Six mobile marketing tips for businesses and brands

From chatbots to personalisation, here advertising and mobile experts share their tips on how to master mobile marketing.

We type tap and swipe our phones, on average, 2,617 times a day, according to new research by data company dscout. For heavy users that can rise to more than 5,000 “touches”. The figures are stark: mobile is where you find people’s eyes and hands. It means that brands can’t afford to ignore mobile as a marketing platform; it’s now an essential way to attract new customers and build brand awareness.

Telegraph Media & Tech Connect asked some of the top ad agencies and mobile experts to share their tips for marketing on the powerful, pocket-based platform. Here’s what they said:

1. Know your chatbots

“Chatbots provide a great opportunity for brands to engage in a personal and smart way with their audiences. We’re seeing a big shift in traffic from traditional social media platforms to messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.

“With six out of the top 10 most used apps globally being messenger apps, it seems like a really interesting way for brands to exploit having a direct conversation with their customers. This worked well for KLM Royal Dutch airlines, when it launched a chatbot via Facebook Messenger to deliver flight information, itineraries, boarding passes and even delay information. That’s both useful and relevant.”

2. Think about how people travel across devices

“How you advertise across these devices depends on your product. Marketers need to understand how devices fit into the customer journey. There’s often a very complex path when people discover a new product or service: they jump between devices during the research and consideration process (this can be very varied across industries and product types).

“The size of the purchase makes a massive impact; a car purchase will involve a very different path across devices than buying replacement ink for a printer. It’s so easy to buy ink from Amazon on a handheld mobile device, you almost don’t even think about it. But if you are buying an insurance policy, it’s a lengthier process. Understanding how devices fit into your specific customer journey is important.”

3. Stop obsessing over tech and focus on users

“Businesses focus on what application or technology is coming next, but the people using it don’t care about technology – they care about what technology enables. The best technology is seamless, useful and invisible. Rather than focusing on technology or trend, shift your thinking to the user first: to their behaviours (the way the mobile user consumes content in a more snackable way); location (tailoring content depending on whether the user is at home in front of the TV or in a shop); and their need, which tends to be more immediate compared to a desktop user.”

4. Personalisation breeds quality

“Personalisation is the big trend in mobile. As datasets become richer, artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and shapes expectations, brands will be expected to offer more personalized content and better-curated experiences through mobile. Eventually ‘Recommended for you’ will reflect where you are, what you're doing and what your needs are, with no questions asked.

“In particular, it means that good content will find its way to the right people, creating a strong incentive for marketers to place an emphasis on quality rather than quantity when it comes to content.”

5. Sites need to work for mobile; being responsive isn’t enough

“Consumer behavior is different on mobile, which means that site builds must exploit the functionality mobile offers, with click-to-call buttons or GPS store locators to ensure the needs of consumers are met.

“If you have an app, it’s also really important to think about how it works with your site. 

“Having a single user journey – with actions performed on one touchpoint showing up in another – is critical to ensuring that the customer journey is seamless. The key here is they can continue whatever it is they started on the device or touchpoint, they choose.”

6. Ask yourself: where is the right place to advertise?

“Two important areas of mobile content consumption are the social ‘feed’ (Facebook, Twitter and so on) and editorial ‘read’ environments (for example, an article on the MailOnline mobile site). But consumers in the ‘feed’ are in a very different mindset than those in a ‘read’ environment.

“We asked a group of mobile users to spend 15 seconds interacting with a social feed and 15 seconds reading an editorial story. We found that users in the feed scrolled past about three ads, translating to a dwell time of only about 1.5 seconds per ad. In the editorial environment, users scrolled past an average of one ad, with five seconds dwell time – a much better exposure for a brand.

“But it’s not just about speed. Consumers in a feed are searching for something to engage with, but in read mode, they’ve already opted into an article they want to pay attention to – much better exposure for contextually relevant brand messaging.

“There’s one more thing to remember: grabbing an engaged consumer’s attention isn’t enough; if you don’t serve an ad that’s more creative and interactive than a standard static banner, for example, you can’t blame the audience for failing to interact with it.”

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How to Grow Your Startup Without a Budget

Here are 4 things you can do right now to grow your startup without a CMO or budget:

1. Use Free Resources to Spread the Word

There are some high-quality blogs and forums with a large and relevant audience that can be your content distributor and promote your startup. Popular blogs like ProductHunt, Betalist and startupli.st are ones that are being visited often by potential customers, tech industry members (including possible future investors or employees) and reporters. Promoting the launch of your startup in one of these blogs can generate massive traffic to your site and even spark interest in tech reporters who can, later on, cover your startup in large tech news outlets.

