Another year has gone by us fast. As we approach a brand new year, I like to stop and think of what the immediate future holds for us as social media marketers and CMOs. In my opinion, we are going to continue to see social media, mobile, video and augmented reality take more of our time as consumers and marketers. Yet, the two most important areas to pay attention to in 2012 in my opinion are social media measurements and mobile web and marketing:
1. Social media marketing requires measurements. Social media continues to evolve, dominate time and demand budget increases. Although many marketers are still not sure of how to measure their social media marketing efforts, they continue to put more time and money into growing their online community. In 2012, marketers will demand more accurate measurements for social media marketing efforts and hope to start proving return on investment from spending time and energy on places like Facebook and Twitter. Rightly so, a marketer’s job is to measure how their activities move the needle and without proof of why this works, social media quickly turns into a waste of time. How are marketers currently measuring their social media marketing? This recent survey from eMarketer shows that fans and followers or size of network is still the number one measurement with 60% of marketers depending on fans and followers to prove their success. Personally, I’m a lot more interested in the qualified leads from social media, time spent interacting with the brand and the potential increase in sales attributed to social media.
The Econsultancy report “The State of Social Media 2011” noted that 41% of marketers surveyed had no return on investment figure for any of the money they had spent on social channels as of October 2011. This seems to me incredibly high for the time investment it takes to commit to social media. Start measuring your social media marketing efforts today and if you are not sure what or how to measure them, please, give us a call so we can help.
2. Mobile will continue to grow as smart phones are becoming more popular, apps are becoming more available and marketers are realizing that websites need to be mobile friendly for smartphones and tablets. The statistics are staggering when it comes to mobile marketing. A snapshot of important statistics from 2011 from Mobile Marketer shows the incredible rise in mobile and a trend that will continue to go up:
Applications
- 1 billion app downloads
Mobile social media
- 166 percent increase in Facebook Mobile users in the first half of 2011
- 1 billion foursquare check-ins
Data traffic
- 1,800 percent increase in traffic on networks in the United States in next four years
More mobile
- More smartphones bought in the U.S. than PCs
- More wireless subscriptions in the U.S. than people
Mobile commerce
- Mobile commerce sales will reach $6.7 billion this year in the U.S. – a tiny fraction of overall retail sales, to be sure, but a 91.4 percent increase over 2010
- Next year, sales will rise another 73.1 percent to $11.6 billion
Mobile advertising
- Mobile advertising will generate $1.23 billion in the United States in 2011
- Mobile advertising in the U.S. to reach $4.4 billion by 2015
Mobile email
- Mobile email open rates increased 34 percent in the past six months
- In particular, email opens from iPad devices skyrocketed by increasing 73 percent
Bar codes
- 20 million bar code scans in third quarter 2011
- 40 percent increase in scans year-over-year from the third quarter of 2010
Mobile video
- Consumers are spending 29 percent more time watching videos on their mobile devices
Tablets
- 77 percent of tablet owners use their devices everyday
- 53 percent of users depend on tablets for daily news
For more stats on mobile marketing and other relevant mobile information, visit
Mobile Marketer.
Marketers will need to adapt and adjust their plans and strategies with these two trends in mind if they want to stay relevant, be accessible to people and engage with consumers in places that are already popular with their users.
As a marketer and business owner, ask yourself two questions:
1. Can I prove that social media marketing works for my brand? and
2. Can people access my website on any device they are on?
Depending on your answers you may have some work to do in the beginning of the year.
What are your thoughts? What trends and areas do you think will demand marketers’ attention in 2012?
