Social Media Influencers Have Power

“Top brands spend a limited amount of time reaching out to influencers for marketing purposes, but these individuals—generally bloggers or social media users with a greater than average reach among consumers—still have a significant presence in the marketplace. And they are prized by marketers for their ability to spread the word about products or services they believe in,” reports eMarketer. “According to a Technorati Media study from December 2012, 65% of top US brands reported participating in influencer marketing. And a similar 64% of those deemed influencers by Technorati Media—meaning they had greater than average reach in a particular marketplace—made revenue from blogging, whether from ads on their site or sponsored endorsements from brands.” Read more.

Social Media Invasive? Some Say Yes!

“Most consumers are aware that brands use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ for marketing insights,” writes Brafton. “Marketers listen to conversations on the web to gauge brand awareness and trending topics, using these key insights to fuel internet marketing campaigns. However, some consumers feel social listening is invasive, so how can brands respond to consumers' needs online without pushing them away in the process? The answer might be, ‘Speak only when spoken to.’” Read more.

Content Marketing Delivers Great ROIs

“In an environment in which consumers’ attention is increasingly fragmented, the idea of using content to capture interest and engagement is catching on among marketers.” So goes the post on eMarketer. “Compelling content can help marketers tell a story, but it can also be cumbersome—and expensive—to create. So which content strategies are generating attractive return on investment (ROI) for marketers? The most cost-effective content types are articles, video and white papers, according to a January 2013 study of marketing decision-makers worldwide conducted by CopyPress, a software company specializing in content marketing tools. In particular, marketers were most widely satisfied by the ROI from featured articles, with 62.2% saying they provided some of the best content ROI.”  Read more.

Social Media Good for B2B Marketing

“For B2B [business to business] small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Facebook is for traffic, and Twitter is for leads. That, at least, is the conclusion of an analysis of 600 US B2B SMB websites conducted by Optify,” according to eMarketer. “The study, which parsed over 62 million site visits, 215 million page views and 350,000 leads in 2012, found that visitors coming from Facebook made up 54% of all social media-sourced site visits, and those from Twitter just 32%. Nevertheless, Twitter accounted for 82% of all social media-originated leads, while Facebook accounted for a paltry 9% of leads. LinkedIn played a relatively minor role, accounting for 14% of site visits from social and 9% of social leads.” Read more.

Changing Role of Video Online and on TV

“Several factors are likely to contribute to that eventual fusion, most notably the availability of high-quality video content and associated advertising across five increasingly used digital screens—desktop computers, notebook computers, smartphones, tablets and connected TVs,” according to eMarketer. “But in the near term, conventional TV will continue to dominate spending: At $64.5 billion, TV will make up 38.9% of total media ad spending in the US in 2012. In contrast, online video’s $2.9 billion will contribute a mere 1.7%. That imbalance is why Dave Morgan, chief executive officer of Simulmedia, said that digital video advertising ‘is more of a compliance buy when the clients say they want multiscreen.’" Read more.

The ‘New’ Mobile Device—the Phablet

“Apple’s competitors are finally doing a better job of making the kinds of phones that customers want,” according to a section of a New Yorker article about Apple’s financial fate. “The most notable of these is an oversized phone dubbed “the phablet”—Samsung’s Galaxy Note is the leader in the category. The phablet is bigger than a traditional phone, smaller than a tablet, and as ungainly as its name—too big to fit comfortably in your pocket and cumbersome for making calls. In the U.S., the phablet is still very much a niche product, but overseas, particularly in Asia, sales exploded in the second half of last year. And, unfortunately for Apple, there is no iPhablet. The analyst Peter Misek, a managing director at Jefferies & Company, told me that he had been an Apple optimist until last fall. ‘We assumed, as Apple did, that a buyer of a smartphone would also be a buyer of a tablet, so you’d have one device for mobility and one for surfing the Net,’ he said. ‘But what we’re finding is that, especially in lower-income areas, people can’t or don’t want to buy both. So they’re buying the one device that combines the two.’ Read more.

How could this device affect digital marketing? Advertisers could enlarge the size of display ads, miniaturized for mobile phones. They also could create more dynamic videos that viewers could play on devices with screens larger than those on smartphones. It could lead to easier navigation and viewing from tweats, emails, and links on advertisements to brand home pages or social media sites. In theory, it might lead to less eye fatigue, making it easier for the viewer to stay connected. The problem: How would an individual carry it around? Would they want to? Women could stick the device in a pocketbook, but men usually forgo such items. Will men just hold them? Or will men end up getting two devices—a smartphone for walking around and a phablet for work since they can stick it in their valise? If men get two devices, then how is that different from the current market of individuals owning a smartphone and a tablet? And for marketers, if men and women do carry the devices in cases—whether a pocket book or valise—will they use it as frequently as a smart phone, which they can slide out more easily?

I have written these ideas and asked these questions to show how a mind can work with new data. Since the phablet will not enter the U.S. market for a few months, no one can predict with any accuracy how Americans will perceive the product and, eventually, how they will use it. If you read the questions carefully, if you think about them for more than the time it takes to read them, and if you connect it to the information you currently know about Internet marketing, you can come up with some unique concepts.

