Wait, what? Mobile browser traffic is 2X bigger than app traffic, and growing faster

A  report released this week by comScore itself said that 87 percent of all time spent on mobile in the U.S. was spent in mobile apps.

Morgan Stanley’s study is focused on unique visitors — calling it, somewhat misleadingly, “traffic” — while comScore’s report is focused on actual user time spent.

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The big takeaway here is that companies, including tech companies and media properties, need to still be aware of their mobile web experiences, especially in retail, finance, insurance, and travel, which typically see a 50 percent or higher chunk of their visits from the mobile web.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/25/wait-what-mobile-browser-traffic-is-2x-bigger-than-app-traffic-and-growing-faster/

 

LinkedIn Elevate opens to the enterprise, gets audience reach analytics

In the age of social media, companies turn to employees as brand ambassadors. These are the people who add credibility to any company in terms of expertise and thought leadership. It’s because of this that LinkedIn launched its Elevate service earlier this year, and five months later, the service is now available to large enterprises (those with more than 2,000 employees).

Elevate allows users to track their audience demographics in order to better understand who’s engaging with their content.

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Elevate shows employees how sharing is helping strengthen their professional brand…if employees don’t see how they benefit from sharing content, their engagement will wane.”

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/29/linkedin-elevate-opens-to-the-enterprise-gets-audience-reach-analytics/ 

Colabo scores $7M to build a bigger bridge between CRMs and social networks

June 7, 2015

Colabo wants to be the bridge between the old world of customer relationship management (CRM) systems and the newer one of social networks, where many customers reside.

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In addition to the new integration with Oracle and an existing (although less promoted) one with Salesforce, Collabo offers about 130 out-of-the-box connectors to services like Quora, Meetup, GitHub, Twitter.

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A salesperson who finds a prospect on, say, LinkedIn can click an overlaid Colabo button and automatically add the prospect’s info to the integrated CRM’s profile and sales pipeline.
Colabo can also automatically locate and add the info about the same person on other social networks.
http://venturebeat.com/2015/06/07/colabo-scores-7m-to-build-a-bigger-bridge-between-crms-and-social-networks/

VC Byron Deeter: Sales tech more interesting than marketing or ad tech

As others have, Deeter pointed out that the best-positioned big challenger to Salesforce is business network LinkedIn, which is busily launching sales and marketing cloud solutions to take advantage of its extraordinary, massive, and detailed professional membership.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/29/vc-byron-deeter-sales-tech-more-interesting-that-marketing-or-ad-tech/ 

 

Agile marketing is about evolutionary survival

Since the late 1990s, marketers have been faced with, and survived, several big extinction moments.
The first marketing extinction moment happened with the widespread adoption of cloud software for product development, first in the software industry and then quickly spreading to all product verticals due to increased cycle time speed. Product development teams could no longer wait for yearly marketing budget waterfall strategy or processes.

A few years later, the evolutionary climate got even more disruptive as social networks added to the speed of change by removing the barriers between audience and company. 

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Marketing is not software. Marketing comes from more divergent psychological realms like emotion, brand impression, artwork, persuasion, and the like, creating two main problems for marketing people:

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That means there is no “one best way.” The tactics that work for one firm’s marketing, almost never work the same for another firm.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/29/agile-marketing-is-about-evolutionary-survival/ 

We can now stop guessing what the TiVo Bolt is about: It’s here, and it’s making skipping ads much easier

First of all, TiVo is pushing a refined ‘Skip Mode’ feature. The company is selecting popular programs off of certain high-traffic channels and adding tags to the content, which act like jump markers, allowing users to skip commercials on recorded shows without accidentally leaping too far ahead and having to perform the fast forward/rewind dance.
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TiVo added social media functionality as well, allowing me to email, tweet, and Facebook update my friends on what I am watching.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/30/we-can-now-stop-guessing-what-the-tivo-bolt-is-about-its-here-and-its-making-skipping-ads-much-easier/

Elon Musk’s Tesla Model X launch was a marketing and PR disaster

Tesla is a game-changing company. Its product is a game-changing car — one that Consumer Reports said was the best car they’ve ever tested. The new Model X is a major addition to the line-up and a hotly awaited SUV version of the company’s eco-friendly vehicles. It’s beautiful. It has self-opening doors! Gull-wing doors! It’s gorgeous. Sexy, even. Exciting. And painstakingly designed.
And Musk starts with safety. Minutes and minutes of safety. Maybe 10 minutes of crashes, crumple zones, collision-detection systems, risk of death, and chances of serious injury.
A little clue here for Tesla: When you are marketing, sell what’s awesome. Pitch what’s exciting. Focus on what is aspirational, inspirational, emotional.

http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/30/elon-musks-tesla-model-x-launch-was-a-marketing-and-pr-disaster/