Gallup puts the Kibosh on Social Media’s Marketing Hype

September 20, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Content Creation and Content Management, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media Business, Consumer Behavior, Gallup, marketing, Marketing Hype, Social Media, Social Media Hype

“Social media are not the powerful and persuasive marketing force many companies hoped they would be.” — Gallup, Inc.

That’s one of several key conclusions from a report issued this past summer by research firm Gallup, Inc. The report examined the influence of social media on consumer purchase decision-making.

The Gallup findings are based on web and mail polling it conducted with ~18,000 American consumers during 2013.

When asked about the influence of social media on buyer behaviors, ~62% of the respondents reported that social media has “no influence at all” on their purchasing decisions.

By contrast, ~30% stated that social media has “some influence,” while only ~5% reported that social media has “a great deal of influence” over their purchasing decisions.

Compare these middling results with the fact that U.S. companies spent well over $5 billion on social media advertising in 2013, and the two figures seem out of proportion.

Actually, the disconnect between “people and products” on social media shouldn’t be too surprising, in that ~94% of the Gallup respondents reported that the reason they go on social media platforms is to connect with friends and family members.

The percentage of people who use social media to follow trends and/or to find reviews or other information on products is far lower: ~29% according to the Gallup survey.

But it’s the magnitude of the difference that may be surprising.

And here’s another thing: In its report, Gallup states that “consumers are highly adept at tuning out brand-related Facebook and Twitter content.”

It’s yet another data point supporting the growing realization that social media has failed to live up to its early marketing hype. So it should come as little surprise that more companies have been refining their strategies to stress quality over quantity when it comes to both fan acquisition and to published content.

More findings from the Gallup report can be viewed here.

Google Glass: Far-sighted … or fuzzy?

September 18, 2014September 18, 2014 Phillip Nones Business, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary Apple Watch, Fashion Failure, Google, Google Glass, Google Goggles, marketing, Mobile Communications, Wearable Technology

I’ve been blogging about Google Glass forever, it seems — or at least as far back as 2009 when the early conception of the product, then known as “Google Goggles,” was in its preliminary stage of development.

The Google Glass product was “soft-launched” in 2012, but it’s only become available to the broader consumer marketplace since the spring of this year — at about $1,500 a pair.

So … how has Google Glass done so far?

“Underwhelming” might be one way of putting it.

As it turns out, there are a number of key factors that are hindering consumer acceptance of this new piece of electronic gadgetry. Consider these points:

Substandard quality of images and video compared to a ~$200 smartphone: oversaturated colors, lack of depth and dimension and all.
Battery life in normal use that is far less than promised: only about three hours instead of a full day.
Although somewhat streamlined compared to the beta versions of the product, it remains a somewhat “clunky” wearable device — or as Forbes magazine puts it, a “fashion failure.”
The general “creep-out factor” of constant surveillance remains a psychological barrier to many consumers.

Indeed, the jokes haven’t abated about the kind of people who make up the cadre of Google Glass “early adopters.”

“Glassholes” is one of the not-so-nice monikers they’re being called.

Going forward, Google Glass faces even more competition in the “wearables” category as computer power migrates into watches, jewelry and clothing in addition to eyeglasses. Even as these concepts become more mainstream, I suspect that Google Glass will continue to lag behind other products which seem to be harnessing the “high-tech-meets-high-fashion” concept more effectively.

We saw clear evidence of that this past week with the introduction of the Apple Watch.

Whereas Google has taken a “brute force” approach in the technological aspects of Google Glass (with design playing second fiddle), Apple has taken its technological innovation and packaged it in a way that resonates with the marketplace at a more visceral level.

If you glance quickly at someone wearing Apple’s watch, you’d be hard-pressed to think it’s anything much different from an analog version. If Google hopes to have the same kind of success that Apple is poised to have, it needs to start thinking along those lines, too.

But one wonders if Google is “hard-wired” that way …

Organic Search: Still King of the Hill in Generating Web Traffic

September 14, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Media BrightEdge, Business, Content Creation, Content Marketing, marketing, Media, Online Marketing, Organic Search, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Web Marketing, Web Traffic

In recent years, the focus on “content marketing” has become stronger than ever: the notion of attracting traffic via the inherent relevance of the content contained on a website rather than through other means.

