Jamie Turner is an author, keynote speaker and the Chief Content Officer for the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response. The 60 Second Marketer is an information station for marketers around the globe. We bring you short, 60-second updates on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing.
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In Digital Leader, Qualman has assembled a first-rate manual for leadership in the digital age, worthy of a place on your bookshelf right alongside Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Covey’s 7 Habits. He sets forth five principles, forming the acronym STAMP: Simple, True, Act, Map, and People. Qualman expands on these principles using lessons that are drawn predominantly from real-life experiences, and emphasizes the crucial role that digital tools play in the process of becoming a great leader.
Digital Leader by Erik Qualman is an inspiring book that's perfect for people looking for inspirational thought-leadership.
Without a doubt, the many well-chosen stories in Digital Leader are one of its biggest strengths, making for an enjoyable read to which anyone can relate. One of my favorites comes from a section stressing the perils and permanency of griping online, and tells of a VP at a prominent PR firm who, upon flying into in a major client’s hometown, proceeded to bash the city on Twitter. Of course, the client saw the tweet, backlash ensued, and a teachable moment was born.
While Qualman may have used this story to show that mistakes will be made and must be dealt with appropriately, the majority of anecdotes are aimed at uplifting and inspiring. Take the story of Ray Kroc who, after working a number of jobs with moderate success, found his calling as a restaurateur and started McDonald’s at the age of 52.
As the name implies, this is a leadership book for the 21st century, although the essential principles are timeless. In connecting his lessons to the digital world, there are a few occasions where the effort by Qualman feels a bit forced, as if the wisdom is good enough to stand on its own or the connection could’ve been made more clearly. However, by and large Digital Leader represents a successful marriage of enduring truths and a timely perspective.
It’s hard to imagine that one could come away from reading this book without a sense of empowerment. “Fail forward, fail fast, fail better” is the refrain, and just when your inner skeptic tries to get the better of you, Qualman anticipates it and counters with some more ammo to keep you focused and optimistic throughout. No matter your position on the career ladder or technological prowess, Digital Leader is a powerful guide with much to offer.
Cory Gaddis is a guest contributor to the 60 Second Marketer and an account manager at Mobilize Worldwide.
Subject Line A: “Where Does Your Brand Fall on this Brand Spectrum Chart?”
Subject Line B: “Apple, Google, GoDaddy and the Brand Spectrum”
Can You Guess Which Subject Line Won?
Normally, when we do tests like this, one subject line might beat the other by 10%. But in this case, the winner outperformed the loser by 40%.
Yup, you heard right. The subject line with “Apple” and “Google” in it generated 40% more opens than the “Your Brand” headline. Better still, the click through rate was 15% higher in the “Apple” email — even though the copy in the email was exactly the same.
My guess is that the higher click-through rate happened because the people who opened the “Apple” email were more engaged and interested in the content.
Action Steps for You:
If you aren’t already running tests on your marketing program, here are some things to consider.
Build Testing Into Your Program: Make sure A/B Split testing is built into your marketing program. Don’t make it random — do it every time. (Truth-o-Meter: We don’t test every time, so do as we say, not as we do.)
Keep it Simple: Only test one variable at a time (unless you’re doing multivariate testing with a sophisticated research company)
Start with Easy Stuff: Test the simple things first (e.g., subject lines, “Buy Now” buttons, etc.), then work your way up to more complex tests (e.g., layout, design, e-commerce options, etc)
Test Your Way Into Success: When you have something that’s a winner, use it as your control. Continue to test against your control to see if you can beat it
We’d love to hear from you about your experiences with A/B Split Tests. You can let us know what your results have been by adding your comment below.
Other Articles of Interest from the 60 Second Marketer Blog:
There are so many Twitter applications available it can be extremely difficult to know where to begin, and what to select. I continue to try out new applications at the rate of at least one a week. Some barely last longer than it takes to set them up, because they are clearly not for me. That is not to say there is anything inherently wrong with them, they just don’t improve on what I am already using. Others tend to stay around on my desktop or in my browser for the duration of an evaluation period, while I try to give them a good test.
