It’s that
simple, forget PR stunts or the amount of friends your company has, our
research (Eyefortravel Marketing Barometer) shows that half the travel industry
sees social media providing them with real measured sales. The same
research shows that 27% see mobile growing as a sales channel. At our recent shows the debate and interest
has been around this sweet spot ….where
mobile and social combine to give you a real time communication
channel you can use to inspire and convert and so produce the cash rewards and market
share that your hard pressed company needs. We will have fresh data in July and
it will be great to see if this trend continues.
The trouble for Facebook is that unlike Google, who effectively
forced us to advertise to build its huge revenues, Facebook delivers an awesome
way to communicate for free with our customers and can’t really change that
without damaging their core product. Mobile
Social networking which is Facebook’s fastest growing area makes it doubly hard
to monetise.
Finally Facebook is not an awesome way for some of
the world’s fastest growing and biggest markets. Asia is a different world, Facebook
and Google may be an effective way to communicate with your customers in The
USA, Europe, India, Africa and South East Asia but they fall flat on their
faces in the world’s fastest growing market - China and the regions 2 heavy
weight markets of Korea and Japan; here you need to work with Mixi, Cyworld,
Baidu, Renren, Sina, Weibo and others to make an effective social media
campaign. The region also has the
highest and lowest 3G and smart phone penetration rates. China will have a predicted 1 billion mobile
web users but in Vietnam it is a different story. How you create and drive your
social media and mobile channel in such different markets will be key to your
market share and future success.
By Tim Gunstone