85% of Smartphone Users Prefer Mobile Apps over Mobile Web

According to recent report from Compuware, mobile applications are preferred by smartphone users over mobile web sites by 85%. Reasons cited were that apps are more convenient, faster, and easier to navigate than mobile websites.  With over 61% percent of people in the US now owning smartphones, it is important that businesses now realize that the need to "dip their toes" into mobile applications is now.

Medical, Shopping, Banking, and More Now Mobile

No longer are customers sitting down at home in front of their desktop computer to get their shopping, news updates, or banking done. Now users are embracing apps that allow them to schedule an appointment, streamline their banking, notify them of current and breaking news, and texts them when a deposit has been made into their accounts. Having a mobile app for customers not only allows them a quick, easy, and effective way to keep in touch with a business, but also allows the business to collect data on who and how their app is being used, very similar to how Google Analytics for a website. With the ability to track analytics from a mobile app, businesses can now learn about their "mobile customer".

Convenience Factor of Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Websites

When asked about the benefits of using a mobile app vs. a mobile website,  the biggest factors cited were:

-          Convenience (55%),

-          How fast they are (48%),

-          Easier to browse (45%)

-          Better user experience (28%)

Knowing these convenience factors and implementing them into a business could offer up essentially an endless possibility of benefits for the business owner. Faster customer service, better customer relationships and increased opportunity for market share through referrals are just a few of the examples that a mobile app could help a business.

Enhance the Customer Experience

While a mobile app will help to instill a better customer and user experience, it is important that it is updated frequently, much like a blog, with fresh and relevant content and information that will keep the customer coming back to the app. Push notifications when personalized content, special offers, perks based on interests are all great ways to ensure that this will happen. Ways to improve downloads of your app include social sharing and referral and review options available within the app. Mobile apps, just like desktop websites are the image and identity of your company to both new and old users. Failure to implement a successful brand image on either could result in loss of clients, visitors and profit. So how do businesses ensure that a mobile app will portray them in the best of light? Stephen Pierzchala, Technology Strategist at Compuware said it best:

"With consumers expecting greater experiences with mobile apps now more than ever, fulfilling those expectations doesn't just happen -- it takes a conscious effort throughout every stage of the design and development process to get it right. Performance is a crucial contributor to providing a dependable mobile app user experience, so performance should be considered a key driver in the design process. Mobile applications need to focus on a core utility, and they need to be fast and reliable in order to be valuable."

If you would like an in-depth look at the report, you can download it here.

Quick Tips to Help Create Blog Content

With all the new updates in the Google search algorithm thanks to the Hummingbird update, businesses now more than ever need to ensure that their blogs are updated with fresh and relevant content on a daily basis to ensure that visits and search rankings don't drop-off. Below are just a few quick and easy ways that businesses can stay on top of relevant content that they may find useful for the next time a blog post is scheduled to be posted.

Google Alerts for Fresh Content

If you are unfamiliar with Google Alerts, now is the time to study up. Google Alerts allows you to create an alert or email every time something that relates to your original search query is posted. For example, say you are looking for news articles related to the new iPad. Google Alerts will then allow you to choose what type of results you would like (News, Blogs, Video, etc.), how often you would like these sent to your email and whether or not you want all results or only the best results for this topic. This will not only keep you up-to-date on all results of what is being put on the internet about the new iPad, but save you time from having to scour the internet.

Review Your Blog

Who is the blog targeting? Are posts targeting that demographic? How has the blog changed, and is it better or worse than when it was first started? Looking through past blog posts and data can help businesses realize what their target demographic really wants from the company blog. By looking at the data, businesses can then begin to create articles and topics for future articles based on those posts that received the most post, comments, or goal that the company is looking to achieve.

Expand Thinking Beyond Words

Blog posts don't simply have to be all content. Infographics, videos, and webinars are all great forms of media that can be used to create blog posts that are equally or more informative to your target demographic, and allow a company to show off the company's personality in a unique way. These types of blog posts and media also have the chance to become more shareable, as they allow consumers to process the information faster than reading through a 500-600 blog post.

Step Outside Of Your Boundaries

Much like in your daily life, blog writings can become tedious and repetitive, which can lead to a major case of writer's block. Once the feeling of monotony starts, step outside of the box and write about something that interests you or the company. Write about a personal experience that not only helped co-worker in life situation, but also in a work situation. These types of blog posts allow businesses the ability to give visitors to their blog a peek into the personality of the business, as well as what type of people they have working there.

While these are examples of how to help create blog content, they are not the end all solutions for every business. Take some time out of the day to discuss with co-workers the overall look and feel of your blog, get an understanding of what the company wants the blog to be for your company and for your visitors, and begin to formulate a plan that will help to deliver fresh and relevant content to them.

