Social Lens Research and  MocoSpace recently teamed up to understand how Latinos—America’s fastest-growing, highly mobile and social consumers—are hitting the road!

Survey Results:

To better understand how Latinos plan, manage and share trip experiences, we surveyed 1,106 Latino adults using MocoSpace, a mobile gaming platform with over 7 million unique monthly visitors and an estimated 2.5 million U.S. Hispanic unique monthly visitors.  Respondents were 100% U.S. Hispanics, almost equally split by gender, with 60% under 34 years old, and 57% parents.

The study found that during every stage of planning for a road trip, Latinos are using mobile phones and seeking more relevant location-based deals, rewards programs and mobile accessible travel content to assist with their trip planning. The study indicates that among Latinos who are leading the way on mobile adoption, the willingness to use mobile phones for trip planning has outpaced what functionality and content companies offer. Travel planning is likely just one example of the more advanced mobile functionality required to meet the highly mobile Latino consumer’s needs.

The Top Opportunities: 
Think Latinos are hard to reach? Think again, Latinos are hardly difficult to reach! Marketers need to understand the most effective strategies for engagement.

Below are 6 critical ways to reach Latinos via mobile and social marketing efforts:

1: Mobile Travel Content: Create mobile-friendly travel content that helps Latinos discover your location as a destination. 75% want a better way to find new places to visit on their mobile phones

2: Location-Based Deals: Offer location-based deals via text messages and mobile ads. 69% want text ads and 59% want mobile ads with local deals

3: Mobile-Ready Booking and Planning Capabilities: Make it easier to book and plan trips on-the-go. 61% want an easier way to book hotel rooms. 55% want a better trip planning app. 

4: Create Customer Rewards Programs That Are Available and Accessible On-the-Go: Provide a reward program that is easy to access and use on a mobile phone. 57% want rewards and ways to earn points with their favorite brands.

5: Encourage social sharing about your business with rewards, contest and campaigns. 52% share trip plans, 56% share experiences and 72% share pictures after their trips. 

6: Family-Friendly Messaging: Consider making your message family-friendly and welcoming to larger travel groups. 42% travel with kids. 33% are traveling with parents.

The Mobile Life of Moms study is based on a scan of available research data and a digital ethnography study conducted with 25 participants recruited via
GigCoin. We focused on early adopter moms (ex. social influencers, bloggers who are smartphone power users).

The study used the participating bloggers online footprint, a short survey and a Pinterest collage exercise to better understand how and why moms are using mobile phones. Here are some of the key findings:

Moms are highly mobile, early adopters of smartphone features and heavy users of apps

A scan of secondary research on moms and mobile phones shows that moms are highly mobile, early adopters of smartphone features and heavy users of apps:

• 61% of moms own a smartphone*
• • Moms are more active users of Texting 86%, Social Media 53%, Mobile Banking 30% and Mobile Shopping 23% than the general population**
• • Moms have an average of 13 apps loaded on their phones.***

75% said they would feel “anxious”, “lost” and “cut-off” without their phones. 

Without their phones moms would be unable to keep track of their kids, stay connected with husbands, check-in with friends, get where they need to go and access the info they need. Phones serve as alarm clocks, fitness diaries, coupon clippers, calendar and “me time”.  Most of all their phone make moms feel safe and in charge of life.

http://pinterest.com/CookiesandClogs, @CookiesandClogs “I was once without my phone for two hours – I didn’t know what time it was, forgot the date, couldn’t check e-mail, didn’t know if my husband texted me, couldn’t use it to track my daughter, etc. I would miss not being connected with my family.”

65% felt that mobile phones are a “necessary” and a “must have” parenting tool 

Moms are using their smartphones as a command center to stay connected, informed and in control of their family’s day.  Moms with kids at home are using the mobile phones to distract, entertain and for parenting information. But the stakes are higher when the kids aren’t home, phones become a critical tool for emergencies, to track their child’s movements and parent remotely.

http://pinterest.com/nomadicpixie @pixiedeals  “It’s a huge role, especially as the kids get older. The little ones, its not as big a deal – I use the phone to entertain then when we are out, but not much beyond that. For older kids that you need to communicate with its absolutely essential.” 

http://pinterest.com/SocialSavvyMom @SocialSavvyMom ”We would be like chickens with our heads cut off! Most of my parenting resources are used via my phone as well as household management and grocery shopping.”

