Study: Web-traffic boosts in-store sales

In a recent study the research companies comScore, Accenture and dunnhumbyUSA found some significant relevance between in-store sales and a company’s web presence. The study was based on a panel of CPG customers and one million U.S. Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to have their online activities continuously measured and matched to their in-store brand buying behavior provided by dunnhumbyUSA.

The report comes to the conclusion that consumers who visit a website prior to their shopping experience in a company store spend 34% more with that company and 57% more on products or services based on their specific industry sector. It also states that visitors of brand websites are frequent buyers of the brand in retail stores. It shows that 42% more of these clients finish their transactions than non-visitors. Furthermore, website visitors are also heavier buyers in a brand’s product category. They are spending 53% more in their category dollars than non-visitors.

“Since website visitors have higher affinity to the brand and the overall product category, there is an opportunity for brand marketers to drive loyalty through personalizing the website experience, catering to the preferences of their best customers.”John LaRocca, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, dunnhumbyUSA

And again another study highlights the importance of content marketing as the new emerging trend in marketing. Shoppers were more aggressive in their approach to understand and evaluate their purchases prior to their visit in shops as a result of the massive information access through the web. According to the research, content marketing plays a significant role here. So, campaigns on the web not only add value to web shopping but also -and for some companies and brands more importantly- will help to drive and boost in-store habits and sales – apart from positioning a brand’s capability.

“Marketers who create compelling (brand) website experiences for consumers are extremely effective in driving incremental and profitable in-store sales. Analysis shows that consumers visiting the best of the 10 CPG brand websites evaluated in the research study, spent over 200% more on the brand than non-visitors.” Jerry Lohse, Senior Director, Accenture Interactive

Based on the fact that Brafton reported some weeks ago that the average consumer visits more than 10 web pages before a purchase decision, this study marks an important point in the relevance between online and offline shopping. This might be catalyzed by the new opportunities that smartphones, tablets or Augmented Reality (see real-life community shopping) offer, and shows the straight relationship between the two shopping experiences which more and more merge to one close shopping cycle.

Spot On!
More companies are realizing that offering web shoppers the same information and service as in-stores will lead to more purchase at both ends of the shopping cycle: online and at offline locations. The challenge for companies is to differentiate the shopping experience by using SoLoMo (social – local – mobile). Here the question for the future will remain whether in-store shopping needs to become more of a lifestyle experience or adventure to attract more consumers to join in-store activity (see IKEA Sleepover), or wether people will want to have real people around them and thus make it a social reality world, rather than a social web world…

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….

Top 3 Ways Web 3.0 Will Change Workflow

There are many ways to bolster the productivity of your workforce. You could bring in a business speaker to inspire the inner entrepreneur in your employees. You could offer financial incentives for reaching certain benchmarks. You could also upgrade the technological infrastructure of your office. Preparing for Web 3.0, for instance, will require all companies to rethink business as usual and adopt a wide-ranging portfolio of new online tools and services. The advent of Web 3.0 has already made a lasting effect and we can expect this trend to continue. Here are the top 3 ways it will change the workflow in the business landscape:

Real time collaboration. Complex projects can now be undertaken simultaneously by multiple people across vast distances. The software as a service model now so common with cloud computing services is making it so that documents can be synchronously changed on-line using Google docs and other services. This enables businesses to maintain a diverse and mobile workforce that can execute and launch projects outside the traditional constraints of an office. Web applications that facilitate real-time communication, such as Skype, also allow for non-location based business meetings between clients across the world. In the future, this should help reduce the energy demands of the modern office, as well as the broadband and IT requirements of the typical company.

Virtual reality communities. So far, the best example we have of a vibrant virtual reality world that has bred its own economy, global population, currency, and infrastructure is Second Life. In the future, many people will conduct the majority of their business transactions through sites like this. Everything from trade shows to business meetings to the stock market exchange could take place in an online virtual reality space. At present, VR systems are strengthening the efficiency of workplace environments by offering better visualization tools to manufacturers.

Ubiquitous smartphone use. As cell phones continue to be viewed more as online tools and replace PCs as the preferred method of web activity, we can expect businesses to adopt their widespread use. Smartphones are also increasingly used for journalism, file transfers and real time communication. Expect smartphones to be the pen of the future.

