The Beginning

In the US, the beginning of the mobile marketing before the iphone, android and the whole host of newer smart phones, companies were attempting mobile marketing through SMS campaigns. You’d often see “text ‘XYZ’ to 12345 for …”. This was alright and is usable by a larger audience because it can be used by every cell phone with SMS capabilities. The problem is that there is the potential for a carrier cost for the consumers wishing to participate and that the interaction is singular. It’s not that companies are necessarily trying to charge consumers, but it’s that the consumer’s carrier charges for SMS service at a “message-at-a-time” rate.

QR Codes

With the introduction of smart phones, more companies are able to integrate campaigns with a more sophisticated interaction level. Outside of the US, they’ve embraced this kind of user connection to brands much more rapidly. Audi Japan created a campaign using QR codes, while others like Pepsi have used them in print ads, outdoor boards, banners, and other clever media. The potential with this kind of interactions are very high. Take Japan’s Tada Gets’ use of QR codes throughout their magazine.

Location Based

Consumer brands teaming up with other forward thinking companies can benefit consumers and the brands symbiotically. Take Gowalla for example. The idea of allowing consumers to publicly “check in” and broadcast through other social media used by the consumer that they’re interacting with a brand is monumental and when paired with incentives such as custom “stickers”, discounts and other offerings by brands rewarding consumers from interacting with those brands. Also by utilizing the opportunity with services such as these, companies can easily drive business to a specific destination during specific periods at a fairly low cost with a higher adoption rate with consumers.

Barcodes

Also along those same lines as Gowalla, a newer company (at the time of this writing) called Sticky Bits has emerged and allows consumers and brands to attach and assign content to barcodes – any barcode. To take this idea into practice, a company could include a special offer and/or special product related infotainment, offers and bonus “content” to the packages of their products with encouragement for consumers to “scan” their products for these. Besides the obvious integration opportunity for games, like those “under the cap” games you often see with beverages, you can easily create other similar experiences with any brand.

Future Opportunities

Certainly there are far more opportunities and inspiring ideas that can be had about integrating mobile marketing into brand campaigns to provide engaging, relevant experiences to consumers that haven’t been documented and/or have yet to be discovered.

Useful if you plan on having multiple users on the blog. You can customize access by user role.

http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/

TinyMCE Advanced

This adds Microsoft Word type of editing tools to write your posts. You can customize what buttons you have on there this plugin is golden.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

Register Plus
This one is strictly for customizing the login page. Nothing more than aesthetics.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus/

Page Links To

This allows you to create pages that link directly to another site or page directly. Very useful.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-links-to/

Avatars

Makes it easy to manage custom avatars on your site. If you plan on using avatars on your site for comments or in other areas, definately check this out.

http://www.sterling-adventures.co.uk/blog/2008/03/01/avatars-plugin/

Contact Form (cforms)

This plugin is very useful. Makes it really easy and simple to manage all form needs for your site whether you have one or twenty.

http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Flash Video Player
If you plan on having video on your site or posts, check this plugin out. You can download free skins to customize the look and alter what shows on the flash player.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flash-video-player/

Twitter Tools

Helps you integrate twitter into your site to display your tweets if you wish, or you can choose only to have it post to your twitter account when you post new posts. You can tell it on a post-by-post basis whether you want it to publish a tweet for it. Super handy.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Gallery Plus or Nextgen Gallery

Image gallery plugins each have their own usefulness. You might like Nextgen Gallery more if you want to display different sets or “galleries”.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gallery-plus/
or
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

WP e-Commerce

If you’re looking for e-commerce to sell things, this plugin is pretty great. It allows for easy management of products, easy shipping calculations, and hooks up natively with paypal or google cart. With a “gold” plugin license (for a small fee), you can connect to other payment gateways, and you can purchase other add-ons.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/

In a time when credit card machines are available to mom-and-pop shops, and services like Paypal and eBay have made everyone an entrepreneur with access to customers world wide through the web and through personal websites with the means to collect, it’s no wonder that we’re at that point where our clients and their customers are becoming more and more savvy in this digital jungle.