80% felt opportunities existed to make phones even more family friendly  

Moms felt that mobile phones could use the following features and apps to better serve the needs of families. Note some of these features are available but even highly connected and power users aren’t fully aware of them which points to a big opportunity to better communicate their availability.

Child proof and build-in safety on the phone:

http://pinterest.com/smashbravo  @smashbravoteam “My phone does not have tracking for my girls phones. That would be something that would bring more peace of mind, if I had it.”

http://pinterest.com/momwithadotcom @momwithadotcom  ”It would be nice for my phone to be indestructible.”

Facilitate inter-family connectivity and bonding:

http://pinterest.com/TheMommaYoung @mommayoung “It needs more syncing abilities; apps we as a family can use and share.”

Offer moms lock down capabilities: 

Better connect families with schools and teachers:

http://pinterest.com/colleenstout @MommieDaze  ”I wish the school had an app. It would make it a lot easier to look up information like school calenders and events.”

http://pinterest.com/goodncrazy @CarissaRogers ”Could they create a homework monitor system of some sort that would help while in the car or during the run-around car pooling etc? Ideally that homework ‘app’ would also communicate with their teacher! I hate all the ‘sign this’ release and initial my homework and reading chart..Can I click a button.

Provide enough battery for mom and the kids:

http://pinterest.com/happymothering @HappyMothering ”I think my biggest challenge on my phone is battery life. If I download a game for my girls and they want to play it, the battery gets run down quickly and it kind of defeats the purpose.”

http://pinterest.com/marixsa @Marixsa  “In addition to voice recognition, it would be great if the phone could talk back to me reading an email or giving step by step directions while I AM busy using my two hands and doing all the things a mom do (we sometimes feel we need more than two hands).”

Pin Stories: The Mobile Life of Moms

Moms are using their mobile phones to live more rewarding, connected, and efficient lives, according to our study. We asked the Mobile Life of Mom study participants to share on Pinterest how mobile phones impact their life as a mom. To see the full collection of pins, visit the Mobile Life of Moms Pinterest Board. Here are some of our favorite pin stories:

Marketing to Mobile Moms – Top Takeaways

It’s clear that adding mobile marketing to reach moms makes sense. Here are our top tips for focusing your mobile marketing efforts:

Focus on increasing utility and your customer experience on mobile:

Moms are turning to their mobile to save time and better manage everyday activities. Mobile apps which help moms on the go use your product efficiently offer an opportunity to build more loyalty and improve your user experience. Make it easy to buy, report an issue or do other transactions offered on your website.

Help moms get inspired:  

Moms use mobile for inspiration, from recipes to things to buy to exercise. Campaigns that help moms take action to do something new and rewarding are good areas to explore.

Facilitate inter-family bonding:

Help families better connect via apps and campaigns. From games letting you challenge your kids, to new ways to share pics with grandma there is a huge opportunity to promote family bonding via mobile.

Recognize and reward moms:

Delight moms with a just in time offer when she needs it most in the retail location. Offer exclusive items, perks and deals that make it worthwhile to download your app.

Getting Visual in 2012: Key Stats 

• Phones have gotten smarter: 1 in 2 mobile phone users have smartphones (Nielsen)
• People are getting social on their phones: 40.8 billion minutes spent on mobile social media apps in 2012, 76% YOY growth (Marketing Profs)
• Sharing pictures has become common : 56% of internet users share images they created or curated (Pew Internet)
• Instagram is a huge depository of images: Instagram has 1 billion+ images and is adding an average of 5 million+ Photos Per Day (Instagram)
• Pinterest is driving huge traffic : Pinterest made the top 50 web properties list with 25 million visitors which makes them the 4th most visited social media site (ComScore)
• Brands are investing in Instagram and Pinterest: 63% of the top 100 brands are on Pinterest, 54% on Instagram.  (Simply Measured )

A more visual social media space is putting pressure on brands to produce unique, relevant and engaging visuals. Not easy! Here are a few examples of visual strategies that work.