Some of the tools I use are now almost household names, but some are a little more obscure. I want to share those that make up my current Twitter Desktop, and thus remain active in a browser all day.
SocialBro
I’m starting with a measurement tool. SocialBro trawls through your Twitter account and slices and dices it in every imaginable way. When it is done it provides you with a dashboard, and a series of filters that allow you to analyse most aspects of your followers and friends. The options include time zone, language, account, age, tweeting frequency and whole lot more. There is also a menu item called Insights which presents this information in pie charts and bar charts.
SocialBro also bucks the trend a little and chooses to link to Peer Index to add influence scores. Being somewhat ambivalent about Klout, I see this as a positive move.
Once you have got your head around all of the basic dimensions of your Twitter profile, you can begin to explore an array of additional capabilities. The scope is considerable, but the following bear a mention:
Best time to tweet - I know other tools do this, but as well as determining when your followers are on-line, it looks at the times when re-tweets have occurred historically, AND then lets you import all of this information into Buffer (see more below).
Analyseyour competitors – want to know all of the above for any other Twitter account? You can just add the user name and you are away. This also shows you who your common friends and followers are.
Analyze your lists – check out the broad dimensions of the people on your lists
There is one thing that has puzzled me and that is a number of references to limitations, normally volumetric, associated with the free account. Now that is entirely reasonable, but I can’t find a paid account and what it might offer!
Garious
Garious is great tool for scheduling tweets from multiple sources and to multiple destinations. In my view, Garious has one of the easiest and most intuitive interfaces around. Essentially it has 3 components:
Lists - these are made of your own twitter lists, your blog feed(s), Google Reader sources and, any other RSS source your care to use.
Schedules - each schedule you create has a number of really useful components. You can determine the start and finish times, the number of tweets to be sent during the period and, the list or lists from which the tweets are to be selected. The tweets can be selected sequentially or at random, and a schedule can be run indefinitely, repeating tweets over time.
Social Networks - finally you can target the network or networks that each schedule will deliver tweets to.
I’m not often given to using superlatives, but this application truly is awesome! It is simple, straight-forward and effective.
TweetDeck
Certainly one of the better Twitter clients in its original desktop form, and better yet when used in Chrome. Since I imagine most people will know TweetDeck reasonably well, I won’t elaborate further, save to say that it supports all the basic day to day stuff extremely well.
Buffer
A great means of drip feeding a steady stream of interesting tweets to your followers on Twitter and Facebook. For me this enables me to spend just one or two sessions a day reviewing all of my feeds in Google Reader. Instead of immediately sharing those items I believe to be of interest I just add them to Buffer. Buffer then sends out the tweet or status update complete with a link to the article, at the next time slot I have set for the network in question. (See SocialBro above, which can set the best times for your status updates automatically)
For each Twitter account or Facebook profile you are linked to, you can define the number of statuses you wish to post each day and at what times. As you add items to Buffer they are allocated the next available slot, overflowing to subsequent days if necessary. It is possible to post the same item to multiple accounts if you wish, and you can also post immediately if you find something that is time critical.
A useful feature allows you to review all items in Buffer and edit them if you wish with your own comments. While I use Buffer predominately with Google Reader, it can also be used as a Browser plugin, enabling you to post from anything of interest from anywhere!
BottleNose
I am still exploring the potential of BottleNose, which provides a combination of insights and suggestions for re-tweeting or mentioning. Essentially it takes your Twitter timeline and allows you to segment this in a number of different ways using ‘Assistants’. You can add Assistants that will track:
Popular items that have been shared often
Suggested items that are aligned to your interests
Breaking News within your network
Suggested Reposts of items deemed to be highly relevant or trending
You can also set up specific streams to track your Twitter lists; a wide variety of popular topics; specific individuals; items that are exclusively News, Video or Pictures; or something else that you can customise.