Web 3.0 will be making considerable headway in marketing, social media, and business protocol in the coming years. Many analysts expect it to dramatically change the way companies operate. Real time collaboration, virtual reality, and increased smartphone use are just three of the ways this change will be manifested.

The Social Media Rockstars – Community Managers (Report 2012)

Being a community manager in a company or a community center is the most popular position people can have in these Social Media times. Not only is this the person in charge of the engagement cycle of all Social Media topics but moreover that they become the main public touchpoint of the Social Media conversation of the brand or company, and thus their reputation becomes one of a kind of a rockstar…

Still, many brands and companies still hand over the Social Media responsibility to junior level people or trainees who then have to engage and manage their online communities. Would you say this is clever, or wouldn’t it be better to hand over the responsibility to a chief culture officer or an experienced market brain?

Socialfresh published an infographic and report data that illustrates the work, the tasks and capabilities that a community managers need to be able to cover. And these are some of the findings they provide.

Community Managers..
… commit most of their time with content, respectively online conversations
… 67% come from a brand side vs. 33% form an agency side
… are far more females than male (65% vs. 35%)
… have an average age of 30 years, however the 31-40 year olds make most money
… see more success on Facebook (52%) than any other platform
- gets an average salary of almost 62.000 USD

Ok, the salary is not rockstar-like but their chance to become one of the top 50 Social Media influencers is a sweet potential outlook…

Edelman Trust Barometer 2012: CEOs down, Social Media getting better…

Year on year, Edelman’s Trust Barometer checks the credibility and trustworthiness of politics, companies, CEOs and media from a quite generalistic point of view.

The findings for this year were published in the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global survey which came out yesterday in its 12th year. The survey offers insights from over 30,000 people in 25 countries with the main focus on “Informed Publics”. By “Informed Publics” Edelman sees college-educated people between 25-64 years of age that are among the best earners in their countries and describe themselves as heavy consumers of media information.

Obviously interesting for me were two things… How are people trusting CEO’s after CEO’s criticized their marketers some month ago in a study by the Fournaise Marketing Group. And also, how are consumers worldwide gaining trust in social media as a source of business information.

Let’s start with the CEOs first.

When Edelman asked respondents how credible information coming from a CEO would be, 38% replied they would trust the information. Although this sounds not bad, it is a 50% dump from last year and the biggest drop since Edelman started doing the survey 12 years ago. And although government leaders were less trusted than CEOs, in more or less all the countries responding, 49% would want to see an increase of government regulation of business.

And how about consumers’ trust in Social Media?
Well, let’s put it that way… Social Media is on the rise but still lags behind corporate websites and traditional media. So, you marketers should better not rely solely on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.
The 2012 survey tells us that 14% of respondents see Social Media as a trusted source of company information — an increase of 6% to one year ago. But it’s still getting the lowest trust score of the four options shown below. This comes close to the trust in company websites (16%). Traditional media still is top of “news pops” (32%).

Spot On!
So which business is trusted most? Technology companies are most trusted with 79% saying they believed tech companies do the right thing. Indian, Chinese and the United States tech companies earn most trust, UK, France and Germany rank lower. Trust in financial services companies and banks soars, and those companies are the least trusted businesses. 47% said they trusted banks to do what is right. 45% saying they trusted financial services companies.

Who do you trust? Would you agree with these Edelman findings?

comScore: Smartphones and tablets boost European media consumption ‎

The digital environment is chaining very fast, based on the evolution of the modern mobile devices which are offering new opportunities and challenges, depending on whether at home or at work. Some forecasts already proclaim the death of the desktop. Today, mobile devices like tablets and smartphones change the daily lives of Europeans, and the way we use our mobile devices was explained in one of my last posts. .

A recent study by comScore, Inc. and Telefónica Germany called Connected Europe -published during DLD Conference today- shows some five developments and gives an outlook where the mobile evolution is heading to. The study was based on a survey of mobile subscribers age 13+ and their primary device. These are the key findings the study is coming up with…

Smartphones and Tablets make PC more and more redundant.
Reasons: Lower hardware costs, increased subsidies, and aggressive operator price plans. A majority of non-computer web traffic comes from smartphones (65%) and especially tablets (25%) are picking up momentum in the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom).

