Infographic: M-commerce and mobile shopping in Australia

by Marketing ON 17 May 2013

Online shopping still accounts for only a fraction of the $256 billion total retail market in Australia, and shopping done through mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is just a slice of that, but at $5.6 billion it’s a considerable slice.

In this, another original infographic developed by Marketing, we draw on sources from Nielsen, TNS, PayPal, Quantium, NAB and the ABS to paint a picture of which categories are most popular via mobile, which retailers get the most hits online, and who uses which devices to scratch their ecommerce itch.

Click the image for full-size version

Infographic of the week: Data-rich and insight-poor, from information to intelligence

by Marketing ON 10 May 2013

The world of marketing is becoming incredibly rich in data, but unfortunately poor in insights. There is currently an influx in customer data, however, the ability to understand all of this new and exciting information hasn’t exactly kept the same pace.

Email marketing company Yesmail partnered with Infogroup Targeting Solutions and surveyed 700 top marketers at the DMA2012 Annual Conference and Forrester Research’s eBusiness Forum last year in the US.

They found that 68% of marketers expect their data-related expenditures to increase in 2013 and 56% of companies surveyed plan on hiring more staff for data specific positions.

The below infographic shows all of the findings.

Salesforce’s social ad exchange connects social ads with CRM and social listening

by Marketing ON 6 May 2013

Cloud computing company Salesforce has launched a social advertising application that connects social ads with CRM and social listening. In what the company claims is a world first, Salesforce’s Social.com will allow brands and agencies to power social ad campaigns on Facebook and Twitter using real-time customer and social listening data in order to maximise return on advertising dollars.

Social.com is part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and in this move the company is doubling down on social advertising, aiming to cement its place in digital marketing campaigns. The main feature of this new self-service application is its ability to connect with and share data between other Salesforce products: Salesforce CRM and Radian6.

Australia is among the top five countries for targeting consumers with social ads. Social advertising spend is projected to double from $4.7 billion in 2012 to $11 billion in 2017, according to BIA Kelsey. Nielsen also predicts 64% of advertisers expect to increase their spend on social advertising in 2013.

“Social media has achieved a recognisable level of credibility in the marketing world and if brands don’t have it in their marketing mix, they are missing a huge touchpoint with potential customers,” says Jonathan Nelson, CEO, Omnicom Digital.

“Smart marketers are buying media in real-time and working with the latest tools to ensure they are delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person, which is even more imperative in the connected, social world,” he says.

Infographic of the week: IMC challenges and how to tackle them

by Marketing ON 3 May 2013

This week’s infographic comes courtesy of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) which has released research highlighting the main barriers companies face in the development of effective integrated marketing communications (IMC).

Despite 80% of advertisers naming IMC a top priority, sceptics still remain, and advertisers still face significant challenges in realising their dreams of integration.

The WFA research highlights three key areas where these challenges to effective IMC reside: process, performance and people, with the latter two showing the biggest gaps in developing effective IMC. See the infographic for the top six areas (‘gaps’) for improvement.

The research, which polled WFA members representing eight categories and marketing budgets of around US$32 billion, is based on outputs from the IMC Scorecard, a tool developed by the WFA in conjunction with Naked Communications that is designed to enable advertisers to benchmark their ability IMC readiness against their peers.

Interestingly, it’s not the largest companies (ad spend greater than $2 billion) that are most IMC-ready. They come in second, behind companies with an annual ad spend of $500 million to $2 billion, with smaller companies most likely to struggle.

Geoff Seeley, global communications planning director at Unilever and chair of the WFA’s IMC Forum, which also includes representatives from other WFA member companies, says there are still IMC sceptics within many large companies. “Many members of the WFA’s IMC Forum therefore have to play the role of advocates. To be able to benchmark your own company against a pool of other large multinationals can be invaluable to help inform smarter conversations internally and help realise real progress.”

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) infographic from World Federation of Advertisers (WFA)

Infographic: Mad Men mob would be digesting metrics instead of martinis in 2013

by Marketing ON 23 April 2013

Correlating with the latest season of Mad Men, Responsys examines the history of the marketing industry over the six decades since the hit advertising-themed show was fictionally set.

A lot more has changed in that time than the disappearance of boozy lunches and the increasing abundance of females in senior creative and executive roles (wait…)

Put simply, the marketing industry has changed significantly over the 1960s, in some areas more than others.

“Mad Men shows just how fast the marketing industry continues to evolve. These developments didn’t happen by accident; rather they were a response to rapidly changing consumer behaviour and demands,” says Paul Cross, president of Responsys Asia Pacific.