Finally there is a clever graphic capability called Sonar. Within any of the
streams you have defined you can see how you link to other Topics, Hashtags or People. You can also select any Topic, Hashtag or Person to be centred in Sonar to see how the connections form around your selection. The screen grab shows part of an instant snapshot of my stream.
ManageFlitter
ManageFlitter is one of those really useful applications that is easy to use and performs a helpful housekeeping role. It quickly loads the people you Follow and segments them in to a number of different categories, such as:
Don’t follow back
No profile image
Inactive
Talkative
Quiet
In turn each of these categories can be sorted by criteria such as ‘follow date’, ‘listed’, ‘last tweet’, ‘username’ etc.
The purpose is to allow you to quickly segment people that you may decide to unfollow because they are inactive, or have no profile image. To aid the process you can select as many as 100 people at a time. There is a Pro version that offers more sophistication.
Conclusion
These applications are among my current favourites, and I see little reason to replace any of them in the immediate future. (Well at least not until something amazing gets launched tomorrow!).
If you want to explore some other interesting applications then do try Strawberry Jam, Commun.it and TwentyFeet, AND then share your findings.
Peter Rees is an independent Internet Business Consultant. He specialises in a metrics based approach to internet marketing, making extensive use of website analytics and website performance auditing tools to best inform and advise his clients. He is a strong advocate of the need for companies to implement a formal Social Media Strategy, supported in turn by Social Media Policies and measurement systems.
Every year, it’s my honor to speak professionally at organizations such as The Coca-Cola Company, Markel Insurance and the National Restaurant Association. For reasons I can’t quite explain, audiences seem to really enjoy my informative, upbeat and interactive presentations on social media and mobile marketing.
This year, given the fact that my new book Go Mobile is the #1 mobile marketing book in America, my requests for speaking engagements will increase. At that time, the law of supply and demand will kick-in and my speaking fees will go up as a result.
Before that happens, I’d like to make a special offer to the regular readers of the 60 Second Marketer blog and the 60 Second Marketer e-newsletter.
Hire Me to Consult or Speak with Your Organization by Purchasing Copies of Go Mobile. As mentioned, corporations from around the globe hire me to speak professionally about social and mobile marketing. For a limited time, in an effort to keep Go Mobile at the top of the mobile marketing beststeller list, I’ll make the following proposal to the first 5 organizations who take advantage of this offer:
90-Minute Consulting: I will conduct a 90-minute social and/or mobile marketing consulting session with you via phone in return for your purchase of 25 copies of Go Mobile.
Webinar: will run, manage and conduct an exclusive social media or mobile marketing webinar for the audience of your choice in return for your purchase of 75 copies of Go Mobile.
Keynote Speech or Workshop: I will conduct a keynote speech or 4-hour workshop on the topic of social media or mobile marketing at the location of your choice in return for your purchase of 300 copies of Go Mobile. (Airfare and hotel paid by you.)
This is a limited time offer — once I have 5 of these proposals locked-up, I’ll be shifting back to my regular speaking fees. I can answer any questions you have about this offer via email and will be happy to provide a sales sheet I’ve prepared with details about the offer.
Thanks again for being part of the growing global community we have at the 60 Second Marketer. I look forward the prospect of working with the 5 organizations who will take me up on this offer.
(For a snapshot of my speaking style, watch the video below or click here to watch it on the 60 Second Marketer YouTube channel.)
If you’re like a lot of people, you might be asking, “What is mobile marketing?” It sounds like a basic question, but in doing some keyword research for the 60 Second Marketer, I found that “What is mobile marketing?” is the third most common mobile search phrase after “mobile marketing” and “mobile media.”
So, given that, I thought I’d shed some light on what mobile marketing is and how it’s used.
The definition of mobile marketing is pretty straightforward — it’s the set of techniques and practices that enable organizations to connect and engage with their audience in an interactive manner through any mobile device.
The tools and techniques that are used in mobile marketing included the following:
Near Field Communication and BlueTooth (i.e., wireless communication between two devices)
SMS and MMS (i.e., text messaging)
2D codes (i.e., QR codes, EZ codes, Microsoft TAG, etc.)