Hummingbird and the Future of SEO and Link Building

Recently Google released their Hummingbird update to their search engine. This update was far more in depth than recent updates such as the Panda and Penguin updates, featuring re-tooling and behind the scenes updates of the search engine itself to help it perform smarter and faster. If you have been keeping up to date with all of the Google updates, you would know that the Panda update helped to remove bad content from search results and that Penguin pretty much removed low-quality links from search results. As Hummingbird has taken affect, we can only look into whether SEO and link-building will be non-existent in the future.

What is Hummingbird?

Hummingbird to marketers is similar to buying a new house with all new appliances as opposed to just painting your existing, older home. It helps to deliver more relevant results to users faster. Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, put it best:

In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

Essentially, Hummingbird was created to make everyone's lives easier through user experience improvements including:

-         Updates to the knowledge graph (comparisons and filters)

-          Conversational, cross-platform search

-          Better mobile search experience

Essentially, Google is making sure that the content that shows in the results are designed for the user, not for keyword-stuffed content.

Future of SEO

Whereas in the past, where results were delivered to the user based on keyword relevancy and link quality, the Hummingbird update aims to deliver the best results to the user based on the meaning behind the search query. For example, when someone is searching for "best hamburgers" on their desktop it may mean that they are looking for recipes, whereas if they are searching for "best hamburgers" on their mobile they may be looking for a restaurant nearby with the best hamburgers around. Conversational search is also playing a larger part of SEO, as Google hopes to answer user next question even before users type it in the search bar.

Future of Link Building

Although much of the "spam" link-building and low-quality content has been removed or punished by the Penguin and Panda updates, some still exists, and Hummingbird aims to remove it faster than the previous updates.  So how can marketers build links within these new updates parameters? Simply put, by building quality content that meets the specific needs of users and is in-depth. No longer are poorly written, low quality articles or blog posts going to be a factor in search results. Link building within the Hummingbird update is very similar to what marketers should have been doing before the update:

-          Developing high-quality, amazing content

-          Getting to know influencers in your space

-          Online community contribution

-          Asking friends to considering sharing content (when appropriate)

-          Bank on earning your links naturally

In the end, while Hummingbird has changed the way SEO and link building works, it has only urged and pushed marketers to adapt to a more timely and efficient way of serving users. Instead of creating keyword heavy content, marketers can now create high-quality and relevant content that will better serve the end users requests.

3 Reasons Businesses Need Location-Based Marketing

Location-based marketing is not something that is brand new to advertisers and marketers, and yet very few effectively understand what it is and how it can be implemented within advertising or marketing campaigns that lead to higher conversion rates, better targeting and more data about consumers. Below are 3 reasons why every business should implement some type of location based marketing within their current or upcoming marketing campaign.

Location is the New Cookie

Just like how marketers gather information through the use of cookies left behind by visitors to sites, location data provides marketers valuable information about where a consumer is from, where they have been and where they may go next. With the help of algorithms, businesses can then begin to group consumers into behavioral and demographic segments for targeting within their next campaigns.

Competitors Already in the Game

In a recent forecast, mobile ad spending was expected to surge 95% in 2013. In total, this is an estimated jump that will account for almost 25% of total media spending this year. With the changes and updates made within Google Adwords to help create an easier and more reliable way to target mobile customers, businesses now have no need to worry about setting up completely new campaigns within Adwords. By simply checking off a box within Adwords, they now have mobile ads. Within the industry, businesses are already noticing lower costs for keywords when targeting mobile specifically, leading to higher visits and chances for conversions versus those businesses that target on desktop only devices. By utilizing location-based mobile ads, companies can reap the same benefit of a person looking on line as they would if a pamphlet was handed to them when walking by the store or business.

Location is Extending beyond Smartphones

The first device that pops up in anyone's head when "location-based" is mentioned is usually a smartphone, and while this may be the major driver of all location-based data for the time begin, we need to look towards tablets and the ever changing technological landscape for the next smartphone. While it is imperative to have location-based ads targeted to smartphones and tablets, it is even more important to have those ads linking to the closest store or business. As more and more smartphone and tablet owners begin to use their device throughout the entire shopping process, businesses must create strong ads that help to engage their audiences while on the go in a mobile and location friendly design and interface.

While these are only a few of the reasons businesses need location-based marketing within their marketing strategies, it is important to also ensure that their web site is equally "location-friendly". This means your site is optimized to be viewed on any type of device, whether mobile or desktop, and also allows for a satisfactory customer experience when it is viewed on their tablet, smartphone, or desktop, failure to do so can lead to lost conversions and customers.

