2010: Resurgence for Digital Media in the Wake of the Recession

I mentioned previously this interesting research from Comscore, and I wanted to highlight more general trends about digital media coming out of it.

Comscore outlines that the digital media industry responded with significant growth across various media platforms to the wake of the recession. As they say: 

"Industry innovations brought an unprecedented number of options to consumers as digital media continued to weave itself even tighter into the fabric of Americans’ daily lives." -- comScore

Key findings about consumer trends, highlighted in the report, include:

• Following 2 years of depressed consumer discretionary spending, the economy showed signs of improvement, leading to positive growth for the e-commerce market. Total U.S. e-commerce spending reached $227.6 billion in 2010, up 9 percent versus the previous year. Travel e-commerce spending grew 6 percent to $85.2 billion, while retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending jumped 10 percent to $142.5 billion for the year.
• Social networking continued to gain momentum throughout 2010, with 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users now visiting a social networking site in a month, and the average Internet user spending more than 4 hours on these sites each month. Nearly 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.
• The U.S. core search market grew 12 percent overall in 2010, driven by a 4-percent increase in unique searchers and an 8-percent increase in the number of search queries per searcher.
• U.S. Internet users received a total of 4.9 trillion display ads in 2010 with display ad impressions growing 23 percent in December 2010 versus December 2009. Social networking sites, which now account for more than one-third of all display ad impressions, were a significant driver of growth in the display ad market in 2010.
• In December 2010, the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video, a 12-percent increase from the prior year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.
• Major milestones in mobile were crossed during the year as smartphones reached 1 in 4 mobile subscribers and 3G penetration crossed the 50 percent threshold. Approximately 47 percent of mobile subscribers are now connected Internet media users (via browsers, applications or downloaded content), up 8 percentage points from the previous year.

In short, businesses should consider these aspects of Digital Media in their strategies to be successful in the coming years:

1. e-commerce
2. Social Media Presence
3. Search
4. Advertising 
5. Video on line as convergence with traditional TV continues to blur
6. Mobile media for both consumption and as an alternative e-commerce platform

Ecommerce spending jumped 9% to $227.9B in the US

As I track the evolution of e-commerce, I found these results coming from Comscore pretty interesting.

e-commerce revenue reached $227.6B for the entire year, growing 9% compared to 2009, and varies per industry:

• travel e-commerce up 6% to $85.2B
• Retail (non travel) up 10% to $142.5B
• Top growing category: Consumer Electronics +19% (flat panel TV and mobile devices are first)

This signals a recovery since the end of 2008, after a two years depressed situation due to the economic downturn. The 2010 holiday season was at a peak with a 12% growth, reinforced by some promotional activity - most notably free shipping. The Cyber Monday (Nov 29th) did peak at $1.028B surpassing for the first time the $1B mark. Groupon.com attracted 10.7M unique visitors in December, up 712% vs 2009.

Interesting evolution since my post e-commerce revenue over $100B back in January 2007 i.e. it more than doubled since 2006 even with a major downturn in between.

So, how is your e-commerce strategy going? Maybe a good time to revisit if you have one and definitely start one if you haven't.

If you want to know more, you can download the comScore 2010 US digital year in review report.

Social Marketing: identify influencers for free

source Elliott Lemenager 

This is the question I get very often even from marketers already involved and active in Social Marketing: how to identify influencers? Yes, seems like 101 but actually not so easy to figure it out.

The notion of influencers came first to me with Regis McKenna back in the 80's -- wow already! Here is the quote:

« The infrastructure includes all individuals between a vendor and its customers that can influence the buying process. » -- Regis McKenna

Pretty wide isn't it? But for B2B marketers like me this is so true and so daunting. Today's Marketing 2.0 reinforces and stresses our imperative to identify them and reach out to them through social media because we need them to be involved in the conversation, hopefully positively.

To start with today, I wanted to share with you this blog post: Social Marketing: Hybrid Approach to Identifying Targeted Influencers. Dive in as Elliott's post has lots of tips and links to tools and present it in a very simple way. His Hybrid approach actually refers to a combination of manual operations and free services you can use if you're on a budget contraint and cannot hire an agency to help you. Enjoy!

source Elliott Lemenager 

Social media marketing: build a lasting methodology

Here is an interesting post about optimizing your social media marketing from David Kirkpatrick, Marketing Experiment.

Justin Bridegan, Marketing Manager MECLABS Primary Research said, “One of the most difficult parts of social media marketing is creating a lasting methodology that works.  Time and resources continue to be two of the most difficult challenges social marketers face.”

Justin’s key takeaways:

1. Start small and test – “You don’t know what you don’t know”
2. Having a solid social marketing methodology in place will allow you to focus on real obtainable goals.
3. Determine the most effective offers for your campaigns including: Contests, incentives and promotions
4. Weigh Quality vs. Quantity with your offers, and remember the need for balance in your engagement
5. Successful campaigns don’t always equate to revenue, but can be one of many contributing components

Related resources on Marketing Sherpa

Free Inbound Marketing Newsletter – Case Studies and How To articles about social media, SEO, and content marketing

New Chart: Social Marketing Maturity and the Social Marketing ROAD Map

Social Media Marketing Research: Rolling up my sleeves and getting social

Maximizing Email List Growth: How the New York Public Library drove a 52.8% lift in newsletter subscriptions

Most-Tweeted Blog Posts of 2010: Facebook case study, social media marketing human factor, antisocial media, and more