I reviewed this year’s report and extracted pieces of data important to consumer product brands selling to consumers direct or through resellers. Here they are.
Global internet users = 3.4 bil at 10% per year growth. The market to sell online continues to grow, especially in developing and frontier markets, so digital products can be sold globally, versus physical products that can be more difficult to sell cross-border. Try to include digital products in your product lineup.
US internet use/engagements: 4% growth per year. For the U.S. market, attention is going towards digital, so you need to be there in a big way.
5.6 hours per day on Internet – 60% of that on phone. Optimize entire digital presence for a mobile device, which is easy with current web platform technologies.
Mobile advertising is where growth is happening -desktop has declined.
Looks like opportunity in ad spend is on mobile, not on Internet, TV, radio or print, based on usage
Internet ad spend will surpass TV within 6-months. So, TV might become the better opportunity because more available inventory that will come down in price (marketing arbitrage).
Google and Facebook command 85% and rising share of internet advertising growth. Opportunity might lie in other networks where marketing arbitrage is better.
Ad blocking on US desktop is 18%, where mobile is 1% – still does not seem a big problem, but why you need to focus on organic content, not paid or ads, especially if this trend continues. This is what I do for organic content marketing:
- email list;
- snail mail/direct mail;
- transactional emails;
- customize email signatures;
- events;
- attract social followers;
- product packaging;
- product shipments to consumers (customize shipping box, add in other marketing materials to the packaging);
- 3rd party marketplaces
- product listing ads
- content/SEO;
- word of mouth
- get credible reviews.
26% of Facebook users that clicked an ad made a purchase. This is a stunning conversion rate to me (and wonder if it is correct). I think it will go down as ad fatigue on Facebook sets in, but now is time to take advantage of it.
Online video advertising: mobile app reward is only one with which consumers have strong positive attitude towards. All others – social click to play, skippable pre roll, popups, banners – have strong negative attitudes. You may not want to use them as much.
Interesting idea here for retail locations or if you are doing location-based selling (events, popup stores).
I would add voice to the statement below as well. But if images, then use lots with your products showing different ways to use or in different settings, maybe with text in the image (but not more than 20% of area is text because of ad restrictions on some platforms).
Demand for instant customer service response makes it hard for small, niche companies to compete.
Retail is not dead, just changing. Old stalwarts are being disrupted. Internet only brands/companies going to retail offering new experiences and leveraging online/offline.
This slide surprised me. Analog use is not going down, but digital is going up, which means we are just spending more time looking at screens.
I found this slide interesting, and it appears that AR/VR will not keep to this trend.