It seems eminently logical. But content marketing is also relatively labor-intensive to build and to maintain. So there’s always been an effort to drive web traffic through “quicker and easier” methods as well.

But the newest findings on web traffic really do demonstrate how fundamental good content is to meeting the challenge of generating web traffic.

An analysis by web analytics and measurement firm BrightEdge reveals that organic search (SEO) drives over half of all traffic to websites (both business-to-business and business-to-consumer).

By contrast, paid search (SEM) accounts for only one-fifth of SEO’s result, and social is lower still:

Organic search: Generates ~51% of all web traffic
Paid search: ~10%
Social media: ~5%
All other methods (e.g., display advertising, e-mail and referred): ~34%

Source: BrightEdge, 2014.

In other words, all forms of advertising put together don’t drive as much traffic as organic search.

The BrightEdge statistics also remind us that social media, however popular it may be to millions of people, isn’t a highly effective traffic generator like search. Here are some of the key reasons why:

Social shares are fleeting and can get drowned out easily.
Most users don’t go on a social platform, only then to click on different links that take them away from social.
Not everyone uses social media, whereas everyone uses a search engine of some kind when they’re in “investigative” mode.

That’s the thing: People use SEO when they’re seeking answers and solutions — often in the form of a product or a service. Unlike in social or online display advertising, there’s no need to “disrupt” the user’s intended activity.

And if you’re in the B-to-B realm, organic search even more prevalent: Organic search drives ~73% of all web traffic there.

Even consumer categories like retail, entertainment and hospitality find that organic search is responsible for attracting 40% or more of all web traffic.

The takeaway for companies is that any marketing strategy that doesn’t adopt “content development” as a core tactic instead of an “ornamentation” is probably destined to fall well-short of its full potential.

Coming Up: A Labor Shortage?

September 10, 2014September 10, 2014 Phillip Nones Business, Demographics, Economics, Employment, Manufacturing, Social Commentary Business, Conference Board, Economics, Employment, Employment Trends, Gad Levanon, Labor Market, Labor Shortage, labor shortages, Unemployment

It may seem fanciful, but a new report published last week by The Conference Board concludes that the United States and other advanced economies will actually face significant labor shortages over the coming decade and a half.

This forecast has been made primarily based on the Baby Boomer workforce departing the labor market over this period.

The Baby Boomer phenomenon is what makes things different in now compared to the decades previously: For the first time since World War II, working age populations will actually be declining in mature markets.

As Dr. Gad Levanon, director of macroeconomics at The Conference Board reported, “The global financial crisis and its aftermath – stubbornly high unemployment in many countries – have postponed the onset of this demographic transformation, but will not prevent it from taking hold.”

According to The Conference Board’s analysis, several countries have already begun to see this happen, as their natural rates of employment have now fallen below their pre-recession levels: Japan, Germany, South Korea and Canada.

The same thing is expected to happen in the United States and the United Kingdom by 2015 … and in the Scandinavian countries, the Benelux countries plus Australia by 2016 or 2017.

Other mature economies like those of Spain, France, Portugal, Italy and Greece won’t experience this until the years further out – but The Conference Board predicts that it will happen there as well.

U.S. market sectors that are expected to experience the most severe labor shortages include healthcare occupations, STEM occupations (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), as well as skilled trades that don’t require a college degree but that do require specialist training.

Among the challenges The Conference Board envisions in these three major categories are the following:

Skilled labor occupations like construction, transportation and utility plant operations are going to be adversely affected by many more retirements happening than new job seekers coming in to fill the void.
STEM occupations won’t be as stressed as some might imagine, because higher productivity will alleviate the pressure on hiring more workers in IT and high-tech manufacturing segment. That being said, certain sub-segments such as information security, environmental and agricultural engineering, and applied mathematics are expected to face severe labor shortages.
The numbers of new entrants in various healthcare occupations are constrained by high barriers to entry such as extensive education and experience requirements, along with accreditation requirements.

The Conference Board report has constructed a Labor Shortage Index covering 32 countries. The index combines current labor-market tightness with future demographic trends to predict the likelihood of the different countries experiencing labor shortages.

The bottom line on the index: with the exception of the Mediterranean countries, all of the labor markets in developed economies are expected to be squeezed pretty tightly starting within the next few years.

It’s been quite a while since we’ve been hearing about pending labor shortages … but that’s exactly what The Conference Board is predicting. Here’s a link to more details about the report, which is appropriately titled From Not Enough Jobs to Not Enough Workers.

