International Digital Marketing

Social Media, Social Networks, Social Commerce … there is no escaping social these days especially after the launch of Google+. We communicate with the consumers via wall posts and tweets, build our business network in LinkedIn instead of meeting face-to-face and handle customer service via Twitter. But maybe we are right to become so obsessed with Social Media.

According to an European comScore MobiLens study, the mobile social networking has increased  44% in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK during 2011. What is even more interesting is that more than 40% of the European Mobile Social Networking users are engaging with brands.

 Snapshot of the 2011 European mobile market

•  UK and Spain are leading countries in Smartphone usage with 46.9% and 46.3% penetration respectively, compared to the European average of 40.1%. Germany has the lowest Smartphone penetration with 33%.
• British and Spanish mobile users also use non pre-installed apps above European average of 34.5%, UK with 44.9% and Spain with 35.4%. Germans have the lowest percentage with 30.4%.
• 46.9% of the mobile users in the UK and 35.3% in France use browser, compared to the European average of 35%. Germans users browse the least with 28.4%.
• 33.8% of the British , 30.1% of the Italian and 28.7% of the Spanish users play mobile games, compared to the European average of 26.5%. French users play games the least with 15.6%.
• Sending text messages is the most popular mobile activity across all five European markets, the average reaching 82.9%.
• 32.6% of the Spanish mobile users listen to music, above European average of 25.9%. Only 23.3% of the French use mobile to listen to music.
• 35.1% of the UK mobile users access news, way above European average of 18.5%. Germans are the least interested on news, with 15.7%.
• 35.1% of the UK mobile users access social networks and blogs well above average of 23.5%. Germans were the least social with 17.3%

 Increasing mobile social network addiction

 55.1 million European mobile users accessed social networks or blogs via mobile devices in September 2011 only, representing 23.5% of the total mobile audience. Not only did the mobile social media usage nearly double, but 47% of the users accessed social networks and blogs daily.

“Over the past year we have seen social networking use grow rapidly among mobile users across Europe, driven largely by the growth in smartphone adoption, making it easier than ever for users to stay connected and engage in social activities while on-the-go,” stated Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe vice president for Mobile. “More notably, the rate of growth in daily social networking usage has surpassed even the rate of growth in total social networking adoption among mobile users, suggesting that the behavior is becoming even more ingrained into people’s daily mobile lives. As social networks continue to invest in improving the user experience on mobile devices and tablets, it will be interesting to see how social behaviours on the mobile platform further evolve.”

 Interestingly, while most of the European mobile users accessed social networking sites via browser (31.3 million), the usage of social network mobile apps doubled to 24.2 million.

Mobile Social Networking Activities

Finally good news for marketers: 44% of the mobile social networking users admitted reading posts from brands and about 27% reported receiving offers, coupons or deals on their mobiles.

 What comes to other activities, 74% of the users read posts from people they know and 62% updated their status. Peer recommendation also has an important role with 35% of the users posting links to websites and 49% of the users following posted links to websites.

Leading European mobile social networks

In 2011 Facebook increased its European mobile audience 54% up to 39 million. This represents 71% of the EU5 mobile social networking audience positioning Facebook as a clear leader. However, even if the social network gathered the most users, it did not experience as big growth as its competitors: Twitter grew its mobile audience 115% up to 8.6 million, 2.2 million unique users accessed LinkedIn increasing network’s mobile users by 134% and the Spanish social network Tuenti grew by 60% gathering 2.3 million unique users.

Go social, think local

The results highlight the importance of Social Media in European brand communication strategy. With localized mobile site and social network pages brands can increase user engagement and user referrals, and the little snapshot of the social media activities can provide some insight to the best tactics in each country. While building a game app seems to work in the UK and Spain, a mobile game might not be very successful in France.

Reaching European audience is tricky because of the different languages, cultures and customs, but for brand to engage with the European audience, social media seems like a good starting point.

