Eleven percent of U.S. e-commerce sales in 2012 —or $25B — came from mobile, according to eMarketer, and they don’t anticipate this trend to revert downward. Yet, many businesses are still lagging behind in their mobile strategy. Unless your business is not selling anything to anyone, or you can’t yet afford it — app developers are in high demand, and supply is not always easy to find — you should probably think about your mobile strategy, whether your company is B2B or B2C.

Most of the laggards are found in B2B companies. But wait a minute, if you are a B2B company, don’t you think your buyers will research your company and products online first? When do buyers and company executives have time to do their research? They are surfing away during long and unproductive meetings, while traveling, or at home watching the kids…Are they lugging their eight pound laptop with them? Probably not. Today’s executive is working on a smartphone or a tablet. If your products and services aren’t easily accessible and readable from these devices, they might just skip to the next supplier.

And what about your sales team? Won’t they benefit from the ability to showcase your products and services to the customer directly from their iPad or tablet? Could you make it a good sales rep/customer conversation enabler?

Don’t feel too bad if your company has not yet fully embraced the mobile world, even Mark Zuckerberg, missed the boat for a little while before having to drastically correct the course. And the new strategy is working: according to Kenshoo, Inc, 20% of Facebook ad revenues in last November and December came from mobile.

There simply is no way around going mobile.

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Tablets, Smartphones Drive Mobile Commerce to Record Heights

By eMarketer
01/09/2013

Maybe 2012 was the year of mobile after all. US retail mcommerce sales shot up 81% to nearly $25 billion last year, propelled by rapid adoption of tablets and smartphones as shopping devices, according to new estimates from eMarketer.

Mobile devices accounted for 11% of total US retail ecommerce sales in 2012, eMarketer estimates, and further growth is expected to push mobile sales to a 15% share of all US retail ecommerce sales this year.

Mcommerce sales include all purchases made via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices, excluding sales of travel and event tickets.

eMarketer’s mcommerce forecast reflects a confluence of three trends: first, the expanding number of smartphone shoppers whose behavior affects commerce in all channels; second, the growing number of smartphone buyers who enjoy the immediacy of purchasing through their phone and are expected to generate just over one-third of mcommerce sales this year; and third, the rapid rise in tablet shopping, which will produce the bulk of mcommerce sales over the next four years.

This year, US consumers will spend $24 billion shopping on their tablets, and that figure will nearly double by 2015. Mcommerce sales on smartphones are lower and will grow more slowly, reaching $13.44 billion this year and $24.32 billion by 2016. Purchases on other mobile devices, such as ereaders, will continue to make up a small but steady share of the mcommerce pie.

Read the full article here

Social Media marketing works and smaller is better…

Small digital-only retailers are more effective at using social media than the large, more established retail houses, some driving up to 30% of their traffic from social media marketing only.

That the big e-retailers are not to be found in the top 10 leaders in social marketing should not surprise us. Clay Christensen’s “disruptive innovation” concept is once again at play here. For a refresher of this famous business concept visit Clay Christensen’s website (http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/), or open his book, “The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth.”

Social media is being disruptive to the advertising market. Traditional advertising, whether online or off, is too expensive and the small guys are turning to social media for inexpensive — essentially free — ways to drive awareness and traffic to their sites. In the meantime, large companies on their “sustaining” path get larger and larger marketing budgets, doing more and more expensive and sophisticated marketing campaigns. And I don’t know any marketing executive who would request willfully a smaller size budget than his or her prior year budget. Unfortunately power and influence within an organization is more tightly correlated to the size of one’s budget, and more loosely so to one’s performance.

So, not surprisingly the best at social media are the “relatively new, small to mid-sized, web-only merchant.” According to the Internet Retailer Social Media 300, petflow.com and fab.com would derive about a third of their revenues from social networks. Big e-retailers should take notice and learn from it.

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The leaders in social commerce are not the usual suspects
Internet Retailer’s Social Media 300 reveals that smaller web-only merchants are beating out Amazon and Wal-Mart in social media marketing.
 By Stefany Moore
Internet Retailer
01/03/13

Here’s what the leaders in social media marketing and commerce look like: they are small to mid-sized web-only merchants, relatively new to online retailing. They are putting social media at the forefront of their business strategies. And they are growing fast as a result.

The Social Media 300, Internet Retailer’s new publication available today, is a comprehensive analysis of e-retailers’ social commerce strategies and a first-ever ranking of retailers’ social skills based on the percentage of web site traffic merchants receive from social networks—a key measure of how effective e-retailers are at social media marketing and commerce.

The research shows that merchants don’t need to have large staffs or big budgets to be successful in social media marketing. Quite the opposite, in fact, as nine of the top ten retailers in the guide brought in less than $30 million in online sales in 2011.

Merchants at the top of the Social Media 300, like pet food supplies retailer PetFlow.com (No. 1), design-inspired flash sale newcomer Fab.com (No. 2) and baking flour maker and e-retailer King Arthur Flour (No. 6), are generating significant returns by making social media a priority. They are adept at weaving social connections into many aspects of the shopping experience, and have found innovative ways to find new customers via social networks and then to connect with these and existing customers on a personal level.

Read the full article here