mobile marketing Archives - Page 2 of 10

Inbound Mobile Marketing

If you’re looking for more customers and more sales for your business, we’re assuming you know the #1 thing that separates a successful business from the competition, right? If you don’t, let us point it out to you. It’s simple. All it comes down to is presence. Presence, simply put, is the number of people you can reach at any given moment. In this day and age, with all of the latest trends and technologies, it is becoming harder and harder to keep growing your business without using expensive mass marketing, or outbound marketing methods. We understand that average business owners like yourself are having trouble getting your foot in the door, especially when competing with larger corporations. After all, it takes money to make money right? Well, we come to you today with a solution. A solution that will solve all of these problems that we have just discussed. This solution is inbound mobile marketing, and we’re going to show exactly how it can help you level the playing field and get your company’s foot in the door!

What you need is a direct line to your customers, a way to contact them anytime day or night. So how do you do this? Phone calls? Nope. Caller ID has done away with that. Emails? No way. People are tired of receiving spammy emails and a majority of people have spam filters set up on their email accounts. How about text messaging? Yep! Text message marketing, or SMS marketing, is part of mobile marketing, which is the fastest growing method of connecting with your leads, clients, and audience. Some may think the internet is the #1 way to communicate with your audience, when in fact, it’s not. But in actuality, mobile devices outnumber desktop computers 4 to 1! Think about it. There are 1.8 billion people surfing the internet from a desktop computer right now, but what about the people who aren’t near a computer right now? How are they accessing the internet? That’s right, 5.2 billion people have their mobile phones with them RIGHT NOW! People obviously don’t answer their emails right away, but text messages? According to multiple studies, 95-98% of people answer their text messages within 3 minutes of them arriving. So, taking into account a staggering fact like that, it is almost GUARANTEED that your message will at get read.

Once you’ve decided to launch a mobile marketing campaign, you will be able to target your SMS messages so they are specifically tailored to each individual who will receive them. With response rates ranging from 10-70 for every 100 messages sent, you can be assured that your business will not only be reaching a wider range of people than if you were using outbound methods, but your business will also assuredly grow.

So let’s take a look at how this works. The first thing you’ll want to do is build a database of contacts based on opt-ins. You can get people to opt-in to your database using incentives such as “Text MOBILE to 55555 to get 10% off your next purchase at Anchor Mobile!” You will be able to get your own short code and keyword once you decide on a service provider. Once you have people opted-in to your database, you can now text them discounts, deals, and announcements pertaining to your business. By this point, you now have a channel to communicate directly with your audience regardless of what time of day it is and where they are located. It’s like having a virtual line of people lined up outside of your establishment, waiting for you to text them the next deal so they can come in.

It’s also important to note the differentiation in costs. Outbound marketing and mass marketing methods are expensive, costly, time consuming, and it takes awhile for the effects to be felt, if they will be felt at all. With inbound mobile marketing, the effects are felt almost instantaneously. SMS campaigns will not only promote and establish a presence among your customers, but it will also help you build customer loyalty through long-lasting customer-business relationships. The best part is the longer you run an inbound mobile marketing campaign, the more efficiently it works. You presence, customer loayalty, and overall effectiveness of your campaign will get stronger over time.

Since inbound mobile marketing is gradually becoming a standard practice for all businesses, both large and small, it is imperative that you launch a campaign SOON before you get lost in all of the other companies rushing to do the same. If you start now, you can get ahead, and your campaign will be that much more effective. The more effective your campaign is, the more you reap in benefits later on. That means more presence, more loyal customers, and more profit!!!

Helfrich SMS Patent Licensing Lawsuit FAILS – NY TIMES & CBS Win!

August 15, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile marketing, SMS /by Thomas Kirgin

Today an Illinois Federal Judge tossed 5 law suits alleging that brands including NY Times and CBS had infringed the Helferich Patent Licensing patents by sending text message alerts (SMS) to mobile phones including a URL, ruling that the patents are EXHAUSTED when the manufacturer sells a phone to the consumer.

US District Judge John W. Darrah rejected the patent troll’s position that the defense of patent exhaustion did not apply to infringement allegations since it only licensed the handset portion of it’s patented inventions to mobile phone manufacturers and not the “content” claims. The defendants’ SMS infringed those content claims the troll contended.