Behind the Scenes:

Post pictures to offer a glimpse of the real people behind your company and operations. Pampers adds a human touch by congratulating its employees who have new babies.

Create a Visual Identity:

Invest in graphics that match your brand personality for your social accounts. Intel stands out for it’s geeky but clever images, especially on Facebook.

Contests:

Hold a contest to get users to contribute images tied to your brand and up engagement. Ben & Jerry’s is offering Instagram fans that share their #CaptureEuphoria moments for a chance to be featured in local ads.

Be Trendy:

Use special events, hot topics and holidays to create visuals that are topical. Extra points if you can use images of your product creatively like Diet Coke.

Infographics:

Create infographics using your in house data, survey results  and/or secondary sources to tell a compelling story on a topic related to your brand.  Amstel took infographics to another level by using Facebook data to allow users to customize an infographic about themselves. Here is my very own Complicated Facebook tale:

Going Vintage

Dig up old pictures to share some history and add personality on your social accounts. American Express regularly digs up vintage photos that add fun to their accounts.

 Which images do you think work on social media?

Want more? Take a look at the great post and useful infographic over at Socially Sorted. See a good list of great instagram campaigns on Postano.

A look at the ComScore Media Metrix gives a picture of just how online and social Hispanics have become in recent years. More than 60% are online and regularly visit social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube.

Hispanics Online By The Numbers:

32 million Hispanics online
22 million Hispanic Facebook monthly visitors
18 million Hispanic YouTube monthly visitors
3.2 million Hispanic Twitter monthly visitors
2.8 million Hispanic LinkedIn monthly visitors
787,000 Hispanic Tumblr monthly visitors

Hispanics are also more likely to own a smartphone 57% versus the general population 45% (source: Nielsen). Hispanics are using their mobile phones to make purchasing decisions, 20% view reviews and 16% make purchases .

Marketers are taking notice and investing heavily.  eMarketers estimates that 88% of marketers will target digital campaigns at Hispanic consumers.

The Greater Washington Hispanic Chamber Commerce held a panel during Digital Capital Week exploring how Hispanic mobile and social media adoption is changing Hispanic Marketing. I helped moderate the panel, and here are my key takeaways as well as an info-graphic of the statistics and examples I shared.

Segmenting within the Hispanic consumer base is key 

What Hispanic consumer  segment you are targeting impacts communication campaign choices like language, social channels and technology platforms. Latinos in Social Media (Latism) DC Director Jennifer Lubrani shared how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) uses a mix of social networks as well as web banners to reach the different segments within the Hispanic market. CDC worked with LATISM on an immunization awareness blogger outreach and twitter chat campaign.

Culturally Relevant is more Important than Language

Simply translating creative into Spanish misses an opportunity to truly engage consumers. Alison Lemon from the Food & Drug Administration shared how they created ¡Nunca Más! Novelas telenovelas to engage Hispanics on safe medication usage. The series generated 6 million impressions and 14 K plus views by using social medis, online banners and mobile ads to reach Hispanics.

Explore new platforms to increase the ROI of your Hispanic campaigns 

Hispanics are new platform early adopters. Going beyond Facebook and Youtube brings great opportunities to increase your campaign’s reach and performance. Tom Dorf of Mocospace (one of the largest multicultural mobile web sites and game platforms with 3.5 million US hispanic monthly visitors) shared the success of their McDonald’s in-game placements, which generated over 1.6 million in-game engagements.

Be ready to engage and interact

You have to be prepared to engage and interact with your Hispanic consumer via social channels. Carla Briceno from Bixal shared how March of Dimes focuses in on responding and interacting on its Spanish langague NacerSano channels on Facebook and Twitter.

Here is the Infographic we created for the occasion:

 How are you reaching Hispanics through mobile and social networking?

GoldieBlox is a cool engineering toy using story telling and problem solving to engage girls who may ignore more traditional building toys.  The founder Debbie Sterling is a Stanford trained engineer who’s using Kickstarter both to fund the toy’s production and as a social community for design ideas and feedback.

