Big Boy Mobile Marketing. Change FAST

April 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’ve decided to restart this series because quite frankly, “the big boys are fixin to EAT YOUR LUNCH. Thats right, the big boys are quickly moving into the mobile space, planning mobile campaigns developing strategies that will eat your lunch.

Here is what I mean;

1). Walmart buys Kosmix a company that organizes social media content. Walmart bought the company to “accelerate the development of our social and mobile commerce offerings.” according to Wal-Mart vice chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright.

2) Visa starts delivering real time deals to mobile consumers. Which means Visacompeting with Groupon, Living social and the other deal sites.

3) and lastly (not really) eBay buys Where, to “to strengthen its position in local and mobile commerce and as a multichannel commerce partner for retailers and brands.”

Here is the point, with all of these big companies buying claiming the mobile space, where will your business fit in. The point is if you don’t start thinking about a mobile strategy for your business, the big boys will “EAT YOUR LUNCH

Amplify’d from www.mobilemarketer.com

With the news that Walmart will acquire mobile and social commerce firm Kosmix, the big-box retailer became the latest of several large brands last week demonstrating a healthy commitment to the mobile space by investing heavily in related acquisitions or new business.

EBay’s decision to acquire Where, Groupon’s deal for Whrrl and Visa’s launch of a mobile deals business – as well as the Walmart news – all point to the growing recognition by big brands that mobile is a force to be reckoned with.

“These deals show that a company like eBay or Groupon is looking forward and saying, ‘How can we be a player in the emerging mobile commerce and mobile marketing ecosystem,’” said Neil Strother, Kirkland, WA-based practice director at ABI Research. “They’re not sitting back and letting others be the leaders.”

Driving consumers into stores
In the eBay, Groupon and Walmart deals, in particular, the companies acquire mobile marketing technology rather than develop it in-house.

“There is an acknowledgement that we’re rapidly shifting from a place where smartphones make up  a small population of phones, particularly in North America, to a large population of mobile phones – which makes a lot of these GPS/local or just high-quality interactions via mobile much more attractive,” said Nikki Baird, managing partner at Retail Systems Research, Miami.

But what all of the deals have in common is that big brands are placing bets on mobile in terms of driving in-store visits and to directly spur sales.

Read more at www.mobilemarketer.com
 
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Are You Using Mobile Marketing?

April 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Mobile marketing is expected to explode and that explosion will dramatically change business marketing. But the mobile marketing explosion will require business owners to rethink how they market. Not only will they have to change thir search engine marketing strategies but they should also plan on adding the following;

1) Businesses will need to get their website converted to mobile sites.
2) Businesses should claim all of their online real estate (Twitter, FB, Local etc)
3) Businesses should adapt attraction (inbound) marketing strategies
4) Business owners should start collecting customer info including cell phones

These changes are a good step toward preparing for mobile marketing and every business needs to take these steps.

Amplify’d from www.mobilemarketer.com

Many experts believe that Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo will increase their mobile search market share. And, as mobile search grows exponentially, marketers will need to rethink their search engine marketing (SEM) strategy and consider a different approach to mobile search.

Microsoft has its Bing search platform that includes mobile browsers and applications, and Yahoo also offers a number of mobile search services such as its in-browser search, mobile applications and a search widget for Android devices.

Bing’s mobile search engine emphasizes categorization and depth in search results.  

Mobile search provides a great opportunity for marketers. Many should take advantage of smartphone capabilities such as GPS and voice and image-recognition technology and incorporate those into their multichannel marketing efforts.

“We’ve found that when advertisers run a mobile-specific campaign, they experience, on average, an 11.5 percent increase in mobile click through rates compared to their mobile click through rates on a hybrid campaign that runs both on desktop and mobile.

“Advertisers should be constantly measuring, analyzing, and re-testing, always with their marketing objective in mind,” Mr. Slinger said. “If their goal is calls, they could measure the close rate on Google-supplied calls. 

“Mobile is just another way to reach an individual that you’re trying to have a relationship with,” she said. “You should be looking at the different key data points, what’s causing the most inertia and what types of products are being sold on mobile devices today.”

Read more at www.mobilemarketer.com
 
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Who will win the Mobile Payments Push

April 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There is a war going on. No, not the war in Afghanistan or the war in Iraq and it’s not the war in Libya. This is a war being waged by every major player on the online and mobile business. This war is a war to get you to use your smart phone as a way to pay for goods and services and while it seems to be a war about payments, it’s really a war about fees.