Mobile Media is booming.
Reason: Ubiquitous 3G/4G networks delivering mobile ready content to multiple screens (PC, Smartphone, Tablets). 75% of the EU5 use mobile media users in October 2011 which is an increase by 62% in the past year.

Apple connected use wins in fragmented EU5 market across ecosystems.
Reason: However, there are powerful competitors (Nokia and Google), Apple’s iOS has the top spot when combining smartphones, tablets and other devices: 30% share of connected devices in use! Nokia’s Symbian and Google’s Android win in terms of the highest market share among smartphone.

iPad boost Apple’s market power.
Reason: iPad enthusiasm is not limited to Apple enthusiasts. Users of other phones such as LG (86% more likely) and Motorola (72% more likely) were overrepresented amongst iPad owners, as compared to their respective shares of the smartphone market. Obviously, iPhone owners were quite likely to have an iPad (66 times more likely).

Mobile commerce is increasing and changing expectations for the retail industry.
Reason: Smartphone users are massive mobile shoppers and push retail with double or triple digit growth rates across European countries. Just look at the use of modern mobile devices and their apps in the Prime Time and you won’t be surprised anymore.

Spot On!
According to the study, Germany had the fastest growing (increase of 112% year on year) user base and witnessed the quickest adoption of emerging technologies, such as QR codes. Interesting to me were two facts…
a) Men are still more likely to have a tablet than a smartphone compared to women, whether this is based on business issue or interest the study did not give an answer…

b) Smartphone and tablet is not an issue of income aspects. 65,4% of a household income under 40K EUR have a smartphone and 56% own a tablet.

Would you agree that calling a smartphone and a tablet your own will become as important as having a TV in the past?

ComScore study: 31% of banner ads get lost for viewers

Companies and brands love to book page impressions with publishers, shopping and trading sites. Users find themselves being bombarded with banner ads all over the web – and not often do these ads add any value on customer journeys and the digital shopping experience. Often they bore us (dresses and dishes), annoy us (gay ads for married people) or make us hate companies brands (you love a and get b beer brands). Real Time bidding (RTB), (Behavioral) Retargeting technology and demand side platforms (DSP) will become game changers in the ad space in the future.

Sounds good but do advertisers get what publishers promise today, just on the basis of ad impression buying? Well, not really…

Yesterday, ComScore announced their “Validated Campaign Essentials (vCE)” which is said to be a Holistic Measurement tool for verifying the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and their subsequent targeting tactics. Thus, ComScore can double-check of where the ads are being delivered, where they are positioned within a page and who’s eyeballs they meet with the optimization add-on to know where they can be better positioned and at what time. The new technology or tool (vCE) will allow ComScore check campaigns effectiveness on a demographics basis.

ComScore definitely recognizes clients need for a world of better performance with campaigns for a reasonable future of advertisements. However the good news, when you worried about the effectiveness of your last campaign, there is much worse stuff to think about…

ComScore has found, in a recent comprehensive study, that over 31% of online display ads get lost for eyeballs of potential viewers, and for some websites it is even a scary number of 91%. Reasons are obvious: Some of these ads are below the fold. User might not scroll down far enough to view them, and vice versa. Some people just scroll too quick and thus get passed them before they have been loading.

The findings also state that as many as 15% of campaign ads were delivered to viewers outside of the targeted media plan places. An average of 4% of ad impressions found viewers in locations that weren’t on the plan, or where products weren’t available. Do you still wonder why the above mentioned banner campaigns reach us? But ComScore works on the issue…

“One big issue with internet advertising is that not all ads that are served end up being seen. This is a core issue raised by the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. In order for marketers to have the same confidence in the digital channel as they do in TV, we need measurement around the visibility of ads.” Mike Donahue, EVP, Strategic Partnerships, ComScore

Spot On!
Google will penalize companies and platforms that have too many ads above the fold in the future: 3 ads per page is sufficient and strategically clever, Google advices in this video. Just imagine your banners are being delivered to platforms that are damaging for your brand. It happens. Impressions appear beside content that were defined as “not brand safe” by the advertiser. Of all tested campaigns, 72% showed up on pages that had objectionable content, as defined by the brand. Now, that ComScore and advertisers like Chrysler, Discover, E*TRADE Financial, Ford, Kellogg’s, Kimberly Clark and Kraft among others push the development of the third-party tracking, there might be hope that consumers and clients get banners delivered that are targeted the right way. Nevertheless, companies need to start thinking about the right call-to-action in order to get the right conversation figures…

Memories – History of Disruptive B2B Innovations

Sorry, if I am getting emotional in this post… After far more than 1.000 posts, there must be one that is more personal than the rest of this blog: Memories.