The project hit its $150,000 goal in just 5 days, has thousands of fans and is now moving into funding two more toy versions.

The video that the GoldieBlox team used to launch the Kickstarter campaign:

I was struck by how GoldieBlox used research insights both to build the product and their project case on KickStarter.

Below is a summary of an interview conducted with Debbie Sterling and Sydney Malawer from the GoldieBlox team who were kind to share their story of research, design and social networking with me.

Girls, stem and playing: a scan of secondary research

There were countless research insights that played a role in the product design of GoldieBlox, but here are some highlights:

1. Girls have strong verbal skills: This insight sparked the idea to utilize storytelling as a way to engage girls. All construction toys teach how to build with an instruction manual, but I for one have always hated those! So, I came up with the idea to write a children’s story about a kid inventor named Goldie and have the girls build along with her. At our target age range of K-3, it really leverages girls’ verbal skills. It’s great for early readers and uses girls’ confidence in reading to get them interested in building.

2. Girls have an innate sense of nurturing and like to help people: This inspired the story lines of GoldieBlox. We introduced quirky cute animal friends who Goldie needs to help. Rather than just building a cool machine, Goldie’s machines have purpose. This gives the “why” behind the building, which was incredibly important in getting girls to engage.

3. Girls have collaborative (rather than competitive) play patterns: While boys like to compete and destruct, girls prefer play scenarios where everybody wins. In Goldie’s first story, “GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine,” she needs to figure out how to build a belt drive to spin all of her animal friends. It was fascinating to see how much girls got into the building when the scenario involved helping “everybody win.” We also decided on a flip book presentation-style format for the book so that multiple girls could enjoy it at once. We found girls liked playing GoldieBlox together and collaborating.

The top sources for the research were Why So Few study by AAUW , NCWIT study, and a meeting with Harvard Neuroscientist Joyce Benenson, who specializes in children’s play patterns, particularly around competition. Much of the insight on play patterns came from her and her work.

Playtime: testing the prototype with kids

I recruited the efforts of two design researchers trained at Cornell to help put together the research protocol for gathering data from user testing. We tested the prototype on over 100 kids (girls and boys, ages 4-12) by visiting the homes of over 40 families and 3 schools. We created our own quantitative and qualitative design research rubrics to take notes during the tests and evaluate the interaction. We also videotaped every test for further analysis.

Our biggest and most important finding was that the concept was solid: the book + toy combination worked really well in engaging girls to read the story and build along with Goldie. This was a big win.

Another top finding was how much kids enjoy interacting with the iPad and how a digital Goldie experience could really enhance the physical toy experience by providing narration (for kids who aren’t at the reading level yet), animation (to further clarify the building instructions) and encouragement (to prevent kids from giving up too quickly when the building gets challenging).

There are hundreds of little things we learned that impacted the final design. Here is an interesting one: In the book, Goldie builds a belt drive spinning machine in the shape of a star. We were testing on a standard hardware store pegboard and found a lot of girls getting frustrated that they couldn’t make the star symmetrical because of the hole placement on the board. We switched to a pegboard with off-set holes and put a picture of the star on the board to address this and the building experience dramatically improved.

The biggest change we made had to do more with the book narrative than with the toy. The original book had Goldie fail the first time on purpose, to show that it’s ok to fail, as long as you don’t give up. We found that almost everyone, from parents to children would get stuck at that point, trying their hardest to make it work without turning the page. We decided it was best to remove the outright failure, and instead include Goldie’s problem-solving process differently in the narrative.

One big surprise was what the kids built with GoldieBlox after the story was done. Instead of putting it away and playing with something else, they began playing make-believe with the characters and building their own inventions. We found kids building slingshots, cemeteries, classrooms, etc. They’d play act with the characters as they would with any other popular “pet shop” toy on the market, but they’d add in the construction pieces into the play. It was incredibly rewarding to watch that happen.

Another big surprise was how much boys also liked playing with GoldieBlox. Although the design had been carefully chosen to appeal to girls, almost all of the boys we tested on really got into it too.

