CMOs: Feeling unprepared for digital challenges ahead? 4 in 10 say YES…!

Sometimes surveys bring out the final truth about the status in which chief marketing officers (CMOs) find themselves in. One of the latest reports by Accenture, titled “Turbulence for the CMO: Charting a Path to the Samless Customer Experience” was done with 405 senior marketers from 10 countries. It makes clear that almost 4 in 10 CMOs think they don’t have the right set up to manage their business challenges in front of them. They are missing the right tools, resources and people.

The annual survey shows a decline in 5% in preparedness compared to 2011. Especially, the digital transformation is lacking behind. Compared to 2011 10% find it challenging to improve their workforce’s responsiveness to digital shifts. Furthermore, CMOs also stated that they find it difficult to keep up the efficiency of marketing operations (8% increase!).

Some deeper findings indicate what CMOs main interest in the business will be. The most interesting observation in the results is that digital orientation has the biggest gap between importance and performance among the five marketing capabilities.

The top priority for them is profitable growth (87%) and operational efficiency (85%). The good point for agencies and consultants is that CMOs have this as a bigger objective that cutting their marketing budgets (58%). From a long-term perspective, consumer expectations for specific experiences have the biggest impact on marketing strategy (65%).

And I am sure, you will detect some more interesting findings in their infographic.

Questioning banner efficiency? Native ads perform better than banner ads, says eye-tracking study

A recent eye-tracking study called “Benchmarking the Effectiveness of Native Ads” states that the visual attraction of native ads (52%) is more frequent than with traditional banner ads. The study which used eye-tracking tools was conducted by Sharethrough and the IPG Media Lab with the aim to identify the impact of banner ads of top brand on the web.

The main findings of the study were..
- 71% of respondents described native ads -based on the fact they had previously had a purchase intent- as “personally identify with”; this number stands against only 50% for banner ads
- 32% of respondents argued that a native ad “is an ad I would share with a friend or family member”. However, only 19% would do so with a banner ads
- 25% of respondents looked more on in-feed native ad placements than on banner ads
- Native ads achieve a 18% increase in purchase intent versus banner ads that get a 9% upside for brand affinity. 

Spot On!
The interesting point about this study or me was that native ads and editorial content move closer to another. Almost the same percentage of respondents said they looked at native ads (26%) next to editorial content (24%). However, they potentially spend more time viewing the content still compared to native ads.

Is this another proof for the fact that content marketing is increasingly becoming important and moving in the spotlight of companies and brands? Maybe the infographic helps you find an answer to this question…

Target-group men: 10 Stats for better marketing

Obviously, there is a difference when targeting men and women. Their purchase behaviour differs in many ways. Who is searching more for coupons, bargains or the latest gadets? According to a report by Microsoft, marketers should have an eye on the right mix between banner advertising, search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) tactics in order to address and find men at the right time with the right content in the right context.

Many men, especially young dads (between 25 to 40 years), are influenced by the impact of social networks, according to the report by Performics which we reported quite a while ago. Interestingly enough, 58% of them use four or more sources for their purchase decision. Utilizing social media with story-telling about products and services will make the appropriate impact on men, will give them insights on how companies and brands against their competitors.

Check the infographic published by Brian Honigman and have the 10 stats in mind for the next marketing campaign or tactics when addressing the male audience when your business wants to influence the purchase behavior of men.

PS: If you are interested to see the difference to women, you might have a look at the latest Blogher study here…

Study: Social networks eat up most time of web usage

It is a question many marketers ask themselves on a daily basis: “Where do users browse when they are on the Internet?” A recent study by Experian is spot on here. It reveals that people spend most time browsing social media platforms. Entertainment websites (9%) and shopping (5%) as well as business and checking emails are following with each one achieving 3% are coming in the following places.

The research was checking peoples’ browsing habits in the United Kingdom, United States and Australia. By distilling the overall Internet browsing time from 2012 into one single hour, the study found out that respondents spend 27% of every hour on social networkings. The U.S. was the leading country with 16 minutes per hour, followed by Australia 14 minutes and United Kingdom with 13 minutes. However, the time spend with social sites is overall a bit decreasing compared to 2012.

