It is not just how many but how much.

Mobile marketers and advertisers shouldn't dismiss the purchasing power of adult
and baby boomers.

The idea that new technologies are adopted by teenagers quicker and easier than by adults is common wisdom but perhaps it should be reassessed. It is a fact that teenagers are more frequent users of  cell phone and text  messaging.  A report presented in September by Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist from the Pew Research Center shows that teenagers are more prone to use mobile devices. The ratio of teenagers sending  and receiving text messages compared to adults is five to one:  15% of teenagers between 12 and 17 text more than 200 messages a day, while only 3% of adults between 25 to 29 send as many.

Nonetheless, adults are rapidly increasing their utilization of cell phones for various and often different purposes than teenagers.  Adults are more likely to use the phone to make plans on the fly, check on their children and to coordinate physical meetings. Lenhart also mentions that  82% of American adults own a cell phone, either a Blackberry, an iPhone or another type of smartphone, and they use it more and more for mobile commerce. Statistics also show that almost half of smarthphone owners have shopped for at least one item using their handset devices. The Mobile Marketing Association and its official  research partner, Luth Research released on May 2010 the U.S.Mobile Consumer Briefing on adults mobile marketing behaviors and opinions. This survey states  that approximately one in five U.S. adults have used their cell phone for mobile commerce and 17% utilize mobile banking  with a projection of an increase to 22% in 2011.

A survey conducted by Lightspeed Research in August 2010 with almost 4,000 respondents shows that applications, games, music, videos and ringtones are the most popular items purchased by teenagers, while travel related items such as airplane tickets and hotels are the favorites of adults 55 and older. This shows that even though the number of commercial transaction via mobile is higher among the teenagers  the amount of money spent through this channel by adults is far greater. In addition, it is also true that mobile advertising has a significant impact on this segment of the population. Although mature adults respondents in the LightSpeed research prefer shopping on their computer, they also admitted that they have searched for product information using their mobile devices. Security is not much of an issue, only 13% of the mature adults respondents mentioned it as a reason for not using mobile commerce, but they did feel more comfortable using websites and credit cards instead of mobile commerce and charges to their phones' bills.
Naor Chazan, marketing director for the Americas of Lightspeed Research states: “With the increase in smartphone adoption, the increase in ecommerce applications and the increase in mobile-friendly ecommerce Web sites, it is only a matter of time before we see more people becoming aware of mobile commerce and buying on their phone."

The idea that  adults are more conventional and slower to adopt new technologies is simplistic and not true. In an article named "Why Marketers Can't afford to ignore Baby Boomers" published by Nielsen Wire in July 2010,it is mentioned that Boomers are considered a group who enthusiasticaly adopt new technologies such as e commerce and social networks. Nielsen further mentions more and more  adults of 55 and older are adopting Facebook and similar social websites. The number of mature people maintaining an active profile in Facebook has been increased considerably year after year from 2007 to 2009 and senior social media users have mentioned Facebook as their new hobby.

To summarize: Advertisers and apps developers should not dismiss the increasing number of adults using new technologies and mobile commerce, and should  not just focus on the youth market.

References:
Cell phones and American adults. They make just as many calls, but text less often than teens
Amanda Lenhart, Senior Research Specialist  9/2/2010
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Cell-Phones-and-American-Adults.aspx

PR News wire  One in Five U.S. Adult Consumers Now Using Mobile Commerce
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-in-five-us-adult-consumers-now-using-mobile-commerce-94244549.html
Boomers and Social Media. emarketer digital intelligence

http://www.emarketer.com/Report.aspx?code=emarketer_2000649

Nielsen Wire
Why Marketers Can’t Afford to Ignore Baby Boomers
July 19, 2010
http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/why-marketers-can%E2%80%99t-afford-to-ignore-baby-boomers/

Search engine marketing, risks and opportunities.

Imagine a shopping mall without any signs, displays or advertising. From outside this mall would look like a big warehouse, there will be no indications to the products and services offered inside. A place like this might be full of great products with potential to produce high revenues, but without the right marketing and advertising, consumers will not know what the place has to offer. Targeted marketing is aimed to develop effective promotions displayed in strategic locations within the store and its main purpose is to push customers to buy their product.