Augmented reality mobile apps’ future looks bright. According to Juniper, by 2015 global revenues from AR will reach 1.5 billion dollars. ABI Research forecasted that even if in 2010 revenue from AR was only 21 million dollars, amount might very well increase to 3 billion dollars by 2016. But it gets better: AIB claims that revenues related to AR will increase from 6 million dollars in 2009 to more than 3.5 billion dollars in 2014 – which signifies a yearly growth of 97%.

Main reason for the growth and high predictions is the exploding global use of Smartphones, which are able to run the augmented reality apps, and the big brands which are very keen to take advantage of the new shiny toy.

No wonder Google and Apple want the biggest piece of the cake. And are ready to fight for it.

Augmented reality – a new way to see the world

Long way short, augmented reality apps allow user to see digital text, animations, links or images in real time on top of the real life environment via mobile devices. For example, only by placing the mobile front of a painting in Rome, user can get information of the painter, history or dimensions. Or more fun example: user can play real life pac man, where the players look like computer pac man characters (through mobile of course). Basically, the possibilities are endless. See list of interesting AR apps here.

Blooming augmented reality market

At present, most of the augmented reality elements focus on marketing and entertainment, but there has been some experiments with online shopping experience, ecommerce, tourism and search. Layar (http://layar.com) is currently the leader developing AR apps for both Android OS and iPhone OS, including advertising, reviews, ratings or other information users need in real time. Yelp is another rating and review service, mobile media company Ogmento creates AR mobile games and Wikitude shows the user in real world the information from Wikipedia and other sources.

Google and Apple: augmented reality rivals

Google and Apple are very interested in the possibilities augmented reality can bring, since both Android and iPhone have computer vision technologies that rely on Smartphone cameras. Other companies have developed AR apps for both OS, but it brings a small revenue compared to the profit and business opportunities a fully owned killer AR app could bring. In addition Google has already picked up a fight with Yelp, one of the providers.

Google started by creating Goggles, a mobile app for Android and iOS which can translate text, get more information out of contact info, artwork and books besides of recognizing landmarks, logos and wine labels. However unlike Augmented reality, Googles does not process and present things in real time. It takes a photo, sends it to Google’s servers, which recognize and translate it before sending the result back.

Apple meanwhile has acquired Polar Rose, a company which has created facial recognition software and other elements that enable the “automatic creation of events based on visual cues in images.” This brings enormous possibilities on social networking area.

Apple/ Facebook Partnership?

Facebook and Google do not like each other. Apple and Google do not like each other. What would be a better partnership than ganging against a common enemy?

Apple has the iPhone OS and technology, and Facebook its Facebook Places and large user base perfect for the newly acquired facial recognition. If these two companies join forces they can very well have a chance to compete with Google. Actually these two combined could possibly even be very, very dangerous for Google.

Let’s imagine Google decides to upgrade Google Places and create AR version. With its impressive data base and search engine & Google maps experience it could very well become a killer app. There are review and map AR apps, but they are mainly focused on cities and tourist attractions such as NY, Paris and London for example. Imagine an app you could use everywhere you go: like Google Maps with a real life view. Imagine what it would mean for local businesses and advertisers to be highlighted in real life environment.

Now if Apple and Facebook decided to join the forces, they could compete in AR “places” category with a social touch. Imagine an app where you can see in real life not only the ratings or info, but also which places have been recommended or visited by your friends. Seeing little pictures of friends who like the place or even friends who actually are currently there sounds very attractive. Imagine adding the Facebook “deals” function with the discount/offer that is available in the place.

Of course this Apple/Facebook partnership could lead even further if the two explore more the social networking capability on the iPhone. For example, user could see other person’s social networking info and feeds from Facebook just by looking at them though the phone. Big personal privacy issues yes, because no one wants a stranger in the street or bar to know his name and everything else about him. But then again – when exactly Facebook has cared about privacy issues?

Expanding market with huge potential

It has been predicted that augmented reality will take between five to ten years to become mainstream, together with the Smartphones. Brands and consumers do not necessarily understand yet how the technology works, but AR creates interest and fascination. Android, Nokia, iPhone…there is something to explore and take advantage of.

