marketing

“Fanning out” when it comes to brands and social media engagement.

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Social media may well be taking the famous 90-9-1 principle of online engagement … and bringing it to new lows.

It’s hard not to come to this conclusion when reviewing the results of research conducted by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. This Australian-based University think-tank studied the actual engagement levels of people who have “liked” the top 200 brands on Facebook by considering the degree to which fans actually shared posts or commented on the brand.

Over a six-week period of study, Ehrenberg-Bass found that fewer than one half of one percent of the brand fans actually “engaged” in any way at all.

The conclusion? It turns out that social media fan bases and actual engagement are two very different things.

Categories that do somewhat better in “engagement” are ones like alcohol, cars and electronics. But interestingly enough, the study also found that the so-called “passion” brands – such as Harley-Davidson, Porsche or Nike – don’t perform much better than “regular” brands: 0.66% engagement versus 0.35%.

In its report conclusions, Ehrenburg-Bass questions whether the Herculean efforts being made by some brands to “bribe” their way to thousands of “fans” and “likes” is really worth the cost in terms of the added product discounts, coupons and other goodies that are being proffered to entice consumers to become brand fans.

When you boil it down, the Ehrenburg-Bass research confirms yet again a basic truism about branding: Much as we would love to think otherwise, the marketplace isn’t nearly as enamored with our brands and products as we think they should be.

To us, the branding so important. To them … it’s just one big shrug of the shoulders.

Taking the “phone” out of “smartphone.”

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SmartphonesAs more consumers migrate to the smartphone from traditional feature phones, we’re seeing a transformation of the mobile phone away from its original “tele” purpose.

That’s the conclusion of several studies by analytics firms Flurry and Wireless Intelligence.

In an analysis of smartphone users’ app activity conducted in December 2011, Flurry found the an interesting breakdown of daily activity that places mobile gaming at the top of the list:

 Playing downloaded mobile games: ~49% of daily app activity
 Interacting with Facebook and other social networks: ~30%
 Viewing mobile entertainment: ~7%
 Checking/reading news: ~6%
 Other applications: ~8%

And Wireless Intelligence found some very intriguing figures in its analysis of smartphone user activity conducted in mid-2011.

Of the average ~38 hours of time spent on smartphones per month, actual “phone calling” represented less than one-fourth of the time:

Messaging activities: ~29% of smartphone user time
 Interacting with apps: ~29%
 Voice activities: ~23%
 Web browsing: ~19%

What we’re seeing is that the original purpose of the cellphone has devolved into a position of distinctly lower importance. In time, it could well become the asterisk at the bottom of the page.

And this is happening inside the span of 15 years.

To borrow a phrase from former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, you’d be hard-pressed to cite another device that has so “fundamentally and profoundly” changed its functionality and user purpose over such a short amount of time.

It makes one wonder what the next 15 years will bring …

Social Media Communities: Digital Potemkin Villages?

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Social media stats riddled with fake accounts and cipher profilesMarketers like to talk about the 90-9-1 rule of web engagement: For every 100 people who are online, one person creates content … 9 people comment on that content … and the remaining 90 may lurk and read, but never participate in any other way.

The more we learn about social media engagement, the more we’re seeing the same phenomenon at work. To wit, studies of social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are finding far fewer numbers of “real” and “active” users than the gross statistics would suggest.

Alarmingly, these evaluations are finding that as many as half of social media accounts could be fake, or are ones that contain no user profiles.

And if there isn’t a user profile, of what value is a social media account to marketers? After all, it’s the information in these user profiles that provides the data for targeted advertising and marketing campaigns.

Just how extensive is the problem?

Let’s start with Google+, one of the latest entrants into the social media sweepstakes. Kevin Kelly, an industry specialist, published author and former editor of Wired magazine, recently conducted an analysis of the ~560,000 people who have him in their Google+ “circles.”

Reviewing a random sample of these ~560,000 users, he found that the majority of them had not made a single post … had not posted their image … and/or had never made a single comment.

More specifically, here’s what Kelly found:

Only ~30% had ever posted anything
 ~6% were “spammers”
 Fully ~36% were “ghosts” … accounts lacking even a user profile

Evidently, Google+ is taking “ghostwriting” to new heights.