Here is what I mean. I recently read a report that said that 1/3rd of US profits came from the financial services industry and that industry generates most of its profits from fees.

If Google or Apple or Amazon or Paypal can get you to pay for stuff with your cell phone they can charge fees and in many cases fees are pure profit.

So , here is the question. Who do you trust to process your mobile payments.

Amplify’d from mashable.com

Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have their eyes on the NFC mobile payment market, setting the stage for a potentially brutal battle over the future of payments.

NFC, or near-field communication, allows for wireless transfer of data over short distances between two devices. This makes it an ideal technology for financial transactions between a phone and a device at a brick-and-mortar store.
  • Apple: The iPhone maker is reportedly considering adding NFC to the iPhone 5, though rumors that it would be added to the iPad 2 turned out to be false. From what we’ve heard, Apple has been testing NFC payments on its Cupertino campus for months, but is unsure about whether it should be made available in the next edition of the iPhone.
  • AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile: Three of the four major networks teamed up last year to announce Isis, a joint venture between the networks to facilitate the addition of NFC technology into their phones.

And then there’s Amazon. While it doesn’t control a mobile OS or millions of smartphones, it does have the most payments experience and clout of the group. It has also proven adept at developing strong mobile apps. And even more important is its potential ability to convince brick-and-mortar stores to include its own NFC devices in their stores.

Read more at mashable.com
 
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Is Anyone Using Your Mobile App

March 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The buzz in the mobile space is creating a “app” for your users but this latest study show that just having an app doesn’t mean that your customer will actually even use the app.

The lesson is “creating an app” ain’t easy. Just like with your blog, social media, videos and other marketing efforts, your “app” must provide value to your user. Massive value.

Here is the lesson, instead of focusing on creating an “app” focus on understanding your customers and creating compelling value on your major media. Once you create compelling value, then you can use an app as delivery mechanism for that value.

Dedicated to your success

Amplify’d from www.mobilemarketer.com

Fewer than 20 applications are installed, on average, on the Web-enabled devices that mobile consumers use, with only 50 percent of those apps actually used, according to a recent MRM Worldwide study.

The company rolled out a mobile attitudes study that interviewed 1,717 Internet users between the ages of 16-70 years old from Germany and Britain. The study tracked current mobile Internet and application usage patterns.

Apps dilemma
According to the study, applications are no easy game.

The problem is getting on the screen and then getting the user to regularly use their applications.

In addition, developers and marketers have challenges.

There are so many applications in app stores that it is difficult for marketers and developers to know what the user will choose.

User behavior
The study also found that there are four characters with a clear and distinguished profile – The Rookie, The Rationalist, The Everday and The Restless.

The Rookie shows a very low usage intensity, where the mobile Web is being used selectively and is still reduced to a few basic services.

“I think there are three surprising findings from the study,” Mr. Kiefer said. “Even among the most active user types, smartphones are not that dominant – although they have the majority among the Restless user type, there are a large percentage of  people who use Internet-enabled phones to connect with the Internet and its services on the go and that should be recognized.

“We are also going to see an increasing sophistication in the types of mobile offerings and services as consumer demand for constant mobility continues to rise.”  

“Mobile will leave the playground and will be taken more seriously,” he said. “We are going to see more integration with other marketing initiatives.

“Marketers should try to understand your target audience and what they do and expect in the mobile space first, then think what you can do mobile,” Mr. Kiefer said. “For a mobile marketing effort to be successful, knowing the target market is critical.  

Read more at www.mobilemarketer.com
 
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How Inbound Marketing Would Have Gotten A Local Plumber a New Customer

January 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Like many, Christmas Day was all about family. We stayed up until 5am Christmas Eve wrapping gifts and promply at 8am are kids where awake wanting to start the holiday festivities.

We have a great Christmas, we have teenagers and they got gifts like DF Hero and watches and clothing, we ate breakfast and the kids played DJ Hero all day while we prepared dinner.

We had a great dinner, watched movies and eventually I did the dishes, dumping the garbage in the garbage disposal, ran the disposal and washed  the dishes. Everything was done when I discovered that we had a clogged sink and dispite my working hard to unclog, the sink was full of water, clogged, a disaster.

I'm no handyman but I did try the plunger to no avail, the sink was clogged with standing water and garbage and nothing was working. So, like any good geek, I went to Google and entered "how to unclog a sink", here was what Google returned.


