International Digital Marketing

It took a while, but Facebook has finally – at least officially – identified mobile as “critical to maintaining user growth and engagement over the long term.” The global social media platform acknowledged that users are moving from PCs towards mobile Facebook access, and admitted that “if we are unable to successfully implement monetisation strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.”

 Growing International mobile advertising market

 According to experts, global mobile advertising market is experiencing an annual growth rate of 64% and is expected to reach 17.6 billion US dollars by 2015. This might be the main reason, instead of the user engagement, why the social networking company is so interested in mobile market. In fact, Facebook’s biggest revenue channel is advertising, generating 85% of sales in 2011. To put it in perspective, Facebook’s revenue accounted for 3.71 billion US dollars in 2011.

Surprisingly, Facebook is not currently generating profit directly through the Facebook mobile products and it has not been advertising via mobile. The social media company revealed that this is going to change and that they “may have potential future monetisation opportunities such as the inclusion of sponsored stories in users’ mobile News Feeds.” I am not sure how the Facebook users are going to react, but users’ reaction seems to be one of platform’s smallest concerns, especially taking in account the recent changes, privacy issues and the polemic regarding the timeline.

 Global Facebook mobile usage

 But how many users are currently accessing Facebook via mobile? According to Facebook, more than 425 million monthly active users (MAU) were utilizing its mobile products in December 2011. This has great significance since in total the platform has 845 million monthly active users and it seems unbelievable that the social networking company has not realized until now the potential mobile marketing has.

Company is forecasting the mobile user rate to grow even faster than the MAU, which has been increasing annually 39%. This may very well be possible. According to a recent ComScore study, 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.

Challenging global mobile market

 Facebook might have a strong position in International online market, yet the global mobile market is full of competitors and challenges. The social networking company admitted that it is dependent on different mobile operating systems they do not control, such as iPhone OS, Windows OS and of course … Google’s Android.

 Until recently we were experiencing Apple smartphone domination, yet things are changing. Industry analysts are predicting that Windows Phone will increase its market share up to 16.7% by 2015, while Apple’s market share will decrease from 18% percent to 16.6% by 2015. Meanwhile Android is expected to grow from 47.4% to 58.1% by 2015.

 There are several reasons for the change. One is Nokia’s powerful partnership with Microsoft, which has resulted for example in a successful Lumia mobile. Other is Android’s massive volume of devices. Even if the Android OS is fragmented and constantly changing, Apple takes its time to launch a new expensive new iPhone / iPad, while hundreds of Android powered mobiles arrive in stores across the globe in a year … and with a cheap price.

Facebook / Apple mobile partnership?

Facebook has a problem. It is planning to step into the mobile game, however its 425 million MAUs have already an existing Facebook app, there are many competitors in location-based services, social networks, games and deals, and the social networking company does not have any control over mobile OS. Apple on the other hand is losing its market share rapidly while Android OS is growing fast.

One interesting possibility the two companies have is augmented reality. According to Juniper, by 2015 global revenues from AR will reach 1.5 billion dollars. ABI Research estimated that even if in 2010 revenue from Augmented reality 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 Augmented reality will increase from 6 million dollars in 2009 to more than 3.5 billion dollars in 2014 – which signifies a yearly growth of 97%.

What this has to do with Apple and Facebook? Apple has acquired recently 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 in social networking area, which should interest Facebook. 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.

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?

E-commerce, M-commerce, now T-commerce…just like Smartphones, the amount of “tablets” such as iPads is increasing across the globe. In 2010 Apple sold 14,8 million iPads and the Analyst IDC estimates the number of tablets, not just iPads, to reach 44 million in 2011. Meanwhile, according to Forrester, many retailers report that over 50% of their mobile traffic is now coming from the tablets.

What is very interesting is that a study by e-commerce platform provider Shopatron, supporting more than 800 brand stores in 35 industries, claims that the conversion rate from tablets is much higher than conversion rate from mobiles or even PCs. According to the study, the average conversion rates for non mobile optimized pages (iPhone, Android, iPod…) was an average of 0.37%, yet the average conversion rate from iPad was a whopping 2.04%. For some of the e-commerce stores the iPad conversion rate was double than the conversion rate from personal computers.

Are tablets better for e-Commerce than Smartphones?

Smartphones used for investigation

Consumers are using mobiles to investigate before buying a product, but not for actual transactions. Currently 6-8% of the retailers’ traffic comes through mobile, but only 1% of the final purchases are done by mobile.

This is mainly because, unless the web is mobile optimized, transactions through mobile are not very user friendly, especially if the user has to fill up long forms. Instead, Smartphone is ideal for users to investigate products and do a pre-purchase at any time in any place. Consumers access mainly the product price, availability and client reviews. During the weekend consumers dedicate 30% more time on investigation than other days per week

This reflects in the number of searches. According to the Google Mobile, in Q1 2010 mobile search queries from Smartphones on Google grew 62% over the previous quarter. Concerning the m-commerce, Google mobile searches on shopping-related keywords grew 2500% in the past three years.

To enhance users mobile shopping experience, here are some tips on how to mobile optimize your site.

Tablets used for purchases

Let’s face it: tablets are bigger and with a bigger screen the shopping experience is closer to the familiar PC e-commerce experience. The buying process is also much simpler. It can actually turn out to be much richer and exciting with a touch screen giving the user a bigger possibility to interact with the brand and the store.

And of course, another reason is that there are far too many non mobile optimized sites. A webpage that is unpleasant to browse in a mobile looks slightly more appealing in a bigger tablet screen. Still not optimal, but better.

