Online by Zooma

With a few exceptions, most notably Russia, Facebook is now the dominant player in Offsite (aka ”Social Media”) in Europe. However, even though Facebook may have ”won” the battle for our private time for now (rest assured something new will arrive to pick up the gauntlet in the future), when it comes to what we do professionally the fight for Offsite dominance is still very much alive. Despite LinkedIn closing in on 200m registered users worldwide, it's facing stiff competition in some key European markets. Let’s look at a few examples of what is happening using search volume data from Google Trends to highlight user intent in some of the major European countries.

For a moment I had a thought that the header of this post should be the only content in this post…

It’s pretty clear that the automotive industry in Europe is in trouble and has been so for the last couple of years. In fact, the European auto market is set to drop this year to the lowest volume of new car sales since 1995 with a -7.6% decline in eleven months of 2012 compared to the year before. Even in 1990, just as the Berlin Wall was being dismantled and the Cold War era came to an end, more new cars were sold in Europe than in 2012 as proven by the graph below based on data from the European Automotive Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA).

I had an interesting discussion with one of the world’s best designers a while ago. The discussion centred on us both having noticed that people immediately tend to think about screens whenever we mention online… It was one of those discussions that I would have loved to be able to recount word for word in this short text; instead I will have to settle for describing the essence of it.

The fact that people think about different types of screens and surfaces when you talk about online is based on what they have experienced while being connected. But all that they have experienced is at most 2% of what they will experience… We will soon get our health status while we drive, we will get told if we are about to get ill, we will start the iron at home when thinking about it, we will open the doors in the corridor in the office by looking at them, the car seats will adjust when we’re getting close to the car and so on.

According to analyst firm Forrester Research business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce in the US is poised to reach $559 billion by the end of next year. In comparison, another analyst firm – eMarketer – predicts that business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce in the US will reach $256 billion in 2013. Thus, in spite of the overwhelming immaturity of the B2B online commerce landscape, the value of B2B online purchases are expected to be more than twice as high as B2C online purchases next year.

A long time ago, someone said that the first step towards the patient getting well is understanding that the patient is sick. This is very much true for businesses and organisations today, as they face an ever-changing landscape of online behaviour from consumers and customers. However, once past that first step, the real challenge starts; making change happen inside the organisation. Don’t know where to start? Here are the first 3 things you should do.

If you still question online, it’s time to face the facts of the importance of online. Right now too much time and effort is put into thinking, questioning and discussing the effects and the ROIs of online marketing and communication. It’s important to understand that those thoughts, the questioning and the discussions are based on the knowledge about your own behaviour and habits online, and the stress that it causes. A stress that demands changed behaviour by you and by your company.

Not that long ago, online almost exclusively meant being connected via a computer to the Internet. Being connected and online via other devices such as mobile phones was something that was talked about a great deal but few people actually did it.  That has all changed dramatically in recent years. Now the transition to a multi-device, always connected online society is happening at breakneck speed around the world and it will impact everything we do online.

Quite recently, in a typical marketing department of a typical company, three people had a discussion about a product launch campaign. There was Jolene, the company’s 27 years old budding talent, Michelle, the hyper efficient doer in her forties who never lost track of anything, and there was Dan, a company alderman who had been in charge of many of the companies campaigns over the years.

There are many important turning points in the history of human invention. The invention of the wheel, Gutenberg’s printing press, the telegraph, the light bulb, television, the computer, the mobile phone and the internet included. Now the next wave of innovation is upon us and it has the potential for creative destruction as never before imagined.