Study: Web economy expected to double in G20 by 2016

We all know that the web economy is exploding at the moment in terms of activity and users. In the next four years the value of the web is expected to achieve a valuation sum growing from 2.7 to 4,2 trillion pounds. This means that the value of the web economy in the G20 countries is nearly going to double in the next four years.

The global web user base is expected to increase foe 1,9 to 3 million users by 2016 – almost half the world’s current population. All these findings are based on a new report commissioned by the Boston Consulting Group. Still, the report also states that there is at present no standard way of measuring the parts of web economy that is ‘digital’.

Boston sees the growth in the evolution of the mobile web access as 80% are assumed to access the web via smart mobile phones. Thinking back to 2010, which is just about two years back, mobile internet access accounted for just over 4% of the G20 economies. The study makers claim that each household has an approximate valuation of 2,000 pounds worth of purchases online before buying.

Some more key conclusions from the study…



- Digital transformation is key for companies. Companies have to build their digital assets and reduce the digital liabilities that limit their ability to tap rich opportunities. People, processes, and organizational structures need to change and adapt them to the digital world.

- IBM forecasts 1 trillion devices to be connected to the Internet by 2015. This has an effect on the ways companies interact with customers and run their supply chains but also how traditional industries have to build their business.



- Companies such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google shape the Internet, in China this might be Baidu and Tencent or in Russia Yandex.

- The power of digital experience goes far more local in terms of impact on everyday life, reflecting economic, political, national characteristics and social influences specific to individual countries.

- The “Millennials” have different expectations as employees, consumers, and citizens. TheArab Spring protests and grass-roots “occupy” movements in the West are the most visible manifestations of the power of the Millennials to shape society and commerce.

Spot On!
Seeing the rapid economical and market changes, the intensity of competition will improve and increase. Companies and brands will need to plan more flexible in terms of their strategic approaches how to reach clients than in earlier years when long-term planning cycles were the common status. Today, it will be important to create an adaptive strategy planing and restructuring process.

PS. A challenge might be if evangelist entrepreneuers like this guy spread market distraction and confusion….

Social Business: 84% of businesses have not fully integrated Social Media in their operations

This report comes as no surprise to me as it justifies our Community Centric Strategy model. The study from InSites Consulting states that only 16% of businesses using Social Media have fully integrated Social Media platforms into their businesses operations. Nevertheless, business leaders believe better social integration will help improve and streamline their business operations. Their hope is that Social Media marketing and internal social apps will boost productivity of their business.

The study concludes that 27% of business executives are on the move to integrate Social Business in 2012. Moreover, another 20% are wishing that the integration of Social Media projects will increase business efficiency. As there are no reliable or established measurement and metrics standards most companies are still waiting to invest big budgets. Still, as competition is high companies start integrating social into their business to be competitive in their market.

The results of the inSites study show that most companies (69%) will invest in Social Media marketing and launch campaigns in 2012 hoping to improve online conversations and their web efforts. For now 64% of businesses have at least one person responsible for Social Media activities and platforms. With a reason: One-third are sure that Social Media is changing their operations.

Spot On!
The challenge for companies will be to set up the right Social Business strategy as it involves the right understanding of community centers as an external strategy issue. And it needs an appropriate internal company culture with social policies, social training and social commitment and the people. Apart from that, 45% of the respondents said that they cannot find the people for their Social Media efforts. The best option is to start investing in the people you have to integrate social in your business. The Community Centric Strategy could be one starting point…

From online to offline with a smile…

We love living digital. We love being online. We love taking our mobiles with us. Anywhere, anytime, any place. However, sometimes people might make fools of us, out of our new digital reality.

In the summer the English National Opera picked up the social networking habits of Twitter and Facebook and created a great commercial that promoted their latest act, transfering our online attitudes to offline. As we all tend to pretend to be friends these days, we sometimes might loose our focus and just make our world seem to be “friendly” and “social”.

And friendly does not mean to make shopping online be easy. Many customer where I have been speaking and doing some consulting business, forget to find out and regularly double-check where their customers are “checking out”. A trend that with Google Analytics picked up with a lovely commercial that illustrates how difficult online shopping might be in the real world. Just think about the annoying digital experiences you have had in the last years, and then transfer them into our offline world. That’s what Google has done.

