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: What makes Twitter users trustworthy?

We all want to know what makes us trustworthy, especially when we tweet something. What is the secret sauce that makes others believe in the importance of our tweets? What makes those tweets better than those of our competitors?

The answer comes with a study “Tweeting is believing” from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University. In their research the two parties find how companies and individuals can feed their tweets with more credibility, and giving them some of the secret sauce.

So, ok,… the results were no really the deepest insights, but somehow they undermine what many of us might have expected: Gain followers, receive retweets, include URL’s in your posts, set up a profile picture alongside a serious bio with information that correspond with your tweets.

In order to get the right findings the researchers surveyed more than 250 Twitter users factors to understand what makes up credibility in Twitter accounts. These factors got scored from one tot five, five being the highest.

The top-rated factors that make tweets more trustworthy…
1. Tweet was retweeted by someone you trust – 4.08
2. Tweet from a verified subject expert – 4.04
3. Author is someone you follow – 4.00
4. Tweet contains a URL you clicked through – 3.93
5. Author is someone you’ve heard of – 3.93
6. Account has verification seal – 3.92
7. Author often tweets on topic – 3.74
8. Author’s tweets frequently include similar content – 3.71
9. Author’s user image is a personal photo – 3.70
10. Author often mentioned and/or retweeted – 3.69

These were the lowest five credibility lowering factors for tweets…
1. Weak grammar and/or punctuation 2.71
2. Profile picture equals Twitter’s default user image – 2.87
3. User image is a cartoon/avatar – 3.22
4. Author follows many users – 3.30
5. Author’s user image is a logo – 3.37

Spot On!
In many seminars, companies and managers have asked me whether a weak language and incorrect tweeting is destroying the credibility of the brand. They wanted to know whether avatar pictures or brand pictures might affect it. In my eyes, companies should worry more about their general company Social Media standards, their way of collaboration external and internal, and ask themselves why and what they are tweeting about. Tweeting is just a tiny part of your Social trustworthiness….
What are your own experiences? What makes you trust a Twitter user? Any ranking similarities you can see as well?

Study: In-car internet to become “the norm”

Never will I forget the day some time between 2001 and 2002 when I went to the BMW pavilion exhibition in Munich to get an understanding of what “Connected Drive” means. Those days, even the people in the pavilion could not help us, and it took BMW three days to give us some proper feedback on this term via telephone. Today, the term is clearly defined as driving with internet access which enables all sorts of connected infotainment, and if you want to know more about it, you can get plenty of information here.

Every day today, people are sitting in their cars, grapping their smartphones while waiting at traffic lights – although a great Facebook page tells us not “Text-and-Drive”. The future will be different though…

According to the world’s top car bosses, in-car internet access is close to becoming reality. A recent survey by KPMG called “Global Automotive Executive Survey 2011″ shows that speech recognition and internet connection with Wifi and 3G will become the norm in the future.

The results of the study state that 37% of the 200 responding car executives see “infotainment” to be almost as important as car safety. It makes clear that over the next five years, car buyers will see in-car gadgets provided by the big tech firms like Apple, Google or Microsoft.

Intel already announced some collaboration with Toyota at the end of last year. Intel forecasts that the connected car is the fastest growing technological device following smartphones and tablets.

According to Reuters, Mercedes-Benz USA is bringing Facebook to its cars with the new in-vehicle telematics system that will be unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. It allows drivers to access Facebook on the road. However it is not exactly the same as using the social network on a personal computer or a smartphone. “The version of Facebook offered in Daimler AG’s Mercedes is stripped down to a limited set of features, specially designed for drivers and centered around the locations of friends and businesses.” Audi’s A7 series already offers a built-in 3G wireless which shall be extended to other new models.

Spot On!
Car manufacturers will look out for cooperation opportunities with IT companies as well as telecoms and the music industry. It will be interesting to see how much the in-car technologies will evolve and develop in combination with the Hybrid technology that will get the main investment according to 53% of the car execs. Apart from that 57% see speech recognition and built-in navigation as important product issues for consumers in the future. Just imagine you can send your tweet, write a blogpost or a Google+ status update without taking your eyes from the streets. If speech recognition performs, a lot of the dangerous texting and driving could end. Although it will take some time for people to adapt to the nex technology.