“Once the handset manufacturers sell the handsets which embody HPL’s patents, HPL’s patents are exhausted as to all third parties, including defendants,” Judge Darrah said in granting a joint motion for summary judgment filed by the New York Times, CBS, G4 Media LLC, NBC’s Bravo Media LLC unit and JC Penny.

Allowing the troll to “carve out individual claims from a single patent” and recover financial gain from downstream third parties that send SMS content to a licensed handset device, he said, “would frustrate the purposes of the doctrine, including an efficient method of determining that a patent had been exhausted.”

“To the contrary, the confusion that would be created by HPL’s model would produce uncertainty regarding the rights of third parties and end users and potentially deter further innovation,” Judge Darrah warned.

This case is part of a lawsuit blitz in which the troll has accused many media companies and other brands of patent infringement causing much angst in the mobile marketing industry. Many companies just paid for licensing rather than fight. Other mobile marketing software companies partnered with the patent troll to use fear in generating new business.

According to HPL, it has sold licenses for its technology to the entire cellular handset industry, constructing the agreements in such a way that it could recover multiple royalties on the same patents from a single sale or use.

Because of the distinction between its handset and content claims, HPL argued, patent exhaustion did not apply under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics, which held that when a patented invention is sold, all of the patent’s claims are exhausted, regardless of any narrowly tailored licensing agreements.

But Judge Darrah said HPL could not “avoid patent exhaustion by attempting to shield some of the claims within the patents-in-suit from being covered by licensing agreements.”

“Once HPL licensed its patent portfolio to, for example, Motorola, downstream customers and third-party users of Motorola devices employing HPL’s patents cannot be found to be infringing,” he included in his order.

The judge also made mention that there would be little value to mobile phone makers to purchase licenses to receive content from a third party “if the content provider, like the defendants, could not send the message to the licensed handset device without infringing the patents.”

Source: http://www.law360.com/articles/464984/ny-times-cbs-escape-mobile-alert-patent-suits

5 Best Practices for Mobile Marketing

July 25, 2013/0 Comments/in best practices, mobile marketing, sms marketing /by Brett Gordon

Due to the aggressive growth of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in the last 5 or so years, mobile marketing has become an increasingly profitable and lucrative medium. The best part about this is that mobile marketing shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. Mobile use will only increase significantly in the coming years and has, according to a lot of experts across several industries, become a dependency for a lot of people. What better medium to market to your audience than through a channel that they are actuallydependent on? Of course, integrating mobile marketing into your company’s overall marketing strategy requires thought and a certain amount of knowledge of the industry. So, to help you get started on the integration process, we’ll give you the 5 best practices for mobile marketing that you should be aware of.

Optimize the User Experience

One of the most important, if not THE most important aspect of mobile marketing, is the user experience, or UX. The mobile experience you provide your audience should be able to cater to users with a variety of different interests, skill levels, and habits. To do this, you want to provide something that is simple and easily understood, yet you don’t want to cross the line to where your experience is seen as archaic or outdated. Mobile marketing is entirely dependent on building relationships with your subscribers, so you need to make sure you are meeting and exceeding their expectations. Creating an experience that your end users can engage with anywhere and at anytime is critical to the success of a mobile marketing strategy.

Take Advantage of Features Unique to Mobile

Mobile devices offer unique features that are not available in other web-based marketing. Mobile is unqiue unto itself in that it offers locality, ease of access, and user-specificity. You cannot get these features on any other device, so take advantage of them and leverage them in your favor! Simple things like using larger font sizes, smaller photos, and arranging your text into single columns benefit end users more than you realize, so don’t underestimate their importance.

Simplify, Simplify, Simplify

You can go ahead and get super creative and imaginative with your mobile design, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into success. Proven successful mobile marketing campaigns are usually simple and concise. Your end users have extremely short attention spans, so if your mobile campaign isn’t grabbing their attention from the start, you are already fighting an uphill battle. Get the important information out there and make your point quickly before your users get tired of scrolling and leave.

