Dear Friend,

May I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous Year of Snake in 2013!

2013 is a going to be a great year for all of us and there are just so many things we need to do as marketers.  In his 80’s, my father was born in the Year of Snake and he has started to use Android based 9.7 inch Tablet PC last month by dumping his “slow motion” desktop PC.  If you are following what I am trying to say here, we must run faster to catch up the “Mobile Age”.  According to the figure of Office of the Communications Authority in November 2012, there are over 9.9M mobile subscribers in Hong Kong using 2.5G and 3G/4G and similarly in China, there are 420M mobile internet users (74% of total Internet population of 564M) as of end of 2012 as reported by CNNIC. 

I personally believe, the tipping point is right at this time, the new media of advertising specifically online and mobile phones are going to dominate the market reach by far in this year.  If I had to summarize the top most important tasks we have to complete this year, here is my top 5 list:

  1. Mobile Ready Website: Take a look at your corporate website or promotional site using iPhone, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab, mimi iPad, iPad…etc (Yes, I mean all of them as you can never restrict who is using what to access your site!).  If you still have to scratch your fingers and expand the screen to see clearly the texts of your site, you are going to lose to your competition very soon.  Even you may see your site clearly, the second test is to see if you can use your fingers to point at menu items freely without making mistakes!
  2. Customer Mobile Phone Database: WhatsApp and WeChat in Hong Kong and China are taking the market by storm and to certain extend stilling the “air time” of Facebook and Sina Weibo.  My personal estimation that over 80-90%of the working community is using Smartphones.  Hence, you don’t have any choice but communicate with your customers using these means.  But you can’t do it without purposely collecting their mobile phone numbers!  However, you still need to observe the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Ordinance (UEMO) and Guidance on the Collection and Use of Personal Data in Direct Marketing.
  3. Google Mobile Ads: According to the ranking showing on www.alexa.com as of Feb 18, 2013, Google is now No.1 website in Hong Kong and No.5 website in China. This is largely because nearly all most popular mobile devices are pre-installed with Google search apps and functions.  If you are planning to advertise on mobile platforms, Google is the single most ready and available choice you can choose both from Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Display (banner) Advertising perspectives.  There are special ways in linking your phone numbers and addresses in your Ads to invoking dialing or Google map display that would make your Ads more actionable in your Google Mobiles Ads.
  4. Online Customer Service: Mobility is giving people access to the Internet even more easier than before.  There deemed to be more online enquiries especially during out of office hours if you playing the game right and tactful.  Response time for online customer support is going to be the determining factor for your success in the coming months if not days!
  5. Facebook Sponsored Story Ads?: Facebook is not able to show Social Ads on mobile phones but it is possible to show Sponsored Stories Ads.  So when you create your Ads on Facebook, you must choose to show Social Activities in order to get your Ads through to mobile phones.  Apparently, data is showing that the click-through-rate is comparative higher through sponsored stories than Ads.

There is no time to loose and we must get ready for the mobile challenge as soon as possible.  If you are interested to learn a bit more on this subject, Adams has actually launched a new series of training course in January and it is going to be re-run on April 18, 2013. You can find out the course details on the course page at http://www.adamshk.com/trainings/Winning_the_Consumer_Market_Mobile_and_Social_Media_Course.htm

For other training courses, our China e-Marketing course is scheduled to continue to cooperate with Tradelink in a quarterly fashion in 2013 (next one on March 14, 2013) and the renowned e-Marketing Strategy course is also available regularly (next one on March 21, 2013).  Please feel free to refer them to your friends and other marketers to join for us.

I was honored to have chances to speak at HKTDC events about some of the thoughts on Social Media and Mobile Marketing in Hong Kong and China during November and December of 2012.  Here are some related articles for your reading if you are interested.

I hope the above information is useful for you.  I look forward to connecting with you soon.  Have a great year ahead!

Best regards,

Matthew

Matthew Kwan
Principal Consultant
Adams Company Limited
T: +852 2723 9977     M: +852 93807322
E: matthew.kwan@adamshk.com
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