2. Reach Out to Bloggers and Reporters Yourself

Having a small or zero dollars marketing budget probably means you won’t be able to afford a good PR agency. Don’t be tempted to work with cheap agencies that can’t deliver (for reference, good PR agencies in the U.S charge somewhere between $5K-$10K/month), but rather do the outreach yourself. Whenever you are ready to spread the word about your company, prepare a pitch or a press release and send it to reporters who you know cover your field. Like anything in marketing, the best results are the targeted ones. Most media outlets publish their reporters’ emails, and there are some great templates you can use to draft a release. Before sending, do your homework on what a reporter is interested in. Influential reporters and bloggers receive hundreds of pitches a day, so the major part of your work is to plan and create a great pitch. To make sure it’s appealing and interesting, run it by your friends first to solicit feedback.

3. Use Your Personal Network

Not all marketing and growth has to do with SEO, conferences and buying media. Your personal network is valuable and can lead to even more valuable second and third-degree connections. Maintaining a strong personal network is important for any entrepreneur, as it can be tapped into from the brainstorming stage – advising with friends on aspects of the product, name, etc. – all the way through to the launch stage and future partnerships.

4. Use A/B Testing Methods to Increase Conversion

A/B testing is something that can really help you grow, without investing a lot of money. By using tools such as Optimizely and Unbounce, you can maximize the potential of users who are already visiting your site. A/B testing can be tricky if not done right, as you don’t want to be overwhelmed by numerous variables. Simplify the tests, and each time, check one variable or two. You will be surprised how a small change in the color of a button or the size of your header image can boost your conversion rate, sometimes by 20%-30% or even more.

Source: http://bit.ly/1UoWjNg

10 Ways to Update Your Online Marketing Efforts

Marketing methods for small businesses are constantly changing. You need to be able to keep up with customers who are using technology that’s always evolving.

To update your online marketing efforts, take a look at the following tips from members of the online small business community.

Use These Tips for a Great Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social media marketing is more complicated than just posting the occasional Tweet or Facebook photo. If you’re going to use social media marketing campaigns as part of your online marketing strategy, take a look at these tips from Anita Campbell on the SBA blog.

Write Headlines That Catch Fire

Headlines are often the first impression that potential customers have of your online content. To make them as catchy as possible, you can learn from the songwriting techniques outlined in this post by Merrill Shane Jones on the Copyblock Creative Blog.

Use Blogging More Effectively

Whether you want to do it as a career or use it as a promotional method, blogging presents multiple upsides for your business. To learn how to be a professional blogger, take a look at this post and checklist by Ginny Dwyer on Modgility. Then see what BizSugar members are saying about the post.

Use These Best Practices for Pinterest A/B Testing

In order to get the most benefit out of Pinterest, you need to learn the best practices that will work for your business. That means you need to do some testing. This Blogworthy post by Sara Tetzloff includes some best practices for A/B testing on Pinterest.

Optimize for Ecommerce Sales with Information Bias

When selling online, it’s important to give customers enough information to make a decision. But more isn’t always better, as Jeremy Smith explains in this post on the JeremySaid blog. You can learn more in the post about how to optimize your selling strategy by using information bias.

Analyze Your LinkedIn Data

As the business social network du jour, LinkedIn can be a great place for you to connect with other professionals and potential clients or collaborators. The platform also lets you access data about who views and interacts with your profile. To learn how to best utilize that data, take a look at this post by Nancy A. Shenker on the Bad Girl, Good Business blog.

Follow These Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

When it comes to social media, there are some practices that can be beneficial for businesses and others that can be detrimental. For help deciphering between the two, check out this Dyer News post by Jonathan Dyer. Then you can read thediscussion on BizSugar.

Use Mobile Marketing to Reach Millennials

Millennials love their technology. If your business is one that you want to appeal to millennials, then you should probably be utilizing some form of mobile marketing in order to get your brand in front of your target customers. This post by Kristina Waters on the Candybox Marketing blog includes an infographic with some facts and statistics about millennials and technology.

Learn How to Promote a Podcast

If you’ve decided to take the leap into podcasting for your business, then you need to learn how to promote your podcast so that it gets heard by as many people as possible. This post by Lyndsay Phillips includes some tips for promoting podcasts online.