The Evolution of Search Marketing – From Keywords to Conversations

In celebration of Google's 15^th birthday last week, we thought it would be appropriate to write about the history and future of search marketing. Our thoughts, ideas and processes have changed throughout those 15 years, as often as search algorithms have changed names and updates have been added. As we begin to fully digest the effects and updates of the Hummingbird update, we take this time to look where search is headed.

Keywords Change to Conversations

In the beginning, in order for a website to be found in the top search results, all a company had to do was insert keywords within the copy, meta description and so forth on their web pages. As Google continued to grow, their search algorithms became smarter, and so did technology. With the invention of personal assistants such as Apples' Siri, your voice and conversation became part of the search process. Through technology we no longer search for results relating to "Date Detroit was founded" on our mobile devices, instead we say "When was Detroit Founded?" this changes the way Google's search engine works. Through "conversational search" we are no longer just searching for results, but receiving a direct answer and response to the question via voice. Going further, we can begin to ask more in-depth questions, such as "Who was it founded by?" and receive the correct results. The magic here is that the search engine assumed the "who" in this case must be referring to the founder of Detroit based on previous searches.

Search Now One Step Ahead

When Google first started, visitors to the site would type in what they are searching for, hit search, and results would then be displayed. As Google grew, visitors looking to search for something would only have to type a word or part of a word to see instant results. Now, as we go to the Google page, the algorithm has an idea of where we are, what we have searched for, and the potential results to answers we have barely even typed or spoke of. As Google and technology continue to improve, Google founders expect that search will get even more integrated within the general public, including a possible implant in the brain, according to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

The Future

As Google continues to improve upon its search engine, advertisers and marketers must realize the potential of everything they do and how they can relate to search results. For example, no longer does "Hump Day" signify just Wednesday within the search results, but also the Geico commercial and a camel, hashtag, and so much more. A search engine no longer provide you with links to other websites, but provides the relevant posts, pictures, videos and statuses from friends and family. The future of search is bright, and Google is leading the way. How is your company adapting?

3 Ways to Create a Successful Partnership between Social Media and SEO

Advertisers and marketers are always trying to find that perfect balance of traditional and digital advertising and marketing to reach their target demographic and audience. With digital advertising and marketing overtaking much of the budget, agencies are finding out that reaching their target audience isn't as simple as it used to be. With so many social media networks, advertising networks and SEO changes that must be updated or added into the marketing plan, things can get out of hand fast. Often times, all of these different outlets and networks that you joined will be for naught, as clients do not see a change in their profit margins. Below are 3 ways that can help improve profit margins, likes, and retweets.

Leverage Promoted Posts to Increase Outreach and Link Building

Everyone is familiar with the old ways of content marketing that are outdated, and in some cases, can often hurt your chances of appearing higher in search rankings. Nowadays, social media networks such as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook allow users and companies to "promote" their posts. What this essentially does for a company is allow their status, pages, posts or tweets to get displayed on your target demographics news feed. Targeting a clients key demographic with these promoted posts using highly relevant content can help to get a product or business noticed, the content shared, and onto other newsfeeds and help lead to sales and new followers and fans for a very low cost.

Create More Effective Content

It is said over and over, but the key to gaining new fans, likes and customers is to create fresh, relevant and effective content as often as possible. By looking through your Google Analytics and determining what keywords are helping to bring people to your site along with what they are searching for, and what is the most effective content is, companies can begin to write content that will help drive more visits to their site. Along with this, having the social media data of what articles were shared the most will also help to determine what a company should be writing about. By having this and a 3-4 month plan, companies can begin to think of complementary blog posts and articles that will complement those primary posts and articles and help drive audience engagement activities to those main posts and articles.

Engage the "Movers and Shakers"

How often is the company engaging with its customers? Oftentimes companies will simply set-up a social media page and forget it, leaving the page to potentially be run over with spam messages or worse, unhappy customer reviews. So how can a company improve upon and build their social media profiles? Interact, engage and build relationships with your key influencers (i.e. those people who have a large group of followers, fans, friends, etc.). These are the people that enjoy your brand and continually post, tweet or interact with your statuses. By using services such as Klout, your social media team can begin to compile a list of influencers that your SEO team can begin to build a relationship with these people by sharing their content, retweeting tweets of theirs, answering questions, commenting on their posts, etc. Much like a real-life relationship, things must move slowly and carefully, or risk being seen as "stalker-ish" and annoying. If done correctly, these types of relationships can help build the company's social credibility and a better success rate of having influencers share your content and link back to you.

SEO and social media are no longer two separate teams within a company. In order for your client to be happy with a digital marketing campaign, these teams must work together to create a fully operational and successful content and relationship driven campaign using data from both departments.