The competition: competitive toys and the design process

Competitive products played a huge role in the design process. For starters, I bought competitors’ construction toys and observed children playing with them to get an understanding of how they could be improved. I’ve spent months observing how they market to kids and parents on the toy shelf as well as online and in the app space. The brand I’ve been following most closely is Lego Friends, who launched a big line of girl construction toys in January 2012. The biggest struggle for me in the design process has been figuring out how traditionally “girly” I’d need to make the toy in order to appeal to girls. Being able to follow the success (and criticism) of Lego Friends has helped me fine-tune my product design.

We also would like to invest in the storytelling aspect of GoldieBlox by video interviewing women in STEM fields to understand how they got to where they are and break down the stereotype that engineers are all nerdy white males who sit behind a computer all day! We’d love to re-tell these stories in a compelling way to continue making engineering more accessible to all generations.

I took a quick look at Social Mention to see what is driving the conversation on back-to-school and if their any conversations that were standing out. Beyond a few sponsored campaign, what really stood out was the shopping hauls on youtube.

Haul videos showcase a shoppers purchases in minute detail. Most of the videos feature the where, how much and why of each purchase. These haul videos are not just entertainment but can drive spending. A recent study  from Google highlights the importance of video to shopping decisions, especially with millennials :

• 4 in 10 shoppers visited a store online or in-person as a direct result of watching a video online
• Nearly 1 in 3 shoppers use YouTube to shop for apparel
• Thirty-four percent of apparel shoppers are more likely to purchase after viewing an online video ad, versus 16% after watching an ad on TV.
• Millennials (aged 18-34) are twice as likely than other age groups to rely on a video to decide which company to purchase from, and are regularly turning to YouTube for shopping advice.
• There are nearly 600,000 shopping “haul” videos on YouTube, more than 35,000 of which were uploaded within the last month alone

The audiences of back-to-school haul videos are large with the videos reaching millions. The haul video creators offer a mix of over the top shopping voyerism and girl next door how to look good on a budget pragmatism.

Meredith at  StilaBabe09 is like the shopping buddy you wish you had as a teen and she has a good eye for deals.  She offers her audience a look at what the cool kids might be wearing and how to have fun on a budget with your shopping choices. There is a lot of focus on price and tips on how to use the shopping finds.  Her videos are engaging and interactive (i.e., tell me what you think about these shoes?).

• Hauler videos make it clear that one of the funnest parts of shopping is the sharing part . Tap into the desire to share by making it easy and even rewarding for those that share. Look at things like a leader board and sharing top picks from your community on your social networks.
• Back to school shopping is really a more grown-up version of dress up. Shoppers are playing around with looks and spend a lot of time creating outfits and looks. Look at ways to help shoppers create a personal “look book” and plan out outfits.
•  A constant theme in these videos is  ”it adds pop to a plain outfit”.  Consider how to deliver “snack size” style tips online and in the store to spur purchase, especially around accessories.
• A good find was often defined as a lot of style for the price versus just being on sale. Well priced and/or aggressively discounting some of the trendy items might be a good way to attract these shoppers.
• Understand that their is a lot of anxiety involved in back to school shopping. A lot of comments involve stress around back to school and request for more videos like what’s in your back pack. Create “chill moments’ for your shoppers like a chill lounge, “stop stressing” campaign  and/or a on the spot mini spa treatment. Offer checklist and other be ready type of info for shoppers.
• Shoppers are sharing what they think is “cool” and giving a lot of feedback on price and quality in these videos. Add watching hauler videos to your insight/marketing departments to do list.
• Your super fans are creating content about you and you need to leverage that. Make to sure to start identifying your fans and look at ways to reward (fashion spreads with top haulers instead of models) and engage them in your creative process and planning.
• Your target is watching hauler videos, these videos are getting major views.  Look at adding YouTube campaigns and video ads to your marketing mix.

In our article, Social Media Monitoring as a Call to Action, we discussed the importance of using social media to discover valuable information about your brand rather than just focusing on acquiring a higher number of fans and followers.  The information, or “social intelligence” as Forrester refers to it, can then be used to improve business strategies.

