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.