However, the figures vary depending on what device respondents were using. When respondents were on mobiles, they tend to spend the most time working on email. Again, the U.S. spent about 23% of every hour being busy on email on mobile devices in the first quarter or 2013, then closely followed by browsing social-networking, entertainment, shopping, and travel sites. Still, when using a personal desktop, people will most likely spend over a quarter of their time browsing social sites,

“With smartphones and tablets becoming more powerful, our data clearly indicates the difference between mobile and traditional desktop usage further enabling the ‘always on’ consumer mentality. Marketers need to understand these differences, as well as regionally, to ensure campaigns can be tailored for better and more effective engagement.” Bill Tancer, General Manager Global Research, Experian

Spot On!
The desktop finds it’s end as we all know, and social media is the driver. Mobile emails get read more than emails seen from desktop, states some new benchmark report data from Informz. For this study in 2012, the company analyzed 1 billion emails from 800 associations. In fact, the study made clear that more links, shorter headlines, focussed lists and flexible send-outs are key to drive awareness to the email newsletters. If we bring these two studies together, we will understand the close connection between mobile and social.

Report: Digital Influence 2013, Interview Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati

Technorati Media just shortly released its 2013 Digital Influence Report which is replacing the former annual “State of the Blogosphere” periodical.

The report explains in detail why inbound marketing is on the rise at the moment, and how it influences consumer behaviour.

“When it comes to community size, 54 percent of consumers agree that the smaller the community the greater the influence … The survey findings also indicate that many of those consumers are turning to blogs when looking to make a purchase. Blogs were found to be the third-most influential digital resource (31%) when making overall purchases, only behind retail sites (56%) and brand sites (34%). In fact, blogs were found to be the fifth-most trustworthy source overall for information on the Internet.”

Technorati makes clear what the real top influencers in digital marketing are doing in a different way than other marketers: 88% of the top influencers blog for themselves, and 52% have more than one blog. Furthermore, top Influencers are evaluating content differently when blogging. They keep monitoring different people, different blogs, different content sources in order to boost some extraordinary blogging experience.

When Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati, was interviewed by Social Media Examiner, he states that close to 90% of all professional bloggers and 73% of bloggers are using Twitter as opossed to 14% of the general population. This also shows the high popularity and growth of the micro-blogging service.

But watch yourself what Richard tells us about influencers…

Global Web Index: Twitter shows fastest growth of social platforms

According to some new research by the Global Web Index, Twitter is growing faster than any other social network in the world, leaving Facebook and Google+ behind. The index polled 31 markets for the research. In their definition, an “active user” is a person who has “used or contributed to Twitter in the past month.”

The study suggests that the number of active microblogging service users increased 40% between the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2012. Thus, Twitter gets up to 288 million monthly active users. This is an increase by over 700% compared to 2009 when Twitter just had 35.47 million monthly active users.

The research also shows that the engagement rate per user went up with 59% of Twitter handle holders being active on a monthly basis these days. Taken from a global perspective, 21% of worldwide Internet users are now active monthly Twitter users.

The study also shows the percentage change in active (last month) behaviours for Twitter users via PC and via mobile. “Comment about my daily activities” or “Comment on a friends post” is defined as the lowest ranking growth activity from both sides. The positive impact for brands is that Twitter finds more use in marketing which can be seen from “Organizing an event”, “Posting comments about brands”, “Using branded apps (with Twitter)” or “Asking friends about products”. All of these figures show that the 3Rs of the social customer get more impact through Twitter.

How do you use Twitter? Or why don’t you use it? Give us your views on which social platform is most efficient to you…

Study: Content Marketing is becoming big in B2B, focus is shifting…

A recent study by Curata identified the main drivers of content marketing activities in B2B companies. The findings are based on Curata’s poll of 465 B2B marketing professionals in October 2012 from business owners, VPs of Marketing, CMOs, managers, marketing consultants and agencies.

