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Content Marketing – Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends for 2012

AR Communications — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:24:53 +0000

Content marketing is gaining an increasingly important role for B2B marketers, and in companies’ overall marketing strategies . Below you will find a link to the 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets & Trends survey put together by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.

For purposes of the research, the survey defined content marketing as follows: “Content marketing/custom media (sometimes called custom publishing, custom content, or branded content) is the creation and distribution of educational and/or compelling content in multiple formats to attract and/or retain customers.”
Here are some highlights:

• On average, B2B marketers employ eight different content marketing tactics to achieve their marketing goals.

• 60% report that they plan to increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months.

• Marketers, on average, spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing.

Industries with the highest rates of content marketing adoption:

• Professional Services………………………………..94%

• Computing/Software…………………………………93%

• Advertising/Marketing………………………………89%

• Healthcare……………………………………………………….89%

• Business Services……………………………………….84%

• Manufacturing/Processing…………………….83%

For a free copy if the report – Click Here

How is your company leveraging content marketing? What results are you experiencing? Leave a comment below or email me at michael at ar-com.com

It’s the End of the Mall as We Know It and I Feel Fine

AR Communications — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:27:47 +0000

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile, and author of the recently published “The Impulse Economy”. In it, he discusses the impact of the mobile revolution on traditional retail.

Click here to listen to the podcast (Length – 22 minutes and 54 seconds of wholesome goodness).

The Impulse Economy – Click here for your copy

“We live in a world where our mobile devices have become extensions of ourselves. We depend on them for instant connections to entertainment, social media, news, and deals. The phone has become our ticket, loyalty card, and catchall wallet. Networks are faster, phones are smarter, and the mobile shopper is ready to spend money now. What can a business do to maximize the mobile buying power of the new impulse consumer?”

The Future of Mobile – Thoughts from Ignition West

AR Communications — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:16:55 +0000

To help you keep your eye on the “mobile” ball, a link follows below to the slide deck from Ignition West: Future of Mobile conference held in San Francisco last week.

Some highlights include:

Last year the number of smartphones sold exceeded the number of PCs sold
In a few years the number of mobile devices will DWARF the number of PCs
Tablet sales should surpass PC sales in the next 2-3 years

For the full presentation put together by the smart folks at BI Intelligence go to – http://read.bi/the-mobile-revolution

Is your company looking to add mobile apps into its social media marketing mix? Give us a call and we’d be happy to share some ideas.

For the latest developments in social media follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/mikerabinovici

To Mobile or Not to Mobile

AR Communications — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:23:37 +0000

If you’ve had any doubt ‘til now, I think the following stats courtesy of HubSpot will change your mind real quick:

Mobile in 2012

Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million in 2012, up 17.1% from 97.3 million in 2011.
Smartphone users will reach 106.7 million in 2012, up 18.4% from 2011.
In 2012, 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users.
All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million in 2012, up 2.3% from 2011.
Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million in 2012.
Mobile buyers will reach 37.5 million in 2012.
Smartphone shoppers will reach 68.6 million in 2012.
Smartphone buyers will reach 36.4 million in 2012.
Tablet users will reach 54.8 million in 2012, up 62.8% from 33.7 million in 2011.
iPad users will reach 41.9 million in 2012.
In 2012, 76.4% of tablet users will be iPad users.
Adult-aged eReader users will reach 45.6 million in 2012, up from 33.3 million in 2011.

Follow me on Twitter (Twitter.com/mikerabinovici) and get the latest information on, and best practices for, Mobile and Social Media marketing

Getting Social In House

AR Communications — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:21:11 +0000

Most companies that have ventured into the social media space have focused almost exclusively on marketing. Very few have considered the tremendous benefits that can be unleashed by using social media tools within their company.

In a good piece in IT Business, Robert Scheier gives a number of examples, including IBM, where “social networking isn’t just for spreading the word to customers. Employees use an internal Facebook-like network to find colleagues with the skills they need to solve pesky customer problems”. It is these type of collaboration applications that deliver significant ROI for your business. Read the full article here – http://bit.ly/ts7QTs

For another excellent article, I suggest “Using Social Media To Improve Employee Communication, Collaboration, And Even Compensation” by Shawn Graham which appeared in Fast Company. You can read it here - http://bit.ly/tKbzJG

From all of us at AR Communications Inc., a joyous holiday season, and a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year.

Bringing Social Media into the Strategic Planning Tent

AR Communications — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:53:35 +0000

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting at Federated Business’s Strategic Planning Skills event. When the invitation to present arrived a few months earlier, the topic at first blush seemed a little awkward. Once I started to research it, I was amazed at social media’s potential impact on all the key facets of corporate strategic planning: Sales & Marketing, Legal/Regulatory issues, Human Resources/Recruiting, and Customer Service. View or download the presentation at the link below – mind bending stuff, I promise. Looking forward to your comments.

http://slidesha.re/social-media-in-the-strategic-planning-process

OMG, is Social Media just a fad? Part II

AR Communications — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:34:14 +0000

Last week I promised to follow up with metrics from a recent study conducted on the growth of social media. Note: In my last post I indicated that the metrics I will list came from Pew Internet & American Life Project. While Pew was quoted in one of the articles I read in writing the post, the metrics that follow are from Search Engine Journal (the sources SEJ relied on are at the bottom of the infographic).