And it was only a loaf of bread he wanted to buy. It made me smile… And you?

The world is mobile social networking

From a new study by Insites Consulting, we can learn that Europeans connect more to social networks via their phone than surfing the web with them.

47% of smartphone-connected-Europeans will surf the mobile internet every day. However, this might sound like massive traffic load, it is probably more remarkable that 66% of connected smartphone users log on to their social media profiles daily. At the dmexco all experts agreed that the mobile phone is and will remina the leading communication device.

Obviously, it makes a change if you have your smartphone with you whereever you go – at least from a social network point of voiew. It is a difference in terms of frequency and intensity of use of social media platforms. It comes as no surprise that Facebook confirms “People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users”. Smartphones are the emerging access point for Social Media.

Social Media around the word (study presentation)

Steven van Belleghem from Insites Consulting is presnting findings from a global social media study with 9.027 consumers (age 15+) across 35 countries, representative for the online population for their counties on age, gender and e-commerce in Europe, the US, Australia and some of the biggest Asian countries like China and Japan.

LinkedIn – The future of career advertising goes social…

About one and a half years ago, the guys from Mediamind asked me if I want to write a guest post on the future of banner creatives on their blog. Well, I flashed back to find the future – the old strategic approach… What came out was a headline called “Engagement creatives reloading the future”. Seeing what was happening on LinkedIn in the last months, it seems I had quite a good feeling on what the future might look like.

In the Mediamind post, I focussed on the response banner functionality of Facebook creatives and how the referential potential of social graph marketing intelligence let the personal network get engaged. One individual creates buzz just by being integrated with a linked name in one line of the graphic. So, people know your name and get dragged into campaign activity, just by curiosity, just by wanting to know why, what and how. Just by … you name it.

In the last weeks, LinkedIn came from being just another platform selling space to opening the potential for intelligent career online advertising, and leveraging the network potential with clever display advertising. Companies were focussing on personalization, the social targeting opportunities and the API potential to enable innovative campaigns creatives on the business network.

While some social media marketing companies (funny right…?! see picture above) use the traditional way of banner creatives, Volkswagen identified the evolution of the pick-a-boo effect and the competitive aspect of having more contacts, more recommendations and better education. Just the things that make up a career…

Another example is AMEX. They took their social advertising career campaign even a step further by not spoting you, but the person next to us that helps successful managers, the teams and you: the administrators. People could nominate their business supporters, and by voting promote these “second liners” to have a chance to win a gift card courtesy of 2.500 USD.

In the end, the most convincing career social display campaign is when you find yourself in the middle of a personalized creative. When I checked one of my contacts from SAP today, a rectangle banner appeared next to the SAP contact profile of the person I am linked with. Now, guess what happened? I got offered a job from SAP. Well, maybe not the job I wanted but still a great approach.

The banner was personalized using my LinkedIn picture and my name. It was really somehow talking to me. It detected I could be in the software industry, I could be a consulting sales person, and yes, the creation is clever in terms of straight interaction and sharing. Don’t you think…?

Spot On!
We are still early stages with these new (career) display advertising opportunities. Still, the advertising evolution is happening, and publishers need to have a close look at the opportunities if they don’t want to loose the battle to social networks. These examples might be geeky – however, they are engaging, personalized and conversational. Just what traditional banner cannot offer far too often…

Will Millenials cause a headache for IT in the future?

Just a few days ago, I have written about the challenge for IT departments that millenials will want to use their own private devices at work as employees in the future. If this is causing CIO’s and their IT managers headaches then better get some iboprofen now, as there is more to come…

An online study along with in-depth interviews of 400 “Millennials”, ages between 20 through 29, and 200 IT managers the U.S. from mid-sized to large corporations gives some interesting insights in the expectations of the Millenials when it comes to IT. The study was conducted by Isurus Market Research and Consulting with analysis by GigaOM Pro, and underwritten by Bomgar.

Millenials are growing up in an “instantaneous world” of social web conversations, mobile phones, and almost permanent WiFi access. This brings new challenges for IT departments in the future as expectations are these young people are high. Millennials expect more or less immediate answers on IT support questions and all options of multi-channel communication. However, the worst is: Ideally, they could solve their technology issues themselves.