Make Sure Your Landing Page Forms Don’t Ask for Too Much

Landing pages can be a great way to catch the attention of potential customers and collect leads. But if you try to make them do too much, it can be detrimental to your business, as Elisa Silverman explains in this PageWiz post. 

Source: http://bit.ly/1oj75LT

5 marketing quotes of the week

Why Your Business Needs Social Media Marketing

Your company finally has its website, Facebook, and even a Twitter account set up. You are getting some traffic, you have a small following, and you've thrown up a few status updates and links.

Maybe your website or social media handles even show up in a Google search once in awhile. Check "Social Media Marketing" off that list of things to do. Mission accomplished. Wrong! Or maybe you still think that your business can't benefit from social media marketing at all? Wrong again!

It really doesn't matter if you are a sole proprietor or a CMO at a Fortune 500 global corporation. Your business can significantly benefit from social media marketing regardless of its size or business model. Why does social media marketing matter so much? 

Well I'll tell you why! Here are just a few simplified reasons why your business will grow and improve with SMM:

1) Increase Website Traffic, SEO, Referrals, & Revenue Generation

This is pretty obvious. Your social media platforms promote your website links and the content you produce. You get more traffic to your site, your search engine rank improves (and in turn more organic traffic is generated), you get more referrals from readers / viewers / subscribers / followers / customers / clients / colleagues, and you make more money! Depending on your business model, your income may be generated from product / service sales, advertising revenue, sponsorships, contracts, partnerships, subscriptions, investors, donations, or other means. Simply put, increased quality and quantity of traffic derived from social media = more money. This can be true for all companies whether you sell muffins, clean houses, manage portfolios, or market the latest cloud computing software.

2) Interaction, Branding, and Exposure with Customers, Prospects, or Industries

Your business can always benefit from interacting with your customers, clients, readers, viewers, peers, prospects, or industry heavy hitters. Many people and organizations believe this to be the most important aspect of social media marketing. So establish a positive dialogue that will lead to signing a new client. Successfully promote a current client's business. Provide exceptional customer service by answering a question or addressing a concern. Tell the world about your latest campaign, product, or service. Let the customer tell you what they view as your strengths and weaknesses, or how you can improve your business. The possibilities are endless and you'll be missing opportunities if you don't have a strong social media marketing strategy in place. If you don't properly manage or expand your company's community and network, you are leaving money on the table.

3) Increased Perception of Being Connected, Tech Savvy, and Legitimate

A lot of people think this is more of a subjective or less important aspect of social media marketing. I think it's an incredibly important one if you consider basic human psychology. While business professionals can usually distinguish between quality and quantity of social media statistics, the average person may not. So who cares if your company doesn't have many followers, friends, subscribers, views, tweets, likes, posts etc? Turns out a lot of people DO care. If you are a billion dollar corporation and you have 200 Twitter followers, that obviously doesn't look very good. It looks especially poor when your competitors have 200,000 or maybe 2,000,000 followers.

Why does your company have 6 tweets when you do business on 6 continents?

 Perhaps your business is nonexistent on critical social media platforms or your employees aren't representing your company online. 

Or maybe there is little or no activity on any of your social media accounts. This can make your company seem out of touch, which can be especially damaging if your target market includes younger or more technologically proficient customers and industries. It certainly won't help you relate to millenials if you are a B2C company and have them as one of your main "buyer personas". I've seen technology, media, marketing, and online retail companies with minimal social media marketing presence! It's not pretty. 

People and companies do look at numbers and make judgments based on them, fair or not. Having a minimal or nonexistent social media presence makes your company look bad and your competitors look better by comparison. You will lose revenue and market share if you don't successfully compete on all relevant social media platforms.

4) Return On Investment (ROI)

Social Media Marketing can have an excellent Return On Investment (ROI) compared with traditional forms of marketing such as mailers, radio ads, television ads, magazine / newspaper ads, billboards, etc. 

You could easily spend hundreds or thousands (or significantly more depending on your business) of dollars on any of these traditional marketing methods. 

If you are a sole proprietor or small business owner, that price tag can be a risky or completely impossible option. 

Even a global corporation may be looking to tighten their marketing budget or get more value for their dollar (for example: Procter & Gamble this year opted for a frugal Twitter campaign as opposed to a multi-million dollar Superbowl ad). Social media marketing can be that viable affordable alternative, or a significant component, of your marketing strategy. 

Not only will your social media platforms save you money in the short term, these platforms and SEO-boosting power remain in place to pay dividends months and even years with minimal maintenance.

