2011 Industry Outlook Offers Insightful Data
“It has to be easy [for customers]; nobody wants speed bumps on the information highway,” Anthea Stratigos, co-founder & CEO of Outsell, Inc., told a Capital Content breakfast audience in Washington, D.C., last month. The well-attended event was co-sponsored by SIPA and the Software & Information Industry Association.
Her presentation was titled a “2011 Information Industry Outlook,” an industry she said that is now valued at $366 billion. Predicting a 2% growth in revenues for 2011, Stratigos said that, “One-fourth of our waking hours are now spent on mobile devices.” The good news of that statement, in her view, is that, “There’s certainly more of a propensity on mobile for users to pay for content.” People are paying for magazines on mobile because “users are used to paying for them.”
She stressed that spending on mobile—be it designs for various devices or digital marketing dollars—has just begun to flow. So now is the time to move forward. “Develop platforms not products and focus on discovery,” Stratigos said. “Understand the workflow of your customers and [then determine] how you want to engage, entertain and support them.”
For SIPA, this talk segues perfectly into our upcoming 27th Annual Marketing Conference next week in Miami Beach. Mobile, engage and platforms will be buzzwords as around 200 industry veterans come together to share their knowledge and information in a high-energy locale.
Of that 25% of our time that we spend on mobile devices, Stratigos said 56% is for communicating on calls or texts. The rest of the time is pretty evenly split between information, entertainment, locating product services and stores, and social networking.
Another good chart lists the most acceptable methods for accessing publisher content (free via app/browser on iPads tallied 83%). An additional compelling statistic focused on mobile advertising effectiveness. Her survey found that 45% of ads in browsers proved to be effective on mobile compared with 34% of ads in apps and 33% in digital editions.
Interestingly, she said that print is still hanging in there on at least one front. More than 50% of respondents say they still prefer getting their magazines in print only. Just over 40% said they prefer getting both electronic and print and only 7% said electronic only.
Stratigos then listed 10 trends that matter—slower growth; emerging markets; mobile; social; open; big data; extreme analytics; value-added; services/solutions; mass-customization; and design-driven innovation—and seven essential actions:
– develop platforms not products;
– create ip flow – let users have it their way;
– focus on discovery;
– crowd-source faster;
– perform at industry benchmarks or better;
– invest in web and customer analytics;
– help make money, save money or mitigate risk.
Publishers, she said, after making the mistake of putting too much free content online, now get a kind of do-over with the advent of mobile. And they need to take advantage of that.
Definitely check out her PowerPoint presentation if you get a chance (and you are a member), and remember to take it…I mean, make it “easy.”
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