Online Marketing Blog

The afternoon of Day One at SES New York featured a high-level mobile marketing panel  hosted byDana Todd, SVP of Global Marketing at Performics.  Michael Bayle, Senior VP and General Manager at ESPN Mobile, Eric Litman, Chairman & CEO at Medialets and Brendon Kraham, Head of Global Mobile Sales and Product Strategy at Google shared the stage and their extensive knowledge on the current and coming states of mobile marketing.

The following is a collection of mobile marketing tips and takeaways based on today’s presentation, plus liveblog selection from the panel. Note that this is not a verbatim transcript, but the highlights from the panel discussion.

Today’s consumer is connected every where and in every way. Additionally, we are no longer subject to the agenda of businesses when it comes to when and where we consume content, shop or view ads.  As marketers is our job to take advantage of what Geoff Tam-Scott describes as the infinite loop.

The infinite loops refer to the ongoing cycle of touch points marketers with consumer across devices such as smartphone, tablets, TV, PCs, etc.

On the first day of SES Chicago, Tam-Scott and Gagan Kanwar from Marin Software (@MarinSoftware) offer tips for marketers to optimize marketing for mobile and exploit the potential which mobile unlocks.

Social Media & The Effect On Employee Recruitment

Still think that social media doesn’t hold value for business?  I found this recent infographic from Intricate on Visua.ly that says otherwise.  If you’re looking for a job, or looking to grow your team here are some things you should keep in mind:

What Employers Frown Upon

• 78% – Posts and tweets on doing illegal drugs
• 66% – Sexual posts and tweets
• 61% – Profanity in posts and tweets
• 54% – Grammar mistakes
• 47% – Pictures of you drinking

Google’s Rating Guidelines Adds Page Quality to Human Reviews
A new version of Google’s human rater handbook hit the web and Google’s Premiere Engineer Matt Cutts insists these rating will not directly affect search engine results.  Regardless, the rating document does provide a high level view of what Google looks for in a quality website.  Via Search Engine Watch.

As a disclaimer before his session Jason Falls (@jasonfalls) admitted that there were probably 5-10 more qualified individuals in the room for the presentation.   But he was the one chosen for the job!  One of the reasons being that he could distill (similar to his favorite bourbon) mobile down into easy to consume information.

What we learned in the session was what we should be paying attention to, and what is the “star trek” B.S. that we shouldn’t be paying attention to yet.  Jason’s presentation was flush with factoids, his take on mobile, and a no B.S. approach to optimizing mobile for customer experience.

Spit-Balling Some Mobile Stats

Another disclaimer – Jason didn’t include his statistics on his presentation slides but did note that the majority of his information came from Tom Webster, comScore, Nielsen, and mobithinking.com.  Did you know:

Mighty Trends in Mobile Marketing

Every day we see mobile being used more and more for online shopping, local searches, email, social networking. And that is just scratching the surface.  This infographic from CultureLabel.com provides insight into the astounding use of mobile for Internet searches, as well as why mobile friendly marketing should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy.  Highlights include:

• 87% of the world’s population have mobile phones
• 300,000+ apps have been developed in only 3 years
• 74% of people use mobile at work

Local and mobile search is being used more frequently by customers on their smart phones and other devices now more than ever.  As local search becomes more and more prevalent, marketers must ask themselves what can they do to incorporate this marketing strategy into their arsenal.

According to a recent release by ComScore, nearly 3 billion search queries contain local terms each month.  For companies that have a local presence, top visibility on local search is essential or that traffic will simply go to competitors.  Google Maps is one of the most frequently used local search destinations and even comes standard on many devices including the iPhone.  Google Places provides a great opportunity to begin marketing on a local level to your potential customers.

The web is flush with change and innovation. Gone are the days of linear information flow and incremental growth. Content flows in every direction through a variety of platforms, formats and devices.  The mass adoption of the social and mobile web have facilitated a revolution of information access, sharing and publishing at a scale never before experienced.

Access to information for discovery has traditionally been most associated with search. According to comScore, Google handles over 11 billion queries a month. But did you know, Twitter delivers over 350 billion tweets each day? Facebook is now over 800 million users and Google Plus has had a flood of new users as well, with estimates now approaching over 50 million. Social media is ripe for discovery as well as engagement.

Need to learn more about smartphone and mobile SEO best practices? Let’s start with a few statistics:

According to an infographic from Microsoft Tag, 51% of smartphone users are more likely to buy from a retailer with a mobile specific web site, however: only 4.8% of retailers have a mobile web site.

A recent study by Google, “The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Users” reports 77% of smartphone users visit search engine websites followed by social networks. And nine out of ten smartphone searches results in an action (purchasing, visiting a business, etc.). Mobile use is growing faster than all of Google’s internal predictions, with YouTube seeing 200 million mobile playbacks a day, according to Eric Schmidt.

The “Smart Mobile Marketing” session was a panel discussion, moderated by TopRank CEO Lee Odden. To begin the discussion, Lee opened with a question for the room of 80+, “How many people in the room have developed a mobile version of a site?” 3-4 hands slowly raise. And with that, the stage is set: There is a lot of learning to do surrounding mobile marketing.

The session panel consisted of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry, Deborah Hall and Michael J. O’Farrell.

Deborah Hall

Hall founded web2mobile 3 years ago, frustrated with the user experience when trying to access a site via a smart phone. One of the greatest challenges she noticed was the upload speed, or lack thereof, of sites.

If you’ve read predictions about the future of Online Marketing over the past 3-4 years, you’ll undoubtedly find “mobile” mentioned in each one. For example: Mobile ecommerce is predicted to increase 65% annually through 2015.

With smart phone sales to pass personal computers, the smart phone race between AT&T and Verizon iPhones, Droid powered phones and everyone else, the impact of mobile devices on our daily lives has elevated to unprecedented levels.  2011 may finally prove to be a breakout year for mobile marketing and mobile commerce.

Mobile phone usage goes far beyond making calls and texts. There’s been significant increases in mobile social networking activity, the use of mobile phones to send email and other social/geo apps like Foursquare. It’s a compelling task to stay on top of mobile marketing / advertising opportunities, so here are 5 mobile marketing resources that will help keep you up to speed:

With the rise of smart phone use in the US, (Google Android and iPhone are currently reporting roughly 500,000 activations a day ) it’s more important than ever to have your Google places listing up to speed because when people use voice search on  Android phones, the first results they see are from Google local.

Let’s start with a few facts. Did you know that;

• 73% of all online activity is related to local content (Google)
• 82% of local searchers follow up with a phone call or show up on your doorstep (TMP/comScore)
• 66% of Americans use local search to find local businesses (comScore)

As the use of cell phones and smart phones expands, so do the number of options for consumers to discover and interact with brands. From web browsing to email to social networking and even shopping, more people are using their cell phones as portable computers. However, most sites are not optimized for hand-held devices such as cell phones.

There are really two things to consider;  web site design and how customers are going to find the web site through mobile search.