What about Twitter?

Several editors at Popular Mechanics magazine reported recently that only ~25% of their Twitter followers were “real.” About half were identified as fake users or spammers.

Twitter may be tweeting away … but how many people are actually listening and who’s actually engaging?

Who’s gaming the system here? Clearly, there are reasons why people are trying to show higher social media engagement than is actually occurring. Marketing campaigns love to cite metrics where the number of followers and “likes” is high. It’s great for bragging rights … and sometimes financially beneficial, too, when performance goals are met and monetary payouts triggered.

And today there are plenty of ways for people to find services that will jumpstart campaigns by garnering thousands of followers or “likes” … all for a tidy fee, of course.

It would be nice if the social media platforms would step up to the plate and show some transparency in what’s going on. It’s highly likely that these platforms have developed sophisticated ways to pinpoint which of their accounts are real … versus those that are contrived.

But will they be publishing their findings anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath.

Until marketers can get a better handle on the “real facts” behind the elevated engagement numbers being hyped, it’s best to view any such stats with a jaundiced eye.

Here’s a suggestion: Take any stats you might hear about page “likes,” viral video views and the like … and discount them by a massive percentage – say, by 50%. Then, you might be approaching the reality.

Over time, we’ll probably learn more about “authenticity” when it comes to tracking true activity and engagement in the social realm. Marketers would do well to demand it. It’s just not clear how soon it’ll happen.

Until then, keep your antenna up and apply caveats all over the place.

(Still) Seeking the Sweet Spot with QR Codes

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QR codesI’ve blogged before about how QR codes – those splotchy icons at which someone can point their mobile device and be taken to a website for product information, a coupon or some other type of content – seem to be having difficulty becoming accepted by the mainstream of U.S. consumers.

And now we have yet more evidence to suggest that QR codes may never achieve the level of potential that marketers have hoped for them.

Youth marketing and esearch firm Archrival give us the latest clues as to the lack of adoption we’re seeing when it comes to QR codes. Here are two key findings from a survey it conducted among 500+ students at 24 American college campuses in late 2011:

 Although ~80% of respondents owned a smartphone and claimed to have come in contact with QR codes, only ~21% were actually able to successfully scan the QR code example that was presented in the Archrival’s survey.

 Three out of four respondents reported that they’d be “unlikely” to scan even one QR code in the future.

What’s the problem? Archrival uncovered a number of hurdles when it comes to QR codes. Several of them could be classified as “deal breakers” in the overall scope of things:

 Many survey respondents did not realize that a third-party app needs to be activated in order to scan a QR code. They mistakenly assume that it can be activated with their camera.

 Other respondents believe that the QR code-reading process is too lengthy and cumbersome.

And on a more fundamental level, doubts are being expressed about the value or usefulness of the web landing pages that are promoted via the QR codes.

What we may be witnessing is a dynamic that’s similar in some respects to what happened with CD-ROMs about a decade ago. There was once a boomlet of CD-ROMs being sent via mail to consumer and B-to-B customers. CDs were viewed as a great way to provide extensive rich content that was difficult to download and expensive to print traditionally.

But because the tool was “one step removed” (it needed to be loaded into a desktop computer in order to be viewed), the rate of interaction with these CDs turned out to be abysmal.

Similarly with QR codes, first there’s the need to possess a smartphone with a barcode scanning app installed. Once properly equipped, people then need to take the time to find and launch the app on their mobile device before pointing the camera at the QR code.

For many in today’s “instant gratification” world, taking those extra steps, however simple, may be a bridge too far.

Consumers and coupons: The latest stats are in.

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Consumers are redeeming coupons more than ever in 2011Coupons are big business in the USA. According to the latest Coupon Facts Report published by NCH/Valassis, a whopping $470 billion worth of coupons were offered by consumer package goods marketers in 2011.

Of this, an estimated $4.6 billion in coupons were redeemed. That represents more than 3.5 billion individual coupons at an average value of ~$1.30 per coupon.