One of the things our interactive team prides themselves on is having the ability to have foresight to see and suggest trends that are upcoming and can have a positive impact for our clients while offering value and meaningfulness to the end user. We look at trends in things like social media, entertainment, start-up companies and everything in between. We spot opportunities to enhance our client’s brands and the ways in which they reach out to consumers everywhere we look.

One tactic that many of us use to determine which services work well for our client’s needs and the needs of their customers is to try new services, technologies and integrations on our own. It’s not until you’ve done for yourself before you can suggest to others. Even if at first you don’t see how integrating something as non-related as Twitter into your business, give it a try and see how, if any, you could utilize it to your advantage.

Another thing to consider is that not everything works for everyone in the same way, or at all. In some cases, you may be used to integrating a certain service on client sites because they add value, and at some point find an instance where it doesn’t necessarily work out for a project. Some things cannot successfully be integrated, and therefore shouldn’t be forced.

We’ve seen changes made to projects because of personal preferences and not what was right for the project or audience. Seeing beyond the outward appearance of a project and starting at the core is the first step to giving good feedback. Often times you’ll see feedback revolve around personal taste and opinions of one individual rather than a target audience. Just because you might not like a particular look doesn’t mean that your consumers, users, or clients agree. Refer back to market research when deciding whether or not to keep something or whether it should change. Training yourself to objectively critique a project takes time, but in the end is extremely beneficial for your project’s audience, and for self development.

Though you can format your website specially for mobile browsers, doesn’t mean that’s all you should consider putting in the mobile version of your site.

There are many types of Internet capable devices with smaller screens, joysticks, track balls, d-pads and touch screen. It’s best to create a stylesheet that tries to take all of this into account or better yet, create a few specialized stylesheets and experiences for specific devices.

On a recent trip to London I’ve noticed many different devices that people are using to access the Internet. Most of these are cell phones sporting all kinds of screen sizes and Internet connection capabilities.

Though nearly every place in London has Wifi and many US places offer it as well, doesn’t mean that everyone uses it. With that in mind, remember to optimize your mobile sites as much as possible for quick loading and small load sizes. If you’re using images, remember to use sprites when possible to reduce load time and http requests.

For a few good mobile site samples, check out the mobile versions of: Volks Wagon, BrightKite and LinkedIn

Check out this fantastic video from Magnus Engsfors called Suddenly.

I’ve recently received several direct messages through LinkedIn from recruiters who are open LIONs that have gotten in the house some how. Luckily, they have to get my permission before entering my “house”, so I can just as easily decline their self-invitation to try to join my network. Obviously its nice to know recruiters at the right time, but letting them in on my network degrades the quality of my network.

For everyone, LinkedIn is used differently. Some use it as a “look who I know” tool, others use it as a potential new business tool, and I use it as a “my network=my resources” tool. I only add people to my network that I talk to on a regular or semi-regular basis. My network is also only comprised of people whom I’d personally recommend for a project or job, and people who are in different categories in my field and similar fields. No one way is right, or wrong necessarily, but just about personal choice. Because my network is, in my opinion, of great quality, I’m very wary of who I add to my network and I’m very conscious of who I let into my network because once you’re in my network, you can see who’s in mine. Maybe I’m just too nice, but I try to protect my network and keep it more on the private side.

Most likely, the way these recruiters have found me is by getting accepted into one network which I’m in and they have scoured the network from there contacting everyone, including me, to ask to be let into my network. The only time I accept is if it’s someone I already know and that we’re connecting on LinkedIn for the first time. Sorry LIONs, no free steaks here.

One item they wanted us to help them with was a landing page which an e-blast campaign would drive subscribers to. First of all, they were unclear about what a landing page was and how an effective landing page should work. The bigger problem was not that they didn’t have a landing page yet, but was that they were sending out an e-blast campaign that had only one response; to remove that user from the list.