Know Your End Users

The internet has done wonders as far as connecting people from all over the world, but according to industry giants, most mobile searches are coming from local sources. Google reports that 40% of all mobile searches are local while Microsoft reports a 53% local search rate. This shows that mobile users are using their devices to fnd out where things are around them in real-time. So when you’re developing your mobile strategy, keep in mind that a majority of your users are searching locally while on the go. You’ll want to know who’s using which devices, how often are they using them, and where are they searching from. You’ll also want to know their interests along with their habits. Once you’ve compiled all this information, you should know your end users well enough to develop a mobile campaign that targets them.

Always Be There, And Be There in Real-Time

Simply put, live in the moment. Mobile devices operate in real-time, so you should too. The most crucial parts of any mobile marketing campaign is to keep it timely, develop, strengthen, and maintain relationships, drive increased relevant traffic to your site, and ensure that all mobile efforts are being implemented in the most efficient way possible. If you’re not there, or available when end users are looking for you, or they can’t find you, then you have completely defeated the purpose of your entire mobile marketing campaign. Don’t be one of these companies. Be there when your users need you and it will pay off big in the end for you and your company.

Mobile Marketing’s Future | Smartphones and Augmented Reality

July 8, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile marketing, smartphones, sms marketing /by Brett Gordon

It seems like every year marketers and mobile marketers alike predict that THIS is going to be the year mobile marketing explodes. Yet, it seems like we are in a back in forth tussle between the future actually being upon us today, or are we still waiting on specific technological advancements to be made? Factually speaking, mobile has become one of the most innovative devices ever introduced to mankind due to its numerous capabilities and the ability to allow users to converse and share information while on the go at any time! With over 50% of mobile users now owning a smartphone, and that number constantly growing, there has never been a better time to jump on the mobile marketing bandwagon and take advantage of this expansive frontier! Simply put, the market for applications and further technological advancements has never been more ripe!

Mobile Marketing Today

Since smartphones have essentially embedded themselves into society, people are starting to expect a deeper, more personal experience from their phones. At this point, a lot of people have become completely dependent on their smartphones as their primary source of telecommunication, email, and social media. Secondarily, they’ve become dependent on their phones for entertainment and generally consuming any type of content. This means app developers and operations system developers are going to be in high demand and will be expected to evolve smartphones so they will continually be a pivotal part of people’s lives.

Facilitating the Experience

FourSquare and Yelp have already taken advantage of smartphones’ GPS features by releasing updates to their apps which allow users to be notified whenever friends, family members, or specific people have checked into a nearby location, or the same location. Not only is this another concept that is reducing the need for direct communication between users to find each others whereabouts, but it can be incredibly useful as large events, for going out and coordinating with friends, or even avoiding troublesome ex-boyfriends or girlfriends.

These types of mobile apps can also be used to uniquely market events or special experiences. Users love nothing more than being informed of secret concerts or performances designed for specific app users, or being notified of a special discount on some drinks at a bar two blocks over. This allows them to not only feel special and valued by the marketer, but also allows them to focus their energy on their own social lives and friends instead of spending energy finding them and the experience itself.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality, or AR, has been, and continues to be perceived as the general direction mobile marketing is heading in. With instant reviews already available online for restaurants, hotel locations, online prices for products, and much more, the potential for local businesses and large corporations alike is huge! There is also the concept of bringing entertainment and gaming into the home using augmented reality.

It is widely agreed that augmented reality’s potential is virtually unlimited, however, it is still being developed and a vast majority of its potential has yet to be taken advantage of. HowStuffWorks, who provides the video below, predicts that by 2020, 50 million devices will be connected to the internet, which means online sensors will be able to influence how people view reality relative to their past behaviors and preferences online as well as in real life.

For a better perspective on what augmented reality is and what it will mean to us in the future, check out this video by HowStuffWorks.

Smartphones and AR Moving Into the Future

Mobile phones have already made it much easier to find product and service prices along with getting discounts and coupons. As long as you have WiFi access or cell phone service, you can essentially do anything on your smartphone that you can do on your desktop computer at home. Several mobile marketing apps have taken advantage of mobile to create services based on end users’ locations, search, and available connected profiles. Yet there are so many possiblities that have yet to be leveraged.