It’s not surprising to learn that the offering of coupons by manufacturers spiked during the recessionary period that began in late 2008, when shoppers were more value-conscious than ever.

But by 2011, manufacturer behavior changed. In fact,this past year saw the first decrease in coupon offerings since 2008 (the drop was 8%) … although the volume hasn’t declined anywhere close to the volume of coupons consumer goods manufacturers offered back before the recession started:

 2007: $373 billion in coupon value distributed
 2008: $379 billion
 2009: $445 billion
 2010: $511 billion
 2011: $470 billion

Not every consumer category behaved similarly in 2011. Grocery product marketers reduced the total quantity of coupons they made available during the year, while marketers of health and beauty products showed no such decline.

With the increased popularity of digital couponing, one would expect that the growth rate in this segment would significantly outpace that of traditional coupons.

That turns out to be correct: NCH estimates that ~11% more print-at-home and paperless coupon offers were distributed in 2011 compared to the previous year.

But digital couponing still represents only a very small fraction of the total coupon landscape, which continues to be dominated by the free-standing inserts that are found in nearly every Sunday newspaper published in America. Here’s how FSIs dominate:

 Free-standing inserts: ~89% of U.S. coupon distribution in 2011
 In-store handouts: ~4%
 Direct mail: ~2%
 Magazines: ~2%
 Coupons inside or on product packaging: ~1%
 Digital couponing (paperless or print-at-home): ~1%

One other interesting study finding is that even though manufacturers reduced the volume of their coupon offerings during 2011 … consumers themselves showed no inclination to reduce their participation.

In fact, coupon redemption was up more than 9% in 2011 versus 2010. Clearly, many people are still thinking in “recession mode” when it comes to squeezing every ounce of productivity from their shopping dollar.

Marketing Measurement: Aiming Really High … Scoring Kinda Low

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Marketing ROI - return on investmentThere’s clearly a disconnect in the world of business regarding the theory and practice of ROI measurement for marketing campaigns.

That’s the key takeaway from the 2011 State of Marketing Management Report, based on a survey of 200+ U.S. marketing professionals in the B-to-B and B-to-C realm.

The research was conducted by Ifbyphone, a Chicago-based developer of voice-based marketing automation platforms, with results published in December 2011.

More than 80% of the marketers surveyed report that their executive management expects every campaign to be measured. But fewer than 30% of the respondents believe they can effectively evaluate the ROI of each campaign.

Not surprisingly, e-mail marketing, with its robust reporting capability, is the program that is reportedly most easy to measure for return on investment … whereas public relations programs are most difficult.

Here’s how eight marketing techniques fared in the survey in terms of their ROI measurement “difficulty”:

 E-mail marketing: ~53% of respondents report difficulty measuring ROI
 Direct mail campaigns: ~59% report difficulty
 Online advertising: ~60% report difficulty
 Print advertising campaigns: ~66% report difficulty
 Tradeshow marketing: ~72% report difficulty
 Social media: ~74% report difficulty
 Search engine optimization: ~76% report difficulty
 Public relations: ~82% report difficulty

The survey found some correlation between the types of marketing tools utilized and greater ability to measure ROI. The most popular tools used by the survey respondents included these five:

 Web analytics: ~48% utilize
 e-Mail marketing software analytics: ~47%
 Lead counts from online contact forms: ~38%
 Social media monitoring: ~30%
 Call tracking: ~27%

The study’s bottom-line finding: Marketers have a good deal more work to do to meet senior management expectations for campaign measurement … as well as to meet their own high standards.

Now for the tough part …

When it comes to advertising … the Super Bowl is supreme.

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Super Bowl XLVISuper Bowl ad placements have the reputation of being the most pricey ones on television. And based on an analysis by Kantar Media of Super Bowl ad activity over the past decade, that perception is quite accurate.

According to Kantar’s analysis, over the last ten years the Super Bowl game has generated more than $1.7 billion in network ad sales from more than ~125 companies.

