Mobile, social video and messaging apps: The big trends to inform your 2017 strategy
Each year, analyst Mary Meeker, a partner at KPCB does a rather fantastic job of curating a vast range of pertinent internet marketing stats , and 2016 is no exception. Her 213 slide presentation is 'packed to the gills' with a panoply of charts, graphs and data. You can view the whole deck below:
For those without the time to browse all 213 slides, we've picked out they key points for marketers, just as we did last year, so you can stay abreast of the latest trends.
#1 Rapid Smartphone growth concentrated in emerging markets
We saw last year that mobile outstripped desktop for the first time when it came to web traffic. This year we see Smartphone use continuing its strong…
How does the digital maturity of your business compare?
Although digital marketing cannot be called new with the advent of the web now over 25 years old, this new research from Adobe shows that relatively few companies have mastered digital marketing. Only 19% of North American organizations and 7% of European organizations rate their digital maturity as “Advanced” when reviewing processes, data integration and technical skills.
Digital maturity definitions from the research shown in the figure are.
Advanced: Data mostly integrated, best practices generally followed, automation common, strong technical skills
Focused: Data and processes somewhat integrated, automation common, solid and expanding technical skills
Emergent: Basic data integration, some automation, growing technical capacity
Nonexistent: Limited data in silos, no automation, low technical capacity
This pattern of a low-level of maturity is similar to that we…
A sizeable majority of millennials shop via their phones, yet many still worry about payment security.
For any online retailer to thrive and enjoy a fair share of the market, it is imperative to understand Millennials’ smartphone habits. 28% of Millennials in the United States indicated that they prefer shopping online using their mobile devices as opposed to computers. Millennials now make up 26% of the total population and it is no wonder that they are influencing the online shopping trends.
Coupofy conducted a study on more than 2000 Millennials in the USA so as to understand their mobile shopping habits. We established that 73% of the Millennials use their smartphones to find locations, 67% to play games while 59% use their mobile devices for online shopping.
42% of the Millennials feel unsafe making online payments using their smartphones while 32% feel safe and secure about online payments. When even the digitally native generations worry about…
See the explosive growth of mobile in real time
Because of the massive shift towards mobile over the past few years, it's difficult to overstate it's importance to marketers. This Infographic shows how online users are spending their time and highlights the scale of the trend towards mobile. To create it we analyzed raw internet traffic statistics, to provide users with analytics to reflect average day-to-day usage trends. From the number of tweets sent from mobile devices to number of people accessing Facebook to even the number of Snapchat photos uploaded on an hourly basis. Here are some ways the stats presented here could help you:
Effective Targeting
Let’s say you are looking at the most appropriate launch pad for your product, you can use some of the crucial data that the infographic provides, such as:
Every hour 159,817 products are purchased on mobile devices from Amazon marketplace sellers
Alibaba generates 542,237 in mobile ad revenues
…
Social media is massively disrupting the online news industry
The era of online publishers may be coming to its end. More and more statistics are showing that people receive news from sites such as Facebook rather than going to traditional media sources. Furthermore, once people read news from social outlets, they generally discuss the stories on their on Facebook and Twitter pages rather than on the sites where the pieces originated. This means, online publishers are losing traffic as a result of social media rather than experiencing further growth.
Since Facebook announced its new “Instant Articles” feature, which allows anyone to publish articles almost automatically, the threat is becoming even more real. After all, if anyone can produce content with automatic access to a built-in audience as well as conversational tools, why would anyone ever need authentic online news sources?
This is the dilemma the industry is currently facing--and the signs are…
Social is the perfect way to influence your potential customers
Social selling is much discussed and often overused. People sending out endless tweets about your products gets tiring fast, and is unlikely to get anyone's attention. But if you can leverage the power of social media to influence your customers at the research stage of their buyer journey, it can be a very powerful tool.
A new study, which surveyed 2,017 people aged 18 and over, shows that 41% of people follow brands to see new product ranges when they launch and 35% use social to get ideas about what to buy when they next go shopping. This is somewhat higher for 18- to 24-year-olds at 47% and 40%, respectively.
Don't sell, influence
Once someone knows what they want, organic social is no longer necessarily the best tool for targeting that person. By that point, email, on-site optimisation or remarketing via social or display networks…
The way people use social sharing is changing markedly. Does this mean the 'collapse of context'?
That we see changes in the way people use social networks is hardly surprising since social media demographics have changed. Networks once dominated by teenagers are being 'invaded' by the middle-aged and elderly. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is the over 65s. Not just that, the very college students that started out as Facebook's core user base are now in their 30s, and probably settling down, starting to have kids.
But some of the ways Facebook is changing could prove to be a threat to the very characteristics that make Facebook so successful. The latest figures on social sharing from GWI show what Facebook itself calls the 'collapse of context', where people are sharing far less about their personal lives, and instead tend to share things not personal to them, such as news articles.
The number of…
New research on how email readers interact with marketing emails
Those of you familiar with the latest email marketing stats will already know how important 'mobile opens' are. In fact, emails opened on smartphones and tablets make up over half of all emails opened over the last three years according to a new report from Yesmail. This research makes a compelling case for upgrading to responsive email designs, or if you already have them, for optimising them.
The importance of mobile email readership makes responsive email design more crucial than ever, because users expect attractive emails across devices, and are unlikely to click through on an email which looks poorly formatted because wasn't designed to appear on a mobile device.
Responsive design is key for boosting mobile clicks
Regardless of whether your emails have responsive designs, over half your email opens will be happening on mobile devices. However, if you don't have responsive designs, most…
New study shows how shoppers are using their Smartphones in store
We're all familiar with 'showrooming', where people visit a shop to compare products and then buy it online later, often at a cheaper price. Until a few years ago, buying online generally entailed going home, logging on and remembering exactly what is was you fancied buying back when you were in store. Easily done with big ticket items like laptops, fridges or bikes, but not so easy with products like clothes or food. Generally by the time you get home you've forgotten exactly what it was you were looking at.
But the massive advance in mobile technology over the past few years means that now pretty much every consumer has a computer in their pocket capable of checking prices in seconds. No longer is there any need to remember what you were looking at for when you get home, the whole showrooming…
Measure your brand's growth rate on social against the industry average
That social networks are still growing rapidly should come as no surprise. In 2014 a quarter of the world's population was active on social media, but by 2018 it is predicted a third of the world will be active. That is a massive increase of almost a billion new people in just 4 years.
The term 'fastest growing' can be defined in a number of ways. If you calculate it in percentage terms, then it will be the newer, smaller social networks that come out on top. For example, if the new social network 'Peach' went from having 10,000 to 100,000 followers in a year then it would have grown at 900%. By this measure, it would be faster growing than a more established network which had growth of 10 million users in a year, even though it had…