The possibilities are endless. Imagine if a restaurant sent a lucrative coupon to someone everytime they left a negative review or posted a negative tweet or status about their restaurant? Imagine if a user’s smartphone GPS shows that they’re in the general area, and a nearby business instantly offers a deal specifically tailored for that particular end user? Well, it’s time to stop imagining, because all the things we used to think were in the distant future are now in the near future, or are happening RIGHT NOW!

The entire livelihood of mobile marketing rests on its ability to react and cater to the customer. Th days of customers triggering requestes for information themselves is over. GPS and inter-connected social media APIs will eventually make reactions to customers and end users second nature.

Interaction With the Real World

We’ve discussed augmented reality, mobile marketing, and how they can react to users and their behaviors, but new and developing mobile technology will soon make it possible for users to:

Use Shazam to listen to an infomercial and then instantly buy the marketed product.
Order photos or images from Shutterfly directly from someone’s smartphone photo album.
Use apps or Bluetooth to pay for purchases at a bricks and mortar store.
Scan furniture’s barcode to see tutorial videos on how to assemble it.

Of course, some of these instances are already possible, but developers are still in the process of refining these practices so they become easier and more practical for consumers. Mobile marketing has come leaps and bounds since the introduction of the first iPhone in 2007, but it is still an ever changing industry with many newer, better, and more efficient technological advancements on the way. Since it is predicted that there will be over 50 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020, smartphones, tablets, and other devices will become more and more important in the coming years in creating better experiences for the user, influencing purchase decisions, and just making life easier for everyone. Don’t be one of the companies who just ignore this trend, because if you do, in 5 years your company won’t even exist.

Mobile Trends | How Mobile Phones Have Taken Over

July 1, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile marketing, mobile trends, sms marketing /by Brett Gordon

If you haven’t noticed by now, mobile phones and mobile marketing is EVERYWHERE! Regardless of what direction you are looking at it from, mobile is taking over everything around us, and it’s not just affecting users. It’s also affecting companies and the overall way we do business, marketing, and go about our everyday lives. It’s essentially a phenomenon that is not going away, it is only growing and becoming larger as we speak. Here, we want to put in better perspective the mobile trends around us and their sheer gravity and enormity, so buckle up.

To start off, 5 of every 6 phones are connected to the internet, so that means mobile apps and mobile websites are not only already popular, but they are still GROWING in popularity and use! There are 5.3 BILLION subscribers around the world, which is 77% of the entire world’s population! So just by getting on mobile, you are already exposing yourself to all those people! Of the 1.4 BILLION handsets shipped, 21.8% of them were smartphones. That is 302 million smartphones. Additionally, 82% of all company executives currently own smartphones, and this number is only going to grow in the coming years.

When mobile phones first came to the forefront of public consciousness, Nokia was the industry leader in mobile phones. However, now Android and Apple are the leaders in the market, and they are taking the lead on smartphones here and into the future. To put in perspective how big the smartphone market is right now, let’s give some physical representations. 302 million smartphones are the same weight as 460 blue whales. Stack them and they would be the height of 7,372 Empire State Buildings, and if you were to lay them out, they’d cover 380 football fields. That’s a ton of smartphones.

Mobile search took off in 2011 when searches on mobile devices QUADRUPLED. On top of this, 30% of all restaurant searches are mobile, 17% of all automotive searches are mobile, 15% of all finance and insurance searches are mobile, and 16% of all consumer electronic searches are mobile. Those numbers alone are impressive, but they are only going to increase in the coming years as mobile devices and mobile search become easier, quicker, and more effective.

72% of the United States workforce has gone mobile, and 94% of that 72% have smartphones. More importantly, 75% of major decision makers claim deploying mobile apps increases productivity and 65% of major decision makers claim mobile apps increase decision making speed.

The mobile web is here NOW! 85% of new handsets can access the web and 1 in every 5 mobile subscribers have fast internet access. Of course, this is just the state of mobile right now. Every trend and projection sees the mobile and mobile marketing industry growing, and growing exponentially in the coming years. The mobile revolution is happening RIGHT NOW!

Are you ready?

Why Mobile? Take A Look…

June 27, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile, mobile marketing, text messaging, why mobile /by Kiefer Kness

Why would ANYONE pursue a mobile marketing strategy? Well, let’s take a look…

A couple of good old friends that just got back from college and sharing stories of their promiscuous youth.

