International Digital Marketing

Pinterest. Surprise, surprise – another new social network everyone talks about. There is a lot of hype around the platform, but is it really necessary to invest again money, time and resources in another social network?

Yes. There is actually a very good reason why Pinterest should not be ignored: the total number of global unique visitors in Pinterest increased 2,702.2% since May 2011 reaching 11,716,000 visitors by January 2012. It has 1,36 million visitors a day.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social photo sharing network that allows people and brands to create image collections, Pinboards, based on their interests, hobbies, products, beliefs, humour, art, events and more. The idea is to connect people through the things they find interesting and get inspired by. Users are able to browse other users’ collections, re-pin images for their own Pinboard, follow other users, and like their photos. Pinterest allows users to share pins also on other social networks, which increases the social visibility.

Pinterest – user demographics and engagement

The average Pinterest user spends almost 16 minutes on the site per visit compared to 16.4 min. in Youtube, 12.1 min. in Facebook, and 3.3 min. in Twitter. Surprisingly, Pinterest provides more referral traffic to other sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined together, and the apparel retailer referral traffic from Pinterest increased 289% between July and December 2011.

50% of the Pinterest users have children, almost 70% of Pinterest users are female, and 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. Instead of teenagers and young adults, the platform seems to appeal most for the older age groups: largest age group is 25-34 year olds (27.4%) followed by 35-44 year old users (22.1%). Interestingly 45-54 year old users represent 17.9% of the user base, which is a high number compared to other social networks.

Pinterest in Europe

In Europe Pinterest has grown exponentially since May 2011 becoming the fastest growing social network. According to Comscore, in January 2012 the UK had the highest number of unique visitors in Europe (245,000), Germany had 67,000 unique visitors, and Spain had 62,000 unique visitors. What comes to the growth, from May 2011 to January 2012 Germany had the highest growth rate of 2956% in Pinterest, followed by Spain (1348%), and Italy (794%).

Even if the unique visitors decreased in France and the UK between December 2011 and January 2012, engagement on Pinterest increased by 1740% and 20%, respectively.

Is Pinterest worth investing?

Pinterest is currently the fastest growing social network in the US and Europe, and it is very interesting from a brand perspective. You have a possibility to target people according to their interests in real time without being their “friends”, provoke a stronger response with images as people are very visual, and obtain social recommendations when people “pin” or like your image. With a proper preparation, the social photo sharing platform may be very beneficial for sales,  and looking at the demographics, it is great especially if you are targeting women and more mature demographics.

How brands can use Pinterest? For example, ecommerce sites and brands can use Pinterest to pin their products (fashion, clothes, shoes, accessories, interior designs, household items, wedding items, baby products, etc), travel companies and hotels can pin location pictures, food manufacturers can pin beautiful dishes, pet food companies can pin cute animals, etc. etc. The list goes on, but as with other social networks stop and think before you start pinning. Pinterest has a lot of potential, but if not done properly the end result may not be what you expected. To be successful as a brand you need a proper Pinterest strategy to reach right people, and if you have a good strategy  – an image can be worth a thousand words.

Google+ with user base of over 40 million people and growing has finally opened the doors for businesses. Since the launch there has been a lot of speculation whether Google would keep its promise to create business pages for brands and finally the wait is over. The launch of Google+ pages enables brands to connect with customers and fans while improving their search ranking as well as SEO campaigns.

A couple of brand pages are already available, including +Angry Birds, +Pepsi, +Toyota and +Barcelona Football club (you can create your own Google+ page here). If you already have played with your personal Google+ profile, the features Google+ page offers are familiar. For example, the page works through the Google+ mobile app, your brand can have live video conversations with the customers or fans, and you can place people in different circles – a feature which enables you to target better.

However, there are certain differences: brand page cannot send messages to a user who has not added them yet in their circle and the content on a Google+ page defaults to public (unlike personal profiles). Pages also cannot share with extended circles.

Google+ demographics

But who actually uses Google+? According to a Comscore study, Google+ has currently over 40 million users and 20 million active visitors across the world.

Top Google+ 10 countries:

• US: 5.31 million
• India: 2.85 million
• U.K: 0.87 million
• Canada: 0.86 million
• Germany: 0.71 million
• Brazil: 0.62 million
• Taiwan: 0.52 million
• France: 0.5 million
• Turkey: 0.37 million
• Spain: 0.37 million:

Unique visitors in Google+ are in average between 25-34-years-old. The Google+ audience tends to be more affluent, 54% earning a household income of $30k and over, and 12% earning $150k and up. 72% of the Google+ population is male and 78% of the professions in top 100 list consists of different developers, engineers and designers.

But despite the very interesting user base, is it really worth creating yet another social network page, even if it is Google+?

Google+ page benefits for brands

Besides of being an additional channel for user engagement, Google+ page allows you to have a different conversation with different circles increasing the effectiveness and relevancy of your message. With pages people are as well able to recommend a brand, not only separate sites, articles or ads.

