Tag : Advertising

  • Retailers Use Mobile Marketing to Attract More Customers

    Posted Jul 21st, 2011 By in Mobile With | 2 Comments

    As a customer, you’ve probably experienced the benefits of mobile marketing to give you discounts, specials, and freebies from your favorite brand. Right? Well, as a business owner, you can use this same type of hands-on mobile marketing to reach customers more effectively than ever before.

    Even the most popular fast food chains like Subway, Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Wendy’s started marketing to customers with text marketing, iPhone apps, and mobile coupons just a few years ago. Many of these mobile apps will allow a customer to place an order online and pick up their food moments later. Simply brilliant.

    Even large retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy stay connected with customers via text for holiday specials and discounts and have introduced iPhone apps to give customers more options. Instead of visiting the official website, customers can read reviews, order products, and create a gift list directly through their mobile phone.

    As a business owner, you can take your mobile marketing campaign beyond just the standard text message. You can get creative with the following ideas:

    • Mobile Payments: Starbucks recently introduced Starbucks Card Mobile payments available at more than 1000 Safeway locations via the Android App. Customers can load up their Starbucks card on their mobile phone and use their phone to pay for their coffee at their convenience. This means that Starbucks mobile payment is now available on 90% of all smartphones to make it virtually impossible for a customer not to connect with Starbucks through their mobile device. (more…)

  • Mobile Marketing Trend: Texting Is Mainstream

    Posted Jul 13th, 2011 By in Mobile With | 1 Comment

    If you’re a small business owner who already uses text message marketing, then you’re on the right track. But it’s still important to stay up-to-date with the latest mobile marketing trends to ensure that you too can stay ahead of the pack.

    Currently, there are four times as many mobile phones in the world as opposed to PC users. Roughly 20% of houses in the US are mobile only without a landline.

    When you consider that we send 130 billion text messages each month, mobile marketing can be incredibly lucrative for small and large businesses if it is approached correctly. This is precisely why so many businesses have embraced text message marketing wholeheartedly as the most popular form of mobile marketing. Which is why text messaging is now becoming more mainstream than ever before.

    To best grasp the concept, text messaging should be compared to e-mail marketing and can be used in the same way that you would create an e-mail campaign. Of course, instead of encouraging your customers to give you their e-mail address for a newsletter or a coupon, you’ll be asking for a mobile phone number to send the same type of condensed updates to a mobile phone.

    Yet mobile marketing provides an even greater benefit. You don’t have to go to the trouble of creating a fancy e-mail campaign with images and video because you’ll only be using 160 characters of a text message. Even if a customer doesn’t make a sale the first time, 97% of your customers will still read your text message because it’s so short. You can’t beat those odds!

    Businesses have been using text messages to reach out to customers for several years. A Comscore study has confirmed that 25% of all mobile phone users have signed up for anywhere from 1 to 10 text messaging programs on a monthly basis. This means that customers are ready and willing, and you can reach them with your marketing message at any time away from home.

    And the text marketing trend continues. People of all ages are using texts for communication, meaning that businesses can use text message marketing for all generations. More and more customers are searching for mobile coupons as our economy recovers from the recession and programs like Groupon rise in popularity. As a result, a number of retail stores, grocers, and restaurants have launched mobile coupon marketing programs to reach out to more customers.

    Last but not least, the result that can’t be beat in text marketing is the impressive ROI. A text message will normally get seven times the response rate as an e-mail, meaning that the same message sent out to the same group of customers via text versus e-mail will be much more successful to generate even more sales and revenue.

    Guest Author:  Bethany Ramos is an expert in Internet marketing and social media marketing, and she also co-owns her own e-commerce website, The Coffee Bump.

     

  • How to Make Quick Gains from Location Based Mobile Marketing

    Posted Jun 28th, 2011 By in Mobile With | No Comments

     

     

    Under the broad umbrella of mobile marketing is location based marketing. Savvy smartphone users everywhere can pull up local search results on their phones at any time. These same smartphone users rely upon location based apps and social networks to share, interact, meet, and even recommend certain places to their online friends.

    Some top location based networks for mobile users include:

    • Foursquare
    • Gowalla
    • Loopt
    • Yelp

    As a business owner, the first step in the process to maximize this mobile marketing platform is to understand how each location based social network works. Most users will rely on the above apps on their smartphones to check in to certain locations to alert their friends of their whereabouts. The same feature can also be used with Facebook Places.

    In order to get acclimated, download all of the above apps to your smartphone so that you can understand how each is best used.

    The next step in the process is to set clear goals for what you hope to accomplish with the use of location mobile marketing for your business. Perhaps you want to increase local traffic to your retail store, raise awareness about a new shop that has opened up, or even bring back repeat customers to support your business. (more…)

  • 3 Mobile Marketing Musts for the Small Business Owner

    Posted Jun 21st, 2011 By in Mobile With | 1 Comment

    Sure, you can try your hand at mobile marketing as a small business owner, but what’s going to guarantee that you’ll be a success? How do you know that you’re not going to waste thousands of dollars of your advertising budget trying to reach your customers through text or smartphone apps?

    Fortunately, the answer is simple. As a small business owner, you can develop a clear mobile marketing strategy that will ensure that you avoid many common mistakes that competitors in your industry have likely made by now. When mobile marketing is approached correctly, you can reach your customers even more effectively, quickly update them about product news and specials, and boost your sales as a result.

