Social networking and blogging have seen the most growth in adoption, while other technologies have flattened or even declined in use, including wikis and online video. Twitter usage, of course, has caught on quickly—more than one-half of businesses reported tweeting in 2009. This was the first year respondents were polled about Twitter.

One impressive change over time was in the percentage of Inc. 500 companies that did not use any form of social media. It dropped precipitously from 43% in 2007 to just 9% in 2009.

The Center for Marketing Research also noted that the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US, is outpacing the larger, more traditional companies in the Fortune 500 in many social media activities.

Is the rush to adoption bringing marketing success? Respondents overwhelmingly believed it was. The companies polled were mostly measuring hits, comments, leads or sales as primary indicators.

Companies were also monitoring mentions of their brands in the social media space, at 68% this year. That figure was climbing steadily, up from 60% in 2008 and 50% in 2007.

Reposted from Emarketer.com

BIA/Kelsey and ConStat put heavy mobile Internet users at 21% of the total US mobile population in October 2009, up from less than 15% a year earlier. And the overall average number of monthly mobile Web sessions has doubled in that time period.

Heavy users of text messaging and mobile e-mail have also increased over the past year; nearly one-half of mobile users text more than 10 times weekly, while one-fifth send and receive more than 10 mobile e-mails per week.

Overall, users have become more active across many mobile activities—except in nonlocal searches for products and services. Almost one-fifth of users, however, had performed a local search.

Other content activities, such as sending and receiving video and watching or purchasing online videos or TV shows, had also increased among overall mobile users.

“Between waves one and three of Mobile Market View, consumers have basically doubled their use of the mobile platform for non-voice communications,” said Rick Ducey, chief strategy officer, BIA/Kelsey, in a statement. “This represents a fundamental and rapid shift in media use, which needs to be considered in determining the appropriate mix and spending levels among local platforms. Media companies that do not currently offer a differentiated mobile advertising option had better get there quickly.”

Reprinted from Emarketer.com “The Habits of Heavy Mobile Web Users.”

Scott Shilling interviewed at the Launch of the new Napoleon Hill Book Think and Grow Rich Three Feet from Gold.Scott Schilling has led the field in training others, presenting as a top professional speaker.

Despite the importance of linking to relevant pages, however, the survey revealed that a majority of marketers still do not take the basic step to link their online ads or emails with relevant landing pages, and are missing out on a wealth of post-click analytical data, not to mention sales, reports MarketingVOX.

The recently-released “Holiday PPC Ad Strategies” study found that 66% of this year’s holiday-themed online search advertising drives traffic to a home page or some other landing page that is not obviously tied to the online ad, and confuses and/or annoys potential shoppers. Only 34% of the holiday-themed search-engine ads analyzed in the study directed traffic to specific landing pages that urged shoppers to buy, or were otherwise reflective of the original ad.

Campaigns Not Linked

As part of the research, CrownPeak analyzed search marketing results across 10 different holiday-themed phrases, including general themes such as “holiday deals” and “holiday gifts; specific products such as “Nintendo Wii” or “Elmo Live”; and product categories such as “Halloween costumes” and “Christmas decorations.” Individual ads were analyzed from more than 100 online marketers, all of which used Google Adwords to disseminate campaigns. Advertisers were assessed over a period of two weeks.

The study found that the majority of online ad campaigns and web content were not linked. Of the 66% of advertisers that did not tie specific, relevant landing pages to their search ad, nearly 13% went to the advertiser home page. The remainder sent traffic to general category pages, or canned “searches” that didn’t specifically play off of the advertising copy.

Additional study findings:

• Product-specific advertising performed better than its holiday-themed counterpart, though many retailers still failed to direct the majority of ads to a clear consumer call to action.
• 50% of product-specific advertisements linked either to a canned “search” or “category” page, or the website home page.
• Some advertisers – primarily content aggregators – directed ads to specific landing pages, which then featured advertisements for other providers of the product.

Amazon, Target Best Scores

Ecommerce retailers were the winners in the race to tie marketing ads and landing page relevance, Crown Peak reported.  When looking specifically at Ecommerce sites, 54% of advertisers had content-specific landing pages paying off a click from a search ad.

Amazon and Target – which also were two of the most-visited Black Friday retail websites – were among the highest scoring advertisers overall, consistently driving consumers to landing pages for products they were seeking.

“The goal of our study was to determine how smart holiday marketers are being with their online PPC spend, and the results were surprising,” said Jim Howard, CEO of CrownPeak. “By driving traffic to irrelevant content or the company’s home page, marketers are virtually guaranteeing that they aren’t going to convert Web visitors to buyers through online ads.”

Reposted from Marketing Charts “Linked Landing Pages Boost Lift 40%” Written by Crownpeak