The study explains that content marketing continues to become more and more important for B2B marketers. However, the drivers for content strategies are shifting towards thought leadership and market education.

The results show that 87% of responding B2B marketing professionals use content marketing for business goals targets (5% increase to 2011). Content marketing gets followed by SEO (67%) and event marketing (60%) as further leading channels in marketing strategies in 2012.

Further findings of the study show that although engaging customers (81%) has top priority for their content marketing efforts, thought leadership and educating the market are increasing in their importance for the business. More than half of B2B marketers (56%) state thought leadership as a key objective (13% increase to 2011). Also, educating the market (47%) increased by 3% to last year. Just 24% see SEO as a key objective (still a 5% increase to last year). Former top marketing tactics (print/TV/radio) went down from 32% to 26% this year.

Spot On!
Lead generation is still one of the key marketing goals for B2B marketers according to the survey. Most B2B marketers (82%) see driving sales and leads as their top marketing goal. Establishing thought leadership (42%), increasing brand awareness (40%), or increasing Web traffic (32%) follow in the next places. Content curation is also getting traction as the next step in content marketing. 57% of B2B marketers see it as an important evolution step. However, content curation is in it’s infancy when only 34% of curating content marketers have done it since six months or less. Quite scary I found that a staggering 43% of B2B marketers don’t measure the efficiency of their content marketing efforts. I found interesting that the topic brand advocates was not on the spot in terms of content marketing in this study.

How much data the world is sharing in one minute…

We might have had our views on the explosion of content in 24 hours and 60 seconds before. However this world is so dynamic and steadily finds and invents new platforms that it does make sense to share the latest graphical data sheet by DOMO.

If data never sleeps, then I am asking myself when we find a rest. In 60 seconds massive amounts of data gets generated via tablets, smartphones, and other application across the Internet. Interesting to see where this data is coming from.

Have you ever thought about how much data you are sharing in one minute or one day?

IKEA: How to fit the store portfolio in the smallest banner ad

What IKEA’s advertising team from Ogilvy Action creates is truly outstanding. Welcome to the smallest store in the world…! This store even fits into a banner ad… which makes it the biggest banner ad somehow. The creative is able to access all 2800+ products inside one tiny banner ad. So, every single product of the IKEA store is available in the banner. However, a challenge to find the product you are looking for. Still a fantastic production…

Via Adweek

Study: Social Media and content marketing attracts brand advocates

Content marketing is one of the fastest growing areas of business for marketers. A report by Zuberance now shows how businesses can make use of content marketing in combination with Social Media to attract more and more web users to become advocates for products and services.

According to the Zuberance report, an amazing portion of 38% of web users have recommended between five and nine brands to their friends and other web contacts. The respondents stated to have advocated at least one company. Even more, 30% recommended between one and four businesses or other organizations. 38% of the advocates stated that they discuss brands with a frequency of once per month. Some of the advocates (12%) even recommend brands several times in a week.

The three main findings…
1. Brand Advocates are even more actіve than previously thought. They recommend more brands, products and services and more often than and in more categories than arlier data suggested.
2. Brand Advocates have even larger social networks than previous studіes showed. They have hundred of friends and colleagues in their social networks. Thus, their recommendations reach more people than earlier estimates suggested.
3. Brand Advocates’ recommendations aren’t lіmited to consumer brands and products. They even advocate products and services that might be considered as mundane like anti-virus software or file transfer services.

Marketers from technology companies should take a close look to these advocates as their business was the most frequently discussed industry. 25% of web users replied that they advise their web contacts on computers, smartphones, and other products. As consumers often spend quite a significant sum on these products, they want to make sure to have chosen the best product that fits their purposes.

Spot On!
Many technology and business companies have realized the fact of the value of word-of-mouth, and thus the value of brand advocates. Different reports by Brafton and Custom Content Council & ContentWise 2011 show how active content marketing influences these people. Companies are clever to promote the conversation around their products and services on the social web, aiming to get their content shared or to boost their search ranks.

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