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Disconnect among marketers on social media marketing significance

There is one thing certain about social media marketing: There are too many “experts” and “strategists” out there, and too many research firms trying to cash in on senior executives uneasy feeling about not understanding a new trend. Which numbers are you too believe? How does this impact your brand?

According to Agency group Creston in the UK, their research shows that even though 88% of respondents believed that social media activity will impact brand reputation at some point, only 14% of respondents agree that this is a current issue.  Really?  Contrast this with Coca-Cola’s recent announcement that nearly all their online marketing efforts will be concentrated in the social media space, and you have to wonder whether this research is wildly inaccurate or whether there are simply enormous differences among marketing departments in large corporations about the importance of social. And other research agencies, like Alterian, seems to come up with the opposite result of Creston.

Although Forrester is probably among the research agencies guilty of publishing the most research with the lowest amount of data sources per report, they recently came out with an interesting study (which also presumably had a larger research base):

This of course shows that the majority of the online population join a social network, and as many as one third update their status weekly.  This is easy to believe, when your 77 old aunt is on Facebook posting daily messages.  And I would venture to say that the marketers asked by Creston are probably 99% certain to have a Facebook account, and given their profession, perhaps also quite likely to use Twitter, I find it stunning that Creston can come up with these conclusions.

Of course, you need to be careful about believing numbers. Mobile marketing is very closely tied to social media marketing, and Ars Technica recently predicted that Apple had a 99.4% market share of application downloads on mobile in 2009, with 2.5 billion apps downloaded.  According to Gartner who said 2,5 billion apps were downloaded in 2009, it leaves only 16 million for the rest of the market.  Quite ridiculous, when you consider that Nokia announced Ovi downloads of 1 million per day in December, and for instance the Facebook J2ME applications has been downloaded 33m times on GetJar alone since it’s early 2009 launch…

Posted in Social Media Marketing.

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iPhone not the leading ad platform

Smaato, the mobile ad network optimization company, has joined the club of Millennial Media, Bango and Admob and started publishing statistics. One of the core competencies of advertising networks is the knowledge they have about usage, and luckily the leading players in this field have understood you need to share this type of information (especially if you want to be acquired :).

Out of Smaato’s first metrics report comes the revelation that Symbian is a far better platform to advertise on as far as click throughs are concerned:

If you compares Symbian device owners, which have an index of 161 with iPhone/iPod owners with an index value of 119, it would indicate that advertising to Symbian owners are 35% more effective than on iPhone.

What is interesting to note here, is that owners of Symbian devices are probably a far better representative of the general population than iPhone owners are. This may be perceived as a strong statement, but given that Symbian’s lead promoter, Nokia, does not heavily push the typical geekie/techie segment in their marketing of devices, rather have used Symbian in a wide range of devices from music focused to office focused – and the fact that Symbian has by far the largest market share among smartphone devices, it does have strong implications for marketers.

It should come as no surprise however, that the iPhone is not the only game in town for marketing.  But in now appears, albeit with a limited subset of  data, that spending your marketing money on the iPhone actually gives you a poorer return. Naturally, there is merit to the types of users you may reach on an iPhone, but given an absence of that data, CTR is likely the leading ROI measure yet.

Thanks to Smaato for sharing. More of this please!

Posted in Mobile Marketing.

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Poll 2: Defining the benefits

This poll is a continuation of the research “A Value Based Framework for Smartphone OS Analysis”, which I wrote about earlier. This time around, you are asked to rank the various smartphone OS on their positioning in providing the Benefits that users want.

When looking at what benefits you want out of owning a phone, it is not only hard to distinguish who will be the clear winner among the smartphone OS platforms based on their capabilities, but also to the fact that individual consumers place substantially different values on the different benefits.  However, only by looking at the benefits can you really have a meaningful discussion about who the winners will be.

The Basics:  On being a phone with data capability

The initial buyers of smartphones were clearly people who were focused on increasing their productivity and connectivity first and foremost.  BlackBerry became a clear leader in providing PIM and email  access, and certainly never focused on the higher aspects in the benefit propositions. Apple’s AppStore has changed this game by broadening the overall appeal of a smartphone by substantially increasing the entertainment aspect, and moving the bar by really making it cool to be a smartphone owner (thus enhancing the Image benefit).

As a provider of entertainment and information, Apple will arguable not relinquish this lead any time soon, although Google is pushing heavy to get developer support for their platform, and few could argue their competence in providing information.  As for staying connected, whether through email access or social network apps and services, most of the players do this really well at this point.

For productivity, Microsoft and Windows used to enjoy a slight lead with the excellent integration to their desktop products, and this lead may yet continue (for instance, the mapping of contact lists fields with iTunes if you use Outlook is still not 100% accurate).

The softer aspects: Hard to pick the winners

When you move up the hierarchy of benefits provided, it becomes harder to distinguish clear winners. Apple is way behind others in terms of camera quality as an example, and players like SonyEricsson, LG and Nokia knows the importance of a good camera, and are the driving force behind Symbian in that regards.  The AppStore rules for now for killing time with free apps, but as mobile operators get better and better with content services, this advantage disappears somewhat over the long  term.

When it comes to the Image factor, Apple made the smartphone cool. Compared to Windows, certainly there are really cool devices coming out based on the Windows OS, but I think they face quite a hurdle to get a teenager saying they want a Windows phone because Microsoft is so cool. Apple has the lead here, but the Android camp could catch on quickly, especially given how easy it is to develop cool apps that are fully integrated with the phone functions.

Where do you think various players rank?


Have you taken poll 1? If not, please do!

Posted in The Business of Mobile.

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