Mobile Marketing Integration: Doing it right!

40% of those who have accepted a form of permission marketing (signing up for a sales list) are open to have multi-channel responses. This means that marketers who are not adding a second or third option for response, are missing a great deal of impression potential. Not only general impressions, but relevant and high conversion potential impressions.

The key is integration. Using one or two different mediums as communication just doesn't cut it. Marketers have to make sure that any interaction a customer wants is easily available to them. This means eliminating barriers to entry and offering calls to action.

This means, when signing up for say, an online newsletter, there should be at least another level offered. The article I'm referencing in Forbes specifies SMS advertising. Some interesting stats in the article regarding demographics of location based advertising specifics:

"64% of younger adults (18-29) prefer to receive the location-based offers but not far behind were 30-39 year olds (50%) and 40-54 year olds (42%)."

These stats are important to remember when looking at a key demographic for a product, or for a b2b operation.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marketshare/2012/12/12/when-it-comes-to-mobile-marketing-integration-is-key/

Merging SEO and Content Marketing

SEO:

Search Engine Optimization is about appealing to computers. Computers is a very broad term, but think search engine web crawlers, calculated quantitative analysis, and hit counters. It has basically been the head honcho, the big cheese, the social butterfly of the digital marketing party for the past few years. At least since consumers stopped memorizing website names and started just using search terms.

SEO is still a pull strategy, using what is offered and letting the customer find them. It is definitely a great basic to have, but expecting that a relatively ancient of digital media as a sole provider for an online pull strategy isn't going to work out well.

Content marketing:

Content marketing is appealing to humans, offering them some bit of information (such as the infographics talked about previously), or entertainment. A highlight of 2012 content marketing is the Red Bull space jump, which gained over 30 MILLION views. The idea is that the marketer does the original legwork, but potential consumers spread the advertisement because they felt they received something out of it. It can be a slow build, or one big event.

A company that can attribute most of their revenue to content marketing is BlendTec. AKA the 'Will it Blend' guys. They went from a relatively unknown to one of the top sellers for industrial blenders (including being in Starbucks). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rofgMueCOqo

So how to appeal to both the human and the computer?

From Mashable.com:

"Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, outlines five best practices for content marketers hoping to maximize SEO value in an ethical way.

1. Create content that people will have an incentive to share.
2. Do keyword research, so you don’t waste effort writing about things people don’t care about.
3. Put all your content on the same domain/subdomain. (e.g. don't use blog.mysite.com, usemysite.com/blog)
4. Stand for something, and write about it. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

5. Don't separate your brand from your content. For instance, casino sites that make fascinating infographics about animal rights aren't going to last long."

Sounds easy, but it essentially is following the same rules as SEO, but being entertaining at the same time. After my peers and I graduate, a great deal of our time will be spent content marketing, and we should be learning more about it.

How Slow Websites Can Kill Companies: Content Marketing

To see the infographic from SmartBear, follow the link below:
http://mashable.com/2012/11/22/slow-websites/

This is the most recent pull marketing strategy in b2b, content marketing VIA infographics. I talked about this in my first blog, relating to a digital focused market research firm offering biased information to hopefully increase business. Here is another example that I personally am not as well versed in, which are slow websites costing e-commerce a solid chunk of revenue (1 second delay in load time correlates to a 7% decrease in conversions).

This infographic does it right. Not only does it clearly state data from external, unbiased sources, it repeatedly offers calls to action, and it has branding everywhere. Using external sources offers a credibility to the information, and the company itself. It lends itself to be trustworthy to the reader, as well as assuring them that they can further explore the data themselves.

The calls to action are the apparent immediacy of the problems. The infographic is structured in a way that sequentially has

1.  flattery
2. consequence of inaction
3. industry comparisons
4. untraditional e-commerce reference (the political stance)
5. growth potential.

In each stage, it offers a different call to action, which is also a large difference between some other infographics repeatedly seen which just spout information.
The branding is offered at the beginning of the infographic, a call to action in the form of a website referral, and the colours match the landing page of SmartBear.com.

Overall, this is a great example of pull strategy in the changing B2B market.

Instagram's appeal.... And lack of sustainability

What is Instagram? And why in the heck does everyone like it so much?

Well, Instagram is a way to take pictures. Exciting right? You know, what anyone can do with any smart phone now. Oh yeah, it also has stock filters that are appealing to a wide audience.

It's appeal came from the ease of use, the time it was implemented  and it's integration. The learning curve for Instagram is excessively low. Basically, one signs into an account and takes pictures with their mobile device.  Then, the picture can be edited extremely easy, from using cropping features to using the stock filters to make pictures look edgy.
The time it was implemented was when cameras were being integrated into cell phones. Particularly when phones became primary for picture-taking, as opposed to separate cameras. Instagram started being noticed in 2010, when it was available for free in the Iphone App Store.
What really made Instagram take off was the approval of Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey. Not only did Dorsey advertise the app heavily, but he gathered an investment of $7 million into the app. Twitter became a main catalyst for the growth of Instagram by showcasing the ease and diversity the app offered.
Then Facebook bought it for $1 billion, and now it has fully integrated with all major social media mediums.

But really, Instagram isn't proprietary. It is a brand that offers integration. It can easily be substituted with a relatively small capital investment. For example, Twitter has come out with a new filter lense as well that is gaining a high amount of popularity. To see it stacked up, see http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedamv/instagram-vs-twitter-filters-starring-my-cat-cli-7xwg .

Overall, due to it's lack of proprietary advantage, and straight 'luck' strategy, this is not an app that was worth $1 billion and will not sustain.
http://mashable.com/2012/12/10/we-can-survive-without-instagram/

Crowd-funding and it's social media-like presence

Crowd-funding is like crowd-sourcing (think Wikipedia), except there is a great deal of money, and business's livelihood at stake. But with little ROI why do investors give small piles of their hard earned capital to small, likely to fail businesses?

Because, as HBR.org explains, crowd-funding for small businesses follow the same strategy as social media. They want to build and create a culture, and they're inviting stakeholders to invest small quantities of time, effort and/or yes, money to be part of that culture. It's not a cold, calculated investment that is asking for a 20% return, with 10% equity a la Kevin O'leary on Dragon's Den.

Crowd-sourcing is said to have a more of an emotional, rather than rational decision. This could be partially because of the relatively small investments as well. Personally, my experience with Kickstarter was I invested $50 into a local restaurant that had a video game theme. I still haven't received my kickback ($50 giftcard), but I don't really mind. It's an investment to be part of something, not for a financial return.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/why_successful_crowdfunding_re.html