If you have thoughts or personal observations to share on the job markets on the domestic scene or internationally, please share them with other readers here.

Social media engagement … or is it disengagement?

September 7, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary 90-9-1, 90-9-1 Rule, Advertising, Audience Engagement, marketing, Social Behavior, Social Engagement, Social Media, SocialFlow

Here’s an interesting finding about social media: The overwhelming majority of posts on the major social media sites engender no engagement.

As in “none at all.”

And this goes for posts uploaded by marketers and publishers as well as one from “ordinary” users.

This finding comes from SocialFlow, a social media software and content dissemination firm which analyzed ~1.6 million organic posts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ that reached a total of ~361 million people.

What the SocialFlow research found was that ~95% of those posts results in no engagement at all.

By contrast, only ~1% of the posts produced really strong engagement — defined as 20,000 interactions or higher per post. Many of those posts are uploaded by big entertainment and media companies and dealt with — you guessed it — celebrity gossip and so forth.

Other findings from the SocialFlow research show that higher engagement rates tend to happen for “data-driven” posts — ones that are targeted to certain audience segments based on predictive algorithms pertaining to those segments’ behaviors.

Not surprisingly, posts that tend to attract higher engagement are more likely to be on “trending” topics. But high-engagement posts about breaking news or celebrity reporting deliver little benefit for marketer of brands beyond the ones involved in entertainment and media companies.

Technology, healthcare and not-for-profits, by contrast, aren’t very good fits for such news, even if the posts themselves attract more engagement and interaction.

The SocialFlow research underscores yet again that, despite the continuing evolution of “interactivity” in marketing, the 90-9-1 rule still generally applies.

That’s the notion that for every piece of content seen, 90 people “look and lurk” only … 9 people may choose to engage with the content … and only 1 person is responsible for creating the content to begin with.

They’re all important factors to keep in mind when considering social revolution and its implications.

Couponing Practices: Tradition Trumps Technology

September 4, 2014September 4, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Marketing Communications, Media, Sales Advertising, Consumer Advertising, Consumer Marketing, Couponing, Coupons, Experian, Marcomm, marketing, marketing communications, Simmons National Consumer Study

With big changes happening every day in the way that consumers are interacting with brands and products, a big question is how quickly they’re changing their habits when it comes to the use of coupons.

Perhaps surprisingly, the results of a new 2014 Simmons National Consumer Study conducted by Experian show that “traditional” couponing activities remain far and away the most prevalent consumer activity.

First of all, the proportion of U.S. households that uses coupons of any sort is right around three-fourths (~74% according to the recent Simmons survey).

And we all know the single biggest reason why people use coupons: to save money. That rationale dwarfed any other among the survey respondents:

I use coupons to save money: ~64% of respondents mentioned
I use coupons to try new products: ~23%
Coupons incent me to try new stores: ~7%

But then the data points begin to deviate from where marketers may think their consumers’ minds are at (or where they might wish them to be).

Consider how many of the following popular couponing practices are distinctly “old school”:

I use coupons from in-store/on-shelf coupon machines: ~55% of respondents cited
I take advantage of rebates on products: ~50%
I use free-standing inserts from newspapers: ~46%
I use on-package coupons: ~37%

Compare that to the far-lower engagement levels with “new school” couponing practices:

I use coupons delivered by Internet or e-mail: ~30% of respondents cited
I use my smartphone to redeem coupons at the store: ~17%
I have used a smartphone coupon app in the last 30 days: ~9%

These results show that if companies decide to embrace coupons as part of their marketing effort, they’ll need to pay as much attention (if not more) to traditional couponing methods than to newer practices.

Old habits die hard … at least in this arena.

The key to environmentally friendly products’ desirability? Deemphasize the green.

September 1, 2014September 1, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Manufacturing, Marketing Communications, Sales American Consumers, Captains of Industry, environmental consciousness, environmental issues, Environmentalism, Green Products, Landor, Marcomm, marketing, marketing communications, Nest Learning Thermostat, Nones, Sustainability, Ted Page, Tesla

It turns out that one key to the success of marketing so-called “green” products is actually to deemphasize the environmental messaging — at least when targeting consumers in the United States.

According to a number of surveys conducted by branding and marketing communications firm Landor, American consumers value possessing “green” attributes the least valuable of a series of brand attributes studied.