Zed Digital released recently a fourth wave of the study  “Mobiles and Advertising: perception, use and tendencies” (Móviles y Publicidad: percepción, usos y tendencias), which interviewed 16.000 consumers between 14 and 44 years - the largest sample in Spain so far in this type of studies.

In Spain we are facing a mature mobile market with more advanced capacities and services with 58% of the respondents having had their mobile for less than a year.  Consumers have learned how to access more advanced and innovative services and there is a clear turning point from a professional internet mobile into a personal internet mobile.

However, the market is still expanding. Most popular operators are Movistar (35,85%), Vodafone (29,70%) and Orange (20,65%), however they are all losing market share for the smaller operators. Main reasons for the change are costs, customer service and different model that is offered if you change your operator.

Internet usage:

54% of the respondents confirms accessing internet via mobile. The principal activities are checking emails, using search, entering social networks and instant messaging.

Almost 50% has a wi-fi with an increase of a 95% compared with the third wave, which shows the rapidity that the terminals adopt new services in the mobiles and smartphones. Yet even if the internet access via mobile has increased, in the next years we will see how it will still see a growth because consumers are yet behind all the technical possibilities their phones offer. This shows in the fact that even if 84% of the users have internet access, only 54% uses it. Same thing happens with packages and use of email, instant messaging and GPS. It shows the clear potential Internet Mobile has in the near future, since users own already devices that are technologically advanced and they only need to learn how to use all the features.

Social Networks:

Use of social networks via mobile has increased between 16-44 years old individuals by 275% in 2010.

The study also analyzes the profile of the users that access social networks via mobile: Young urban who enters social networks to take advantage of the time in the metro or bus to principally send messages (80%) and gossip in 48% of the cases. The most popular network in the device is Facebook with 89% of the users.

62% of the users have less than 30 years and 44% lives in cities with more than 200.000 habitants.

19.8% of the users spend more than an hour and 29% between an hour and half an hour  in Social Networks. Main perceived advantages users saw were taking advantage of time in bus or metro, being connected to the Social Networks even if they were not at work or at home and being more active user than others because they can connect more time than their friends do.

Communication & Apps:

64% of the respondents counts with instant messenger, mostly Windows Live Messenger with 79% penetration among the users, compared with 31,24% with Skype.

What comes to the use of email and instant messenger, there are two different profiles. Email is mostly used by a man between 30-40 years and Hotmail stays the most used service with 68% of the users, followed by Gmail with 55%. In the contrary, the instant messager is equally popular between two sexes, but is used by younger users (18-24-year-olds).

Concerning the apps, already 24% of the users download them habitually. The principle downloads are games and entertainment followed by social networks and instant messenger. These apps are the ones they keep in their phone and use mostly daily.

Advertising

According to the study, respondents perceive mobile marketing as a meeting point between consumer and the brand and think it offers the brand modernity, innovation, differentiation and leadership.

They also noticed the advertising in mobiles: 72% remembers having seen advertisements in their phone and 49% has clicked an advert some time. Besides, surprisingly 46% of the consumers would give permission to receive advertising into their phone and this percentage would increase if there was some advantage for the consumer (discounts, operator loyalization points) or if it was advertising they have requested.

The most attractive advertising formats are audio MMS and the sponsored videos, advergaming and sponsored apps – formats that offer consumer additional advantage for user.

On the other hand, the geolocalization services have huge potential, because 73% of the interviewed said they would be interested of receiving advertising messages related to the place where they are.

Only 3 years ago half of the intelligent mobiles in Spain were used in professional environment, however, with the more attractive smartphone prices and offers from the operators, the balance has tipped in a favour of consumer market and personal use. The use of social networks, music and games are the keys in the new era where mobile marketing in Spain is no more an option, but a necessity – and it is even welcome according to the users! From a web design and usability point of view, it is now important to consider if your website is mobile friendly and is it easy to use in small scale.

Of course, it is not about concentrating only on mobile marketing, but integrating it slowly yet steadily into your other marketing and communication strategies. Taking advantage of the trend now when the interactive mobile advertising is not yet saturated and is perceived positive can give your brand a strong position in the future.