Fun Facts to Know and Tell

From a marketing perspective, an abundance of trends and shifts in lifestyle are starting to impact our lives.   It is hard to make sense of them all, but here are a few that recently caught my eye:

• Time spent online in 2000 was 2.7 hours per week; in 2010 18 hours per week
• My kids won’t wear the wrist watches we got them for Christmas (they check the time on their cell phones)
• Number of daily newspapers in 2000, 1,480; in 2010, 1,302
• Books published in 2000, 282,242; in 2010, 1,052,803
• Top health website:  WebMD with nearly 8% market share.  #2 Righthealth.com; #3 Yahoo! Health.  WebMD is also the top general health content site visited by physicians.
• Half of adults 50-64 use social networking sites.  26% of people 65+ use social nets.
• 60% of Americans get news from a combination of online and offline sources:  Internet is now third-most-popular source behind local television news and national television news.
• Average time it takes a person to search the Internet following a doctor appointment is less than 20 minutes.
• The most time spent by mobile Internet users is doing e-mail (average 25 minutes per month); a little over 6 minutes for social networking; nearly 3 minutes for news.
• Average Facebook fan is worth a $137 ($270 is best case, $0 is worst case).  Facebook fans participate with a brand 10 times per year.
• More than 60% of online transactions are made by women.
• Average US citizen watches 158 hours of TV per month.
• Direct-to-consumer drug advertising on TV and online was more than twice as effective than advertising on online alone.
• 61% of Americans believe customer service is more important in today’s economic environment and will spend 9% more with a company that provides a high level of service.
• Social media tactics are growing for small business, but most (around 30%) do not integrate or cross-sell social media in e-mail campaigns or on their websites.

Don’t worry, there will be no quiz over this material—at least not from this blogger, but from your customers and stakeholders there may be a few questions.

Sources: Newsweek Backstory; Marketing Charts, Hitwise, comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Nielsen, eMarketer.

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How Is Your 2010 Plan Working?

There are 4 months remaining in 2010 (just 100 days to Christmas).  So how is your marketing plan working so far?  In December of 2009, Entrepreneur magazine listed the following marketing goals for emerging technologies this year:

• Test search engine optimization
• Invest in paid search
• Test blogging
• Invest in e-mail marketing
• Start a social media effort
• Invest in your web experience for users
• Invest in online video

Of all the goals, the three I believe you should be moving up on your priority list are:

1. Online video:  Add video to your website and post videos on YouTube.
2. Improve your website experience:  It’s time to energize your website and make it more focused on the people who use it.
3. Work on search engine optimization:  It’s great to have a good website, but people need to be able to find it when they are looking for the things you do.

No matter where the technology takes us in marketing, the ongoing goal for all of us is tightly focusing on the audience.  No matter which media you use, you need to make sure your message is refined directly in the bull’s-eye of your target audience.  And just think, only about 20 more blogs until I start talking about goals for 2011.

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Multi-Generational Families

I’m always amazed at how few US households meet the “ideal” family unit portrayed in TV shows and political speeches.  Single-person households are the most common household unit, representing nearly 30% of total US households.  Yet another group that is building steam is multi-generational family households (homes with kids, parents, grandparents). 

In 1960, 15 % of household were considered multi-generational family households.  It dropped to 12% in 1980.  It is now estimated at 16.1% for 2010 (a 33% increase since 1980, which is sharp trend-line change).  This number is expected to grow based on the size of the boomer generation entering retirement age and the current economic conditions.

How does all this impact marketing?  For one, think of how you portray the families in your marketing materials.  Do you represent the new family units and the issues they might have?  People like to see themselves in advertising messages.  If you always show a two-parent household and two kids (a boy and girl), you are missing the audience target.    Also, think of how the needs of multi-generational families are different than the needs of a typical family.  What are the needs of single-person households?  This will impact everything from insurance sales to appliance sales, home healthcare to grocery stores.

There is a real upside to this demographic trend:  Older adults who live alone are less healthy, and they often feel sad or depressed.  The multi-generational family unit may provide more support to the elderly, and in this economy, help share in the costs of maintaining a household.

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