And because it's digital, you can usually modify your social media marketing platforms or strategy as needed .

It is necessary these days to be able to adapt and make changes within a matter of days, hours, or even minutes. You could be spending a fortune on traditional advertising or marketing consultants when social media marketing could get the job done for a fraction of the price.

5) Analytics 

This is an enormous benefit that you receive from implementing social media marketing into your business strategy. You usually get minimal data in response to traditional marketing campaigns. 

Sometimes you aren't sure whether your business is benefiting from one traditional method or another. With social media marketing, you can get incredibly detailed, immediate, and convenient statistical reports on nearly every aspect of your SMM campaigns. 

You'll get key measurables such as impressions, clicks, comments, likes, shares, subscriptions, referring links, sales, time on site, detailed demographics, and much more. Analyze this data and modify your social media posts and ads accordingly to achieve even greater results. 

You don't get that with a newspaper ad or television commercial. You can get these detailed SMM analytics from Google Analytics, CRM platforms, individual social media platforms directly, or other web services. 

6) Integration

Finally, you can seamlessly integrate social media marketing into your overall marketing and business strategy. 

Your social media marketing complements and/or links to your email marketing, website, direct mailers, telephone, print ads, and radio / television ads. You may notice these days that half of the ads out there already have links to the company's social media URL or solicit readers / listeners / viewers to follow them on social media. 

Every email marketing campaign and website should be fully integrated with its SMM if it isn't already. And everything radio and television is already integrated or being integrated with online media. Magazines, newspapers, and newsletters are all online now as well. Complement your overall business marketing, sales, and customer service with social media savvy. 

Of course there are dozens of other important reasons why social media marketing is important for your business success. I will continue posting more specific SMM articles so I can share my thoughts and experiences with specific social media platforms, paid advertising options, specific industries, and various business models. 

Source : http://bit.ly/1Jup3Wc

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5 predictions for the Internet of Things in 2016

The Internet of Things revolution is set to dramatically alter many industrial sectors during 2016 

The promise of software sitting inside a wider variety of devices is set to open up valuable new revenue streams for the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2016.

Device manufacturers are set to aggressively adopt new business models associated with monetising the embedded or external software powering their intelligent devices, as the rhetoric becomes reality and the true value of connectivity comes to fruition. 

Here our five predictions for how the IoT landscape will shape up next year.

1. Intelligent device manufacturers will increasingly realise the need to become software-centric companies to garner profits

Increasingly, the value of physical devices will be defined by the embedded software inside them or the control software that helps to manage the physical goods.

Manufacturers will have to start thinking and acting more like software companies, leveraging the software applications they build into their products as a driver to reduce manufacturing costs, increase product innovation, and capture new revenue streams. 

Taking a software-centric approach means manufacturers will start re-designing products from fixed-function, disconnected devices to flexible, seamlessly connected systems.

2. Manufacturers will start realising the financial gains from the IoT

While the innovations and customer references now possible with smart and internet-connected devices serve as the fuel for industrial revolution, there must be an accelerant to ignite that fuel.  In a business context that accelerant is the lure of money. 

In last-generation devices, device makers were fairly limited in terms of monetisation options. Today, and more so in the future, device makers will continue to aggressively adopt new business models associated with monetising the embedded and external software that’s increasingly powering their intelligent and internet-connected devices.

This includes leveraging software licensing and entitlement management – a mainstay in the traditional software industry. 

3. ‘Everything as a service’ – IoT will transform objects into services

As IoT manufacturers seek ways to deepen their relationships with customers, a key goal will to become more strategic and provide ongoing solutions tailored to evolving customer needs. Services will be a critical element to selling solutions. 

For instance, medical device makers will be able to use big-data to provide better diagnostics based on segmenting national, socio-economic or ethnic characteristics of an overall population pool. 

Or auto manufacturers will be able to equip their cars with every feature and upgrade available – and simply turn on or off the feature via software and licensing based on what the customer has purchased. 

In these scenarios, the device maker can make a strategic decision about whether or not to monetise a feature or to provide it at no cost.

4. IoT hacking will make more headlines, increasing pressure on device makers to focus on security and remediation

Recently, much attention has been paid to potential security threats facing smart internet-connected devices – from refrigerators to vehicles. As incidents of these device hacks continue to mount, device makers will need to make security more bulletproof – both to prevent hacking and to quickly remediate the problem if hacking does occur. 