Just five Super Bowl advertisers account for more than one-third of the activity, led by – no surprise here – Anheuser-Busch:

Anheuser-Busch: 10-year advertiser … ~$239 million
 PepsiCo: 10 years … ~$174 million
 General Motors: 8 years … ~$83 million
 Disney: 10 years … ~$74 million
 Coca Cola: 5 years … ~$67 million

It doesn’t seem that long ago when the rule of thumb was that a 30-second ad for the Super Bowl game would set you back one million dollars.

That’s not the case any longer. In fact, the average rate for a :30 ad increased by ~40% over the past decade, reaching $3.1 million in 2011.

[And for 2012, the ad rate is expected to be even higher at $3.5 to $4 million per spot — a double-digit increase.]

At such stratospheric prices, you’d expect only a handful of ads to be longer than 30 seconds. That’s true to a degree; only about one in five of the Super Bowl ads are :60 spots. But compare that to just ~6% of ads on broadcast networks being long-form.

And if it seems as if you’re seeing more advertising during the Super Bowl game than in years past … you’re not hallucinating. Back in 2006, the volume of commercial time for ads during the game was ~44 minutes. That rose to ~46 minutes as of 2011, and will probably continue to creep upward in 2012 and beyond.

Most Super Bowl advertisers are big consumer brands. But Kantar also finds that nearly one-third of Super Bowl advertisers allocate more than 10% of their annual media budgets into the game. Clearly, it’s not only the big Hollywood film studios, car companies or food brands that are shelling out the bucks for the Super Bowl.

Kantar Media also compared advertising volume for the Big Game against the dollar volume of ads placed during other major televised sports events, such as the Baseball World Series and the NCAA Final Four Mens Basketball. In nearly every year, the one-day Super Bowl out-pulled these multi-day sporting events when it comes to raking in the ad dollars.

To sum things up, even in the world of advertising where the only constant is change … some things don’t change all that much.

Digital Advertising Growth Forecasts: Rosy Scenarios on Steroids?

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Ad spend forecasts lower than projected.Isn’t it interesting how industry growth forecasts for emerging digital segments always start out looking stupendously stellar? Terms like “swelling demand” … “robust growth” … and “tipping point” often accompany these breathless predictions.

And of course, the business media are highly prone to report the news, as it underscores the fact that highly interesting things are afoot in the marketplace.

What’s done much less often is to go back at a later date and compare the growth forecasts to the actual performance.

But digital media company Digiday has done that, and if you think you remembered industry growth predictions that were a bit high on hyperbole … Digiday’s analysis reveals your memory is right on the money.

One market prognosticator – eMarketer – is often cited for its digital ad market predictions. But how accurate are they? Here’s how it forecast annual mobile ad spending in the United States:

 Prediction by eMarketer published in 2008: $5.2 billion in 2011
 Revised prediction from eMarketer restated in 2011: $1.2 billion
 Percent off-target: ~77%

And here’s how eMarketer forecast U.S. annual video ad spending:

 Prediction by eMarketer published in 2007: $4.3 billion in 2011
 Revised prediction from eMarketer restated in 2011: $2.2 billion
 Percent off target: ~49%

Granted, it is a challenge to forecast growth rates in digital advertising activity early on in the developmental cycle. But being off by such a dramatic degree makes the forecasts essentially worthless – and laughably so.

Another phenomenon may be at work as well. Invariably, the initial growth forecasts are too aggressive rather than too timid.

Why? Rosy forecasts tend to spark more interest from journalists, venture capitalists, publishers and others – and hence have a greater propensity to be published. So there may well be subtle pressure to “err on the plus side” when formulating the forecasts.

Digiday’s Jack Marshall poses that question, too, and then writes: “It’s important to think about where new markets and technologies are headed, but the ad industry often gets preoccupied and overexcited with what are essentially just guesses.”

As for the latest crop of (downwardly revised) growth estimates, Marshall adds: “Let’s reconvene in four years for the inevitable update.”

If you’re a betting person, you’d best wager on the revised figures being lower.

Internet advertising: Blue smoke and mirrors?

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Online advertising spurious claimsIn today’s online world, marketers can’t afford to do advertising the old fashioned way. They need to rely on automated programs that serve ads to the right audiences in cyberspace.