Productivity squared? Future productivity vision 2011 (video)

Many of us web techies have seen the 2009 version of Microsoft’s productivity vision. In their video, Microsoft offered an outlook on how technology could “transform the way we get things done at school, at work, and in the home over the next 5 to 10 years”. Some things have become real in their vision…

Many companies fear that productivity might get lost with the advent of Millenials working in companies in the future. And one things is for sure, screens will change our productivity and our daily working habits in the future.

Also, in their latest version 2011 we can find visions that seem to be not too far away from us, not even visions any more. The video gives still some interesting aspects to think about on how future technology could make our time more efficient to focus our attention on productivity. Now, whether this really strenghtens our relationships when we do different things at the same time, needs to be seen.

Watch it and tell us if this is how you would like to see your productivity squared, and if this is to become real in your future…?!

Screens of the future – Merging Augmented Reality and 3D Apps

What happens if we are merging Augmented Reality and 3D applications in the car industry? After the last vision of Toyota which explored the futuristic rear seat window called “Window to the World” and the Corning “Day Made of Glass“, or Microsoft’s productivity vision of the future, this is another fantastic vision of the capabilities of modern technology in the future.

This business vision, called the Aeon Project, won the 1st place at the Imagina Awards for Best Design and Communication. It is thinking ahead of time and explores the merger of Augmented Reality & 3D applications in a mobility mode.

The Aeon project is not only about the navigation or connected drive mode opportunities, you might know from other car manufacturers. It offers some interactive knowledge management via selectable applications which gives the user the chance to learn about the world around us. It just takes a simple swipe of finger and the screen tells you more about the history of buildings or gives information about restaurants nearby.

It also offers customization features. Whether you want virtual reality, mixed reality or augmented reality, the system can shift from facts to figures to graphics. The real connection of online and offline…

Do you like that…?

Infographic: Why mobile will fuel the future of business…

Mobile apps and technology is becoming increasingly important for companies in order to increase productivity, generate revenue, approach a new client generation and to get rid of paper. Thsi states a study by Zendesk which highlights the results in a nice infographic… and it reminds me of some research data of a Microsoft study.

The Zendesk research found out that 43% of businesses are planning to increase mobile technology for business purposes by 2015. Corporate networks will see half of all devices being mobile devices until that date. The business use of mobile apps is expected to grow on a worldwide basis up to of $25 billion by 2015 (approx. $6.8 billion in 2010).

News Update – Best of the Day

About one year ago Twitter started introducing their new monetization model: Promoted Tweets. Twitter expects 150 Mio. USD revenue this year with the program. Now, one year later the first “success story” have been published, and Gordon Mc Millan writes a nice summary “Do Twitter ads work?“. Not really, it seems…

Is tablet computing changing the future of the whole computer industry? Who can say that today? However, since tablets are equipped with advanced sensors like high-resolution cameras, augmented reality has become an interesting opportunity to facilitate help for customers, i.e. in the form of manuals. Metaio explains in their latest video how this works…

Have you ever wondered why Microsoft bought Skype? This infographic by Jess3 might have an answer for you. The infographic highlights the dynamic of geosocial networking, and the relative size of social networks, like Skype, Twitter or Foursquare among others.

Mobile marketing facts for today and tomorrow….

It seems that I am having a mobile information week. Mobile is the future in my eyes. And I thought it might be worth having a close eye on mobile business productivity, mobile access points for purchase decisions and now will provide some hard facts with an interesting infographic by Microsoft.

It is interesting to see the tiny differences. Some speak of 5 bio users subsribed, the following infographic illustrates the power of 4 bio. mobile devices in use globally. The question is who are the most active mobile users? You say, it is teenagers? No, it is women between 35-54 years of age. Sorry, but I cannot understand this, knowing the way my wife (and her friends) uses her mobile devices (how often do I have to try to get hold of her…).

The following statistics will open your eyes on the present and future of mobile use and marketing opportunities…

Learn More about Mobile Tagging at Microsoft Tag.

LeWeb10 – web strategy catch-up with Jeremiah Owyang

When I joined the LeWeb10 in Paris last week, I was fortunate to spend some time with Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Altimeter Group and Blogger at web-strategist.com. We to talk about the future of web-strategy, the evolution of brands in the social web era and exchanged thoughts on how businesses need to integrate social media in their web activities. And it was good to see that our views matched nicely.

