows that they need to have a presence on the internet because 1) It makes them look modern and "with it," 2) that is where they think their customers might be, 3) everyone is talking about social media so that must be where things are happening, 4) it doesn't cost anything to send an email so why not? or 5) all of the above.

The trouble is knowing you should and knowing how are two different things.  As I read recently in Fast Company magazine, "[companies and] brands on the internet are like 11 year old boys.  They know that they want girls to talk to them, but when they do, they don't know what to say."

It seems to me, many companies are putting the cart before the horse.  Instead of deciding you want to jump into social media and then figuring out what you should say, instead you should be deciding what your story is BEFORE thinking about the best venue or venues to tell it.  Often the nature of the story will dictate the appropriate media to tell it in.  While many stories work well on the internet, some are best told on radio, or by postcard, or an in-store display.

Like that 11 year old boy, you should figure out what you want to say before you start passing notes in class!


Some of my other posts you might enjoy:

• Tell Stories http://allismarketing.blogspot.com/2011/10/tell-stories.html

• The Marketing Value of Social Media http://allismarketing.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-value-of-social-media.html