Google Introduces "Google Tag Manager", Analytics for Mobile Websites and Apps

Earlier this year during Google I/O, Google introduced a new mobile website and apps management feature that can be integrated into Google Analytics to help improve mobile capabilities for developers, add analytics, re-market data and conversion tracking to mobile websites and apps, without having the need to update the mobile app, which can cause frustration amongst users. So what does this mean for not only mobile websites and apps, but marketers and developers?

Data, Data, Data

Similar to the time before Google Analytics was created for websites, marketers and businesses had no idea where or what their target markets and visitors did on their sites when they got there. With the invention of Google Analytics, marketers and businesses were then able to see where traffic went once they visited the site, what pages they spent the most time on and how to improve their website to improve customer experiences. With the creation of Google Tag, and the installation of the code into mobile apps, marketers can begin to track Adwords conversion tracking, remarketing and Analytics from the mobile app, helping in turn to create a more robust, user-friendly mobile app.

IT-Friendly

With marketers in mind, Google created Google Tag, however, they wanted to ensure that it was also IT-friendly for developers who were going to be using, implementing, writing and rewriting the codes within the mobile app. Through the Google Tag Manager features, developers will be able to debug mobile site's (mobile app debugging currently not available yet), and preview the mobile website or app that they are working on before it goes live within the Apple and Android App stores.

Quick and Easy Implementation

Marketers and developers can add or change tags whenever they want, helping to keep the site updated and running smoothly and quickly. Using the web interface, developers and marketers won't need to write or rewrite new code following implementations.

Google Tag Manager can best be summed up as the future of Google Analytics. As more users continue to make the switch from traditional desktop computers to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, mobile websites and apps will, and are, becoming the go-to source for search queries, e-commerce, and much more. With the features and abilities of Google Tag Manager only going to be growing as he mobile market expands, it is important that businesses integrate this system into their mobile websites and apps, so that they can ensure the business' website or app is delivering a fully capable and customer-friendly interface and experience.

3 Ways Mobile Apps Are Changing the Healthcare Industry

As the shift of getting information switches from desktops to mobile devices, the healthcare industry can reap great benefits from utilizing current mobile apps to provide for, track symptoms, and mange the time of customers and their appointments. Below are just a few of the ways mobile apps are changing the healthcare industry today.

Building Better Client Relationships

Mobile apps in the healthcare industry can help professionals keep better track of their customers and patients through special services offered in mobile applications. Whether a patient needs a reminder about their appointment, needing to track a symptom that they are having so that they do not forget it during their next appointment or simply to call and schedule an appointment, a mobile app can help patients reach their doctor or physician quickly and efficiently with a tap of their screen.

Cost Effective Marketing Tool

Unlike a Yellow Pages ad or website, a mobile application that is downloaded onto a patient or customers mobile device is within arm's reach of that person for the entire day and night. The ability to have this type of brand presence and the knowledge that patients and customers have their phone on them at all times can lead to push notifications of special offers, availability of the next open time for a visit, and many other marketing opportunities at a low-cost. The mobile app also allows healthcare professionals to share informative articles, blog posts and news to their patients and customers in a way that is easily readable for people on the go.

Improved Patient Safety

Similar to building better client relationships with mobile apps, healthcare professionals can help improve patient safety with mobile apps. Whereas today patients leave an office with a stack of papers and little memory of what they are supposed to do, healthcare professionals can add and tag relevant news articles and treatments to their blog, which can be uploaded to the mobile app. Mobile apps can also allow for a "pill reminder" to help ensure that the sick and elderly remember to take certain pills at specific times.

In the future, as more and more people begin owning and using smartphones, and technology advances, we should begin to see mobile apps that allow for tracking of blood pressure, workout routines, and many other topics that can be researched and studied to help healthcare professionals find out what are the best treatments or solutions for their patients and customers. It is important that healthcare professionals begin looking at mobile technology as an extended knowledge base and staff member for their team, as not only will it soon be something that every healthcare office has, but something that every healthcare office will come to rely on in terms of patient relationships, marketing themselves, and improving patient safety. 

3 Facebook Marketing Techniques for Businesses to Help Engage Potential Customers

Facebook, with over 1 billion users and growing, is a social network that small, medium, and some larger businesses have been slow to adapt into their marketing strategy, and use to engage their current and prospective fan bases. Below are 3 marketing techniques that can help these businesses engage, gain and build new and existing customer relationships.

Creating Engaging Content That is Shareable

Have something interesting that your company is celebrating, like an anniversary of a product launch or brainstorming new products? Create a press release or interactive poll and share it with your customers via a short and brief status update, along with the link to the article or poll. Inviting your fans and customers to engage with you on this level will not only give you better insight as to what they are thinking, but may also give you some new ideas on how to sell, promote and market your products.