This despite years of social engineers and marketers of environmentally friendly brands attempting to “educate” consumers on environmental consciousness and the importance of sustainability.

At this point, it’s probably better for products to promote themselves based on other attributes besides “green” attributes … or at least to stop leading with that argument.

Instead, what are the values that resonate the most with American consumers? According to Ted Page, a principal at content marketing firm Captains of Industry, there are three in particular — none of them having much to do with environmental issues — at least on the face of it:

Freedom
Independence
Saving money

But for green products, it’s possible to tie everything up in a nice bow by being able to lay claim all three of these attributes as brand attributes while not compromising the environment, either.

An example of this message strategy in action is the Nest Learning Thermostat, which promises saving energy in the context of achieving increased home efficiency, automated temperature management and lower energy bills. The “green positioning” is nice — but it’s the other product attributes that really hit pay-dirt.

Another example is Tesla electric automobiles. Tesla is promoting the performance of its high-torque electric engine as superior to other sports cars manufactured by BMW, Lexus and Audi.

The fact that Tesla’s high-performance engine happens to be emissions-free is just icing on the cake.

Thanks in part to this messaging platform, sales of the Tesla Model S auto now outstrip those of the Mercedes S-Class, Lexus LS, BMW 7-Series, Porsche Panorama and the Audi AB.

One has to wonder if this would had happened had Tesla chose to lead with “green” messaging instead.

It would be nice to think so, but … probably not.

The “App Gap”: Mobile Apps Overtake All Others in Digital Media Consumption

August 27, 2014August 27, 2014 Phillip Nones Business, Demographics, Media, Media Consumption, Social Commentary, Social Media Apps, Business, Communications, comScore, Digital Media, Marcomm, Media, Media Consumption, Mobile Apps, Mobile Devices, Smartphones

It was bound to happen.

The bulk of time Americans are spending on digital media … is now happening on mobile applications.

According to data released this past week by Internet and digital analytics firm comScore, the combined time that people expend using digital media breaks down as follows:

Mobile apps: ~52% of all time spent online
Mobile web surfing: ~8%
Desktop: ~40%

Apps are clearly in the driver’s seat – particularly in the mobile realm. In fact, comScore estimates that apps account for 7 out of every 8 minutes spent on mobile devices.

On smartphones, the app usage is ~88% of all time spent, whereas on tablets, it’s ~82%.

This doesn’t mean that app usage is spread evenly throughout the population of people who are online. Far from it. Only about one-third of people download one app per month or more. (The average smartphone user is downloading about three apps per month.)

The inevitable conclusion: App usage is highly concentrated among a subset of the population.

Indeed, the 7% most active smartphone owners account for almost half of all the download activity during any given month.

But even if most users aren’t downloading all that many apps … they are certainly engaged with the ones they do have on their devices: comScore reports that nearly 60% are using apps every day.

Here again, the data show that usage levels are much higher among smartphone users than they are with tablet users (where only about one quarter of the people use apps daily).

Where they’re spending their time is also interesting. Well over 40% of all app time spent on smartphones is with a user’s single most used app. (Facebook takes top honors — of course.)

And if you combine social networking, games and Internet radio, you’ve pretty much covered the waterfront when it comes to app usage.

When you think about it, none of this should come as much surprise. We’re a mobile society – hourly, daily, monthly and yearly. It only makes sense that most online time is going to be happening when people are away from their home or their desk, now that it’s so easy to be connected so easily from even the tiniest mobile devices.

And speaking of “easy” … is it really any wonder why people would flock to apps? It’s less hassle to open up an app for news or information rather than searching individual sites via mobile. People simply don’t have the patience for that anymore.

Vacationing Americans and the “Work Martyr Complex”

August 24, 2014 Phillip Nones Business, Employment, Human Resources, Social Commentary American Workers, Employment, Human Resources, PTO, U.S. Travel Association, Vacation, Vacation Time

I’ve blogged before about the propensity for Americans to forego using all of their allotted vacation time in a given year.

But that was back in 2012, in the waning months of the “Great Recession,” so perhaps one reason for those dynamics was leaner workforces and the need for “all hands on deck.”

A few years have gone by since then, and … very little has changed in these dynamics.

