Mobile is the New Portal for Your Customer Experience – Part I

by Gary Weinberg on July 20, 2012

It’s official, we have been “mobilized”.  According to Nielsen, over 50% of mobile phone users are now carrying smartphones.  Technology and the Web has embedded itself in every corner of our daily lives through mobile devices — whether it’s through an iPhone, Android phone, Windows phone, iPad, we all want to be connected to the world while we are on the go.  Think about just a few of the ways users incorporate mobile devices into daily work and play.

1. Phone calls

2. Sending text messages

3. Reading news

4. Email

5. Social Media

6. Checking bank account

7. Shopping

8. Maps for directions

9. Restaurant recommendations

10.  Google search

Consumers have a love affair with their mobile devices, particularly their smartphones.  More often than not, they are the first thing we reach for in the morning and the last thing we put down at night.  Smartphone adoption has jumped 38% between 2011 and 2012; consumers are using their devices everywhere and they are not only surfing the Web, they are also looking for local information about businesses and engaging with that business through a phone call or a visit to the business. Mobile devices are transforming how consumers connect and make decisions in their daily lives.  It is also changing how businesses and brands interact with their customers — Mobile presents opportunities to create deeper, richer customer experiences.

What does this mean for marketers?

Context and relevance will be critical elements for success in the mobile realm.  Context will be about providing the content that is relevant to the immediate needs of the target audience, ideally in a real-time and geo-targeted environment.  Consumers will gravitate towards brands that provide the context and relevance to their daily lives — so at the end of the day it’s back to content marketing and brand awareness.   Marketers need to stop thinking about mobile as a tool, but as a channel to create a deeper customer experience — potentially the bridge between the online and physical world.

Consumers’ obsession with mobile, local, and social is creating the perfect storm for marketers — Mobile devices are always on, they are always with our customers, and they combine multiple touch points in one device: ads, collateral, email, social, sms, etc.  In the absence of a transaction, a strong mobile presence will help a brand maintain engagement with its customers — and we can now stay in touch with our customers no matter where they are because they are always connected through their mobile devices.  What challenges do you see with mobile?

 

 

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Google is Now

by Gary Weinberg on July 3, 2012

Last week at the I/O Developers Conference, Google unleashed some new products and features that reaffirm their commitment to dominate search, social media, and mobile. But more importantly, they have also demonstrated that the lines between search and social are becoming more and more blurred, and that Google is throwing everything they have in their arsenal to be the driving force behind this.  There is no escaping it; as marketers, we will all be impacted by these changes.  Here’s what you need to know.

Google+

Let’s start by dispelling a myth that has been floating around the Web for some time now – Google+ is a ghost town.  Google+ is in fact not a ghost town.   It just hit its one year birthday and has gone from 0 to 250 million users in the first year.  Yes, you heard right, 250 million users in one year.  Google+ is also seeing heavy usage on mobile devices. Google has fostered this by introducing tablet apps for both iOS and Android.  Here are some other noteworthy stats:

  • 150 million monthly users
  • 75 million daily users
  • Google+ active users spend over 60 minutes a day across Google products
  • Google+ users spend on average 12 minutes per day in the Google+

If the average active user on Google+ spends 12 minutes a day on the site, that’s over 6 hours a month. (Facebook users average just over 7 hours per month on the site.)

Marketing Impact:  Google+ is seeing significant growth and is absolutely relevant to search and social marketing.  Google considers Google+ the core to its ecosystem while it continues to integrate other Google products as “features” into Google+, creating one Google product experience.  We have already seen Google begin integrating products with the Google Places > Google+ Local migration and we are sure to see more of these in the future.

Takeaway: Google+ needs to be in your social media and content marketing strategies – it will positively impact your search results.  Embrace features like Circles and Google Hangouts to better connect and engage with your audience.

Redesigned Mobile Experience/Google Now

Google is slowly opening up the door to the next generation of search process.  In fact, this search process might be smart enough to give you the information you need before you even realize that you need it.  Let’s keep in mind that behind the oodles of products Google offers, their bread and butter is driving revenue through relevant advertising within search results.  This model works best by returning the most accurate search results available, and having hyper-targeted user data enhances this experience even more.