Mobile email
In Go Mobile (affiliate link), the book I’ve written with Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot, we provide a roadmap on how to set-up, launch and manage a mobile marketing campaign.
What follows is an excerpt from the introduction in the book. It’s currently the #1 mobile marketing book in America, so if you like what you see, feel free to take a closer look by clicking here.
Here’s the excerpt:
“Are you curious about how to use mobile marketing to grow your business? Would you like to know how to use QR codes, mobile apps, location-based marketing and other mobile tools to increase your sales and revenue? And are you wondering how companies like Coca-Cola, Delta and Starbucks use mobile marketing to connect with their customers?
If so, we have some good news. That’s exactly what we’ve set out to do in Go Mobile. We’ve demystified mobile marketing and re-packaged it as a simple, easy-to-understand tool that you can use to grow your sales and revenue. The questions you have about how to set-up, launch and run a mobile marketing campaign have been answered in this book.
There are four primary mobile operating systems in the U.S. Percentages indicate total U.S. market share.
It’s worth noting that mobile marketing isn’t just an evolutionary new technology, it’s a revolutionary new technology. In fact, it’s a once in a generation shift in the way consumers connect with brands. And it’s going to have more impact than radio, TV and the personal computer – combined.
How can we say that? How can something as small as a smartphone be as powerful as radio, TV and the personal computer combined?
The reason is because mobile provides all three of those things (and more) in a small device that can be put in your pocket. There’s no need to be tied down by a big box that needs to be plugged in all the time. Instead, you (and your customer) can access it whenever they want and wherever they are.
In fact, research by Morgan Stanley indicated that 91% of all mobile phone users have their phones within arm’s reach 24/7. Additional research by Nielsen shows that the growth of the iPhone was 10 times faster than the growth of America Online.
It gets even more incredible. According to the 60 Second Marketer, there are 6.8 billion people on the planet, 4.0 billion of whom own a mobile phone. Do you know how many own a toothbrush? 3.5 billion. That’s right, more people own a mobile phone than own a toothbrush.
What’s more, Gartner predicts that by 2013 the primary way people will access the internet is via their mobile browsers. In other words, more than half the time someone accesses the internet, they’ll be doing it from a mobile phone. That has huge implications for how your business needs to connect with prospects and customers.
Given all that, it’s not surprising that you’re curious about mobile marketing and that you’re reading this book. After all, people like you have realized that mobile is going to be huge. No, wait. Strike that. Mobile is huge. And it’s going to get even huger. (Is huger a word? Why, yes. Just Google it from your mobile device if you don’t believe us.)
Is Mobile Marketing Right for You?
Thestarting point for anyone interested in diving into mobile marketing isn’t to run out and develop an app or set up a mobile website. Instead, the starting point is to begin by asking yourself, “is mobile marketing right for my business?”
With that in mind, we’ve come up with a handy little checklist designed to help you figure out if mobile is right for you.
Mobile marketing is right for your business if…
You need new customers
You want existing customers come back more frequently
You want to improve your profit margins
You need to appeal to a broader audience
You want to differentiate your brand
You’d like to improve your marketing ROI
You want customers to spend more money each time they buy from you
You’re looking for new distribution channels
You want to grow your market share
You want to be in front of your customers 24/7
See where we’re going with this? The odds are pretty good that one or more of the items listed above is important to you. Who doesn’t want more customers? Who doesn’t want to improve their marketing ROI? And who doesn’t want to differentiate their brand?
5 More Reasons Mobile Marketing Might be Right for Your Business
If the list of reasons above wasn’t enough to get you started in mobile marketing, here are five more that will almost certainly help you along your way.
It’s easier than you think. Setting-up, launching and running a mobile marketing campaign is easier than you may think. If you’re interested in getting a helping hand, reach out to an SMS service provider, your digital advertising agency or a mobile ad network like AdMob, iAd or Millenial Media. A quick phone call to any one of those entities will help you understand just how easy it is to get started in mobile marketing. (Of course, reading this book will help, too.)
