Tablets displacing PCs and why you should care

A new study caught our eye this week and we wanted to share it with you. Researchers from IDC Worldwide predict that tablet shipments are expected to grow 58.7 percent this year to 229.3 million units. Why should you care about that number? Because tablet shipments are predicted to exceed those of portable PCs this year, as the slumping PC market will likely see negative growth for the second consecutive year. The IDC study also said that tablet shipments should outpace the ENTIRE PC market (portables and desktops combined) by 2015.

The tipping point is upon us. Click on these links for additional IDC information about Tablets, and about PCs. With tablets racing past portables in 2013 (and total PCs in 2015), there’s going to be a major change in how consumers and business professionals do what we like to call the 6 Cs:

·         Communicate

·         Compute

·         Connect

·         Collaborate, and

·         Create Content.

What this means for you is that your clients, prospects and stakeholders are increasingly mobile, impatient and distracted. They’re more likely than ever to be reading, downloading and watching what you have to say on a small screen device and away from their desks. You have less room to work with and less room for mistakes.

It also means your email subject lines have to be crisper. Your videos must be shorter and less intrusive. Every webinar must deliver exactly what you promise right from the first minute. Your newsletters must be on target every issue and your case studies, white papers and archived web events must be easier to download and highly relevant.

Special challenges for those in professional services

Most of you are well educated highly skilled professionals. You know how to be relevant. You have the subject matter expertise that so many other “posers” on the web don’t have. You know how to be thorough, accurate and comprehensive. The challenge is being brief when you have so much to share with your audience and when you’re dealing with complex topics, mountains of research, precedents and regulations.

That’s what we do all day long. Do we always get it right? Of course not. But we know an awful lot about how to do it wrong.  Our blog and FREE Resources share more.

Macro View

Today’s jobs report shows that U.S. employers added 175,000 new hires in May, slightly ahead of expectations. While skeptics say that unemployment remains historically high and the economic recovery has shown some signs of slowing, we’re still convinced that the underlying fundamentals remain strong for this economy--remember, we’re in a new normal era. Housing is recovering in most major metro areas and the Federal Reserve said yesterday that that the net worth of most American households is higher than before the recession hit five and a half years ago.

Any more dramatic drops in the financial markets will be a result of investors using the recent worries above as an excuse to take profits.

Conclusion

We’re at the inflection point of a Big Data world hitting a small screen environment. Every word and pixel counts. Respect how busy your target market is and choose your words carefully. Be fast. Be relevant and keep it real.  If you can do those simple things consistently, your clients and prospects will thank you time and time again with referrals and continued loyalty.

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Tags: IDC worldwide. Tablets outpace portable PCs, housing market, jobless rate

Giving Thanks for Some Hopeful Signs for Retailers, Jobs, Factory Output and Home Construction

Don't underestimate the power of a Black Friday shopper

So Americans are getting soft, you say? We’re getting, fat, lazy, unmotivated as the rest of the world passes us by, you say? Well you haven’t seen Americans shop on Black Friday. If there’s one thing we don’t need to outsource it’s the ability to find a deal. Before you choke on that turkey wishbone in laughter, think about how the web is transforming the shopping experience. Consumers have never been better armed with comparative pricing information, specs, sizes, colors and where to find the best deals. Retailers have to keep opening earlier, competing with both online and bricks-and-mortar sellers and motivate their employees to work, longer, harder and faster when they’d normally be home (sleeping) with their families.

OUR TAKE? When properly motivated, Americans can do anything they set their minds to with resourcefulness, determination and stamina—kind of like a nation of small business owners.

Macroeconomic indicators

For the holiday season-to-date, consumers have spent $9.7 billion online -- marking a year-over-year growth rate of 14 percent, according to new comScore data. During the first 20 days of the season -- which began on November 1--daily online spending peaked on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at $688 million, comScore reports.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since early April, a sign that layoffs are easing and hiring might pick up--it was the fourth decline in five weeks. Meanwhile, a Commerce Department report said that builders started slightly fewer homes in October, but submitted plans for a wave of apartments, a mixed sign for the struggling housing market.

A rebound in manufacturing could lead to more hiring. Factory output grew in October for the fourth straight month, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday. Production of trucks, electronics and business equipment all rose, and building permits, a gauge of future construction, rose nearly 11 percent. The increase was spurred by a 30 percent increase in apartment permits, which reached its highest level in three years. Need more? Construction starts of single-family homes, which make up about 70 percent of residential home construction, rose nearly 4 percent last month.

While new homes account for just 20 percent of the overall home market, they have an outsize impact on the economy--each home creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

Online video can boost your business

Still not sure if online video is worth it? Check out these new findings from
comScore.

-- Nearly 80 percent of U.S. Internet users –180million+ people—will view online video over the course of the month

-- The typical Internet viewer watches almost 20 hours of online video per month
--The average online video consumed is a full 5 minutes long
--The most watched videos add value by “teaching viewers something or covering a topic they care about,” says comScore.

What B2B marketers hope to accomplish with social media tools

According to new data from Chief Marketer’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Survey it is:

-- Drive traffic to websites (66%)
-- Generate sales or leads (48%)
-- Address company fans (47%)

Yes, times are tough. But give thanks this time of year that you have the brains, the team, the family support and the resources to figure out ways to get through it. You will. And we’ll all be stronger for it.
Happy Thanksgiving. HB


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Job openings at highest level since August 2008

‘Quit rate’ at 3-year high and 7 out of 10 employed workers ‘mailing it in’ at best

OK people. It’s over. The recession is officially two years in the rear-view window. Let’s get back to business already. You’re not going to get an official memo from the Government saying it’s safe to start hiring people again, or it's OK to invest in capital improvements you so badly need, or to build out your marketing platform so you can get actual qualified leads.Remember those? What else do you need to make a decision?