Google has introduced a new search experience in conjunction with their latest release of Android 4.1 – Google Now.  It’s a new search interface that encompasses both a behavioral and semantic style search based on your location, time of day, and personal schedule. So, for example, when you open the Google Now search page on your way to work, it may automatically pull transit schedule information and suggest restaurants on your route based on what it knows about your destination, habits, past search results, or possibly even restaurant reviews you have written (since Zagat is incorporated into Google+ Local).  This concept could be applied to other verticals as well.  If a user has executed past searches on Ford vehicles, Google Now may suggest dealerships that it knows are in an area that the user travels to frequently for work or play, or dealerships that have a model in inventory in which the user has previously searched.

Marketing Impact: This feature is so new that only time will tell how it evolves, but it could be very significant in the long term.   Google is only going to get better at learning more about its users, which means it will get even better at delivering the most relevant content.  It will be critical to business’ success that their content is delivered at the top of Google Now search results.

Takeaway: Marketers will need to understand the behavior of their target audience now more than ever and carefully craft relevant content.  By gaining this understanding they will find patterns in consumer activity that reveals new touch points.  Marketers should be able to answer questions like “What are my customers’ needs?”, “Where do my customers spend their time?” and “What does a day in the life of my customer look like?”

Gary Weinberg is an avid social media and technology geek who comes from a diverse background of business solutions.  A Pittsburgh native, Gary currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the social media solutions lead for Cobalt. 

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GM Just Doesn’t Get It

by Gary Weinberg on May 24, 2012

GM

Last week, GM pulled $10 million in ads from Facebook because they allegedly didn’t work.  As the first major advertiser to indicate disappointment with the Facebook Ad platform, the third-largest advertiser in the U.S., and retracting their budget on the verge of the Facebook IPO, they certainly achieved shock and awe.  But can they really blame Facebook for their ads’ ineffectiveness?  According to GM, they were spending $40 million total on their Facebook presence with $10 million on the actual paid ad spend.  This also leaves us with another question; was GM really being effective with their strategy and content?

Working in automotive social media, I can easily say that my team and I felt some disappointment when we heard the news about GM’s decision.  We look to the OEMs to drive the direction of a very particular segment of our marketing efforts.  After all, they make the products that we are supposed to generate buzz around.  So, when the largest auto manufacturer in the world calls bull $#it on social media advertising, it can make you rethink your strategy and practices – and it did – for about 30 seconds.

However, let’s look at the facts.

  • Facebook offers one of the largest online audiences in the world – hundreds of millions of users that include GM customers and prospects.
  • Facebook fans of auto brands have three times the average amount of friends than the average user – that’s three times as many “friends-of-friends” to direct marketing efforts towards.
  • GM has made a number of agency changes recently.  (They fired Big Fuel late last year, and they fired their media buying agency, Starcom in January)

Let’s dispel one of the more popular perceived reasons for GMs ineffectiveness; Business Insider suggests that the problem is that Facebook ads have a lower ROI than Google Ads and that is the underlying reason for GMs lack of results.  I don’t want to get lost in the weeds here, but I disagree with this notion because it seems like an apples-to-oranges comparison.  Users search Google because they are actively looking for a solution to a problem or a product to meet their needs.  Facebook users are on Facebook because they’re playing; they are probably clicking on ads in a more reactive sense – based upon seeing content within the ad that is aligned with a personal interest, hence the lower CTRs that Facebook ads generally get in contrast to Google ads. Ford Tweet

I don’t know exactly what GM’s expectations were, but they would be naïve if they thought they were going to sell vehicles to customers who solely had a couple interactions with a single Facebook ad touch point.  Looking over GM’s Facebook page, there is a lot of content out there that is of questionable value or simply has little or no reason for users to want to engage.  Come on folks, we are dealing with automobiles here, not widgets  –  high-ticket items that require a long-term, deeper investment in  campaigns that use engaging content to drive traffic to apps and microsites that have even more engaging content, and keep users coming back.

Of course, that’s just my opinion.

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The Most Brilliant Social Media Article EVER Written

May 16, 2012

“We are pleased to offer you the position and hope you will find our proposal agreeable.”  The recruiter on the other end of the line started droning on about having a couple of days to think about it, and was giving me contact information, and I wasn’t even listening.  Are you f#&king kidding me?  I [...]

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