Create and Share Pictures and Other Media

Instagram, Vine, YouTube, Vimeo, these are all user cultivated, media sharing platforms that either some or all of your customers are on, and they can all be integrated into Facebook. Use and share media on these platforms as ways to get out old advertisements, workplace photos or retro logos of your company via special social network days, such as Throwback Thursday, or simply how employees unwind after a day of work, and ask fans how they celebrate or unwind. This will help to create a better understanding of both who you are as a company and what a customer uses your product for.

Engage With Your Audience

Questions, Comments, and Polls, these are ways that you can interact with your fans and customers via your Facebook page. With social media becoming the new form of customer service, it is important that you like, share and respond to comments on your company page. For those that think it is unimportant to respond to negative comments, pictures or videos about your product, I offer you these as prime examples of why not to do that.

As a business that is on Facebook, it is important to view the social media network as the neighborhood your store just moved into. Whether you are a brick and mortar or e-commerce company, when a customer comes into your store or visits your website, they want to have someone help them, answer their questions, and engage them in conversation about the business and their products to help ease any concerns that they may have.

The Future of Technology and What it Means For Marketers

With all of they hype coming from Google Glasses and potential Apple iWatch coming to surface in the near future, I decided to look at a few of the current and upcoming technologies and devices that will change the marketers and advertisers reach their customers.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is defined as a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented, or supplemented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. Essentially this technology modifies your view of reality. A good example can be found in the video sample below in which IKEA has implemented the technology in hopes of enticing the consumer to purchase one of their products for their home.

This type of technology is already being implemented for everything from catalogs, advertisements, and even business cards. With smartphone and mobile device ownership only increasing in the future, look for this to be the next big thing in reaching customers.

Google Glass

Using augmented reality as one of its main components, Google Glass seems to be the next step in mobile devices. The abilities of having what is essentially a hands-free computer on your head seems to open up endless possibilities for advertisers and marketers. One example that I am excited about is the potential use of the glasses to record a "day in the life of" series. Could you imagine a sports star such as Travis Pastrana or Lebron James wearing these glasses during a racing event or NBA Finals? Fans would then be able to literally "walk" in their idols shoes for a day. Once Google Glass becomes available to everyone I would expect a massive increase in videos uploaded to YouTube, similar to when video became available on phones.

Oculus Rift

Similar to the Virtual Reality centers in the arcades of the 90's, but with less hardware and better graphics, Oculus Rift seems to be the next step in how we play games, watch TV and more. With the ability to display a stereoscopic 3D perspective to users, look for this piece of gaming equipment to quickly adapt into a way to surf the internet, watch TV and more. A good example of how this system can help marketing or advertisers is in terms of gaming and exercising. Using the Oculus Rift system, users could run through the New York Marathon route, or bike through the Tour de France without leaving their homes.

These are just a couple pieces of technology and devices that I expect to make an impact within the marketing and advertising world within the next 5-10 years or sooner. As marketers and advertisers it is important to stay on top of  the ever changing technology and social media landscape in order to provide clients and customers with unique and one of a kind campaigns, and I feel that these devices will be leading the way in those categories for the foreseeable future. What other types of technology and devices do you see changing the way we market and advertise? Feel free to comment below.

17% of Global Web Usage Coming From Mobile Phones

In a recent study done by Statista, an online statistics portal, the company discovered that 17% of global web usage and page views were coming from mobile devices. North America alone saw an increase in page views coming from mobile devices rise almost 6% over last year. While this may seem like a relatively small percentage of the overall page views, it is important to notice that it was a 6% increase over the 2012 number of 11% of the page views. As this number is expected to increase as more and more people buy smartphones, it is important for advertisers to realize the potential that this change has for its customers and the way they market to them.

Responsive Design

As noted in previous posts and several articles throughout the web, responsive design is the new trend in web development and design. Built to format to any type of device and format, responsive design allows users to view your website whenever and with whatever type of device they are on. Utilizing responsive design for a site not only allows the advertiser to create one unified template for both desktop and mobile, but also saves web developers time.

Mobile Apps

With the increase in page views via mobile devices, it is important to take into factor a mobile app for an advertiser. A mobile app not only allows you to occupy space on a customer's smartphone or tablet, but also can give them one touch or tap ability to visit your website. With a mobile app, advertisers can also reach their customers through push notifications, text messages and more.

Social Media

As customers increase their time spent on mobile devices, so should advertisers. Social media review and location apps like Yelp and Foursquare should be at the forefront of this development. By effectively creating and branding these pages, as well as promoting them on the website and brick and mortar shops of businesses, businesses are effectively creating a customer generated focus group that allows the business owner to see what their busiest days are, what time that they get the most people and so much more. This type of interaction between customer and business also helps to increase that pages rankings within search results pages, improving the businesses chances of reaching new customers.