There’s a huge untapped mobile audience. The mobile audience is huge, which leaves a large gap between the amount of marketers targeting mobile users, and the actual amount of people using mobile devices, like smartphones. This means that now is the ideal time to test out a mobile marketing campaign for your business to see how effectively it can build your brand and sell your products.
Mobile converts prospects to customers. The conversion rate for many mobile marketing campaigns is dramatically higher than the conversion rate for traditional campaigns. eMarketer reports that 1 in 10 people currently redeem mobile coupons, which is 10 times higher than the redemption rate of some traditional coupons channels.1
It costs less than traditional methods. The cost of running a mobile marketing campaign is currently less than the cost of running many traditional marketing campaigns. Because of that, the ROI of most mobile campaigns is higher than other marketing channels. What’s wrong with a healthy ROI? Nothing.
People respond to mobile. Just like it’s easy to start a campaign on your end, it’s also easy for customers to opt-in or respond to an ad through a click of a button on their smartphone. Easy sells; and more people are willing to reply to a text message or a mobile banner ad than are willing to clip a coupon out of a newspaper.
The bottom line is that there are amazing opportunities for any business interested in taking a dive into mobile marketing. Better still, mobile marketing is not that hard. If you have a basic understanding of marketing, it’ll be a piece of cake. And even if you don’t have a basic understanding of marketing, it’s incredibly easy to learn.”
If you’d like some quick tips on how to get started in mobile marketing, check out the video below from the 60 Second Marketer YouTube Channel. It includes some additional tips on how to get started in mobile marketing quickly and easily.
A lot of people have been reading about SOPA without having a clear understanding of what SOPA is and why, in a related move, the FBI has shut down sites like MegaUpload.
The short answer is that SOPA was an attempt by Washington to prevent people from illegally downloading movies and music on sites like MegaUpload.
By some estimates, $3 out of every $10 in potential revenue for a Hollywood movie is stolen by people downloading the movies illegally. The core idea behind SOPA — to prevent online piracy — was a good one, but the bill died because it gave broad powers to the government to shut down websites with very little oversight.
You probably haven’t seen the last of bills like SOPA. The only difference is that, in the future, the bills introduced before congress to prevent online piracy will be written in a more clear and specific manner.
On Friday, I was interviewed by HLN and was asked to explain the issues related to SOPA and MegaUpload. If you’d like more information on these topics, check out my interview below with Susan Hendricks.
There’s a fascinating case study involving Williams-Sonoma, the premier specialty retailer that sells cookware to chefs and food lovers across the United States.
When Williams-Sonoma first introduced a home bread making machine for $275, sales were almost non-existent. But rather than abandon the product, the company brought in a marketing research firm which suggested they introduce a slightly better model that was priced a whopping 50% higher than the $275 model. In other words, they would have a product that was 10% better but charge $415 for it.
Amazingly, once the $415 machine was introduced, sales of the $275 model began to take off.
Why Did This Happen?
In consumer behavior circles, this is called the decoy effectand it involves using one product model to anchor the perceptions of another model.
This duck is not a decoy and it has nothing to do with this blog post. Hopefully, you won't hold that against us.
In the Williams-Sonoma example, consumers said, “I don’t know much about bread machines, but if I can buy the $275 model that’s almost as good as the $415 model, then I must be getting a good deal.”
Action Steps Based on The Williams-Sonoma Case Study
Here are some action steps based on the case study above:
Consider increasing your prices. Is there room for a price increase across your product line? I’ve found that consumers are less resistant to price increases than marketers are led to believe.
Explore new ways to tier your current prices. By offering a variety of pricing tiers (e.g., silver, gold, platinum), you’re giving your customers more options. Consumers respond well when companies provide options.
Offer a variety of payment options. Research indicates that offering a variety of payment options works very well, too. Just giving consumers the option of “three monthly payments of just $19.99 a month” can increase sales significantly.
In my experiences working with large brands for the past 25+ years, I’ve come to realize that there is much more room for increased prices than most people realize.