Baby’s first selfie.

If only he had a better resolution tablet he could see it in real HD.

Girls and their sleepovers

They really know how to do a 21st birthday party

Art brings out such vivid emotions.

Everyone bow their head for prayer.

Summer Vacation!

This pizza looks great! No, no, no you just take pictures.

I remember my days in college.

I remember my state ID picture

Watching kids is so much easier than it used to be.

Lets see how uncomfortable we can make someone.

5 SMS Marketing Tips for Your SMS Marketing Strategy

June 12, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile marketing, sms marketing, sms marketing tips /by Brett Gordon

SMS marketing has become one of the more popular ways to market on mobile due to the fact that virtually every phone has SMS capabilities, even if it’s not a smartphone. SMS is also a great way to reach customers and potential customers in real time, directly to their hands. If you are trying to market your company effectively without breaking the bank, then SMS marketing is the way to go. Not only is it cheap and efficient, but it reaches people in real time, directly to their hands, wherever they are! No other marketing medium allows marketers to do this. Running an SMS marketing campaign is fairly easy, but some companies still make elementary mistakes. To prevent this and further assist you on your own SMS marketing campaign, we have put together a list of 5 SMS marketing tips that you can use for your own SMS marketing strategy.

Offer Value

People opt into your SMS program for a reason; they are expecting to get deals and discounts from you or they want to learn more about your company and what you do. Since text messages are more intrusive than most marketing methods, you need to offer value and a very good reason for people to subscribe to your database. This should include something along the lines of discounts, coupons, special treats for customer feedback, or create interaction with your brand through contests with rewards as prizes.

Integrate With Your Other Marketing Initiatives

An SMS campaign will be effective unto itself, but can be made even more effective once you tie it into all of your other marketing initiatives. You can link it up to all of your social media like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., or you can mention your website in your texts. Anything that gets people moving through your doors or onto your website. When you tie up multiple marketing initiatives, your effect, influence, and results tend to multiply.

Remind Your Subscribers Who You Are

People have short memories. This is why you want to constantly remind people who you are by mentioning your company’s name, your product names, and even your contact information, phone number, or website. All of this information will not only build your brand and make you more recognizable to your subscribers, but will make it even easier for people to find you and get in touch with you. As a result of this, leads grow, sales grow, and everyone wins.

Include a Call-to-Action in EVERY Text

You want your texts to be personable and informative, but you don’t want to forget to include a call-to-action (CTA) in EVERY single one of your texts. Your subscribers have already indicated that they are interested in you and what you do by opting into your SMS program, so capitalize on this by getting your subscribers to take action and start doing business with you! A CTA can be asking them to simply respond to your text in exchange for a reward or prize, or it can be something along the lines of presenting a text at the store to receive a discount. Always make sure that your CTAs are easy to understand and your subscribers know exactly what to do to take action. CTAs are where you convert your leads (your subscribers) into sales (paying customers).

Be Personal

People have been inundated with commercials and advertising so much that they have become virtually numb to a majority of marketing that is thrown at them. They recognize when they are talking to or texting machines, and they don’t like this. Don’t upset your subscribers with text messages that have obviously been automated. Create your text messages personally so that people feel like you are directly talking to them, not just a wide database of people. Yes, a lot of them are aware that they are one of a number of subscribers, but if you interact with them personally, and make your texts both fun and informative, they’re not going to care. Be creative, get imaginative, and find original ways to present your information and CTAs to your subscribers. If you do this, and do this consistently, you will have a very loyal and happy fanbase.

When you consider the fact that you see people on their phones all the time, what marketer wouldn’t want to market on those very devices? With such a widespread medium available at a much cheaper price than any other form of marketing, what are you waiting for? If you haven’t launched a mobile marketing, or SMS marketing initiative yet, now is as good a time as ever! If you DO have an SMS marketing campaign in place, then hopefully these SMS marketing tips help you run it more efficiently. Either way, SMS marketing and mobile marketing is clearly here to stay, and any company that expects to stay relevant in today’s constantly changing digital landscape will recognize the need for mobile and initiate a mobile marketing campaign as soon as possible. Don’t get left behind, be one of these companies!