I haven’t been alive 1851. Well, I am not alone on that one, right…?! No, I haven’t changed the world.
Obviously. Many of the companies on this infographic could not make this happen…

However, in 1999 something happened that I did not expect those days, or when I started my career in the B2B marketing and media world. It was disruptive in my B2B marketing life. Ok, I admit it was no innovation…, maybe some tiny idea and thoughts were those days. It was a milestone for me personally. And a tipping point in my business experience…

Getting an award is something that gives people a career kick. No Grammy. No Oscar. No… whatever. Having an award from the company that is mentioned at the beginning of this chart is something special to me, especially when you were young, inexperienced but eager to become better and better in business. When United Buisness Media bought CMP in 1999, I achieved a Salesperson of the Year award from CMP. Big emotions, big memories, I can tell you…

Seeing JESS3 and Eloqua mention CMP in their history of disruptive B2B Technolgy Innovations infographic brought back these long forgotten memories. I haven’t seen anyone mention CMP for years…

This infographic is not only rewarding the importance of content marketing, it also shows that content marketing will remain to be relevant and thrilling in the future. However, it might shift more and more from text to audio-visual touchpoints? We will see…

PS: Thanks to Mai Nguyen to ping this through to me…

Study: Social sharing buttons in email increase click-through rates

Studies from AddThis and ShareThis have illustrated how sharing trends may boost marketing efforts and how to best use them for marketing efficiency.

The latest research from GetResponse shows the influence of social sharing on email effectiveness. The study which compared social sharing preferences of email marketers, analyzed Social Media sharing via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in over 2 billion email sent by customers of the email marketing provider.

The GetResponse study also found that 51.9% only use one social share icon, while 40.6% use two of those, 7.4% three, and only 0.1% four icons. Those companies that offered at least three social sharing opportunities succeeded with a 55% higher click-through rate (CTR). The findings state that the number of marketers who include social sharing buttons in their emails increased to 18.3%. This is an increase of 40% from last year.

It seems that marketers understand the benefit of shirring for their marketing efforts: more reach, more traffic, more engagement, more sales. Email including social sharing buttons had a higher click-through-rate of up to 115%: Emails that included social sharing buttons had a 5.6% CTR which stands against 2.6% CTR for those that did not use social sharing buttons.

The infographic below shows the main results of the GetResponse’s study but also illustrates the importance of connecting all social efforts with traditional marketing to succeed.

The Social Google: Google Search and Google+ unite

Google revolutionized the internet, the way we interact, we use our brains and thus, somehow it changed the world. And now they will do it for the second time… with “Search, plus Your World”. This new search engine technology does not only bring us information from across the web. It proclaims to make search even better better by including photos, posts, and “more from you and your friends”.

With an all new algorithm for their search they have changed their search strategy. Today, people are searching not only for content. Today people also want to find personal and private information and touchpoints. The normal result is one which we have all expected for a long time since Google+ launched: Google+ will be integrated in Google search which will definitely affect the power of Google against their hardest social competitor Facebook.

Google’s new “Search, plus Your World” integrates also personal data like personal content, pictures or videos from Google+. Here is their new promotion video…

On the official Google blog Amit Singhal explains how the new Google search works with an experience of his past.

“As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty. A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.”

Google’s first step to integrate Social Search results gets now followed by the integration of Google+ which becomes a massive hub to “socially unite” all of their own products and services. The new search offers three main benefits…

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Spot On!
However, this might sound as if Google makes us more transparent, users have the opportunity to select whether they want the new Google search algorith, or not. This gives users the ability to see either the good old search results or the brand new private search results. People just need to use the little buttons…

…or they will simply change it in the account settings. And Google extends the Google+ circles idea to their search: Every single result in the private search mode gets marked whether it is private, public or limited entry. Somehow a clever filter, don’t you think…?

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