What have your experiences been on this front? Let us know in the comments section below.
Are you thinking of building and creating an app? In the last week of 2011 alone, a record 1.2 billion apps were downloaded. Here are some tips and considerations when diving into the business of mobile app development.
It takes more than a great Idea – Focus on ideas that will help your core business succeed. Being in a position to execute an idea better than others is more pivotal than coming up with one “great” idea. The ability to excecute your idea is critical. Unique partnerships, original content, better design and stronger brand are a few key areas that will enable you to execute better than your competition.
Sales vs. Value – First ask yourself, are you creating an app or starting a business? An app should be part of a business strategy, not the strategy. Paid app revenue will vary up and down, your business should not.
Free vs. Paid – Assess the value in making your app free. What does your business gain? Generally, an app is considered “viral” after five consecutive days of 500+ downloads. The ranking system in the app store is a weighted function of sales over time. If you’re going to be a paid app, are you going to be viral? How about if you’re a free app?
Building an App is Half the Battle – Getting the message out about your app is the other half. Build up potential energy with newsletters, screenshots, e-mail and word-of-mouth before the app launches. That way when it does launch the app is more likely to be a success.
Don’t settle for OK – There are over 500,000 apps in the App Store. You will have a hard time getting noticed for something that is merely okay.
Think beyond the iPhone – Think mobile.
Android – While the iPhone is the preferred smartphone for many, Android market share is actually larger than iPhone market share. We recommend proving your business on one platform and then expanding to a second platform.
HTML5 – Another solution is utilizing HTML 5 as a resource to create apps. This method works across many phones and may be a simpler solution for many sites. The downside is that HTML5 apps are harder to monetize and there is no “app store.” Web Apps have some limitations in functionality and performance.
iPad/Tablet – Lastly, the iPad and tablets are growing in business. They are ideally positioned as a field data collection/field sales tool. For consumers, the device serves as an optimal platform for gaming and an enhanced TV experiences.
About the author: Greg Raiz is the Founder and CEO of Raizlabs, a Boston-based developer of mobile apps.
Celebrity Chef Paula Deen, recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, has broken the first rule of 21st Century marketing — always be transparent. Ms. Deen, often criticized by food critics and chefs for her calorie-packed recipes, disclosed on Tuesday that she has had Type 2 diabetes for nearly three years. Obesity increases people’s risk for Type 2 diabetes.
Anthony Bourdain, who called Deen the “most dangerous person to America” who’s “proud of the fact that her food is f**king bad for you” took to the blogosphere to point out duplicity of a celebrity chef promoting Deep-Fried Mac and Cheese at the same time that she was seeking treatment for her diabetes.
Paula Deen has had Type 2 diabetes for several years, during which time she promoted cooking that some would argue only fueled her disease.
The Wall Street Journal reports that many comments on Twitter echoed Mr. Bourdain’s sentiment. “I think it’s completely gross that Paula Deen made $$$ pushing food that makes you sick and will now make $$$ pushing the medication for it,” read one Tweet.
It’s safe to say that Ms. Deen has a brand management problem. She’s broken the first rule of 21st century marketing, which is to be clear, transparent and honest in your dealings with the public.
In the past, scandalous stories were often hidden or swept under the rug. (President Kennedy was one of the more notable beneficiaries of stories that never saw the light of day.) Today, because of digital media, negative stories spread much more quickly and have much greater impact on celebrity brands.
The solution, of course, is to be entirely transparent in dealing with the public. If Ms. Deen had come clean when she was first diagnosed — or, if she had just said, “My food choices have, in part, lead to this disease and therefore I’m going to change my ways” — then the public would have been much more forgiving.
My Offer to Ms. Deen — Brand Management Training Free of Charge. I have helped organizations as large as AT&T and The Coca-Cola Company develop branding campaigns that promote the best aspects of their products and services. Ms. Deen isn’t all bad. In fact, with the right training, she could use this as an opportunity to build awareness for healthy cooking and diabetes management.