In Forrester’s recent report, “Evaluate and Evolve Social Intelligence” they describe three stages to the social intelligence maturity model: monitoring, listening and intelligence, It is within stage 3, when companies integrate social data into their existing business strategies and technologies.  Forrester says “sharing data across the organization only works if the organization is prepared to manage it.”

In the examples below, you’ll see how several businesses have moved beyond monitoring and listening to their customers and managed to put the data to good use. In two of the examples, you’ll see how these businesses go about listening to conversations to identify web and social content that is relevant to their target audience. In another example, the business uses post-sales emails to encourage reviews that then provide valuable feedback and higher Google rankings.

WPBeginner

Syed Balkhi, Founder of  WPBeginner, a free WordPress resource site, told us how he has used social media to grow the site:

“I launched WPBeginner in 2009. I got on Twitter and Facebook and started tweeting my articles. No one was listening. I needed a way to get more of an audience. I started utilizing Twitter search and looked for the hashtag #WordPress. People were asking questions, and I started answering them. This also allowed me to get new ideas for my blog posts. I simply turned user questions on Twitter into relevant blog posts. I then replied back to them, linking to the answer (on the blog). This method worked very well because I was writing what users wanted to read. This helped me with SEO as well because the tutorials on the site were exactly what people were searching for. “

Petplan Pet Insurance

Natasha Ashton, Co-Founder and Co-Ceo of Petplan Pet Insurance, described one of their processes for developing more strategic content for their monthly newsletter:

“We are continually evaluating the engagement we have with both our prospective customers and our current policyholders in order to understand how to best optimize the type, timing and delivery of our sales and retention messages. A good example of this is our monthly newsletter – fetch! health news. We send the newsletter to our policyholders, our prospective policyholders and veterinarians. We segment our lists and individually tag with web analytics all three versions. Before we begin compiling our next newsletter, we review the analytics report to see what content, from categories to individual stories, garnered the most engagement on our website, and importantly, what drives them to take the desired action(s).”

JCD Repair

In a recent article by Melinda Emerson she provides the example of Matt McCormick and his business JCD Repair, an iPad and Android repair business, who uses social media as a follow-up tool after making a sale:

His shop obtains a customer’s email address to send a paperless receipt and tells them that they’ll receive another email from them in two weeks to make sure everything is O.K. The email reminds the customer of their 90-day warranty, asks if everything is O.K. and then asks for a review of JCD Repair’s service. Depending on their email address, the company  provides a link to either Google Plus Local, Yelp or Facebook.

McCormick reports that they recently had 97 live reviews on Yelp and how a popular blogger in Chicago wrote a blog post after her iPhone was fixed by JCD Repair.

“Knowing that you are going to follow up in this manner changes the way you deal with customers because you know they might be writing reviews about you…leads to better service at the initial sale. It also gives you the chance to turn annoyed or unsatisfied customers into happy customers. A customer who was not totally happy with your service will let you know by replying to your follow-up email. If you deal with problems swiftly and set things right, people are impressed.”

McCormack reports too that the strategy has helped increase sales and helped them to rank higher on Google—both organic and local results. McCormick even believes that bad reviews can be useful. “…a bad review here and there not only helps you look more credible, it can give you very valuable feedback on what you’re doing wrong. Lastly, it also gives you a chance to set the situation right with the customer.”

How have you used social intelligence to improve your business strategies? Let us know in the comments section below.

The recent CLICKS & CRAVINGS The Impact of Social Technology on Food Culture study by Hartman Group uncovered the following:

That’s a big opportunity for food marketers to reach customers via social networks! The recent 5 Food Brands Building Social Buzz on a Budget article on Mashable showcases how food marketers can engage users, drive buzz and increase sales with a savvy social media strategy.

Social Lens Research recently began data collection for our latest research, “Deep Dive into Food Companies and Social Media,”a study which focuses on the Food industry’s use of social media marketing. We had the opportunity to speak with representatives from 75 companies at the NASFT Summer Fancy Food Show in early July. The data collection continues through September 15th and we’re currently recruiting other interested companies who are currently using social media to market their food products. The study includes both large and start-up companies.

Key goals include understanding:

• Most effective tactics and platforms for food companies to succeed with social media marketing;
• Barriers to and limits of social media marketing;
• Current state of social media usage among food companies.