 A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is analogous to strategic marketing in the mall. As we all know, when developing a good marketing campaign it is necessary to understand consumers’ psychology as well as systematically analyze the way customers perceive products and how they make a selection between different alternatives. Marketing strategies must be developed based on the previous analysis of the market needs to portray this desired-end status and present the products as the best solution to satisfy consumer’s need. Traditional marketing have many proven ways to convey this need-satisfaction link, however, Internet has changed the way people consume and modified the marketing strategy in the age of ubiquitous connectivity. Nowadays, many customers carry mobile devices and like to compare prices by going online even if their intention is to purchase directly in stores. Customers are becoming more demanding and are looking for extra information before making a decision , therefore, search engines are becoming more and more relevant as they are the main tool that connects products and services with potential customers.

The mobile connectivity is now reaching a milestone where new mobile applications like Snaptell .
This application allows customers to scan a product using their mobile device camera and compare prices throughout the web. Universal connectivity has given new meaning to SEO optimization as if a product or a store is not catalogued or somehow does not appear on search results, consumers will walk away and buy from the next best available deal. The influence of Internet on consumer habits is critical, as today’s businesses is required to have an effective presence online and on search engines. This effectiveness will ensure a higher number of hits to their websites that eventually may increase the number of potential customers. The number of times a website appears on search engines and their ranking will generate more qualified visitors and consequently a higher return on investment (ROI).

The competition on the web is fierce and business need to develop aggressive strategies to sustain their position and maintain the desired level of customer traffic. Many number of websites websites selling similar products means the end of exclusivity and businesses must rely on visibility.

White Hat SEO consultants develop strategies to sustain this position in this competitive environment. Strategies might be divided in three big scenarios: On page, off-page and content optimization strategies.

 • On Page Strategies - Among On page strategies one can mention tags (descriptive tags, meta tags and Alt tags) CSS and Javascripts, navigation coding and crawlable pages.
 • Off Page Strategies-we can find link audits, spam free approach and monthly reports.
 • Content Optimization Strategies -we can find brand association , key word building, and visual content optimization.

Nonetheless, as in any competitive environment we can find certain practices which may be seen as solutions, but in a long term may destroy the reputation of a web site and lead to penalties levied by search engines. These are called Black Hat SEO practices, also known as spammy techniques. Among these practices are keyword stuffing, using invisible text to attract crawlers and doorway pages- fake pages not seen by user but built into the system to attract search engine spiders. In conclusion, using these SEO strategies may help to enhance the performance of a website, but choosing the wrong strategy may bring serious consequences in terms of search engines penalizations and most important, consumer distrust . The wrong strategy will make that a business disappear in the huge amount of websites which offer similar products.

Source: Search Engine Journal. Bad Seo Techniques that will hurt your google rankings. Retrieved October 1st, 2010.http://www.searchenginejournal.com/bad-seo-techniques-that-will-hurt-your-google-rankings/7065/


Shannon, Gary-Adam.White Hats: This is Why You're Getting Beaten. Search Engine Watch.com September 29,2010. Retrieved October 1st, 2010. http://searchenginewatch.com/3641389

MKT595:Facebook or not Facebook, that is the question.

The movie Social Media was launched this Friday with great expectation from millions of fans of the popular Facebook. The story is interesting, full of sarcasm,  betrayals , traitors, technology and ambition, enough to capture the attention of teenagers who think that one day they will develop an app that will make them a millionaire, like  Zuckerberg.

Facebook was launched in 2004 and almost immediately I adopted this social network in order to be in touch with my family and friends in Mexico. Learning the many benefits of Facebook resulted from the continuous training provided by my cyber daughter who spends more time  facebooking with her friends around the world than in talking with real people in Chicago. At the beginning my  activity in Facebook was limited to sending short messages and sharing pictures. Eventually I became part of new groups of many different colors and flavors, such a group of former United Airlines employees or a group of fans of Maitena,  a famous argentinian cartoon. Little by little Facebook was taking control of my rare spare time and the only thing that saved me from ever increasing addiction to posting and pooking was the appearance of the famous Farmville, that stole the attention of my friends but never seemed attractive to me, although I must admit that it is outstanding the way   Zynga has seen its profits skyrocketing through the virtual spaces of Facebook. Virtual goods and in game payments account displaced through this social gaming reaches figures of 10 Billion annually, nonetheless I refused to enter into this Farmville mania.