    1. What phones are your customers using? This may be a no-brainer, but you need to find out what type of phones that your customer base uses on a regular basis. If your customers don’t have smartphones, then there’s no use in creating a smartphone app. On the flipside, if your customer base uses smartphones exclusively, then your best bet would be to create a smartphone app to market to your customers or to have a presence on a smartphone social media location-based app, like Yelp or Foursquare.

    Think about the fact that 33% of people in the US are using smartphones, and that number is only expected to increase. It’s likely that your customers are already using a smartphone, but it’s important to find out before planning your marketing strategy. (more…)

  • 6 Ways to Let Google Optimize Your Business

    Posted Aug 25th, 2010 By in Google, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media With | 3 Comments

    It’s easy to take the idea of search engine optimization for granted. Yeah, the marketing landscape is abuzz with all things SEO today, but did you even know what the term “search engine optimization” meant ten years ago? The term has no doubt covered a lot of ground in a short period of time.

    But let’s forget about SEO for a brief moment (gasp!). Trust me, it’ll be OK.

    We spend a lot of time and money trying to make our businesses look good to Google. Maybe it’s time we listen to what Google already likes about our business and do something about that.

    “What the hell does that mean?” Let me explain via a personal experience.

    Shortly after I started blogging a few years ago, I experienced a less-than-optimal situation at my local gym. With one post, I ranted about it. Soon thereafter, I decided to try to be a small part of the solution instead, so I wrote a post filled with my own gym marketing tips. It was a short-lived and somewhat related departure from my normal topics (namely, marketing leadership), so I immediately returned to my regularly scheduled programs.

    Here’s the deal: I’m not a gym marketing expert. I have expertise in certain areas of marketing, and I have frequented lots of gyms over the years, but I’ve never really combined the two. I was simply just giving my unsolicited advice on how gym owners could make things work a little better.

    However, Google doesn’t quite see it this way. In Google’s eyes, I’m an authority on just about any phrase related to gym marketing. I get a minimum of 20 visits a day from people looking specifically for gym marketing tips. It wasn’t my plan, and it wasn’t on purpose. I’m not sure if the post is constructed well or if it’s simply a void niche, but Google has decided what I have to say on this topic matters.

    Which got me thinking ….

    How to Leverage Surprising Inbound Keyword Phrases

    Let’s face it: expertise is in the eye of the beholder. If Google thinks I know what I’m talking about, and comments and emails and other analytics confirm that I know what I’m talking about, then maybe I know what I’m talking about. But how do I take advantage of such an unexpected gift?

    I don’t know the answer to this question, but my pondering has led me to these six options, and I’d love to hear more.

    1. Accept advertising for the specific post. Any niche is going to have its major players. If Google’s looking to you when it comes to certain keywords, then these top dogs probably should, too. If you’re entire site isn’t dedicated to the topic, then run-of-site advertising probably doesn’t make sense to them. But an ad per post probably would. Email them and make them aware of the traffic you’re pulling for specific keyword phrases, and then give them a price. You could do banners or simple text links. This is probably the easiest and most immediate way to leverage this traffic. In my example, I could go find software programs for gyms or even authors who write on the topic of gym marketing.
    2. Build your list. Forget cash, at least directly. Build your email list or subscriber level with a special, targeted call to action within the post. Or set up an autoresponder that expands on the specific topic. Then, hopefully, your delivery of valuable content over time will build trust, which in turn could lead to business.
    3. Create an information product. eBooks, white papers, videos, automated presentations, video, podcast, whatever. If your ideas on the niche have legs, let ‘em loose by creating a more robust information product. You could give it away and leverage the list-building and linking to your site as your form of currency, or you could sell these items at a reasonable price. Just be sure to link the title of the product to the keywords that are most often bringing people to the site. Might as well give them exactly what they’re looking for.
    4. Use affiliate links that make sense. Whether you’re keeping it easy with a simple Amazon.com affiliate program or something a little more robust with a service like Commission Junction, affiliates oftentimes take a lot of the grunt work out of selling. Find some products that fit your niche and just post them. Or you could find creators of products that would make sense for you to peddle and offer to set up an affiliate program for them. Then everybody’s winning.
    5. Manufacture your own hard good. Go ahead and go old school. Make an actual, tangible product, be it a book, a widget or whatever. No need to feel confined to the online space if an offline product is what people are looking for.
    6. Build a company around it. If you’re really feeling ballsy, and if the niche is really ripe for the picking, and if you’re passionate about the niche, then maybe there’s a business waiting for you here. Just be careful: opportunities like this are great at taking your focus off of what you’re really good at it. Make sure you enjoy centering your business around this new niche, or else you’ll be miserable.

    Remember to harness and harvest the gifts that Google gives you every single day. Google will let you know where you really stick out. If you can figure out a way to leverage it, you’re a step ahead.

    I have no idea which of the above ideas I’ll move forward with, if any. If you were me, what would you do? What other ideas do you have for ways to leverage surprising niche keyword traffic?

    Guest Author: Brett Duncan offers common sense for marketing leaders at his blog, MarketingInProgress.com. He spends his days as Senior Director of Global Online Solutions for Mannatech, and his nights chasing a crazy little boy around the house in between brief moments of cheering on the Texas Rangers. He lives in Irving, Texas. Sign up for his free newsletter now if you like practical, thought-provoking marketing tips.

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