Mobile Marketing Jobs to Increase 1 Million by 2015

June 5, 2013/0 Comments/in future of mobile, mobile marketing, mobile marketing growth /by Brett Gordon

The future of mobile marketing looks brighter than ever after the Mobile Marketing Association recently conducted a study which predicts that the mobile market will add over $400 billion in incremental output as well as close to 1 million new jobs by the year 2015. The study was not just meant to encourage spending on mobile, which should be obvious to any marketer by now, but it was also a piece to the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) continuing efforts to head off possible regulation of the mobile marketing industry. If new regulations were to be put in place, it could slow down or even stop job growth. Using the study, they wanted to highlight the fact that the industry has a vast array of job creation opportunities on the horizon and that regulations would only hinder this growth.

“Asking a bunch of people who are unfamiliar with mobile marketing to set up a digital policy might inhibit innovation,” said MMA’s CEO Greg Stuart. “Let’s not stifle job growth.”

Taking a closer look at the study, it specifically projected jobs in the mobile marketing field to increase from 524,000 in 2012 to 1.4 million in 2015. It also projected that spending on mobile marketing will more than double from $6.7 billion in 2012 to around $20 billion by 2015. Do the math and that comes out to a 52% growth rate in just 2 short years!

Additionally, the study also predicts that sales using mobile devices will dramatically increase from $139 billion in 2012 all the way up to $400 billion in 2015. So if you are a marketer and you have not gone mobile yet, you are missing out on all that money! Taking into account that the industry has already been trending upwards over the last 5 years, it is apparent that mobile has nothing but a bright future ahead of it. Make sure you’re a part of it.

Another finding in the study was that the industries and companies who spent the most on mobile also experienced the highest returns on investment from the medium.

Joe Plummer, Professor of Marketing at the Columbia School of Business and a lead researcher for the study, gave his take, “Historically, spending in all other mediums eventually flattens out and declines. We don’t see that curve in the data that we have,” he said. “We looked at the sales of high-end and low-end spenders in mobile, and while the correlation is not 1.0, it was in a positive direction.”

He also mentioned that the study was based off of federal agency research, academic journals, and primary research along the likes of surveys and interviews.

So as you can see, the future of mobile looks very promising and will only continue to grow and increase in both spending and job creation. Now is as good a time as ever to get started on your mobile marketing initiative! With thousands of companies having already gone mobile and getting proven results, you have no reason NOT to want to launch a mobile marketing campaign. You will not have a DeLorean to go back and fix the mistake of not going mobile when you should’ve, so take advantage of the opportunity you have right now to go mobile and watch your bottom line grow!

Hebrew National Uses Mobile Marketing To Drive Brand Awareness

May 28, 2013/0 Comments/in brand awareness, mobile marketing, mobile website, mobile websites /by Brett Gordon

Brand awareness is one of the most important things to keep in mind as a marketer. If people know and recognize your brand, especially if it’s instantaneously without effort like with the McDonald’s “M”, Nike’s “swoosh” symbol, or Apple’s “apple”, your success is virtually guaranteed. However, for smaller companies who do not have the big pockets like the large corporate behemoths do, mobile marketing is a cheap, yet EFFECTIVE marketing strategy that WILL build your brand awareness.

Recently, Hebrew National launched a mobile marketing campaign to increase their brand awareness with consumers. They promoted their product through grilling tips and gave offerings to help drive consumers through their stores’ doors. Alexis Berger, the Chicago-based Vice President of Sales Midwest at Kargo, gave a quick run down of the campaign, “Around the key holidays such as Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor day, we are powering Site Skins to drive mass awareness for the brand. These Site Skins are actually linked to a user’s native calendar, so they can get a reminder to pick up their hot dogs.”

Hebrew National’s mobile ads work under the phrase, “Hebrew National. A Hot Dog You Can Trust. Learn More.” Consumers who tap on the ad using their mobile devices are redirected to Hebrew National’s mobile website. There they can browse Hebrew National’s products while also getting some grilling tips like basic grilling tips, safe grilling tips, and summer party ideas among others.

They also offer a feature where consumers can choose which product they want, and the store locator will locate the nearest store with that product in stock for them based off their entered zip code, city, or state. Consumers are also given the option to choose how many stores they would like to search and the farthest distance they are willing to travel.