Device makers will need to adopt measures such as tamper resistant licensing code, investing the time to reverse engineer-embedded software on the device, monitor and track patch levels to be aware of exposure, and send software and firmware patches to entitled customers using only secure download URLs that expire.

>See also: What does an 'Internet of Things' enterprise really look like?

5. Rise in IoT devices will fuel third industrial revolution

The first industrial revolution ushered in a global transformation as the means of production transitioned from human labour to machine driven automation. The second industrial revolution accelerated change through the growth of the railways, iron and steel production, manufacturing automation, the use of steam power, oil, electricity, and electrical communications.

With the introduction of embedded software and app-driven hardware into manufactured devices, and the ability, through software licensing, to monetise those device functions and features, devices have become intelligent solutions and capable of generating completely new types of revenue streams. 

Connecting those intelligent devices to the internet is accelerating the third industrial revolution by enabling services, solutions and big data offerings around every day industrial and consumer goods.

Source : http://bit.ly/1QjqGWP

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5 Things Tech Entrepreneurs Should Do Instead of Learning to Code

There’s a prevalent train of thought running amuck through the tech startup world: Entrepreneurs believe learning to code will boost their credibility, provide them with a deeper understanding of their businesses, and transform their abilities to lead their troops. Many will run to Codecademy, take a few courses, and expect to be able to write an enterprise app. This is comparable to taking a few guitar lessons and challenging Jimmy Page to a face-off; it’s not going to end well for you.

While understanding code could certainly be helpful, it’s a far cry from being acritical skill for most tech entrepreneurs. If you have at least one developer and you’re still coding, you are ignoring your core responsibilities. That’s why I’m going against the grain here and discouraging tech entrepreneurs from learning to code. There are way more important things you should be doing with your time.

Why Leaders Shouldn’t Learn to Code

If you’re starting out by yourself, there’s some merit in learning to code. Most entrepreneurs are great idea people. Knowing how to actually implement ideas could separate you from the endless line of people hoping to create the “next Facebook.”

However, as soon as you hire a single capable engineer, whatever coding skills you have are no longer necessary. One solid engineer could implement more in two weeks than you could in six months — and it would likely be more robust and scalable.

Every minute you spend in the trenches learning a programming language from the ground up is time your customers are being ignored, your marketing isn’t being executed, and your company is running without direction.

You’re the leader — focus on the overall vision of your company. Leave the code to the competent, career-oriented coders.

Instead of wasting time gaining skills your team already has, you should be coaching and guiding your team toward stardom. These five actions will provide much more value to your brand than teaching your computer a for-loop operation to ask your name and repeat it back to you:

1. Draft a Spec Doc

Even if you can code, taking the time to think through and map out actual customer needs, user flows, and interactions is essential to creating a successful company. Having a more detailed product plan with specifics will not only improve your company, but it will also greatly help in product development (as well as hiring great talent).

2. Evaluate Customers

The single most important thing a leader can bring to the team is a clear understanding of customer and market need. Although most leaders would probably claim to have a good understanding of their target customers, it is rare to find one who actually spends enough time studying and interacting with them. If you don’t fully understand the situations, stories, and users of your product, what (or who) are you even designing it for? Anyone can make up a target customer, but real people in the real world rarely act how you think they will.

3. Recruit Actual Software Engineers

If you were to spend a year learning the foundations of computer programming, you’ll likely end up with a crap junior coder (you) who has no real understanding of what they’re doing. Instead, you should hire an experienced engineer, place your clearly developed vision in his hands, and tell him to put the pedal to the metal. Now that is a winning formula.

4. Sell Your Product

Sales are the lifeblood of any company. Without them, you have nothing. So get out and pitch your product to customers, and then assess the ensuing feedback loop. These early pitches will teach you an immense amount about the needs and wants of your target audience. Imagine how helpful this information will be when you’re training your first sales hires!

5. Pitch to Investors

Nearly every business reaches a point where it needs outside funding to grow beyond being an experiment. If this is the path you’re going to go down, you — as the face of the company — need to be able to speak convincingly to potential investors. This takes a lot of practice, but it’s your job to draw interest in your project and get people to sign on the dotted line.

Coding is a valuable skill, but it’s definitely not a necessary one for a leader just because it’s a tech-based business. Leading a company is a skill in itself, and nobody expects a CEO to understand how to code any more than a software engineer is expected to know how to run a successful company. Instead, stick to your strengths, and hire all-star coders to make your vision a reality.

Source : http://bit.ly/1NG8RT7