What comes to the SEO,+1 recommendations have a positive effect in search ranking as well as search and display ads increasing their performance. Also, not only does Google include Google+ pages in search results, but it also is experimenting with a feature called Direct Connect. The latter enables user to navigate quickly to a brand Google+ page via typing + and the brand name. For example, if the user searches for +angry birds or +youtube he will be taken directly to the Angry Birds or Youtube Google+ page and he has a possibility to add the page to his circle. To become eligible for Direct Connect, Google suggests linking from your Google+ page to your homepage and vice versa. This also allows Google to determine your site relevancy in normal search, which means your pages are likely to index faster and have a better ranking than competitor pages without Google+.

Google+ replacing Facebook?

Once Google+ was launched I was playing with the possibility of Google+ threatening Facebook. 40 million and growing is still far away from the 800 million Facebook users, however it seems like influencers might be leaving Facebook.

Improved SEO and power influencers? Sounds good to me.

“As we look across markets, dramatic differences in mobile media consumption, brand adoption and user behavior become evident…For brands seeking to establish a multi-market presence, understanding usage dynamics across geographies is essential to implementing a successful global mobile marketing strategy.”

Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile

ComScore published in October 2010 a very interesting comparative report on mobile usage and behaviors in Japan, the United States and Europe. To find out how consumers interact with mobile media across these three markets, the study gives a detailed picture of the mobile content consumption, demographic comparisons and top social networking brands across markets.

There are considerable differences between the three: Japanese use mobile to access mobile media, U.S consumers use it for Social Networking and Europeans love texting.

Connected Media

In Japan more than 75% of the mobile owners use connected media (browsed, accessed applications or downloaded content), while only 43.7% are using it in the U.S. and 38.5% in Europe.

Japanese mobile users also show stronger preference of applications and browsers compared to mobile users in the U.S. and in Europe.

Messaging

What comes to the messaging, the biggest difference of user behavior between the markets is that 81.7% of the Europeans use text messages, while Japanese prefer sending emails. The American mobile users were more likely to use instant messaging services on their mobile than the other markets.

Social Media/Entertainment

While 21.3% of the American users use the mobile for Social networking/blogs, only 17% of the Japanese and 14.7% of the Europeans get connected & blogging through their mobile.

However, 63% of the Japanese like to capture photos and 22% watch TV/video on their mobile. Europeans capture videos more than other two and 24.2% of them is listening to music and 24.1% is playing mobile games.

Finance/Retail/Travel/Others

Quite few people accessed their bank accounts, the percentage staying under 10% in all markets, yet 16.1% of the Japanese accessed financial news or stock quotes through their mobile. Online retail and travel services were also low in all markets; most of the numbers not reaching even 7%.

Maps, traffic reports and weather are another story. 16% of the Americans and 15.7% of the Japanese access maps, 12.6% of the Japanese access traffic reports, and 34.1% of the Japanese and 22.3% of the Americans access weather forecasts through their mobile. In Europe these areas are not popular, the percentage varying from 5.9% to 13.7%.

Demographic Segment

The study measures also the mobile media consumption across the genders and age segments.  The usage rate is more balanced across age segments in Japan than in the U.S. and Europe.

* Index = % demographic segment / % demographic base*100

In Europe, 18-24 year olds are 54% more likely to access mobile media than an average mobile user, while persons aged 25-34 are 35% more likely to get connected.

In the U.S., 25-34 year olds are 44% more likely to use mobile media, while 18-24 year olds are 39% more likely to use it.

Another interesting fact was that females in the U.S. were 9% less likely than males to get involved with mobile media and European females were 16% less likely than males to use mobile media.

Top Mobile Social Media Brands

Across markets the top mobile social media brands were the same ones as the social media brands generally. Facebook leads the way in the U.S. and Europe and local social media brands ruled Japan with Mixi, Gree and Mobage Town. The Twitter fever in Japan raised the brand on 3^rd position in the market. In Europe considerable preference for Youtube might explain partly Europeans preference on video capturing.

Looking through the statistics from these three complex markets, I think Mark Donovan is right. To create a successful International mobile marketing strategy, it is essential to know how the consumers use their mobile in each of these markets. For example, SMS marketing and games might work in Europe, email or interactive marketing might be more effective in Japan and in the U.S. social media and blog marketing might be a success.

Everything depends of course of the target audience, which makes the demographics handy, and the relevant content/message/advertising. Good thing to remember here is also the emerge of the Smartphones, which change the user behaviour considerably allowing the mobile user access to different applications and faster connection among the other benefits. The high mobile media use in Japan makes sense since the market is more advanced than the others on this aspect, but I have a feeling that at same time next year the results could be very different in the U.S and Europe.

Great comparative snapshot of Japan, the U.S. and Europe anyhow!