Some key findings what Millenials do…
- 71% state to have done a Google search for a solution finding at least once.
- 61% don’t turn to company support first to solve problems, while 71% say they have done a Google search for a solution at least once.
- 58% prefer to communicate in chat or text messaging, not the phone.
- 40% use a mobile device for work “on a weekly basis.”

So, if Millenials are responsible for their own technology, as it is their private device, IT could get away from the omnipresent IT support issue as they will have less responsibility, costs will decrease for IT, and it is a sustainable Green IT approach. Or who wants to carry around two mobile phones, two tablets, two notebooks, and so on?

The challenge for company bosses? Millennials say that their job satisfaction is “strongly affected” by the type of mobile device their employers provided. Isn’t this great? Just ask them what they want and you can increase personal productivity and work efficiency. Correct?

“Our research highlights the biggest challenges for IT departments: Millennials expect immediate responses, prefer a wider variety of communication channels and, when it comes to problem solving, often turn to Google and outside resources before contacting support,” David Card, Research Director, GigaOM Pro.

Millenials will become difficult to handle though. 60% think that good support time for a technical problem to be solved is less than 10 minutes. Compared to IT managers who think that a reasonable time frame for solving tech problems was an hour or more, this calls for problems between the work forces in the future. No wonder, 80% of IT managers see Millennials as “different or very different than their older peers in terms of technology expectations”.

Spot On!
However, these two studies might sound like a massive IT change process for companies in the future. It has to said that 75% of Millennials rate their IT departments a six or seven on a seven-point scale. Maybe IT should think about setting up IT knowledge wikis instead of letting their employees loose time surfing on Google for a solution. Millenials are not expecting something outrageous, they might just be brighter in terms of technology handling, and show us that collaboration on social networks and in communities works when they are solving their issues without the IT department. They are just another generation. The transition managers need to rate that aspect, too…

What is your view on these new challenges for it?

Social Media Monitoring is becoming mature, SocialCRM it’s future…

It seems to be the right time of the year. At the end of a quarter, companies are buying companies. Just look at how ebay grabed GSI Commerce yesterday. Suddenly the former number two in the retail industry is becoming a competitor for Amazon.

However, even more interesting for me was how quick the Social Media Monitoring (SMM) industry is becoming mature these days. The evolution started last year when the Attensity Group acquired Biz360…

At a time when marketers realized the importance of social media monitoring but still have their internal issues with the listening and analysis technology, Social Media Monitoring will become a boost of awareness by the deals that happened this week. In one week we have two mergers… Meltwater, a social media monitoring provider, buys the Social CRM company named JitterJam. And today Salesforce, one of the leading CRM technology companies acquires Radian6, one of the top Social Media Monitoring providers which will give the “new” companies the opportunity to become a leading supplier of SocialCRM in the future.

Alterian‘s James Eiloart, SVP Sales and Marketing Europe, gave me their feeback on the merger of their main competitor in the Social Media Monitoring arena…

“The purchase of Radian6 by Salesforce.com endorses the importance of the Social Media Monitoring market which we invested in 2 years ago when we acquired SM2/Techrigy, bringing this capability to mainstream marketers and highlighting these tools as something which all organisations need to embrace. However we also recognise it’s not just about the tools or access to tools, it is about having the skills to use them at the micro level, and also being able to use social media data at a macro level, in context of the broader marketing picture. This is why we acquired Intrepid last year who bring the Social Media Monitoring insight services and also consulting to help our partners and clients really use Social Media Monitoring to generate real value across the organisation.”

The micro and macro level will probably become the next challenge for marketers and business leaders. Identifying important communities and social influencers, or analyzing Social Media does only make sense if marketers understand how to answer the Social Media ROI question. And this is a question of understanding the value of conversations. Businesses are build upon these pillars and their ground will be the evolution and execution of SocialCRM which will speed up as a business topic now that these mergers are done.

