Apple iOS up, Android flat, RIM down among recent acquirers.

Smartphones continue to grow in popularity. According to Nielsen’s May survey of mobile consumers in the U.S., 38 percent now own smartphones. And 55 percent of those who purchased a new handset in the past three months reported buying a smartphone instead of a feature phone, up from 34 percent just a year ago.

Android continues to be the most popular smartphone operating system, with 38 percent of smartphone consumers owning Android devices. However, while Android also leads among those who recently purchased a new smartphone, it is the Apple iPhone that has shown the most growth in recent months.

What does that mean for your company?

The smartphone revolution is at the step of your door. It means that almost every single unit has access in the internet, whether via WI-FI or 3G service. This opens new horizons for marketing, as more applications are launched, new audiences are targeted and different kind of campaigns are implemented. Cyprus is now taking its first steps in digital-mobile marketing and such attempts are embraced by customers and help companies to further higher their status'. 

Comments on social sites about brands and products are encouraging users to take action. Social networks are becoming a part of everyday life for many users, and their offline habits are affected by their participation.

In November 2010, the Pew Internet & American Life Project surveyed US social network users for the “Social Network Sites and Our Lives” report, released in June 2011, and found that 31% of social network users are on Facebook several times a day. Additionally, 21% of respondents use the site about once a day. This is followed by Twitter, which 20% of social network users check several times a day and 13% use about once a day.

As consumers use these social sites several times a day or week, they are also commenting on posts from friends just as often. The Pew study found that 26% of female Facebook users and 17% of male Facebook users comment on Facebook posts at least once a day. Further, the study found that 57% of female Facebook users and 48% of male Facebook users comment on posts at least once a week.

But social network users are not just responding on social media. The April 2011 “S-Net: The Impact of Social Media” study by ROI Researchfound that 60% of US social network users were at least somewhat likely to take action when a friend posted something about a product, service, company or brand on a social media site. Only 18% were not at all likely to take action.

The study doesn’t elaborate on what exactly respondents would do, but another question asked specifically what actions US social network users would be more likely to take after following a company or product on Facebook or Twitter. On Facebook, 53% of respondents said the top activities would be purchasing the brand or company’s product and recommending the company or product. For Twitter, the top activities were talking about the company or product (61%), recommending the company or product (59%) and purchasing the brand or company’s product (58%).

Fans or followers of a brand are influenced by what they see from these company accounts, but they are also influenced by what their friends say about brands or companies that they don’t necessarily follow. It’s another area for marketers to focus on—the reach they have and how their brand fans may influence their own friends and followers.

Cypriots are yet more enthusiastic as introducing products in social media still remains a new concept. Digital Marketers are aware of this and they try to implement the right strategies to engage the audience and get reactions out of them.

Marketing director UK and Ireland for Fujitsu Vince Kerr (pictured) pressed the point on a centre stage panel focusing on mobile and social media.

He said: “You have to understand how to integrate social media - it’s not a stand alone activity. It can play a role across the whole media mix, including events and offline advertising.”

The panel, chaired by head of insights at CIM Thomas Brown, agreed that marketers using social media had to tread a fine line between being cautious and allowing teams to be creative and inspirational.

Nick Eades, chief marketing officer of Psion, said: “I think people are right not to be scared but they should be cautious of social media. You will have investors who watch what you do and what you tweet.”

Kristof Fahy, group brand and marketing director for William Hill, agreed and added: “We want to encourage enthusiasm and creativity but we need to put some boundaries around it.”

The panel stressed that staff should be given some social media training and that those who showed aptitude should be empowered to use social media. However, anyone involved should be briefed on the negative side of social media. Fahy said: “Don’t get involved if you cannot deal with it. It’s not all positive in the world of social media.”

Talking about engaging with communities Kerr added: “You have to take a view whether a comment is damaging or is it better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

The panel admitted that measurement and explaining the value of social media to the CEO or CFO was a challenge but Eades stressed that it is no use just throwing unstructured data taken from social monitoring tools at board members. Make sure that your data is segmented and structured and that you can offer a decision or viewpoint, he advised.

So do not give away your social media campaign just to anyone. Visit digital marketers that will assign these kind of tasks to social media experts.

Many consumers prefer email as their primary contact method with brands and companies regarding sales, promotions and new products.

Companies that honor this request and strategically engage recipients at the right time have much to gain, according to findings from email marketing solution provider StrongMail.

Using automated email marketing, also known as “lifecycle email marketing,” marketers can set up a series of email campaigns that deploy messages upon user-triggered actions such as completing a purchase or downloading a trial. According to StrongMail, 46% of companies worldwide are currently taking advantage of lifecycle email marketing.