But don't think that I am an isolated example of a Facebook addict, in an article published by Nielsen in August 2010 titled "what Americans Do Online", it is mentioned that Social Media and Games are dominant activities, with 22% and 10% respectively of the time spend in on line. But also music and videos are highly prized by users, the amount of money spent on this digital content reached 10 billion last year and the average time American spend streaming online video is 3 hours and 15 minutes a month. To continue with  statistics, Women spend more time on line than men and Facebook's greatest growth has come from people aged 35-49, and worldwide adults are increasing adopters of Social Media.

Facebook is considered the number one Social Network, with 500,000,000 users, however, there are other similar social networks which are highly popular in other countries , such as Orkut Orkut, with 100,000,000 users in India and Brazil and Qzone which is popular in China with 200,000,000 users, Hi5 was also very popular in Latinamerica. In addition Other players in the arena of social networks have appeared on the scene, such as Ping which is being publicized as going live for the 160 million users of iTunes, and is available for both internet, iPhone and iPods.

More modest yet significant  other suppliers of social network environments have seen their numbers soar in the last few months, for example, Ning that claims to have more than 300,000 active Networks covering the most diverse topics,  ranging from  politics and entertainment to small business and education.  Thousands of users have made Ning the space for more focused social networks.  Ning's CEO Jason Rosenthal is a former Vice President of Hewlett Packard Software's Business Service Automation product line, one of the fastest growing  units within HP. I am a member of two social networks created under the Ning umbrella,  a social network for Hispanic Professionals in Chicago and an international network for digital photography students.

Experts claim that Facebook's revenue  will surpass  that projected for Google, with 635 Million in 2009 and an expected revenue of 2 Billion for 2010. There is no doubt about the success of Facebook's   on line advertising, which competes with Google Adwords and Google Adsense for the profitable business of  online advertising and  e-commerce. Traditional advertising in newspapers, TV and radio have been decreasing in favor of the new internet and mobile advertising. Consumer habits have been transformed, shoppers now make extensive research in web sites, blogs and social networks before deciding on any actual purchase, and this change is not specific to America. All over the world, the very effective marketing by word of mouth through Social Media is winning the race for consumer attention and is substantially affecting other media. Does this mean that the future of advertising is in the hands of a young entrepreneur who had the idea of creating a Social Network, just to become the most popular student in Harvard?  Google it and Facebook me if you find the answer.

Irrelevant?

In an article published last week by Tod Sacerdoti at Online Video Insider,   it is  claimed that video is totally irrelevant for mobile advertising.  Although some experts say that mobile advertising doesn’t follow the rules of traditional advertising, I still think that one picture says more than thousand words. The effectiveness of visual communications has been proved ever since the times of the first printed advertisements in the XIX Century, so why it should it be different for mobile campaigns? In times when one is able to stream any kind of visual materials, visual communication is a strong weapon for achieving effective communication, it provides a way to help people understand ideas in an ever increasingly  complex world. Also  when words might have different meanings, to different people,  a visual aid could contribute to convey an idea in a more accurately.
I am going to use the example of an advertising that I ran across last  week when I was using my Blackberry, surfing the web looking for an article on Higher Education.  “Case 39, 10.01.10” was the title.  That title might have  different meanings,  I wasn’t sure if that was an American expression or a case cited in a new legislation proposal. To my foreign eye,  these few words didn’t make any sense , and what is worse, they were not even selling anything to me. I clicked on the title and I had access to a short video, it was the advertising campaign for a horror movie. These movies are popular during October in this country, so probably, if I were American,  I should assume, reading that chain of words and numbers,  that the ad was talking about of one of the new typical Halloween season movies. Watching the video I immediately felt  tempted to go to watch this movie , the first thing in October 1^st. 
 Although watching the video,  I realized  that it was  a remake  of “The exorcist”  or “The prophecy”  icons of horror genre,  I must admit  that the video was so good that it motivated me to consume a service of entertainment that I had not in mind.  Mr Sacerdoti claims that advertisers shouldn’t bother in developing campaigns for certain type of computer,  browser or location, because mobile advertising must deliver effective communication regardless of the media. Mr.  Sacerdoti is an expert, but   I am not totally sure that “the experience of viewing the ad doesn't change the way it's consumed or performs.”, as he says.
Although massive is the word for mobile marketing, massive does not always means effective, it is true that with a plain simple and standard text one may reach a larger audience, however,  not all the audience will feel attracted by plain and boring words. Quoting Sacerdoti “IPhone and Android inventory becoming "video-enabled" is the equivalent of the video industry growing” , so nowadays, when the simplest mobile phones are equipped with the technology  to  record and play pictures and videos, why not to exploit the effectiveness of an attractive video to stimulate the interest of audiences?  Particularly when what we are selling is a visual product. 