But what about the euro zone crisis, you say? Don’t waste your time watching the daily gyrations of the financial markets. Check your portfolio one every three months or so, but don’t use stocks as a proxy for the state of business conditions or the economy. It’s a glorified casino driven by program traders, hedge funds and short-term speculators.

People are working, and more importantly quitting for better jobs

Here’s what’s important: New claims for jobless benefits in the United States fell last week to their lowest level since early April and the country’s trade deficit unexpectedly shrank in September, pointing to a slight improvement in the sluggish economy. More encouraging was a Labor Department report showed a strong increase in the “quit rate” -- the number of people voluntarily leaving their jobs for a new one rose 5 percent in September and hit its highest level since November 2008. It means that workers are finally more confident that they can find new work if they are unhappy with their current positions—a recent Gallup Survey found the 71 percent of U.S. workers are “not engaged” in their jobs or “actively disengaged” form their work.

Greater turnover in the job market now means more opportunities for the 14 million unemployed or under-employed workers seeking to get back into the workforce.

Out Take: Stop focusing on the unemployment rate. It’s stuck like a rusty wheel at 9 percent and doesn’t accurately reflect what companies need to grow and thrive. We think a better measure is the number of job seeker to job openings. That ratio is down to 4.1, from a peak of 6.9 workers per opening in the horrible summer of July 2009.

If you’ve got a job. Now’s the time to find a better one. If you’re looking for work, make sure you don’t settle for the dregs left behind by a former employee burned out by the recession. Find something that matters—and pays you commensurately for your skill. If you have a company, make sure you do whatever it takes to keep your best people happy and by all means, make sure you’re capturing all the knowledge, contacts and processes they have stored in their brains and personal hard drives.

There’s going to be a “brain drain” of epic proportions soon—and you won’t get a memo letting you know when it’s officially started. If you’re not careful, all your organizational “smarts” could go walking out the door on a moment’s notice.

Where smart marketing comes in

That’s also where smart marketing comes in. It’s not just to raise your brand and generate qualified leads—it’s a time-tested way to keep your name in front of the best talent and vendors in your industry. When you cut back on your marketing, you not only choke off your lead funnel and brand awareness. You make yourself conspicuously absent relative to your competitors and lose opportunities to capture great talent. That’s right, think about all the great people who just might have spent one too many late nights at the office without feeling adequately appreciate by their bosses. If you’re not top of mind with them, they’re certainly not top of mind with you.

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Don’t Be Fooled by Psychological Benchmarks on Labor, Oil Prices

Time for B2B marketers to shine

Like the Dow 10,000, the 4-minute mile and the .300 hitter, we’ve always been fascinated with benchmark numbers. Is a .302 hitter really that much better than a .299 hitter? No. Is your 401k really worse off when the Dow dips to 9,992 from 10,003? Of course not.

So, when Friday’s labor report came out about brisk hiring in February pushing the U.S. unemployment rate below 9.0 percent for the first time in nearly two years, forgive us for not popping the champagne corks. Sure an 8.9 percent unemployment rate marks a real milestone not since before the recession, it’s just a number that ignores how much ground the economy has yet to regain. It also hides the more disturbing trend of people dropping out of the labor force—primarily recent graduates and highly experienced workers. That’s the kind of folks we need out there the most—high energy and high experience—whether you’re in software, financial services, driving a bus, hauling waste management or teaching.

NY Times columnist, Paul Krugman, points out today that most of work still being done by humans today is work that can’t be easily automated. That goes for manual labor as well as for white collar information workers. And the tables are shifting on those two fronts as U.S. white collar jobs are increasingly being automated and manual labor jobs are increasingly becoming specialized. Check out Paul’s take on this 21st century conundrum here

One key gauge of the labor market's health—the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of adults who have jobs or are seeking them—remains stuck at its lowest point since the mid-1980s. But, as the Wall Journal’s Phil Izzo and Morgan Stanley Economist, David Greenlaw explain, “a low participation rate both saps the economy's long-term growth potential and can obscure deeper problems in the labor market. If, for example, labor force participation today were at the same level as before the recession, the jobless rate would have been 11.5 percent in February.”

As of February, 4.4 million people had been out of work for more than a year. The labor force participation rate stood at 64.2 percent, down from 66 percent in December 2007 when the recession began. We expect the jobless “rate” to go back up over 9 percent in the coming months as formerly discouraged workers rejoin the job hunt process. That’s still a positive sign of slow, steady improvement. Don’t let next month’s jobs report stall you’re hiring or expansion plans.

Impact of $100+ per barrel oil

Unfortunately, employers and consumers must deal with the implications of the rising price of oil, which hit a 2.5-year high, closing at $104.42 a barrel Friday. Is it going to hurt? Yep. Many reliable sources are predicting $4 or $5 per gallon at the pump as we head into peak summer driving season. While Libya accounts for just a small fraction of world oil output—which Saudi Arabia has told us they could easily cover—it’s the uncertainly, not true supply and demand that’s driving this price spike. Unfortunately, rapidly rising prices not only hurt consumers and businesses immediately as it costs more to commute, shop, fly, run their equipment, etc. The price shock cuts into profits, hiring plans and consumer shopping plans as real hourly wages have gone up only one cent this year for those lucky enough to be employed.

Hiring picture brighter for media professionals

Despite all the agita described above, the lift in “intention to hire” is the biggest in 11 years according to researchers at Bernhart Associates who conducted a survey of digital and direct marketers. If the Fed and naturally occurring economic drivers can’t stimulate demand, that’s where great marketing and sales follow up comes in. And no one does that better than U.S. media mavens.


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