To Understand Mobile First Understand Social -- Fred McIntyre -- awe.sm

A flurry of research hitting inboxes is heralding the mobile platform as marketingamp8217s supernova Mobile drove big growth at retail this year particularly over Thanksgiving weekend thanks to uberconnected consumers who opted to buy via smartphones and tablets And mobile is projected to be a big part of a growth in global ad spending However the hype on mobile is overshadowing something All the social media activity thatamp8217s driving usage and making mobile devices a superpersistent presence in consumersamp8217 lives When you look at it from this perspective it changes the game Focusing on the device is only half the story Youamp8217ll get truly valuable insights to help finetune marketing plans by also looking at how consumers are acting on that deviceItamp8217s wellestablished that mobile devices drove a holiday sales spike this year Online shopping grew 24 YOY and racked up 46 billion in sales over ThanksgivingBlack FridayCyber Monday and purchases made with mobile devices grew at an even faster rate of 64 tallying up nearly 940 million in sales during this holiday shopping trifectaAnd itamp8217s true more consumers are using smartphones and tablets to research and shop Rapid adoption of mobile devices has created a new breed of consumer Theyamp8217re highperformance connected consumers who are always on always connected and in perennial shopping mode Theyamp8217re born with Mario Andretti and Danica Patricklike reflexes that allow them to intuitively use smartphones and tablets to deftly navigate an inextricably linked tangle of personal and commercial highways They buy on the go and they often display their haul across their social graph For this consumer social media provides an instant water cooler Itamp8217s often the connective tissue between device and conversionItamp8217s no wonder amp8216mobileamp8217 is top of mind for marketers as they budget 2014 spending and plan how to reach these connected consumers Global ad expenditures are expected to see sustained growth in the next three years and mobile is thought to be the catalyst of this boost projected to account for 36 of this new spendingBut behind all the mobile buzz Social Media One canamp8217t really look at mobile as the sole driver of ecommerce growth without also looking at the real rocket fuel behind it The flurry of social media posting tweeting pinning and photosharing that happened over ThanksgivingBlack FridayCyber Monday Itamp8217s so obvious and yet social marketingamp8217s impact on holiday sales so far has been overlooked underreported and dismissed as insignificant by a few big punditsItamp8217s not just the devices in the hands of those connected consumers itamp8217s what theyamp8217re doing with them Nearly 100 million US Internet users will log on to social networking sites via smartphones and a further 794 million will use tablets at least once per month in 2013 It follows then that it was the tweeted door busters and Facebook offers and Pinterest contest participants that lit up those smartphones and drove consumers to buy not to mention the exponential knockon effect from the social sharing and texting that spread wordofmouthI tell marketers who are seeking to reach connected consumers via mobile marketing to first get a better understanding of consumersamp8217 social activity and useage Smartphoneamp8217s biggest users are also among the most prolific on social media Those between 25 and 44 years old both trend highest when it comes to mobile useage and social media activitySocial messages are often a brandamp8217s first opportunity to touch a consumer and often for a long time itamp8217s that brandamp8217s only touch point with that consumer Social platforms amp8211 increasingly accessed via mobile amp8211 are great ways to engage with and talk to consumers Social media makes the whole online shopping experience well social again The most pluggedin consumers amp8220go socialamp8221 to ask their friendsamp8217 opinions on products or services to get rewarded for spreading the word to find a deal and then swipe and tap over to buy They often share what they bought all without going into a store or using a PC or looking at a commercial email offerMarketers already know that consumers engaging with social media is a big activity on mobile devices And yet brands who are looking to optimize their results are focusing in the wrong places True responsive websites and mobile applications have an impact on sales but itamp8217s the smart effective use of social channels that provides an exponential impactSo the question is While brands spend time and money understanding the shopping habits of consumers from one screen to the next why is there a lack of investment and focus in real social performance metricsThe answer A majority of marketers don39t think it39s possible to effectively track and measure social39s impact on sales and conversions And influencers in the marketing space aren39t helping the case with claims that measuring social ROI is as futile as tracking unicornsThe fact is a lot of very smart marketers are uninformed on social media tracking They39re either writing off social as a qualitative notmeasureable effort in which they observe comments and count up vanity metrics such as amp8220likesamp8221 and follows or they39re spending lots of time cobbling together social data from multiple tools and making leaping wrongheaded assumptions Thatamp8217s just wrong considering the dollars being spent and the opportunities theyamp8217re losing to show ROI and optimize for more successClosed loop measurement tools like the social media measurement tools we developed at awesm can trace every part of the marketing funnel from top line awareness and engagement down to conversionland where real dollars and cents activity happens These are tools designed for the social web and with much more sophisticated abilities to see the whole picture than many of the measurement approaches that were built to measure static websitesMobile is proving to be a retail darling as a platform and a hot advertising medium But social media is whatamp8217s getting consumers to the checkout Designing social media measurement into the fabric of a campaign is what will earn marketers the pole position advantage in a pretty crowded and dynamic marketplaceFred McIntyre is CEO of awesm the San Franciscobased social media analytics company More information is available at totallyawesmCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates at MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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