With the numbers mentioned above only increasing as the years go on and more people switch to mobile devices over their desktop or laptop, it is important for businesses to adapt to the new platform, just like when the internet was the next big thing. Failure to correctly adapt can and will lead to losses in sales, drops in visits to the site, and potentially loss of page rank and position in the search results pages. 

1 in 3 People Now Own a Tablet – 3 Opportunities to Maximize Reach on Mobile Devices

A recent study conducted by Pew Research, a third (34%) of Americans aged 18 or older noted that they own a tablet computer, which is almost twice the amount of tablet owners than a year ago (18%). If your company has been slow to adapt, or even avoiding the move into the digital space, then now may be the time to show this survey to your peers. As a business in today’s ever changing technology landscape, it is important that you leverage each and every form of mobile technology in order to ensure a profitable company. Some of the ways to help your company maximize their reach on mobile devices are explained below.

Know Who Your Target Audience Is

Most people would assume that since tablets are a relatively new technology that it is being adapted by younger generations (18-34) rather than the older generation, right? Wrong.  According to those surveyed, almost half of (49%) of adults age 35-44 now own a tablet computer, significantly more than the 18-24 age group (33%), and the 25-34 age group (37%). So what does this mean for your business? It can mean that either A) your target audience is more comfortable with the smaller, more convenient smartphone and therefore you should begin using marketing techniques geared towards this mobile device, or B) the need to create a mobile friendly website is definitely something that should be put on top of the year’s digital marketing strategy plan. Know your target market and what type of mobile device they prefer or own can help to create a better understanding of how and where you should market your business, helping to maximize your reach.

Begin Your Move From Desktop to Mobile

While 1 in 3 own a tablet and over half of Americans owning a smartphone, now is the time to begin experimenting, working on, and improving your mobile website and brand presence. Does your website layout change to fit the size screen it is on? Or what about a mobile application for an easier purchasing process for customers on the go? These types of things can help to improve customer relationships, build brand loyalty, and make for an overall pleasant experience for customers.

Optimize Your PPC Campaigns for Mobile Searches

With the large majority of your target demographic owning either a smartphone or tablet, and mobile searches accounting for nearly half of all searches, it is important that your PPC campaigns adjust to reach your target users as well as others looking for your products. With the creation of enhanced campaigns in Google Adwords and Mobile PPC in Bing, you can now create or adapt current PPC campaigns to reach mobile device users. You can decide on whether you want to only appear on smartphone searches, tablet searches or more, allowing for your company to reach the device most often used by your target demographic.

These opportunities are available for all companies to use so that they can help to maximize their reach on mobile devices, and shouldn't be overlooked. As more and more customers begin switching to mobile devices at double the rates of years past, it is important for companies to step back and look at the potential benefits each device has for themselves and their customers, and how they can leverage that into a profitable mobile development strategy.

5 Effective Ways to Build and Maintain Customer Relationships via Mobile Marketing Techniques

Whether you own a business or represent a business as an agency, the importance of creating, building and maintaining customer relationships is something that is always being worked on. Customer relationship programs have varied through the years with the rise of technology and the ways we communicate. First there was the direct mail piece, then the email newsletter, and now we are into mobile marketing. Using these five effective ways of mobile marketing, you can help to promote and maintain customer relationships during the mobile era.

Mobile Applications

A truly customized and unique mobile application for your company can help customer relationships immensely. With a complete and well thought out mobile application, a business can help to create a faster buying channel for its customers, enable them to receive unique and special coupons, or allow them to find a store near them faster, among other things.

Push Notifications

Using a smartphones geo-location technology to promote specials, coupons and send personalized messages to customers when they are near your business will allow you to interact with your loyal customers when they are closest to you and persuade them to come and visit your business, whether they were planning to or not.

Social Integration

Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are just a few of the social media networks that businesses should be integrating into their mobile marketing strategies. These networks can help you spread the word on sales and promotions, as well as give you analytics on who has been to your store, how many times they have been there and when and what day is your busiest days. The knowledge gained from these social networks can help you to create better promotions and sales, whether it is to drive more traffic during slow days or promote a special event via a discount when someone checks in.

Loyalty Programs

 While loyalty programs in the mobile space can range from checking-in to a certain place to scanning a QR code with your phone and taking a survey, the limits can be endless. Send them push notifications for every third time they check-in, offer discounts on special products to those that share your coupons on their social media sites. These and many more options for loyalty programs can help set up a trusted base of loyal customers that are willing to promote and market your products and services to their friends and social networks.