Spot On!
Social Media Monitoring has become mature… and goes out to get married. Just some weeks ago, Gartner VP Michael Maoz predicted SocialCRM is taking holidays, the social media industry makes an interesting move towards aligning the best of breed from social media and CRM technology. The importance of the social media monitoring tools for the SocialCRM development becomes clear when listening to Forrester analyst William Bandt. He shows some real interesting examples of companies already making use of SocialCRM by showing the value for sales and marketing teams on targeting, acquisition, retention, insight and collaboration with customers.

Salestainability – a phrase or a challenge?

No, the word did obviously not exist before… Or can a phrase come to live with Google not knowing about, nor finding it with their intelligent algorythm? If Google has not indexed one website with the phrase yet, can I claim the phrase as my innovation? Anyway… So, I just created the word today. Horray…

How did I come across it? Let me tell you how I thought about sales and sustainability…

In my eyes the word salestainability defines the future of a successful long-term strategy in business – especially in our social web world… Salestainability. The merger of sales and sustainability could become the formula for clever and intelligent business for the next generation C-level. For those managers who aim to get the balance right between the desire to use social web efficiency and to credit their own customer base for loyalty and advocacy.

Last week, I thought about the challenge for business decision makers to align their web-strategy with new opportunities that social media and social networks offer. And quite frankly, I can imagine that marketers might become kind of “greedy” when thinking about the latest studies. When Deloitte and ExactTarget find that customers are mainly following brands because they want to get benefits, coupons or discounts, nobody would be surprised, if brands are sending rather than understanding.

The social web tends to offer many opportunities to do conversation with our customers without “spaming” them. If customer become Facebook’s Fanpages they declare their open mind to brand activity, and are not only “Likes”, or brand advocates. If people accept Dell’s promotions and let the IT vendor generate 5 Mio. US dollars via Twitter accounts, we need to re-think our sales business and integrate it into our web-strategy to leverage the sales approach to the next level of SocialCRM if they are capable of doing it. And if customers respond to Groupons location-based promotions, they follow the studies results and motivate brands and companies to reach out to them.

Some might pick it up and use their old email tactics – often unpersonalized, uncustomized, unhuman… Feedback might not be valued the way it deserves to be recognized. Companies will start pushing promotions out to them. Why not, if they ask for it? Why not, on a daily basis? Why not challenge their current capabilities at high frequency, harness their brand feedback and hand out permanent sales offers? Why not…? Another study might tell them why…

So far, so good…

Sales is the key driver for business. Business can’t live without push, promotion and placement. Upsale is upscale. No gain, much pain. Companies love to take the money from their customers but do they really care about sustainability? But how can a company in a world of quarterly reporting, balanced scorecards and budget pressure pay attention and give credit to sustainability?

The value of sustainability in business from an executive management point of view was just highlighted in the study “Sustainability: The ‘Embracers’ Seize Advantage” from MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group. Managers who take the sustainability approach as a key strategic metric to their business will improve brand reputation, claims the study. And most companies are “looking towards a world where sustainability is becoming a mainstream, if not required, part of the business strategy”. Thus, having an essential impact on their sales and web-strategy…

Salestainability is where the worlds of sales and sustainability face the competition to understand which customers are the best ones and how to embrace, hug them and treat them. Who are the best…?

Those who don’t follow/fan/like and still get emails, newsletters and direct mail and don’t unsubscribe?
Those who like the brand on Facebook and do conversation around a brand but don’t buy…?
Those who buy through Groupon, take cheap offers and are one-stop shoppers, never seen again?
Those who follow and listen through Twitter for bargains and rate them with a RT or share it?

Who knows the answer? The answer might be: Find the right salestainability!

Spot On!
Salestainability is not a phrase, it is a challenge. Salestainability is getting the balance right between “want” and “wish”, and thinking about diversification and respect. It is an external strategic business attitude towards training the customer on the social web capabilities around a company and brand. Internally, it is about not exhausting the business immanent SocialCRM tactics. Letting the customers breath and take their own decisions without being pushed too hard, without getting under pressure – with the approach of willing to find and give the personal touch from and to the customer. With the pleasure for social shopping leasure.

That’s what I would define as the future salesforce. That’s what I would call… salestainability!

What do you think of salestainability, it’s definition and it’s future outlook for a business that creates a powerful and still customer-centric strategy?