Afterwards, I did a quick video snapshot on three topics…

Where is web-strategy heading to in 2011?
The main trend that Jeremiah foresees is the integration of social media into the corporate website. In 2010, I have seen many companies already challenging this topic, and it improves. Although I have to admit, in many cases I found often tiny mistakes like the way social media conquers websites while important information gets lost or hidden in the backend or also placement of share items/buttons in the wrong corner apart from other things. Yes, companies are integrating their social affinity and activity but should not forget the business model, the target-group (or should I say friends or followers?) and the main existing user behavior…

What are the main trends from a long-term perspective?
Social analytics and Social CRM will emerge (active, pervasive), he said, and he differentiates this from social media monitoring (passive, reactive). I defintely agree in that point. Companies need to understand and react immediately whenever a client approaches a brand or a company how to match the data of all website and lead generation traffic stats with the CRM system in order to pro-actively supply relevant offers to them – be it on mobile, online or offline. Otherwise any competitive advantage will get lost in the future.

What is the role of brand vangelists/brand advocates in the future?
Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Wall-Mart amongst others have already deployed brand vangelist/brand advocates for their purposes. He makes clear that by using these people brands get ahead of the 1:1 dialogue which he thinks does not work on the social web. Brand advocates make the communication programs scale, he argues – I could not agree more as I see the main ROI factor from a user perspective in the time factor.

Thank you, Jeremiah! Looking forward to catching up in 2011…

Brand studies and relativity – It’s all about trust…

The theory of brand strength and leadership is all around and about trust. No wonder that a lot of companies, agencies and consulting companies produce studies that show the importance of results in favor of their business reason – in order to make it a valid business reason.

Some days ago, a marketer said to me: “One day I will write about the theory of relativity research offers”. I can understand my business contact. Especially today. Why? See what kind of study results came out today focussing the relevance of trusted brands in connection to social networks.

As I read the RSS feed of a lot of advertising magazines, it appeared that in not more than two hours (!!!) I came across the following two “studies”.

A: Study, Scource Reuters – Study by Fleishman-Hillard, conducted with Harris Interactive

This Digital Influence Index study says brands using microblogging site elements that provide real-time responses to the public (like Twitter or Facebook) are winning a higher degree of trust from consumers.

Around 75% of respondents say they trust more more in companies that send out short, frequent messages like status updates on social networking sites. These companies deserve more trust from a consumer perspective. In times where leading companies have felt the power of social networks (BP, Toyota, Johnson&Johnson or Procter & Gamble), these findings show the importance of social web engagement companies should consider.

B: Poll, Source AdWeek – Study by Zogby Interactive

This poll suggests that Apple, Google and Microsoft are trusted brands about equally by consumers. But according to the study Twitter and Facebook lag far behind in that respect.

Only 13% of respondents said they trust Facebook completely or a lot. Now, the unbelievable number of 75% are just trusting it a little or not at all. And Twitter does not show better results with 8% trust completely/a lot versus 64% a little/not at all (28% were not sure).

And the numbers in the Gen Y were not better: 20% of the 18-29s trust Facebook completely/a lot – 72% trusting it a little or not at all. For Twitter it is 15% trust it completely/a lot and 66% saying they trust it a little/not at all.

Can you believe these numbers? People are posting their lives and conversations on this social networks. Though they don’t trust them. Strange, right?

Spot On!
So if we take these numbers of the study and the poll for granted, transfer and aggregate their essence, does it mean that we trust brands which show up regularly on Twitter and Facebook, but we don’t trust the platforms of Facebook and Twitter. This sounds bizarr to me. Now, I know that we have to double-check the number of repondents, the way in which the questions were put to the responding audience, the research conducting company’s interest and so on. And sure, a poll offers probably less value than a verified study. Nevertheless, it shows that trust in brands can be seen from different angles. News companies sell both with the same unverified trusted value of one news story. Reuters and Fleishman-Hillard to me sound more like a trusted news source, so I will trust with their findings. It reflects my knowledge…

And in some way I can understand what my customer meant when we was talking about the “theory of relativity of research”.

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