Text Reminders

Text reminders are a basic form of push notifications. These messages can be sent to customers to inform them of new products and services that may be useful to them, or specials that are happening right now. The benefit of text messages is that they can also reach those users who do not have push notifications enabled on their phones.

These five effective mobile marketing techniques can be used together or separately, but whatever way you choose make sure to remember that there is a line you can cross from being “helpful, informative and beneficial” to “immediately deleted, unsubscribed from or ignored”. Listening to customers feedback on your mobile marketing techniques will allow you to fine tune your techniques so you can best serve your customers and gain new ones.

Responsive Web Design: What Is It and How Does It Affect my Website Development Strategy?

Responsive web design is a fairly new concept in the world of website development and design that is fast becoming a necessity in the ever-changing mobile world. With a variety of tablet, smart phone, laptop and desktop screen sizes, it is important that you utilize a website development plan and strategy that emphasizes one design that will adapt to each of these screen sizes, for a better user experience and interface.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive web design is an approach to web page creation using flexible layouts, images and style sheets so that the viewer of the website is able to see a correct layout of a website without having to “pinch” their fingers in and out. Using the x and y coordinates on a grid of a page and mathematical percentages for images instead of the more traditional fixed-width parameters, designers and developers can create a more fluid design that can adapt to a wide range of displays.

Responsive Web Design and Website Development

Companies and businesses today need to consider responsive web design as an intricate piece of their website development strategy. With over mobile internet usage rising and fewer people using desktop computers to view webpages, it is important that you create a website that will not only be easy to read on a Apple iPhone, but also easily viewed on a Microsoft Surface or Android-powered tablet. Failure to do so could lead to poor customer experiences on a variety of pages on your website. Take for instance a blog page or an e-commerce page showing images of your products, using your old website development and design strategy you create a page that can be viewed perfectly on a desktop or laptop, but users on a mobile tablet or smart phone, will need to “pinch in and out or swipe their finger every few seconds in order to read a story or see a new product.

Responsive Web Design Helps Save Time

Not only will customers appreciate a website that utilizes a responsive web design, but the developers who created will also. Responsive web design utilizes multiple style sheets for the same web page, thereby repurposing HTML code, whereas a traditional website and mobile website will need to have two different types of code to be written for the website layouts, often from scratch. What would you rather choose, a house that has a sturdy frame and only needs to have a few things done to it in order to become your dream home or start with a blank piece of land and work your way up to a home?

With over half of the U.S. population owning a smart phones, it is now time for businesses and companies to consider how their websites are viewed on mobile devices and whether or not it is time to rework their website development strategy and add in responsive web design. Next time you are viewing your business’ website on your tablet or smart phone, take some time and look at the design and layout and ask yourself if it may be time to redesign your website.

Google Welcomes Mobile SEO into Their Algorithm and What You Can Do To Improve Your Mobile Site

As mentioned in several of our blog posts, the time for change in the way you develop and design your website is now, and it was made even clearer by Google in a recent blog post on their webmaster central blog.  As is custom with advancements in technology and search, Google has added mobile SEO into their search algorithms in order to improve their search results for mobile users.

What is Mobile SEO?

Mobile Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to digital content from search engines via natural search results to users entering mobile queries. It is important to realize that mobile SEO is focused on mobile searches, and as such, you should have a website that reflects those keywords and focuses on how a mobile user finds your current website. So what are some ways that Google offered as recommendations to help improve your chances of being found in the new mobile SEO algorithm?

Responsive Web Design

As explained in this post, responsive web design uses flexible layouts of your existing web page so that it can correctly be viewed in any format, whether it is mobile or desktop. Google recommends this type of design because it allows the same content to always be served to the user, regardless of the device that they are on.

Avoid Unplayable Videos

Have a video that you would like to share or already exists on your website? Ensure that it is mobile friendly and able to be viewed on all devices. Google recommends using HTML5 standard tags and to avoid using Flash, as this type of format is unable to be viewed on most types of mobile devices. If you are worried about a video not playing on a mobile device, offer up a transcript of the video as well on the page.

Faulty Redirects

As with all searches done on mobile or desktop devices, a customer expects to be directed to the exact page link they clicked on in the search results. This is not always the case on mobile searches however, as some companies will have a desktop page found on mobile searches redirect to an irrelevant page on their mobile site and Google has recognized this as a problem, and will hurt your rankings if you do not change it. Faulty redirects will also increase bounce rates and customer frustration with your mobile website, only hurting the chances that they will use your website again. To avoid this, ensure that each page of your website is optimized for mobile viewing.

