Posts tagged eCommerce


Wireless data indicate recession surprises

Dec 15th

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telecomm
I have been working with a new regional telecom client and some of the latest industry data are fascinating.

U.S. wireless revenue is up 7.6 percent for the year led by data messaging.  It isn’t news that the wireless industry has been growing or that data has been off-setting a slowdown in voice. What is striking is that data’s contribution to growth has been accelerating through the recession, while the voice slowdown has been steepening.

This has surprised some analysts who expected people to tighten their budgets on “discretionary” data services such as text messaging while holding on to a core service such as phone voice services.  But the opposite has happened. What’s going on here?

  1. Rapid technological advancements (better devices, applicatiions and networks) are powerful drivers of growth. Growth would be even stronger without the recession.
  2.  To some degree, data messaging is substituting for voice services.
  3. Voice markets are maturing.
  4. Alternatives like Skype has some impact on voice
  5. Price competition has been severe for voice while high-end data services are still commanding a premium price.

By the way this is a U.S. trend only.  Data show messaging growth much slower in Europe, Latin America and developing countries, while voice is still growing in places such as Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

If you make the leap (and I think you can) that trends in wireless data growth would also correspond to growth in social media usage, this is how the world stacks up, by approximate two-year data usage growth trends:

  • U.S.              12.7%
  • Asia-Pacific        10.2%
  • Latin America         8.2%
  • Emerging Europe     8.7%
  • Emerging Asia     7.9%
  • Developed Europe    5.1%

Why is Europe lagging so significantly in wireless data usage?  Wouldn’t you think the same trends would apply? Any opinions?

*Illustration: Bank of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Global Wireless Matrix database
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Google, branding, and the beauty of zero

Aug 13th

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If you were in a discount shoe store and saw a beautiful new pair of Nike tennis shoes on sale for $11.99, how would you react?
If you’re like me, you would conclude something is wrong with the shoes! Nike has spent millions to groom and nurture their brand and cutting the price only diminishes their premium image.
So what would you think of the brand image of a product that has a price of ZERO?
This was the subject matter of a little “twit-à-tête” between myself, my friend Steve Dodd, and a few others on Twitter yesterday. I had suggested in my last blog post that small businesses need a free, cross-platform social media metrics dashboard.
That started a round-robin of tweets (yes, pun was intentional) regarding why it had to be free and the impact that price would have on brand equity. Steve’s comment was: “Why should comprehensive measurement tools be free? In my opinion, if they are monetized other ways, their credibility tanks.”
Steve is a keen intellect and when he speaks, I listen. Certainly using my Nike example as a model, he’s absolutely right.
But then I thought about the revolutionary, brand powerhouses like Google, Facebook and YouTube. For you and me, the price of their products is zero, yet they have convincingly nurtured an extremely strong brand in the mind of consumers.
Consumer products in the same price range as Google would be a paper towel in a public restroom, a salt packet at McDonald’s and a toothpick. Think about THAT as a weird business model!
Can you think of another example in history where a company carved out a premium product image (like Google) with a price of nothing? Have we entered a new era of marketing where, in some cases, a brand image can be completely disconnected from price?
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Looking into the future of B2B online marketing

Jul 17th

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This is Part 5, and the final installment, of my interview with Dr. Ben Hanna, VP of Marketing for Business.com.
 
Ben, with your previous leadership experience with eBay and Iron Planet, you’ve been a true pioneer in online marketing. What parallels do you make between social media and other marketing revolutions you’ve experienced? What’s next for B2B marketing?

Well thank you, that’s very flattering. I may be biased toward the present, but I think the most interesting online marketing development is a trend we’re starting to see among the largest brands and agencies, both B2C and B2B – the re-integration of marketing channels.

We currently live in a world where B2B marketers largely trade off their budget between online marketing channels, or between online and offline channels — an ebb and flow we have seen in other historical contexts. Choices are made based on the individual ROI of each channel, historic or competitive precedent (e.g., “we’ve always run print ads in that publication, so we’ll continue to do so”), or some combination of the two. The strategy/budget discussion largely occurs around which channel performs best, rather than how multiple channels work TOGETHER to deliver results. This occurs because 1) the online channels are developing quickly, making it hard to keep up with changes, even with a staff dedicated to a single channel, and 2) solid cross-channel metrics are so hard to come by for the vast majority of B2B marketers.

This “either-or” approach to marketing channels makes little sense in B2C and even less sense in B2B where most purchases involve multiple decision-makers and longer sales cycles. Think paid search marketing on one of the “big three” general search engines performs vastly better than banner advertising? Research suggests they serve different roles in the buying process: general search engines getting undue credit for being the major online portals from which people navigate just prior to purchase (e.g., 71% of paid search clicks are navigational) and banner ads exposure – simple exposure, not a click – driving a hidden 22% increase in search marketing conversion rate.

Unfortunately, B2B marketers are largely blind to these types of interactions. A study we recently conducted of over 27,000 B2B websites found that only 6 percent used a web analytics solution that allowed them to see the influence of more than one campaign on conversion.

Thankfully, online marketing tools and techniques are catching up and enabling the discussion B2B marketers should be having – how different channels work together to deliver results, and what the optimal channel mix should be, based on these interactions and business goals.

It’s possible to see the impact of TV ads on web site traffic, or how banner ads increase the volume of branded searches on general search engines or how site visitors coming from branded vs. unbranded searches perform during later email-driven lead nurturing programs. As Craig Macdonald of Covario, one of my co-panelists on the search attribution panel during the recent Search Insider Summit, put it, measuring cross-channel impact is no longer a technology issue, it’s a “governance” issue involving people defending their specialties – those specialties they’ve worked so hard to build in a single channel.

This evolution – the re-integration of marketing channels as we remove technology barriers – is critically important for improving overall B2B marketing efficiency and should lead to a number of fascinating, useful insights in the coming years. Change is never easy, but shedding our “either-or” mentality for a more informed, integrated approach is a change worth making.

Next week in {grow}: Fanatic-focused marketing, a new series examining the ROI of social media marketing, and more.
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Google Wave changes the game for small business

May 29th

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There were a couple important new technology releases this week but the most significant for the small business owner is Google Wave. Why? This platform provides a powerful communication and collaboration tool you can use with internal and external stakeholders for FREE.

Google Wave brings together email, chat, photo/document sharing, and many collaborative features that would be very useful to a business on a shoestring budget. It opens the door to business channels that major companies are paying millions of dollars to achieve with expensive enterprise software solutions.
Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave.
That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.
This technology could be so far-reaching and important I’ll turn to the commentary of an industry expert. This commentary comes from industry analyst Jeremiah Owyang and his blog Internet Strategist:
  • Google Wave is about bringing together the Web 2.0 lifestyle to become a workstyle.
    Google’s apporach is significant because it will enter the workforce without having to go through IT management. This undercuts players like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and SAP as it grows from the groundup –another groundswell like google docs and yammer.
  • This also impacts Cisco, Webex and Webex connect who is also trying to try new delivery models to the enterprise.
  • Existing smaller collaboration vendors and community platform vendors with enterprise focus will be part of the developer ecosystem and can extend their features to the Wave platform.
  • Google is pushing real time collaboration, and traditional email is asynchronous, yet don’t expect everyone to be interacting in real time, all the time.
  • This is a missed opportunity for LinkedIn who launched their platform but has not exploited as they’ve only hand selected a few partners.
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