This client’s e-blast campaign consisted of a very long email, with no graphics, no branding and which looked like a tedious task just to read and sent it to a list of potential customers whom they borrowed from past employers. Everything about this previous sentence is wrong. Let’s start one by one.

1. Lists should be qualified, interested potential customers, not unsuspecting recipients. The best kind of subscriber is one who opts in themselves. It’s understandable that when you’re a start up company in your first few months of operation that you don’t have a list yet and that people don’t know who you are yet. The last thing you want to do is send SPAM in any one’s direction, especially a potential customer. If you don’t have a list yet, try going to an industry trade-show where potential customers go to look for your services. An easy way to get a mailing list is to have a giveaway that requires them to put their business card or contact information into a drawing to win a fun prize. By entering in that drawing, they understand that you’ll be adding them to your mailing list. Secondly, add a signup form on your website for users to request to be added themselves which lets you know that they are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.
2. Long email type of e-blasts won’t win any readers. You have to think about this in two different ways. For one, step inside the shoes of the recipient. If you received an email trying to sell you something and at first glance, thought, “Boy, this will take a while to read”, then you, just as they, would either pass it up for later (never) or trash it. Secondly, think about this from a sales perspective. You’re better off to say less, but be concise than say everything and be broad. Shorten your copy and stick to the key points of the message that you’re trying to convey and end it with a call to action, whether it be to order your product, or to go to your website for them to get more information, order or sign up for your product or service, or to just correspond with you. Remember, less is more.
3. No visual aides and no branding aren’t very helpful. If you had signed up for an newsletter for a company, you’d most easily identify with that company by their logo and branding that you would have already seen at some point. When you receive a generic looking email, you’re more likely to pass it by or move it directly into the trash. Adding your logo and a few touches of brand design to your e-blast campaign will help strengthen your brand and help recipients easily identify it as yours. A clean, elegant design with the right amount of copy can go along way and can even be inviting to read. Depending on the audience, it can even be very enhancing to the product or service.
4. Never send from Outlook or any desktop email client. Something that wasn’t mentioned, was that they sent this out from their desktop email program such as Microsoft Outlook and didn’t use a professional e-blast sending service to deliver the content. For one, they had to hand enter the email addresses, had a 500 recipient limit with their particular desktop application, and had to Blind Carbon Copy those recipients. Needless to say, if they used a service, they could have set up a campaign list and imported those addresses and began to manage them appropriately. Additionally, any images that they would have included come across as attachments and are even more likely to annoy the recipient and get caught in the spam filter than you’d realize.

What about messaging?

The correct way to think about messaging for an e-blast is short and concise, but based on the use of the e-blast and the target audience and the expected content. Someone who signs up for a Target newsletter is expecting something different from someone who signs up for the XBOX newsletter. Two different audiences, two different e-blast objectives.

Start by defining the objective of the e-blast, its purpose and the content to go in it. Once you determine the audience and objective, write your e-blast tailored to those. Keep it short and informative and have a strong call to action in there to get readers to respond to it. Write in terminology that the recipient will understand. Don’t use lot or buzzwords to try to dazzle your user, no matter how intelligent they are or have privy they already are to those words. Keep the language on an easy to understand level. Recipients will see through your e-blast if all you do is use buzzwords. Using too many buzzwords also brings about questions of credibility. Just because you can use buzzwords doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand them.

If your call to action in the e-blast campaign is to drive traffic to your website to sign up for something, think again. Instead you should drive them to a landing page or mini site (whichever is appropriate) to get them to view the information you want them to view and/or sign up. If you’re trying to get your users to sign up for auto insurance, your e-blast should have been informative about your services offered and why they should choose you. When they click through to get to your landing page, you can provide more details about your offerings, but most importantly, give them the form that you’re requesting them to fill out to get an official quote. The fewer links that take the user away from that page and the less distractions, the better. Focusing your user on the intended content will prove to drive your conversion rate. The last thing you want to do is drive your user to a page with an overwhelming amount of information or link that take them elsewhere and way from the goal you have of getting them to sign up or purchase your product.