With that in mind, I’m offering brand management training for Ms. Deen and her team of social media and branding specialists. The training would provide Ms. Deen the opportunity to address her current situation and to be fully transparent as she moves forward.
During my training, we would create a recipe for success by reviewing the key ingredients of branding, the essential elements of positioning, the primary components of reputation management and the importance of being fully transparent with your constituents.
How Ms. Deen Can Reach Me. I’m not making light of Ms. Deen’s health problems — I understand diabetes since it runs in my family. I am, however, encouraging Ms. Deen to take my offer of brand management training seriously and to call me at her earliest convenience.
I can be reached via email or by calling the number listed on the 60 Second Marketer contact page. I will be happy to drop what I’m doing and devote the next 3 days exclusively to Ms. Deen.
In B2B marketing, landing pages are often one of the first interactions a company has with a sales lead. Landing pages can jump-start a relationship with a prospect or turn them away forever. Marketing automation solution, Act-On Software, compiled a list of landing page dos and don’ts for B2B marketers looking to make the most out of these powerful webpages. Below is a sneak peak of Act-On’s list: Six Dos and Don’ts for Creating Better Landing Pages.
1. Do: Design for a short attention span
Here are six ideas you can use to improve your landing pages.
The web’s a busy place, so make it easy for people to follow your message from the site where they found it to your landing page. Keep the message above the fold, use bulleted text and crisp, clean language. It’s important that your offer be completely on the page, with no scrolling required to find or follow it.
2. Don’t: Have other navigation
It’s a common mistake to link to other products or offers on a landing page. But additional links can dilute your messaging or distract from your call to action. Keep it simple and keep it focused. It’s also harder to measure the impact of your offer, messages, and page design when there’s more than one focus on a page.
3. Do: Make your offer compelling
Fulfill expectations and reinforce why the prospect clicked on that link to begin with. Make sure your content and offer grab attention and provide value.
4. Don’t: Ask too many questions
Landing pages are a great way to get more information about potential customers, but as with any new relationship, asking too many questions too quickly may seem like an invasion of privacy. If you’re using a form or survey, ask only for essentials like name and email at first. If the relationship continues, trust will build and you can ask more questions. If you build forms with conditional logic, you can show or hide data fields based on what users select for another field on that form.
5. Do: Test your ideas
Landing pages let marketers test concepts in ways that print ads and other traditional marketing can’t do. Try at least basic A/B split testing to find out which offers, graphics, surveys, buttons, etc. work best.
6. Don’t: Target everyone with your offer
Half the value of landing pages is that they let you serve self-selected prospects with very specific needs. Keep your offer focused to this target audience; don’t try to make it fit everyone. Getting traffic from people who don’t fit your target demographic won’t increase conversions.
Author: Shawn Naggiar, Chief Revenue Officer of Act-On Software. Act-On Software is the provider of the fastest growing, cloud-based marketing automation platform for the Fortune 5,000,000, enabling marketers to realize their creative expression to the fullest.
Here are the new facts that Cory found. Some are really fun and incredible:
Half of smartphone owners have scanned QR codes and 18 percent of them made a purchase after scanning. Consumer Pulse
30 million consumers watch television content via their mobile phones. Nielsen
40% of tablet owners said they looked up information related to a program they were watching on TV while watching, and 30% said they looked up information about a product after seeing it on TV. Nielsen
Is mobile part of your overall marketing plan? If not, it probably should be.
33% of US mobile customers prefer offers via text message to those via mobile Web (21%), apps (11%), and voice mail (8%). DMA UK
Of smartphone owners that used them while shopping in a store, 73% used mobile Web instead of an app. Yahoo!