The results where somewhat helpful but what strikes we is the following;

  • Not one local plumber ranks in the search results
  • Not one local plumber is running PPC ads on this phrase.

What I was looking for where some really simple tips from a local plumber. My plan was to try the tips and if they didn't work call the plumber that provided me help. If I had found one local plumber with just that, either a site I could read with pictures or ideally a video, that guy would have gotten my business.

Instead I used Craigslist.com, guessed at a plumber, called him only to be told he could come out for 5 days. I called another plumber who didn't answer and finally called back a few days later. Bottomline, my kitchen sink was clogged for three days with water and smelly food. I eventually go the problem fixed, I did it myself.

Moral of the story, a little inbound marketing guide from a local plumber would have gotten a new loyal customer, instead a half competent do it yourself jobs

To discover how Inbound Marketing can help your plumbing or Service Business, get our free special report by completing the form
 

Filed Under: Inbound Marketing, Marketing, Mobile ECommerce, Mobile Phones, Pay Per Click Tagged With: , , ,

Big Boy Mobile Marketing . Ebay Going More Mobile and Coupony

December 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

ebay has had it shares of trouble. One of my good friends John Lawson (@colderice) is an eCommerce and eBay expert and he has a better perspective on eBay then I do. But, when you read eBays’s recent acquisitions an obvious strategy emerges. eBay is moving toward pushing their product to the local marketing using mobile technology.

Not just leveraging an online presence but with an offline strategy as well.

Amplify’d from www.websitemagazine.com

All Eyes Should Be On eBay

The German Groupon?
Based in Berlin, brands4friends is an online social shopping club that sells clothing, shoes and accessories throughout Europe. Launched in 2007, the site has about 3.5 million subscribers to whom it offers daily deals using a group-buying/coupon model similar to that of Groupon. About 20 percent of all European online fashion sales are attributed to increasingly popular daily deals sites, and brands4friends is the largest and most profitable. The site carries about 600 brands including Calvin Klein, Buffalo and Diesel, and the deal should considerably strengthen eBay’s European presence while adding to its $4.5 billion in annual sales from fashion and accessories. The purchase also includes the Japanese version of the brand4friends site and a separately owned British-based shopping club called SecretSales.com. Aside from significantly improving eBay’s global reach and its position in the online retail fashion industry, the move signifies a dramatic entry into the daily deals space that already this month has seen Groupon’s rejection of a $6 billion offer from Google and Amazon’s $175 million investment into Groupon competitor LivingSocial.

It is the largest of three significant acquisitions by eBay in the month of December, and the fourth in the last half of 2010. All of the moves are intended to strengthen eBay’s position in the areas of online social shopping and mobile commerce – two of the most important developments taking place on the Web right now.

Going Mobile
Less than a week before announcing the brands4friends acquisition, eBay purchased the Portland, Oregon-based mobile app developer Critical Path Software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the move was further indication of eBay’s increasing efforts to expand its mobile offerings. Critical Path had previously worked with eBay’s mobile development group to create an iPhone app, eBay classifieds, a ticket-buying app through StubHub, and the comparison shopping app Shopping.com. Two days before the announcement, eBay reported that its 2010 holiday mobile sales were up 165 percent to a record $13 million, and that it expected the annual mobile sales through its marketplace to surpass $1.5 billion this year. Expect a full array of new apps throughout the coming year as mobile may prove to be the ideal way for eBay’s marketplace to compete with Amazon and reclaim its position of prominence.

Where Online Meets Offline
The holiday shopping season had barely begun when eBay put up $75 million to purchase local shopping startup Milo on December 2. Milo provides a service to both buyers and sellers much in the same way eBay’s traditional auctions do, except that the mission behind Milo is to unite online shopping with offline shopping. The site lists in-store product inventory and pricing in real-time for more than 140 retail outlets with over 52,000 brick-and-mortar locations across the U.S. More than half the retail partners are small- and medium-sized businesses, giving local merchants a vehicle to compete with larger retailers and allowing eBay sellers with physical stores to sell their products locally. The purchase was a no-brainer for eBay, according to the announcement, which called the move “a natural extension of what we’ve been doing for 15 years – bringing buyers and sellers together to access the largest selection available anywhere.” Like the previously mentioned acquisitions, the Milo deal will add momentum to the development of mobile and social commerce while also injecting new life into eBay’s auction business. Also very important to note, the online research to offline buying market is currently at $917 million, and Forrester projects it to reach $1.3 trillion and account for 50 percent of all retail sales by 2013.