Participants will benefit from the research results and receive:

• Written report on the study with summarized key findings and recommendations for ways to leverage social media;
• Invitation to live/recorded webinar of the research where we will share results and answer questions;
• Open door to ask questions of members of the Social Lens Research team.

Findings will be available by Fall 2012.

Participation in the study is free and only requires answering a brief survey. You can opt to keep your responses anonymous or public, and may have an opportunity to be featured in one of our case studies, slated to be published in Fall 2012.

If your food related business is interested in participating, please contact us at info@sociallensresearch.com. Please reach out with any questions and/or comments.

#1 Big Data is not having a big impact on marketing yet

Don Sexton from Columbia University presented findings from a recently conducted Marketing ROI in the Era of Big Data that surveyed 253 marketing executives from large companies. The results highlight a strong belief among marketers that data is important to making good marketing decisions but that there’s a big gap in the use of data to drive marketing decisions:

•  91% of senior corporate marketers believe that successful brands use customer data to drive marketing decisions
• Yet, 39% say their own company’s data is collected too infrequently or not real-time enough
• 57% are not basing their marketing budgets on any ROI analysis

The biggest issue with the lack of data is that marketers are relying on historical data versus understanding performance to drive budgets.

You can read a good article about the study over at Advertising Age.

#2 The mobile research potential is NOT just online surveys on your mobile phone

Mobile is transforming how consumers communicate, shop, diet and overall–how they live. Mobile research needs to take into consideration and take advantage of the mobile experience (ie., touch screen, location, difficulty typing long responses, etc.). Facebook adopted the consumer experience for mobile, and as Andy Lees mentioned, research should do the same.

I could see how new services like the ShopKick mobile app which rewards users for engaging with brands in store could be at the forefront on innovating how research gets more mobile.

#3 Making research fun can get you better results

Betty Adamaou of Research thorough Gaming presented her Pimple Crisis research game, see a demo below:

It’s a good example of why gaming as a research tool is not just fun but can get respondents to open up at a new level. The interactive game takes respondents into a virtual world where they can make pimple fighting choices, use thought bubbles to give feedback and write words on mirrors.

#4 It’s not about the data it’s about the story

Gayle Lloyd from Hillenbrand, a top casket manufacturer, shared that only 37% of senior executives agree that their markert research groups are strategic.  She made the valid argument that research needs to drive decision making.

I loved her example of how her organization monitors auto and fashion industry trends  (i.e., fabrics, interiors, new auto shapes) to help inspire innovations for their caskets. It’s a great example of how research needs to translate into actionable business direction.

#5 Data accuracy of social media sentiments is mixed, so plan for it

There was a lot of discussion around standards for social media sentiment accuracy. It appears that given spam, grammar and other language issues it’s hard to accurately measure sentiment consistently. I like Anne Pettit’s @lovestats pragmatic approach– her reality check around the issues concerning accuracy, and recommendation to “work through it.”

Check out Annie’s recent post on Correlating Gas Prices with Social Media Sentiment.

I truly enjoyed the great presentations and the very nice crowd at the Mobile Research in the Mobile World conference. I also was impressed by the dessert tables!

What are your top takeaways?

To better understand Pinterest, we conducted a check-in with 50 members of our GigCoin Influencer Community.  Given the demographics of Pinterest (82% women) and it’s ranking as one of top sites for moms, we selected mostly mom bloggers (47 out of the 50 influencers) who are active users of Pinterest (70% visiting daily).

A major focus of the study was brands impact on Pinterest. Influencers weighed-in on which brands stood out and top tips for brands on Pinterest.

Overall, we were surprised that Pinterest is still not very commercial. Brands have started to set-up shop but for now it’s dominated by individuals. Even some of the larger brands on Pinterest like Real Simple with 138K followers are only at a fraction of followers of some of the top users. Jane Wang ranked as the Pinterest user with most followers by Repinly has 3.2 million followers. In fact out of the top 20 Pinterest users per Repinly, there are no big brands. Followers are not everything but it’s an indicator that Pinterest content is very indie for now.