One question I hear often from business leaders is to what degree of confidence should they place in these automated programs to actually deliver what is promised. There’s a nagging concern that some of the promises might be a bit more like “blue smoke and mirrors.”

As it turns out, some of that concern may be well-placed. Here’s one recent example of problems along these lines. And Trust Metrics, an online media rating firm, has studied more than 500,000 unique web domains – in effect, “taking inventory of the ad inventory.” And what it’s found is pretty sobering.

For starters, the online ad inventory supply is marked by dynamic change and constant evolution. Approximately 20% of the domains studied by Trust Metrics in late 2010 don’t even exist anymore as of the end of 2011. Tens of thousands of sites that may have once been vetted by agencies or networks are gone. There is no content at these domains … or they’re simply “ad farms.”

Trust Metrics claims that never have so many marketers purchased so much online ad inventory in an environment that is so degraded, a significant portion of the domains might not even be around a few months from now.

Moreover, approximately 10% of the domains Trust Metric evaluated that sell ad impressions in scaled buying environments (e.g., exchanges and networks) are actually non-English language sites – hardly valuable places to advertise. Plus, that represents more domain names than those identified as pornographic, or containing significant profanity or hate speech.

Trust Metrics’ evaluation also found that well over half of the sites available in large ad networks are what it classifies as “substandard environments which don’t adhere to even the barest minimum in publishing or editorial principles.

The bottom line on this is that of for 1 million domains that sell ads … most advertisers wouldn’t want to be on ~600,00 of them!

Of course, the flip side of this is that there are thousands of sites that do perform for advertisers – and those “good” sites drive valuable clickthroughs, sales and brand building.

But clearly, advertisers would be well advised to adopt a “buyer beware” stance in the current online advertising environment.

What’s the Latest in Content Creation for B-to-B Marketers?

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Content creationThere’s an interesting new study just published that gives us interesting clues about what B-to-B marketers are doing in content creation.

The B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends study is a joint research effort of the Content Marketing Institute and marketing information resources firm MarketingProfs. The survey found that nine out of ten B-to-B marketers are using some form of content marketing activities to achieve their business goals.

[For this survey, content marketing (also known as custom publishing or branded content) is defined as “the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.”]

The research found that usage of several content tactics is now quite widespread:

 News articles: ~79% of respondents are using
 Social media (excluding blogs): ~74%
 Blogs: ~65%
 e-Newsletters: ~63%
 Case studies: ~58%
 In-person events: ~56%
 Videos: ~52%
 White papers: ~51%
 Webinars or webcasts: ~46%

When queried as to how effective marketers believe these tactics to be, a combination of traditional and “new” ones were cited with high effectiveness scores:

 In-person events: ~78% view as an “effective” tactic
 Case studies: ~70
 Webinars or webcasts: ~70%
 e-Newsletters: ~60%
 White papers: ~60%
 Blogs: ~58%
 Web microsites: ~56%
 Articles: ~51%
 Social media: ~51%
 Videos: ~51%

The survey also investigated how content tactics are being measured for success. Tracking web traffic stats is the most popular measurement tool:

 Web traffic: ~58% use to measure success
 Sales lead quality: ~49% use
 Direct sales figures: ~41% use
 Sales lead quantity: ~41% use
 Qualitative feedback from customers: ~40% use
 Search engine rankings: ~40% use
 Inbound weblinks: ~30% use

And what is the biggest challenge these marketers see in content creation? It’s the age-old problem of coming up with interesting topics to write about.

More than four in ten respondents cited “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” as their biggest challenge.

Some of the comments heard from survey respondents on this topic sound all-too-familiar:

 “Finding people within my organization to contribute their expertise … nobody outside of marketing seems to see the value in sharing our expertise with the market via content.”

 “Having the discipline and being able to assign sufficient resources to create and manage the right content for the target audience, in a sustainable manner.”

 “The ideas are all there; it’s just a matter of finding time to create and write copy.”

 “Management patience: Management needs to understand that in today’s B-to-B environment, it takes time to engage prospects.”

What about your situation? Are your content management issues the same ones as reported in this study … or are you facing different challenges?