Figures like this can only mean one thing: the social networking audience in the US has reached critical mass and marketers need to know the importance of establishing a social media presence in order to ensure that this market does not go untapped.

This article takes a look at consumer’s brand interactions on the social networking site Facebook and evaluates whether it really is worth the effort to integrate social media into your marketing campaigns.

The Rise of Facebook and Branded Pages: What it Means for Marketers

In the last few years, Facebook has progressed from a dorm room phenomenon to a business of epic proportions that encompasses a networking community, advertising channel, multimedia space and online-marketing community. For the marketer it has become an extremely powerful platform on which they can advertise their products and services and attempt to create real buzz for their brand. Marketers who interact with social networks such as Facebook have learned three key things:

• People are willing to interact with branded pages. Any preconceptions you have that users don’t pay attention to brands in social media should be thrown straight out of the window. Users are paying attention. Don’t believe us? Take Coca-cola as an example. On the 27th July 2011, Coca-cola was the eleventh most popular page on Facebook with a staggering 29.1 million fans and a weekly growth of 1.7 million fans. Coca-cola is a major brand and Coca-cola is attracting attention on Facebook. If you have previously thought that Facebook would not be an appropriate channel for your client’s brand, think again.
• People are influenced by their interactions on Facebook. Some of the more skeptical readers amongst you may be thinking that ‘liking’ a product and service on Facebook is one thing, but actually parting with your hard earned cash as a result of your interaction on Facebook is quite another. Actually this is not quite the case. The power of Facebook to influence consumer behavior is immense; in a 2010 survey of Facebook users by research firm Morpace, 68% of those questioned revealed that they would purchase a product if they had seen it on Facebook. So not only does this mean that people like to interact with branded pages, these interactions really do have the potential to hit the bottom line.
• Concerns about privacy need not be a deal breaker. Yes, Facebook users are concerned about their privacy and as a result of the measures that Facebook have put in place to put their user’s at ease, advertisers don’t have the access to the specific user data they would like. However, this need not stop play. Facebook themselves do user their data to target paid advertisements to the appropriate users and, as such, marketers who do use Facebook as an advertisement channel can benefit from data-led segmentation without crunching the numbers themselves.

When you read media reports that Facebook is honing in on Google’s traffic realm you really should stand up and pay attention. Social media marketing is only going to become bigger and better and any marketer worth their salt simply has to have it on their radar.v

Does this automatically mean you should ditch the standard banners and sink your budget in mobile banners? This article takes a look at what is happening in the world of mobile advertising and questions whether the high click-through rate achieved by mobile banners is really delivering the goods.

The Statistics

According to MediaMind the average CTR rate on mobile banners that were published on their site was 0.61% and eMarketer predict that by 2012 mobile display spending will rise to the tune of $334.5 billion USD. So we should all rush out and invest our advertising bucks in mobile display ads, right?

Not necessarily. A high CTR doesn’t guarantee conversions and, if research by mobile analytics company Amethon is to be believed, visitors who turn up at your site via mobile banner ads may just leave as quickly as they arrived.

Amethon’s research, as published in a recent eMarketer article, was based on an analysis of the traffic that visited the websites of companies that had engaged in an active mobile marketing campaign. Here’s what they discovered:

• Mobile banner clicks yield high bounce rates: 33% of customers who arrive on a site via a mobile advertisement do not progress beyond the first page.
• Customers that do stay, don’t stay for long: the average page views of customers who arrive via a mobile banner ad is just 1.53. The best performing sites average 3.00 pages.

The truth is that the reputation that mobile advertising is enjoying is quite simply unfounded; at present we just don’t know what really happens once a visitor has clicked on the brightly colored banner. James Clearly, CTO of Amethon described how marketers should react to this quite nicely in a recent press release:

“We believe that in order to leverage the potential of mobile advertising, brands and their providers can gain much from understanding behavior once a consumer lands on the microsite. This helps them focus on tangible campaign goals like competitions entry, content download and viewing key pages, rather than only click-throughs. The key differences between Mobile Analytics and traditional web analytics solutions include optimized measurement of mobile web activity, ability to track inbound campaign sources such as SMS and banner ads, and measure key conversion events such as a ring tone or video downloads.”

What We Think

Mobile banner advertising, with its high click through rates and ever-expanding reach is undoubtedly a great means of supporting any display campaign. However, it is important to understand what impact these clicks are having on their business and to what extent they are leading to real conversions before diving head-long into an expensive banner advertising campaign.

Between March 2009 and March 2010, the number of mobile subscribers accessing local businesses directories increased by 1.9 million.  The growth between January 2010 and January 2011 was an additional 6% (Source: this year’s comScore survey).  That means that mobile local content users now represent 77 million people, or 33% (over a third) of the US mobile population.  43% of mobile users access local search 1-3 times a month, 37% access local search once a week, and 20% do so every day.  88% of mobile search users now access the internet through a device equipped with GPS.  Nearly a fourth of all mobile users now have a smartphone.  We are seeing tremendous growth in all access areas including users who access classifieds, maps, business directories, news, online retail, and much more through their mobile devices.

The most popular devices to access local information on are as follows:  The Apple iPhone 4 16GB, the Motorola Droid, the Apple iPhone 3G S2GB, the BlackBerry Curve 8530, and the Apple iPhone 3G S 16GB.  Even though tablets didn’t make the list, marketers should take note that they are becoming ever more popular for locally based services.

Neg Norton, president of the YPA said, “Mobile offers significant opportunity, both for consumers who need convenient and reliable sources of local information on-the-go, and also for local search providers that are making this content available in new and innovative ways.  Yellow Pages and other local sites that have a legacy for providing trusted local business information via print directories and Web search tools are best poised to take advantage of this phenomenally versatile and interactive media.  Mobile allows them to extend Internet Yellow Pages to consumers wherever they are.”

According to this year’s survey, the top reasons for search are to find contact information, to find the address/directions to a local business (that motive is increasing), to research (increasing as well), to find a business offering a particular product or service, and lastly to make a purchase.  It’s also been shown that the number of users who are accessing and using coupons delivered to their mobile devices is increasing, along with the satisfaction of those customers.

The mobile consumer base in the US continues to grow rapidly as the technology evolves and moves more into the mainstream.  We are also now seeing the development of location-sharing and other cross channel services which are altering the landscape of commerce.  While cross channel services are still in the early adopter stages, we will be seeing them take center stage in the next couple years.  This is the time for retailers to get in on the ground floor of the new mobile era and take full advantage of the changes in how consumers are interacting with their local economy.