Among those, the majority leveraged it for welcome programs (78%), and about half used it to maintain client communication in post-purchase campaigns (45%) and to continue post-sales revenue generation with cross-sell and upsell programs (44%).

Undoubtedly, the ability to communicate with clients in tempo with user-initiated actions allows companies to target customers with more personalized messaging. In addition, marketing automation can streamline email marketing efforts and methodically grow customer lifetime revenue, permitting companies to free up their sales force to focus on new business.

More than half (57%) of those using marketing automation saw positive gains in campaign metrics like open rate, clicks, purchases and registrations. However, a large percentage (39%) were unsure of the impact on their email marketing efforts, perhaps suggesting these companies lacked measurement capabilities.

Still, StrongMail found 75% of respondents with lifecycle email marketing programs believed they outperformed traditional outbound marketing programs like general email blasts.
Specifically, respondents said these automated programs had positive effects on customer experience: 67% cited increased subscriber engagement and 54% reported increased customer satisfaction and retention.

Companies also cited revenue-specific benefits, including increased revenue and higher ROI. In addition, 38% said they were now able to send fewer but more profitable email messages, highlighting the ability for marketers to be more strategic in their email deployment, ultimately achieving more with less.

In Cyprus email marketing is becoming a popular campaign method but there are factors that we have to consider just before we begin such a campaign. A digital marketing expert should be able to give you advice on this. We are.

Buyers of high-end goods are highly engaged with online visual and mobile tools

Affluent consumers are tapping into mobile and online tools to support purchase decisions more frequently than the general population, research indicates. This gives marketers more opportunities to reach them through newer digital channels.

According to a survey conducted by the Affluence Collaborative, the majority of affluent internet users who earn more than $200,000 a year conduct product research on a weekly basis. And about a quarter of the highest-earning affluents (those earning at least $500,000 a year) research products and services every day.

The survey also indicates that more than half of online affluents use the mobile internet on a weekly basis—and about 40% do so daily. Given the high penetration and usage of smartphones among wealthy consumers, mobile video may be an opportunity to reach affluent or luxury product shoppers.

An automotive study by Google, Compete and Polk supports this. The research found that 30% of luxury car shoppers watched videos on their mobile phones prior to a purchase. And luxury car shoppers were twice as likely as volume car shoppers to watch consumer-generated online video on their PC and on their mobile device.
Data from an Ad-ology Research complements these findings. In the firm’s survey of auto purchasers, more respondents said that online photos and videos were integral to the purchase process for luxury and sports cars than for other types of cars.

Luxury automaker Land Rover knows that mobile and video are two crucial tactics to reach its target audience. According to Ken Bracht, marketing communication manager at Land Rover, a high percentage of its customer base uses smartphones, so the brand has taken “calculated risks” in mobile for several years now.

During the pre-launch of its 2012 Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover introduced a mobile app called Pulse of the City and also created an online interactive movie in hopes of entertaining and informing its early-adopter, tech-savvy target audience.
The videos have returned higher-than-average engagement. “It’s difficult to get anyone to spend more than 120 seconds with your content,” Bracht told eMarketer. “But we’re seeing an average of 7 minutes.”

A recent study found 89% of Internet users share online content on social networks, 93% use email and 82% use blogs. Additionally, social networks were identified as the top method for sharing content with friends.

Listening to your social customers is important and can be beneficial to your company. Think of them like a free focus group; by monitoring conversations about your brand, you can see how people view your company, services or products.

Still not convinced you should listen and join in the conversation? Here are more key reasons why it pays to listen to your social customers:
It can improve your brand or product

Is your service slow, do your customers wish you still carried last year’s model, or is your brand getting a bad rap? If so, your customers are sharing their thoughts on social networks. Understanding how your customers feel can help you improve your corporate reputation and/or product.

It can help you provide better customer support

A negative tweet about your brand isn’t always a bad thing. Quickly responding to customer complaints with a solution and providing instant customer support helps strengthen relationships with your customers. Remember, customers not only share their bad experiences, they also share positive ones.
Keeping a pulse on competitors

Paying attention to conversations around your competition can help you gain a better understanding of their product or services and its advantages and disadvantages. You can learn how much your audience is talking about you in comparision, and, if necessary, strategize ways to ramp up your social media game plan to help shape the conversation.

Generate new business leads

Through keyword search, Facebook interest groups, Tweetchats, forums, and many, many more social platforms, you can uncover potential sales opportunities. There will be people looking for services or products that your company offers; find them and reach out to them!
Build brand advocacy and spread the word

People online are passionate, and you may be able to find those social customers who love your brand. By building a relationship with these community members and influencers, you can spread organic word-of-mouth across different channels. After all, people trust their friends and family the most.