Cross says that, in Australia, marketers are still dealing with this shift, with modern consumers going digital, fast-forwarding through advertising on TV, reading fewer articles in print and heading online for information.

“We’re now in the era of customer-focused, relationship marketing,” says Cross. “Brands need to move away from mass-market, broadcast advertising and harness digital technologies to develop lasting, one-on-one relationships with their customers.”

From the launch of the Xerox fax machine in 1964, the first electronic message in 1971 and the introduction of early telemarketing, it seems the World Wide Web in 1991 was what changed the game completely.

From data analytics experts, revolutionised mobile communications, and the fact that 70% of companies now have a chief marketing technologist as of 2013, things have clearly evolved exponentially for marketers.

“Who knows,” says Cross, “maybe if Don Draper was around today he’d be digesting metrics instead of martinis for lunch!”

Infographic of the week: the good, bad and ugly impact of customer service

by Marketing ON 19 April 2013

Thank God it’s Friday, which means the weekend is only roughly eight hours away, but even more exciting than that, it is time for our infographic of the week!

Cloud-based customer service software firm, Zendesk has released this infographic based on research completed by Dimensional Research about how customers are influenced by the type of customer service they receive.

Customers were surveyed on what constitutes good and bad customer service, with the study finding that bad experiences are more easily called upon than positive ones and good customer service will more often than not result in an increase in purchases.

Enjoy.

Snail mail vs email infographic: old school direct lives on

by Marketing ON 15 March 2013

Snail mail – the original form of direct marketing – lives, according to Australia Post’s ‘Consumer Survey’, showing that the average Australian receives around seven letters per week, with government departments the most prolific users of the medium for communication purposes.

Read rates were high for most sender categories, much higher than standard email open rates, with special interest clubs and government leading the pack with open rates of 79% and 78% respectively. Read rates were less favourable for correspondence from real estate agents and local restaurants, while supermarket communication proved more likely to be read than department store mail.

For all categories respondents of the nationally representative survey preferred to receive correspondence via snail mail than email, although there were high numbers of people with no preference either way. Snail mail is preferred for lengthier or important information while email is preferred for brief information. As could be expected, older generations are more likely to be receptive to mail than email.

Click image to view larger version.

Up to speed: 2012 in social media marketing

by Marketing ON 7 January 2013

Facebook floated, Pinterest took flight, Tumblr bolted and Instagram soared, while social TV, social search, social commerce and social media customer service dominated industry buzz.

2012 saw the use of social networks for marketing reasons mature, despite falls from grace from the likes of Qantas and McDonald’s, and social giants introduce a range of ad options in a scramble to monetise their success.

Facebook, which went public in May, introduced a range of promoted post and ad unit variations through the year. It cracked 1 billion users globally and stood at 11.8 million Australian users in December, a 10% increase across the year.

In response to growing pressure to boost lacklustre profits, it looks set to introduce auto-play video ads to its news feed and a ‘want’ button on photos featuring brands or products this year.

Twitter, which boasts over two million Australian users according to socialmedianews.com.au, also tinkered with ad options introducing promoted tweets and users for brands. The microblog is currently in the process of rolling out promoted tweet targeting options that will enable targeting by location and interests.

Scrapbooking social network Pinterest experienced the biggest jump in visitor numbers, up by 306% to reach 650,000 unique Australian visitors (UAVs) in December. It looks to be paving the way for brand pages, with features for marketers launched in November.

Instagram, acquired by Facebook in April for $1 billion, grew phenomenally in 2012 and is estimated to have reached 1.2 million users by December. Use of the platform by brands continues to grow strongly also, with more than half of the world’s largest brands maintaining a presence on the photo-sharing platform.

See: Marketing‘s social media and brands in Australia infographic.

Social network-blog hybrid Tumblr also had a big year, increasing its unique audience in Australia by 220% to command an audience of 3.2 million unique visitors in December.

Social network growth – January to December 2012
Note: where user numbers are not available, unique visitor figures have been used.

While MySpace continued to decline, down 29% in visitors between January and December, the ‘new MySpace’ launched in December with a redesign featuring a horizontal Pinterest-style interface.

Video sharing site YouTube held steady at around 11 million views per month across the year, while blog networks Blogspot and WordPress commanded audiences of 3.5 million and 2.5 million unique visitors respectively in December.

Google+, which is used by around 377,500 Australians, still has potential according to many industry commentators, despite its comparatively slow growth. Read: The marketing director’s guide to Google+.