More Mobile
The so-called eBay shopping spree began back in June when the company purchased a mobile barcode-scanning application for the iPhone. Called RedLaser, the app from startup company Occipital scans bar codes for in-store price comparisons and other product search purposes. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but eBay wasted little time in adding the local shopping results provided by the Milo acquisition to the new app in early December. Now shoppers all over the U.S. using RedLaser can find out which local retailers have a particular item in stock and which locations offer the best prices – through a single scan with their mobile phones. Also recently, eBay has just launched RedLaser for Android devices. Once again, the RedLaser acquisition, in combination with Milo and Critical Path, bolsters eBay’s growing mobile presence as well as its commitment to social shopping and local commerce.

Read more at www.websitemagazine.com
 
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The Big Boy Mobile Marketing Series – Lane Bryant Growing Sales with Mobile Coupons

September 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Mobile Marketing is being used aggressively by the big boys and here is another example. Each example in this series has been an example of a mobile strategy and this one is mobile couponing.

Lane Bryant is offering shoppers location based coupons and promotions that can be redeemed on their mobile phones.

Lane Bryand has partnered with Yowza, a company that creates a free application that can be downloaded to iPhones, Androids and other mobile phones.

Users can search for their Yowza app for Lane Bryant deals based on their current location or zip code. They can then present the coupon at the store when they checkout.

Lane Bryant is featuring instant offers as large as $75.00.

How Can I Use This Mobile Strategy in My Business?

This is another example of how major retailers are aggressively using mobile marketing and mobile coupons. If you want to use the Yowza app, you can signup here. But if you want a true mobile marketing strategy, designed to leverage mobile and your business,

 

Schedule a FREE STRATEGY SESSION by clicking here.


 

 

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile ECommerce, Mobile Phones Tagged With: , ,

The Big Boy Mobile Marketing Series – Mobile will be big this holiday season

September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Another Big Boy post, this post is a validation of how the big boys feel about mobile from a big boy consulting firm Deliotte. In case you don't know Deliotte, they are an international accounting and consulting firm with office around the world and influence in a wide variety of industrys. 

ALong with their accounting work, Deliotte conducts research in industry's of interest and they recently conducted research on the impact of mobile on thise years holiday season and SURPRISE, the research proved

“We expect mobile to play a significant role in this year’s holiday shopping,” said Alison Paul, retail sector lead at Deloitte, Chicago. “We have seen a real uptick in mobile usage and expect this trajectory to continue.”

Here as some of the ways consumers are using their mobile phones;

  • Comparison shopping. Consumers re using mobile phones to check on prices at stores before they go to the store. They are also checking item availability.
  • Mobile commerce and ecommerce are expected to increase this holiday season.

By reaching out to holiday shoppers using digital marketing, social networks and mobile applications, retailers may be able to add to brand awareness and build store traffic and sales this holiday season.

How Can You Use Mobile This Holiday Season in Your Business.

Start planning a mobile marketing strategy now for the holiday. What products can you feature? What offers can you make to bring consumers to your store or website? Is you site mobile ready? Have you built a customer list with mobile phone numbers? 

Develop your mobile marketing strategy today for bigger profits this holiday season.

 

Want  help developing a mobile marketing plan. Schedule a FREE STRATEGY SESSION by clicking here.

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3 Tips for Getting into Mobile Marketing

September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Great tips from MarketingSherpa.com

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Your Customers Are Using Mobile Phones. Are You

September 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Noah Elkin, senior analyst at eMarketer, New York, recently reveal a list of trends that reveal how your customers are using their mobile phones. After reading this list, you will know how and what you need to do to lverage mobile marketing in your business.

eMarketing Mobile TrendsYour customers are buying smart phones and consuming and creating information daily. Customers are creating content, sharing content, reviewing your products and  looking for information. These trends create tremendous opportunities for your business and marketing to your customers.

The biggest trend in mobile usage is social networks like Facebook and Foursquare. But users are checking the weather.surfing the net, looking for directions to stores and restaurants and of course they're shopping.

The most important way that you can leverage mobile usage in your business is to design a plan, a strategy to being the process. Emulate the big guys, include SMS marketing and mobile coupons. Check to see how you site looks on your iPhone and your friends Droid. Start either small or with a full blown plan but the important thing is to start and start NOW.

Want  help developing a mobile marketing plan. Schedule a FREE STRATEGY SESSION by clicking here.

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile ECommerce, Mobile Phones Tagged With: , , , , ,
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