 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.printFriendly&art_aid=136214

Healthy Marketing?

Mobile marketing is soaring. Every day it is used to promote a wide range of articles, from cosmetics to real states. Mobile marketing is growing rampantly and although it is annoying to be constantly targeted by marketers using these intensive campaigns, it is also true that this massive flow of information allows consumers to be aware of new products and other innovations that are available in the market.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute Conducted  research among physicians and consumers of health services to measure the acceptance of these mobile technologies that are designed to enhance remote contact of patients with physicians and other health care services providers.

The study shows that almost half of the consumers would pay for remote monitoring devices, patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes would be able to send information to their physicians, allowing them to monitor the status of important measurements such as glucose levels and take immediate actions when necessary.  There is an important benefit to this mobile monitoring, mainly the convenience for physicians to make faster and more accurate decisions as they have access to real-time data. In addition medication and treatment management strategies might benefit from these remote interactions; physicians will be able to prescribe medication wirelessly, making the treatment process more efficient.  

In addition to the market of remote monitoring devices which is calculated to be as much as 43 billion dollars, the convenience of this kind of remote patient-physician contact could represent significant savings in health care costs for thousands of individuals, who will save in face-to-face doctor appointments and also improve the use of physicians’ time. This remote monitoring will not necessarily substitute the personal interaction of patient with physician, but may result in a decrease of unnecessary visits and could be replaced by lower costs of medical services provided through mobile technology using a fixed periodical fee.

 In spite of  the obvious benefits of the utilization of this technology, issues of privacy/security represent continuing and significant concerns. There is concern that this information becomes available to insurance companies.  Is it possible that the costs of insurance policies will be based on the results of data mining of confidential information made available in the cyberspace?

A serious question is whether this technology will result in the commodization of health care rather than being a professional service?  Is it possible that physicians will urge patients to aquire  remote monitoring services to patients who won’t be necessarily benefit from this technology?

Soon we will see the asthma and diabetes treatments marketed through SMS just like any any other product? 

What do you think?

 Sources

Health care unwired. New business models delivering care anywhere. Retrieved September 12, 2010.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/lib/9599.pdf

Tsirulnik, Giselle. Mobile technology can lower healthcare costs: PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mobile Marketer website. Retrieved September 12, 2010.

http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/research/7302.html

Globalization and Academia

In the late 60's the Beatles wrote a song named land of milk and honey, it is not a song of my time, i am not so old, but probably my parents hear it when they were dataing, however, the lyrics reminds me of this country.


This is the land of Milk and Honey
This is the land of sun and song and
This is the world of good and plenty
Humble and proud and young and strong and
This is the place where the hopes of the homeless
and the dreams of the lost combine
This is the land that heaven blessed and
This lovely land is mine

Well this might be the Beatles land, I don't think they were talking about my land (Mexico) but it express an admiration for the blessed land. As a temporary visitor in this American land I am everyday more surprised about the greatness of this country, this land of honey and milk, is also called the country of the efficiency, everything works here, energy, transportation, industry, financial systems, you name it. United States is the first economy in the world and although China is getting close , I believe the leadership of American companies in business and industry still have a lot to give to the rest of the world. However, there is something I have seen while living and studying here, some Americans never have been exposed to international experiences, specially in the Academic aspect. Although higher education has become rampantly global, countries like Saudi Arabia and China are using federal funds to educate abroad their youths, I don't see the same encouragement in America. Brookings Institution Press published an article named "Academic globalization should be welcomed, not feared" . Ben Wildavsky. January 15,2010

http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2010/0115_globalization_wildavsky.aspx that talks about this global speeding in education. This article shows some interesting statistics, i.e. 3 million people currently study outside their country, the student mobility has increased a 57% in the last decade and United States is the promised land for international studies. Thousands of students are moving to United States every year to acquire Masters Degrees and PhD to return home and work in local industry and universities. But what happen with American students, why American students do not show interest for studying business or sciences outside United States borders? Wouldn't be interesting to know how the world functions outside American borders? wouldn’t' this international experience collaborate to the understanding of the new globalization? I invite my American classmates to express your comments about this new era of academic globalization.