Crafting the “Right” Marketing Message

“Brands developing Facebook marketing campaigns will benefit from the social media network's most recent acquisition: the Atlas Advertiser Suite. In a recent Facebook blog post, Brian Boland outlined the deal with Microsoft to purchase Atlas and how it benefits both marketers and users,” reports Brafton. “Boland writes that today's digital marketing landscape has grown complex, and without the ability to understand cross-channel efforts [channel being one of the different media opportunities in the real and virtual worlds], marketers adopt siloed strategies for each campaign. This practice leads to inconsistent analytics reports [reports about who is watching what, where, and for how long] and preventing brands from improving their campaigns for long-term results. With Atlas, marketers will get a clearer view of their campaign performance, which will allow them to get the right messages in front of their target markets. In turn, companies need to ensure they have content marketing resources in place to act on the analytics and craft the right messages for unique audiences.” Read more.

How 16 Brands Get the Most Out of Social Media

“Becoming a social business isn’t easy. It takes planning, organization and teamwork.” That’s the start of a post on Social Media Today. “But when established and executed well, social businesses find ways to drive business results, and win the loyalty of social users. If you’re looking for inspiration on how to lead the social brand pace, the following 16 brands embody the best of the best – broken down by social area of excellence.” Read more about the brands.

Marketers Spending More on Digital Advertising

“About 71 percent of marketing firms have reported that they plan to increase their digital [Internet] marketing budgets this year, according to a new report by Econsultancy and Responsys,” notes a ClickZ post. “The Marketing Budgets 2013 report says that marketing teams surveyed expect to increase their digital budgets by 28 percent on average. And around 56 percent of firms saying they will increase their digital budgets by over 20 percent within the year. ” Read more.

New Media Could Surpass Traditional Media Soon

A survey conducted by Strata reportedly “polled nearly 100 advertisers in the fourth quarter of 2012 and found that spending toward TV and radio is declining. Forty-percent of respondents indicated that their clients were less interested in TV advertising and 32 percent were less invested in radio. Interest in print is down 60 percent year-over-year,” according to Brafton. “Meanwhile, 22 percent of agencies reported that the media landscape continues to evolve, and 76 percent say their clients use approximately three different channels to reach prospects.” Read more.

This debate has lingered for almost a decade: When--if ever--will digital media channels (web, mobile) surpass the traditional mass media--television and radio? Several years ago, it surpassed print. One question remains unresolved: Will companies replace TV advertising with Internet advertising, as some suppose, or will marketing organizations integrate online advertising and marketing with its TV advertising? If advertising on the recent Super Bowl forecasts the future, then integration will mark the new sophisticated marketing campaign.

Getting More Out of Super Bowl Marketing

"Less is more—except when it comes to America's unofficial National Holiday of Excess, the Super Bowl," says Digital Marketing. "Following last year's extravaganza, marketers at Adobe got out their digital measuring sticks and sought to answer these questions: Should we still be spending so much money on a seemingly untargeted and an untrackable event? Should we replace it with a ramped-up digital program? Or will doing both be the thing to put the ball of commerce through the uprights. The answers they came up with, depending on a particular brand's budget, were yes, yes, and yes." Read more.

ClickZ has established a ranking--based on viewership--of this year's Super Bowl's ads. See it here.

And the New York Times posted this earlier Monday morning: "As advertisers tried to generate buzz by releasing commercials early online, Times readers voted Sunday night on which of the game’s ads stuck out, and which of the ads they could have done without." Read more, see the video.

Search Advertising Still on Top

"The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has released its first half of 2012 Internet Advertising Revenue Report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and it is good reading," according to Marketing Pilgrim. "Considering our audience it will please you to know that despite cries of the death of SEO and the move to social leaving all other ad forms behind, search still accounts for 47% of the ad revenue from the Internet space as measured in this report. The report states ‘Search revenues totaled $4.1 billion in Q2 2012, up 17% from Q2 2011, when Search totaled $3.5 billion’. Sounds healthy to me." Read more and see the charts.

Mobile advertising, while having a great deal of potential, accounts for only 4% of the money spent on interactive (Internet) advertising. Remember this when writing your reports.

FTC Looks to Protect Privacy of Children Online

"The moves come at a time when major corporations, app developers and data miners appear to be collecting information about the online activities of millions of young Internet users without their parents’ awareness, children’s advocates say. Some sites and apps have also collected details like children’s photographs or locations of mobile devices; the concern is that the information could be used to identify or locate individual children," reports the New York Times. "These data-gathering practices are legal. But the development has so alarmed officials at the Federal Trade Commission that the agency is moving to overhaul rules that many experts say have not kept pace with the explosive growth of the Web and innovations like mobile apps. New rules are expected within weeks...The proposed changes could greatly increase the need for children’s sites to obtain parental permission for some practices that are now popular — like using cookies to track users’ activities around the Web over time. Marketers argue that the rule should not be changed so extensively, lest it cause companies to reduce their offerings for children." Read more.

B2B Marketers Prefer Content Marketing

"A report from Optify found that successful B2B [business to business--meaning companies marketing products/services to other companies] marketers are heavily focused on the creation of website content to improve visibility and niche authority [meaning defining the company as a leader in a small but important segment of a market] for their companies. Actively developing articles, white papers and other kinds of content to attract prospects or keep existing customers and clients engaged [blogs are simply but common examples] helps businesses consistently add to their sales pipeline and drive conversions," goes  Brafton News. "According to the study, 30 percent of marketers said content marketing creation and management occupied the most time, 17 percent pointed to various lead generation tasks and 16 percent named managing their websites as their most time-consuming activity. Each of these tasks are part of a strong inbound marketing strategy that focuses on developing a robust web presence, with content at the crux. Relevant site content pushes a brand's authority, while focusing on generating leads helps engage prospects and convert them effectively. Moreover, managing a website well helps ensure site pages are in line with SEO standards." Read more.