Tablet users want more precise and up-to-date information than mobile users with all the details of the product, purchase process and delivery. To give users what they want, make sure that the page is “tablet optimized” and the shopping experience as simple and pleasant as possible. Make sure the “shopping basket”, product price and image (and discount if applicable) are always clearly visible. Also test the page in different tablets and check that the content is easy to navigate. Include user reviews and comments and optimize the user journey by making payment and delivery fast and effective.

Tablet, Smartphone or PC?

Why not all three? Whether you call it E, M or T, online commerce is increasing fast and retailers should compensate the decline in physical store sales by investing more in online reputation and sales.

Tablets are coming and offer very nice figures. PC still drives most of the traffic and sales. Smartphones maybe are less likely to be used for transactions than tablets, yet mobiles are considerably increasing the traffic to the actual POS. Besides of search and product investigation, users rely on them to find locations and deals near by, check opening hours, and compare prices online. The potential they have to drive sales offline and online is enormous.

By taking advantage of different channels and devices retailer can stay ahead of the competition, create strong online reputation and increase the number of leads. Therefore it is not wise to concentrate only on one channel, but to invest in e-commerce, t-commerce, m-commerce as well as mobile search.

According to a 2010 study by Pew Research Center, the amount of young bloggers has decreased dramatically over the past few years by half. The number of blogging teenagers decreased to 14 % compared to 28% in 2006 and the amount of young adult bloggers (18-29-years-old) has dropped 9% since 2007.

Meanwhile, the older generation is getting more comfortable with blogging: 11% of the over 30-year-old adults blogged in 2010, compared with 7% in 2007. Also, during the last two years blogging by the 34-45 year-old Internet users has increased 6%  (up to 16%), 46-55-year-old bloggers saw an increase of 5%  (up to 11%), and even 65-73-year-olds blogged 2% more (up to 8%).

It seems like the blogger generation is getting older and younger generation prefers social networking – is blogging becoming the sport of “old” people?

Micro-blogging in Social Networks

“The first thing going on here is the broader movement from MySpace, which had a integrated blogging function, to Facebook, which doesn’t put its blogging capabilities up front as MySpace does,” says Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew Internet & American Life Project.

There has been a clear movement from long blog posts, “macro-blogging”, to quick status updates and messages, “micro-blogging”, offered by Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networks. Young people “do not have time” to write long blog posts nor can they be bothered to read “two page novels” of someone’s life or brand’s awards. The new generation wants it short, actual and in real-time.

Also, according to a 2010 study by Technorati based on respondents in North-America, Europe, APAC and South America, even users who are currently blogging say that their devotion to micro-blogging (30%) and social networks (28%) have reduced their blogging activity. Another very interesting detail was that on average the bloggers actually spent more time on social media sites (9.9h/week) than they spent reading other blogs (9.2h/week).

Increasing popularity of Smartphones

Smartphones are constantly increasing their market share around the globe, especially among young people, and as Japanese “Twittermania” has shown they are perfect for micro-blogging. With the augmented Internet use and social media apps, people spend more time checking the latest headlines and status updates, watching videos, commenting with few words and sharing interesting content through mobile devices.

Anyone who has ever blogged knows it requires hard work and concentration and anyone who has ever read a blog post in a mobile knows the effort it takes to read a long post in the small screen. More online or digital communications are happening through mobile devices and the amount of text user can type and read is quite limited.

So, are blogs getting out of fashion?

No. Let’s say they are just becoming more refined by age.

According to the Technorati study, bloggers are more affluent and educated than the general population: 79% have college degrees and 43% have graduate degrees, 30% has a household income of $75K+ and 25% has a household income of $100K+.

65% of the bloggers are 18-44-years-old and 81% of them have been blogging more than 2 years, which increases the quality of the content. In the early ages, blogging was seen as an entertainment for teenagers while now Facebook and other social networks are taking that role and “old” people are catching up. Also, the amount of companies using blogs for marketing has been increasing during the years as shown in the graph below.

Now let’s see. How much relevant content can you include in 140 characters or a Facebook status update if you cannot link it to anything? Why users would be interested in any of your posts if they cannot click to find out more?

Linking the posts only to the official website or other people’s content does not seem enough either. Blogging allows the brand to talk more than just products and services and explore more fun and creative ideas. Blog is also a great way to establish an image of an expert and let your or brand’s voice to be heard over the competition. Only passing someone else’s posts or tweets around without bringing anything your own to the content does not really show who you are or what you really are worth. People and brands without opinions are boring.

From SEO perspective, new and relevant keyword filled content quickly shows in Google, which increases traffic to your blog. Linking posts properly can increase traffic to your website, which in turn improves your website’s ranking.

In reality, social media, micro-blogging and blogs can complement each other. Including social bookmarking buttons into the blog posts helps it to spread around the social networks and promoting the blog posts in Twitter and Facebook increase traffic to the blog. Meanwhile, short relevant posts or tweets about the blog posts add interesting content to your social network sites.

New generation, new trends

However, it is very important to remember that in the end young people are early adopters of the new technologies and communication channels and “old” people are slow to follow. First blogs were for teenagers, then Twitter and Facebook were just for silly teenage talk and no doubt the increased amount of Smartphones will change the settings and trends even more. Whether new generation moves from micro-blogging to traditional blogging in the future is a good question, but at least for the next few years blogs will still remain a good channel to express more profound thoughts, ideas, expertise and opinions of current events and future trends.