Studie: Die Unternehmens-Webseite hat noch nicht ausgedient

Welches Informationsverhalten zeigen Medienvertreter, Finanzanalysten, Investoren oder auch Jobsuchende im Web? Kann die Facebook Fanpages in Zukunft die Webseite werden? Oder wie? Die Studie “Vom Website-Betreiber zum Multi-Channel Manager” von Virtual Identity hat mit einer Online-Umfrage untersucht, welche Informationsbedürfnisse und Mediennutzungsgewohnheiten über 5.000 Personen haben.

Die Studie bestätigt mich im Wissen, daß in der Phase der Neuorientierung die allgemeinen und traditionellen Plattformen, sprich etablierten Medien wie Suchmaschinen, Unternehmens-Websites oder Online-Fachzeitschriften immernoch (und vermutlich auch noch lange) erste Anlaufstelle zur Informationsaufnahme sind.

Interessanterweise nehmen Blogs in ihrer Bedeutung bei der Informationsvermittlung immer mehr zu. Dennoch zeigen neuste Umfragen, daß das Bloggen auf privater Ebene abnimmt und auf professioneller beruflicher Ebene im Sinne eines erweiterten Marketing-Channels zulegt. 34% der U.S. Firmen nutzen derzeit Blogs für Marketingzwekce und eMarketer rechnet mit einer Steigerung auf 39% in 2011 und 43% bis 2012.

In der Phase der Evaluierung und des Erstellens der Shortlist bei einem Einkaufsprozess stellt die Relevanz der etablierten Unternehmensmedien -Brand Websites- weiterhin eine starke Bedeutung dar, was ich jetzt mal auf die B2C Industrie beziehen würde. In der B2B Welt stellt sich dies erfahrungsgemäß anders dar. Die Meinung der “Peers” ist entscheidend, wird hier via Blogs oder Wikis vertieft und dann in Social Networks verifiziert. Kaufentscheidungen werden meiner Erfahrung nach dort auch rückversichert.

Insofern liegt meiner Meinung nach Frau Dr. Nadja Parpart, Director Consulting bei Virtual Identity, richtig, wenn sie meint dass…

„Im Kontext der heutigen, stark ausdifferenzierten Medienlandschaft muss sich die Unternehmenskommunikation einem verschärften Wettbewerb der Aufmerksamkeit stellen. Dies erfordert neue thematische, mediale wie auch organisatorische Strategien auf Seiten der Kommunikationsverantwortlichen. Kommunikationsverantwortliche, die in der Vergangenheit als Website-Betreiber erfolgreich waren, werden sich zukünftig eher als flexible Information Broker und Multi-Channel-Manager positionieren müssen.“

Weitere Erkenntnisse zum Informationsmehrwert von Unternehmenskomunikation…
- Informationen zu Produkten (92%) wichtiger als zu Dienstleistungen (71%)
- Finanzanalysten halten Geschäfts- und Zwischenberichte für (sehr) wichtig (81%), aber nur 52% der Investoren nutzen Unternehmenswebsites für die Recherche und den Vergleich von Anlageoptionen
- Medienvertreter nutzen Blogs (40%) und Foren und Fach-Communities (39%) bei der Themenfindung
- 51% der Mitglieder in Verbänden und Interessengruppen nutzen die Unternehmenswebsite zum Kennenlernen eines Unternehmens
- Zur Stelensuche nutzen 70% der Jobsuchenden Unternehmenswebsites

Spot On!
Die Hauptmessage ist dennoch, daß der User sein Verhalten verändert. Elemente für Multimedialität, Flexibilität und Vernetzung von Informationsangeboten muß dem User bei der Informationsvermittlung geboten werden. Der Informationsbedarf wächst und der User ist gegenüber neuen Informationsquellen – nutzergenerierten Medien, aber auch Videos sowie mobilen Medienanwendungen – aufgeschlossen. Eine These, die ich schon lange vertrete, ist, daß Foren und Communities sowie Social-Bookmarking-Dienste in der Phase der Detailrecherche steigende Relevanz gewährt werden muß aufgrund des Wertes für SEO-Massnahmen. Endlich weist auch diese Studie ansatzweise darauf hin (Abbildung 6).

Die gesamte Studie ist kostenlos hier erhältlich.

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