Here we go.

Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic

OMG, is Social Media just a fad? Part I

AR Communications — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:06:59 +0000

September is on the calendar and school back in session. While enjoying the sunshine by the lake, I still received a steady stream of questions about this crazy world of social media. One of the more common ones – Is this thing here to stay? Is it worth investing marketing dollars in? Will it be a distant memory come next year or the year after?

My views are on the record but I think it is important highlight a number of points:

First, is social media marketing based on completely new principles? No. The fundamental principles of sales and marketing that have been with us since we started selling to each other still apply. What social media does is provide us with a revolutionary set of tools to apply these principles with. These tools deliver nuggets of timely relevant information – a perfect fit for the ADD society we currently live in.

Second, you don’t have to take my word for the impact social media and networks are having. You need simply look around you. What other companies in history have accomplished what Facebook, LinkedIn, or Groupon have in the same amount of time? Many other companies over the years have also had a great impact, but none that fast. This does not mean that these companies will be around forever but the speed at which users have adopted their services is nothing short of astounding.

I’ve heard it said in the past by business experts that really successful companies are great for a generation and then begin to fade or have less impact . It is possible, given the speed at which some social media/networking companies have grown, that they may also see their influence diminish faster. Assuming that’s right, does that mean you should keep your company out of the social media world for the next few years and wait until it all shakes out? Good luck with that.

Third, you can also take a look at recent studies from respected organizations to get a third party view of where the social media world is at. In my next post I will give you some highlights of a recent study conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

In the meantime, for the latest on social media and Web marketing for corporations follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mikerabinovici.

Go Mobile or Go Home

AR Communications — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:05:24 +0000

A recent study covered by the tech site Mashable indicates that consumers are now spending more time on mobile apps than the Web. In June, consumers spent 81 minutes per day using mobile apps, compared to 74 minutes of Web surfing (see chart below). This change in user behaviour is further confirmed by a recent report by Mary Meeker, a partner at the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which found that for the first time combined tablet and smartphone shipments eclipsed those of desktops and notebooks. All this data also backs Wired Magazines’ article last year “The Web is Dead”, which predicted that apps would soon overtake the Web.

What does that mean for your company? If you’ve developed and implemented a mobile strategy, you are well positioned to benefit from this coming shift. If you have started to give some thought to this and you move the process into high gear, you should be OK as well. If you’ve done neither, you better drop everything else and make this your top priority. Now.

Will mobile rule everything? No. But a significant segment of your current audience and your future one will spend an increasing amount of their time on their mobile devices. The question all companies have to answer is whether not they will be able to serve and create value on the devices and media on which their customers choose to spend their time.

You can find a links to the reports mentioned above here:
Mobile Apps Put the Web in Their Rear-view Mirror
Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends

Goupon Groupoff – Part II

AR Communications — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:11:10 +0000

In the first part of this post we established that all is well for Groupon. Are the merchants using the service enjoying similar success? By the company’s sheer growth, the answer would seem to be a resounding “yes” but it is a little more complicated than that. The cost to the merchant who signs up for a Groupon deal, after taking into account the coupon discount and Groupon’s share, can be pretty steep.

Let’s look at this in concrete terms: assume Mikey’s Kona Coffee Emporium is offering $40 worth of wholesome Hawaiian beans for $20 dollars (minimum participation is 10). Two hundred people take up the offer, paying Groupon a total of $4,000. Groupon keeps $2,000 and $2,000 goes to Mikey’s Kona Coffee Emporium. So we just sold $8,000 worth of beans (200 x $40 coupons) and collected $2,000. As it turns out, most merchants make no money on the Groupon experience. BUT they do get is exposure to a large number of potential new customers.

The challenge in the model is that many smaller merchants, as well as some larger ones, may not have the skill set to convert this rain shower of mostly first-time customers into repeat customers, let alone lifetime ones. That, in my view, is one of the challenges facing the company on a go forward basis. Will merchants that use it once or twice without getting repeat business come back? Remains to be seen. The key for Groupon is to make sure it helps merchants build relationships and engage the customers brought on by the coupons. If it can do that well, the go public valuation mentioned above can turn out to be cheap.
So what is it the take away? If you are considering a Groupon deal (or one by the many competitors that have popped up) make sure you do the following:

1.    Crunch the numbers – what exactly is this going to cost per potential new customer (you may also want to re-read the blog post on Metrics at http://bit.ly/web-metrics)
2.    What is your average customer’s lifetime value?
3.    What information on the coupon buyers, if any does, does Groupon (or other providers) give you at the end of the promotion? Note: Some of them may give precious little, not even an email address.
4.    It is incumbent upon you (especially in light of 3 above) to collect as much information on the coupon presenting customers. Do everything you can to get an email address – that will present your best chance to convert the coupon buyer into a repeat customer. No email address – your product or service better be ranked in Zagat’s to bring them back without further marketing.
5.    Have a follow up campaign ready to go no later than 2 days after the first visit.

Follow these tips and chances are the group of potential new customers you just spent money and resources on will not group off.