What will 2013 hold?

With social TV gaining a head of steam in the last few months of the year, it is sure to be a trend to watch in 2013 as TV networks look to socialise programming and IPTV becomes more prevalent.

A number of big brands, including NAB which recently invested in a social media customer service ‘command centre’, have set up dedicated teams to respond to enquiries and complaints posted on social networks. More are likely to do so in 2013 as organisations adopt an increasingly ‘human’ style of interacting online.

Social search is billed as another area set to grow – Yelp, Foursquare and local start-up Posse are taking on Google in this space.

And social commerce (see Marketing’s top10 uses of social commerce) will continue to be a focus as retailers look for smarter ways to drive traffic to their sites.

Add your own predictions to the list, by letting us know what you think the major trends will be in social media for 2013 in the comments below.

Data sourced from socialmedianews.com.au, Quantcast, Comscore, Google Ad Planner tool, Google Trends, Google Insights, Facebook self-serve advertising tool/ Checkfacebook.com. Additional analysis by Marketing.

Infographic: The ups and downs of retail in 2012

by Marketing ON 20 December 2012

Earlier in the year, we tracked the ups and downs of online retail against ‘traditional’ retail in the infographic below.

2012 was a year of fluctuations for online retail, with growth peaking near 30% in February then dropping to below 20% in April, before recovering to 25% in July. The last recorded data from NAB’s Online Retail Sales Index, collected in October (after this graphic was published), growth was steady at 26%.

In contrast offline retail sales growth languished at sub-5% levels all year, with some months recording decreases. In November, the more recent run of ABS retail trade figures, there was no change in sales month on month.

While much has been made of the threat online retail, in particular overseas operators, poses to traditional retailers, the vast majority of sales (94.7% in July) still goes through brick-and-mortar outlets. And international retailers only claimed 28% of online sales, as local online players dominate the space. After a spurt in mid 2011, growth for international retailers dropped below that of local operators, where it remained for much of 2012.

Online shoppers spent the lion’s share of their outlay on auction sites, department stores and fashion retailers throughout the year. In July, toys and media retailers were the second largest segment of the online markets, while household goods and electronics was the third largest.

Tellingly, as of earlier in the year, if the top 15 online retailers in Australia were a single entity, they’d be bigger than Myer and David Jones and almost on par with department store market leader Big W, according to analysis from data analytics firm Quantium.

Click image to embiggen.

Infographic: Social media and brands in Australia

by Marketing ON 23 October 2012

Social media marketing is like putting on a stage show. Give your fans what they want and they’ll love you – they’ll connect with your brand and share word of your prowess. But if you fail to hit the spot, they’ll sling rotten tomatoes your way.

Marketing‘s infographic from the October issue of our magazine looks at the use of social media and what consumers want from brands. With 62% of Australia’s online population a member of at least one social network as of June, the point of critical mass has been reached. However, usage patterns around the country differ slightly, with Twitter use more prolific in NSW and the ACT, and LinkedIn use more pronounced in NSW and Victoria than neighbouring states.

The medium lends itself to some categories better than it does others. Users are most likely to share their views on travel and leisure related industries, with hotels, restaurants, bars and movies the most commonly reviewed topics.

Many consumers refer to social networks as part of the product research process – 67% on an occasional basis and 33% on a weekly basis. On two in five occasions, this research ends in a purchase. Clothing/ fashion is the category most likely to be researched, followed by music and electonics.

Discounts and giveaways continue to be one of the most attractive forms of content, however strong brands or compelling products have no trouble attracting an audience keen to engage in news and imagery.

While more agreed with statements in support of advertising than disagreed, conventional wisdom is solidying around the medium as more suited to social conversations rather than push-based advertising.

Infographic: the fragmentation of TV in Australia

by Marketing ON 29 September 2012

Almost a third of all owners of a smart TV are yet to connect it to the internet, but with the web spilling out of the computer domain and into every facet of people’s lives, including this ‘traditional’ channel, that won’t remain the case for long.

Data is for the Australian market as of March 2012.

Click image below for full size

Videographic: Apple by the numbers, after closing at record market high

by Marketing ON 21 August 2012

Apple has become the most valuable public company of all time.

The company’s stock closed at US$665.15 overnight, an all-time high, putting its market value at US$624 billion.

The value exceeded a previous record set by Microsoft of US$620.58 billion in 1999, according to data provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Take a look at this ‘videographic’ created by Wyzowl, from Sortable’s infographic published earlier this year by our sister site Macworld.