So if you haven’t thought to implement a social media marketing strategy, you should start considering it. At WSI Web Innovators we consider this type of marketing as an affordable and effective way that should be part of your digital campaigns. The Cypriot market is still young on digital marketing so by visiting professionals to design your strategy, it means prestige and great results.

Gone are the days when budget can just be spent and no one will question too closely what it was spent on.

Due to a combination of hard times for businesses and consumers alike and the ability to track and measure activity far more successfully, those controlling the purse strings are rightly demanding justification for the cash you are spending.

Digital marketing should be viewed as a single marketing medium which can be split down into SEO, PPC, social media, content marketing, online advertising, conversion optimisation, email marketing and so on.

Therefore, there should be a single all-encompassing strategy which pulls together the best ways to use each of those mediums to bring additional revenue into a business.

For example the State of Search Marketing Report 2011 found that the most popular objectives for digital marketing for businesses (not agencies) were:
• SEO – driving traffic.
• PPC – generating leads.
• Social media – increased brand awareness and enhanced reputation.

Conversion optimisation was considered to be responsible for sales/revenue from a website and this objective was therefore not assigned to any of the above. However, if there is no strategy pulling these together then what is the point in running them at all?

Your strategy should be completely customer centric. You want potential customers to buy from your business; therefore you need to understand your customer groups completely.

If you are looking to expand your market share by appealing to new customer groups then this needs to be planned strategically as all marketing activity for the business should be following a consistent theme on how to achieve this.

As one of the leading digital marketing professionals in Cyprus, in WSI Web Innovators we aim to give value to your money by offering you affordable and effective strategies.

In the last session yesterday (22 June) at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, delegates heard how Leo Burnett Chicago’s new Comment ad tool is the first developed by an ad agency for the social media giant.
The advertising tool lets brands inspire conversations among friends by posting a video, link, photo or status, to which people can respond.

Carolyn Everson, vice-president, global marketing solutions for Facebook, revealed the new ad unit as part of the company's efforts to entice brands beyond display ads and Facebook pages.
Everson told delegates: "Mark Zuckerberg [Facebook's founder] wants ads to be as useful as a comment from a friend."

Facebook is the world's largest social network and has nearly 700 million users. In Cyprus Facebook has over 400.000 users. This is why more companies are investing on social media campaigns to attract and engage with these markets.

In a presentation that overtly courted delegates from brand-owning companies – this year's Cannes Lions Festival has more brands attending than ever, organisers claim – Everson acknowledged that Facebook had a persuasion task on its hands.

She said: "We've been open about the fact that we're working with Nielsen to prove how Facebook and TV work together [as] we know we’ve got more to prove the effectiveness [of Facebook]."

As part of its consultation with brands, Facebook has created a client council. Everson revealed its first members include Wendy Clark, senior-vice president, integrated marketing communications and capabilities at Coca-Cola.
The social network has given Leo Burnett and its brand clients, including Hallmark and Samsung, exclusive use of Comment for two months.

In 2010, Facebook challenged agencies to create a new Facebook advertising unit that was "social by design".
Mark Renshaw, chief innovation officer of Leo Burnett USA, said Comment would allow brands "to tap into people's desire to participate beyond brands' Facebook Pages".

Accelerating smartphone purchases helps category growth

Social networking via mobile phones has been growing quickly in the US for over a year, and it still has the momentum of one of the fastest-growing content categories on mobile.

March 2011 research from comScore found that growth in unique users of mobile social networking over the previous three months was nearly 46%, compared to 43.3% for maps and 40.2% for weather. Social networking was not only the largest growth area during the period, but it was also the only one of the top three that is used for entertainment rather than utilitarian purposes.

This means that digital marketing campaigns that include social network activity, could become even more important as more and more users are carrying them even on their mobile phones.

It’s about time for the Cypriot market to understand these new realities and incorporate such campaigns and become up-to-date marketing wise.

According to emarketer older Facebook users, not only they use social media these days, but they also growing into a specific social media habit that had been more popular among younger adults: connecting with brands.

These of course are great news for marketers and companies as well, since they can approach effectively an audience that they wouldn’t even try on social media in the past.

As recently as September 2010, based on research from Wedbush Securities, it seemed as if Facebook engagement with brands just might not interest users over age 55. At that point, only about one in four of Facebook’s oldest users had “liked” a brand on the site, compared with 60% of those ages 18 to 34.
By November 2010, over-55s had begun to close the gap, however, and by April 2011, nearly half were connecting with brands. Engagement had also risen among 18- to 34-year-olds as well as the 35-to-54 age group over the period. Overall, 59% of adult Facebook users had “liked” a brand as of April, up from 47% the previous September. Uptake among the oldest users appears to have been a major factor in this rise.

The same applies in Cyprus where more and more older people become regular users of Facebook and other social networks opening new markets for companies.