That’s the conclusion in a report released this week by the U.S. Travel Association. Titled “Overwhelmed America: Why Don’t We Use Our Paid Time Off?”, the study included a survey of ~1,300 American workers and senior business leaders, conducted by GfK.

What the survey found was that 40% of workers fail to take all of their allotted paid time-off.

When asked why this was the case, look at the reasons that were cited:

Taking time off will cause my work to pile up: ~40% cited

Nobody else can do my job while I’m on vacation: ~35%

I can’t afford to take time off: ~33%

I don’t want to be seen as “replaceable”: ~22%

The study characterizes the atmospherics surrounding the phemonemon as a “work martyr complex.”

As U.S. Travel’s chief executive puts it, “busyness” is something Americans wear as a “badge of honor.”

But there may be a bit more to it than that.

The survey also found that two-thirds of the respondents feel that their employer sends mixed messages about taking vacation … says nothing at all about it … or actually discourages people from taking paid time off.

What appears to motivate workers to take their full allotted vacation time is the implementation of “use it or lose it” policies. When such policies are in place, ~84% of workers take all of their allotted time.

By contrast, for companies that offer the ability for workers to roll over vacation time, bank it, or be paid for time not taken, only about half of their employees (~48%) use all of their time.

The big question is whether most companies truly buy into the notion that taking vacation time is important for overall employee health, well-being and relationships – because the survey found that only a distinct minority of companies (one in four) maintain a “use it or lose it” PTO policy.

Of course, the members of the U.S. Travel Association would certainly benefit if more Americans took paid time off and used it to travel to vacation destinations. Still, Roger Dow’s contention that “it’s time to start a conversation and reclaim the benefits we work so hard to earn” makes sense to me. The full report can be viewed here.

At our company, we’ve a “use it or lose it” PTO policy in place for years. What’s your own situation?

Pinterest: Will it ever become a male hangout?

August 20, 2014August 20, 2014 Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Marketing Communications, Media, Social Media comScore, David Rubin, DigitasLBi, Gender Differences, Jill Sherman, Marcomm, marketing, Pinterest, Social Media, Social Media Platforms, Social Platforms

Here’s a statistic about social media platform Pinterest that will probably surprise few people: As of June 2014 statistics reported by digital analytics firm comScore, its user base is more than 70% female.

… Which means that Pinterest remains the most “gender imbalanced” of all the major social media platforms.

For the record, other social platforms have far more gender balance among their user bases – with at least 45% being male:

SnapChat: 52% male
Tumblr: 52%
Twitter: 48%
Facebook: 47%
Instagram: 45%
Pinterest: 28%

But here’s the thing: Pinterest has been trying mightily hard to attract more male participants, but the proportional figures have yet to budge.

This points to a fundamental challenge. It’s very difficult to change the image and atmospherics of a social platform once they’ve become so firmly entrenched.

And it’s not just a question of image. The platform’s content says it all.

Jill Sherman, vice president of social and content strategy at marketing communications firm DigitasLBi, puts it this way:

“If you pull up Pinterest and go into any content section, you will see purses, dresses and women’s shoes — because women are the user base. When 70% of the users are female, then 70% of the content is going to be female-oriented.”

Hope springs eternal, however. Pinterest is continuing its effort to attract more men.

Or at least … to make the site more “guy friendly” when a new member goes there signs up. This means making sure to show items more stereotypically catering to men’s interests rather than things like women’s fashion items.

But how to get men to the stage of even signing up? That challenge falls to Pinterest’s new “head of brand” – who just happens to be a man.

He’s David Rubin, erstwhile senior vice president of marketing at Unilever, where he worked on marketing the Axe brand of men’s body care products.

Mr. Rubin might wish to start his tenure by asking himself what would bring him to engage with Pinterest more … because according to news reports, Rubin had posted only 22 items on Pinterest prior to joining the company.

DigitasLBi’s Jill Sherman sees a challenge for Pinterest that is fundamentally basic. “They haven’t cracked the motivation code: How to attract men and keep them using the platform beyond saving things that pique their interest.”

I agree – and I’d go a step further. Convincing people to visit Pinterest to find or view something of interest “feels” like a function a search engine such as Google Images is doing quite well already. Who needs “yet another place” to tap into that functionality? Especially if one is a male of the species?

In order for Pinterest to evolve beyond where it is today, perhaps it needs to look at what Facebook and others have been doing to create communities and interaction beyond just pretty pictures and videos.

It could be a tall order.