Mobile SEO is something that needs to be done when creating or updating a website, and Google has only confirmed that it will play a much larger role in how and where your site appears on mobile searches in the future. So next time you meet with a client or look over your website for potential improvements, take a look at both your desktop and mobile website.

Does Your Online Brand Presence Accurately Represent Your Business?

In today’s world, not unlike that of the pre-internet era, first impressions are always important when meeting with clients/customers, but now instead of the firm handshake and eye contact, companies are looking at your online brand presence. Clients and customers are searching and finding you via your website, social media pages, press releases and various other multimedia outlets even before the first meeting or call, so isn’t it important to manage, or at least know what you have out there? Below are just a few of the ways you can ensure that your online brand presence is unique and eye-catching so that you will be able to reel in that prospective client/customer.

Be Authentic

You know your company is unique and different than your competitors, so why don’t prospective clients/customers? Research and study what your competitors are doing on their social media pages, blogs, and other multimedia channels and see how you can differentiate from them. You know that your brand has a unique value, and once you discover how to utilize and authenticate this value online, your target customer will soon discover you as well.

Be Consistent

Everyone likes to work with a company that puts out work that is the very best each time, so why not portray that with your online brand presence? Make sure that your social media pages, online directory pages, company website and blog all portray the image you want your company to have. The consistency will be noticed by prospective clients/customers.

Start a Blog

Starting a blog for a company can help you two-fold, 1) It enhances brand visibility and improves chances of getting noticed and 2) It will greatly help improve your sites search engine rank and establishing validity in your industry of work.  Blogging about company culture, relevant news about your industry and other things that relate to your company can help to establish and cultivate customer relationships and other influencers who may be looking to use your company.

Create and Share Videos

Creating and sharing videos can be a great way to establish your online brand, whether through the use of YouTube, Vimeo, Vine or any of the other video sites or applications. Videos can be created using very little to no money at all. On top of that, these videos can help drive traffic to your site, improve the chances of your company showing up in search rankings and help cultivate client/customer relationships.

Participate

Already have a blog, videos and social media pages but not seeing any benefits? Try participating in discussions and comments that are happening on these pages. Sometimes all you need to do is share a customers’ photo that has your product in it and ask a question, (i.e. Susan just completed a 2 mile run using her new Running App, how are you spending your day?). These short but simple shares of pictures, statuses and videos from clients/customers helps to not only build customer relationships , but allows you to engage with the client/ customers and show that if they create something unique using your product that it could have a chance to appear in front of hundreds or thousands of other fans.

These suggestions should allow you and your company the opportunity to create that digital first impression that will help you get prospective clients/customers thinking about your business, and hopefully land you the opportunity for that first in-person impression.

Mobile Apps and Customer Service – A Customers and Business’s One Touch Resolution to Problems

As customers move towards mobile devices for quicker responses and solutions to questions such as “How to repair a bike?” and “How do I fix my flat tire?”, it is important that businesses realize the ultimate potential that a mobile app may have for customer service and helping to build customer relationships. A mobile app centered on customer service will help to ensure that the customer comes to a business’s app first, instead of relying on potentially harmful forums or blogs for solutions to their problems. How should a company go about implementing such an app? Consider the following when deciding if a customer service mobile app is right for your business.

Are Clients Using Mobile Apps?

In short, yes. With 4 of every 5 minutes on mobile devices being taken up by some form of mobile app, businesses can rest assured knowing that customers do in fact use mobile apps. Using this information, we can see that customers use a wide range of mobile apps, from games to social media to health application, and by creating a mobile app that will effectively engage the client using these services a business is helping to create a positive mobile image and relationship with customers.

Have Something to Share?

Integrating social media channels into a business’s customer service mobile app can help to relieve the stress of both the business and its customer service support by streamlining where questions and concerns are answered. Using the mobile app, a customer would be able  quickly interact with the business via verified social media outlets that the company has allowed on the app itself, eliminating the possible chances of a concerned customer trying to interact with an unverified Twitter handle or Facebook page. This will also allow the business itself to create a communication channel that will allow them to share news, press releases, and other pieces of information that may be valuable to the customers.

Collecting Data, Feedback and Customer Data

With more and more customers using mobile devices, a customer service mobile app can help a business to identify areas where there customer service may need work. By creating simple surveys and questionnaires that can be filled out by the customer in the app, a business can begin to transform the way their customer service processes orders and complaints. This in turn can help to streamline the process and help ease customer anxiety and build-up customer relationships.

A customer service mobile app may not be right for every business, but it is important to at least consider the idea of having one available for customers. With more and more channels becoming available for customers to vent their problems on and the potential of these concerns going unanswered, businesses need to realize that a custom mobile app can create a branded, verified way for customers to reach a business in a few quick taps on the screen of their mobile device and receive help and support immediately.