The last thing to remember about having a successful e-blast campaign is to tread lightly on the usage of the email list. Unless the user asked for it, they don’t want to receive an email from you every day trying to sell them something. Many companies send out something just once a month and/or on special occasions only. If you send too many, the potential clients will start to avoid your email because they’ll see them as tedious tasks that they are being asked to fit into their already busy schedule, or worse yet, they’ll immediately request to be removed from the mailing list. If at any point they do request to be removed from the mailing list, you should do it. Continuing to send mailings to someone who has asked not to is a great way to anger them. When you’re brand is on the line, the last thing you want to do is give yourself a bad reputation and change and positive pre-conceived notions about your brand to something sour.

One easy way to generate traffic to your website for free is simply to have a company blog. Surprisingly enough, if you have a company blog and set it up as a sub domain (such as: blog.designcarter.com) you’d be surprised how many people will be willing to remove the blog from the URL and check out your site. Don’t use a blog site such as blogger because you will miss some of the benefits of hosting and running your own blog. Additionally, if you provide relevant blog topics, free advice, or free insight, people you will notice that those certain blog entries will generate lots of traffic, and if you were to include a link to your website as a reference for getting professional help with that piece of information, you’ll notice that you generate a lot of traffic just from that.

Well, if it’s that easy to generate more traffic to my company website for free, why aren’t others that I know doing it? Well, probably because they either don’t know, or they don’t take the time to write blog entries. There are plenty of blogs out there. How do I know if yours will generate traffic? Well, if you write relevant topics that give totally free advice, guidance, and or free insight without trying to sell yourself, you’ll find that you could hit that sweet spot of information that everyone’s looking for, but nobody’s finding. If there are industry related topics or words that you chat about with others in your industry, but those words are changed when talking to potential customers, why not use those industry words in your post?

Keep in mind when writing blog entries, try to write them as often as possible, at least once a month, but you should shoot for at least once a week. Once your blog has triggered the “quicker update” schedule that many blog readers and search engines pick up on, you’ll be more likely to work your way up to the top of the search engine list for organic searches. Because your blog is being updated frequently, search engines will start responding quicker to your posts as it will treat them like news articles. Ever wonder why something that just happened and is newsworthy is already on the web and close to the top of the page for news articles? Well, search engines have already picked up on many of the relevant and popular news sites and know to “fetch” the new information as soon as it posts. If you can get your blog posts often enough, you can trigger your blog to get more notice by search engines.

As more and more people click on the link to your blog from the search engines, and they find your information relevant, search engines will pick up on that and will start to place a heavier weight on your blog because it’s beginning to show that when someone searches for certain search terms, that your site has relevant information related to those search terms.

Also remember, it take a little while for search engines to begin to pick up the information in your blog and learn to start visiting it more often. Additional ways that you can help jump start the search engines to take notice in your blog is to sign up for a free service such as Feedburner or if you use fantastic blogging software such as Wordpress, they have those features built in to ping the search engines and other places when you’ve made a post. Additional things you may not have thought about, or are aware of would be the use of social networks to promote your blog. With my blogging software, I use a plugin that works with Twitter’s API to create a tweet (it’s a twitter thing, similar to a post) that sends my followers a message that I’ve posted a new blog entry and gives the title. Integrating social networks in ways such as this can show immediate results, and all those things together can all work towards getting your blog more notice. Who knows, maybe one day your blog could be the talk of the industry and you could be generating lots and lots of traffic.

Need help setting up a company blog to generate traffic to your blog and your website? Not sure where to start or how to do it? Get in touch with us to set up your own blog.