The beauty of Hebrew National’s mobile campaign is how effective, yet simple it is. Their goal was to get the word out for their products, especially right before Memorial weekend. They also wanted to drive consumers through their doors. Couple this with the grilling tips they offered to keep their visitors engaged with the brand while also providing them with other valuable information, and you have yourself a very effective campaign.

Hebrew National accomplished all of their goals and then some. They successfully raised awareness of their brand, drove an increased number of consumers through their doors, offered quality content with their grilling tips, and actively kept their visitors and consumers engaged with their mobile website. All of this led to increased sales over Memorial weekend and a great setup for the rest of the summer. With holidays like the 4th of July and Labor Day still to come, Hebrew National will be able to use this campaign for the rest of the summer, if not longer. They were able to do all of this without advertising on TV, radio, or on billboards. Just a simple mobile marketing strategy was put in place.

Ms. Berger summed up the campaign perfectly, “We love this execution because not only does it create huge awareness, it is actually perfect in terms of functionality for how mobile is being utilized by a consumer.”

What’s NEW In Mobile Marketing?

May 20, 2013/0 Comments/in mobile marketing, near field technology, sms marketing /by Brett Gordon

By now, mobile marketing has become an established concept in the marketing field. Considering the first cell phone came out in 1973, and the first smartphone came out in 1992, there has been considerable time for marketers to figure out how to market on them effectively. However, as with anything else in today’s world, mobile and SMS marketing are constantly changing. Understanding and learning about any new changes in the industry is key to any company’s survival and success in today’s market. Here we have compiled a list of what’s NEW for mobile marketing in 2013.

Social is Becoming More Important

It seems like companies and businesses everywhere are starting to recognize the need to implement social media strategies into their overall marketing strategies. On mobile, this means paying attention to mobile apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn among others. People today are constantly using social media on the go, so if you’re a business and you want to reach these people, social media is one of the best ways to do this. Networking between brands and clients can also reinforce brand-customer relationships or can assist companies and businesses in finding new candidates to hire. LinkedIn is quickly becoming the premier online business card/resume for many professionals, but is also one of the best places to display your company and share professional content and ideas. Regardless of how you look at it, if you are not using social on mobile, you and your company are missing out on a HUGE segment of the population.

Content Should Be Optimized For Mobile

Content has become one of the premier ways to engage with your clients and potential customers. Content usually refers to blogs, social media, newsletters, webinars, white papers, video blogs, case studies, infographics, visual imagery, and more. On mobile, this means you need to make sure that your normal website content is easily viewable on mobile devices. This includes smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Since content is one of the best ways to generate leads, nurture leads, and then convert them, it is important that you make this content available for mobile as well. Keep in mind, however, that the mobile experience is much different than the desktop experience. If you have not optimized your site for mobile, your mobile users are probably having a hard time navigating your content, which results in lost traffic, lost leads, and ultimately, lost business. Learn how to optimize your content for mobile so you are not just limited to your desktop website’s traffic and lead production.

The Smartphone Has Become King

Smartphones officially surpassed older-style phones in sales worldwide earlier this year and Ericcson has predicted that over 50 million connected devices will exist before the end of the year. That means everything outside of SMS marketing has become even more important. This means social media, mobile apps, and mobile marketing are key areas to focus on when developing and refining your mobile marketing strategy.

You also want to remember to adapt your company’s and your personal profiles to fit mobile screen resolutions, operating systems, and mobile browsers. This is, simply put, the best way to increase visibility and increase your presence on mobile. Local businesses can also take advantage of the mobile revolution with the new geolocation feature that can target people within specific areas, or simply target people who are close to your place of business. SMS is also a great concept to look into for local businesses.

Mobile Wallets and Near Field Communication (NFC)

The newest iPhone 5 has been criticized because it doesn’t have the new NFC technology. NFC is the ability for smartphones to make payments like you would with a credit or debit card, except you’re using your smartphone at the register instead. Other new technologies like Google Wallet and PayPal are pointing towards a future where physical money will continually disappear to make way for electronic money. So this is definitely something you will want to keep in mind when developing and implementing your mobile marketing strategy. you may not use it just yet, but you will want to be educated on it down the road when you will need to implement it to survive.