The average amount of time smartphone and tablet users spend with mobile applications reached 94 minutes in December 2011, more than the 72 minutes they spend on the Web. Flurry
Time spent on mobile apps is largely dominated by games and social networking, at 49% and 30% respectively. Flurry
By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide. Gartner
Nearly 60% of Web users say they expect a site to load on their mobile phone in three seconds or less, and 74% are only willing to wait five seconds or less for a single Web page to load before leaving the site. Compuware
95% of smartphone users looked up local information, and of those, 61% called and 59% visited the business. Google IPSOS
Mobile sites are preferred for shopping: 81% of users prefer them to apps for researching product and price information, and 63% prefer them for purchasing a product. Adobe
Of smartphone users asked why they would scan a QR code, 87% said to get a coupon, discount or deal. MGH
40% of smartphone users and 42% of tablet users report using their device while watching TV on a daily basis. Nielsen
The majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively). Nielsen
87% of app downloaders (those who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days) have used deal-of-the-day websites like Groupon or Living Social. Nielsen
U.S. adults spend 10.1% of their total media consumption time with mobile, but only .9% of total ad spend is dedicated to mobile. Contrast with TV time spent vs. ad spend, at 42.5% and 42.2%, respectively. eMarketer
The average mobile campaign has a positive impact on the five traditional brand metrics and significantly outpaces online, especially in ad awareness, with average exposed-control deltas of +19.9 for mobile vs. +4.2 for online. Dynamic Logic
16 % of smartphone users report that they’ve made a purchase as a result of a marketing message they received on their phone. Email was by far most effective, with 55% purchasing as a result of an email received on their mobile device. Exact Target
More than half of those who purchased as a result of a marketing message on their smartphone did so on the device itself. Exact Target
1 in 10 American adults have texted a charitable donation from their phones. Of those that contributed to the January 2010 Haiti earthquake relief, 73% of these contributed on the same day they heard about the campaign, and 56% continued to contribute to other disaster reliefs using their mobile device. Pew Research
In Q3 2011, teens increased their mobile data consumption by 256% over the prior year. Nielsen
In June 2011, the number of U.S. wireless subscriber connections surpassed the U.S. population. CTIA
Mobile Internet use ranks almost equally high for in-home (89%) and out-of-home (93%) access. Yahoo!
Mobile user traffic remains constant throughout the week, and holds at a consistently high level from 9 a.m. until 11 p.m. Yahoo!
Inneractive found that there is a direct correlation between the size of a mobile device’s screen and the CTR the device yields for mobile advertising. For example, the iPhone yields a 4.35% CTR with a 3.5” screen, compared to a 9.61% CTR on the iPad’s 9.7” screen. Inneractive
This is the year many companies are going to Go Mobile. If you’re already on the mobile bandwagon, that’s terrific. If not, then there’s never been a better time to get started than now.
Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to share these facts with anyone you’d like.
Not too long ago, I wrote a post that provided 21 different tips on video marketing. I thought I’d post it again for those of you who missed it the first time.
If you’re a small- to mid-sized business, you’re probably wondering how you can leverage online video to build awareness for your brand or company. Here are 22 tips to remember if and when you decide to use online video to promote your product or service.
Here goes:
It’s mostly about the visuals. If you watch the evening news, you’ll notice that what you’re really paying attention to is the video, not the script. Sure, the script enhances the video, but at the end, you remember what you see more than what you hear. Think about the Miracle on the Hudson — you remember the video of the airplane, not what the journalist said about it.
Don’t regurgitate a press release. Videos are not press releases. They’re separate animals of their own. Write them that way.
Focus on one, or at most two, key points. Keep things simple. But if you do decide to focus on more than one point, be sure to include a recap at the end so the viewer gets a second chance to see your key points.
Don’t cheap out. Bad video production makes for a bad user-experience. If you’re an Apple user, you can use Garage Band and iMovie to make high-quality videos. If you’re not an Apple user, you can use some PC based solution that’ll probably be less elegant and harder to use. Sorry.
Don’t cheap out #2. Use a professional-quality microphone (about $100) and, if you can afford it, a compressor (about $200). Whatever you do, don’t buy a cheap microphone. It’s like printing a brochure on cheap paper — when the sound quality is cheap, it sends a bad signal to your prospective customers. Invest in a good microphone and you won’t regret it.
Keep the videos short. People don’t have the time or the patience to watch something more than two or three minutes long.
Write in concise sentences. Jerry Seinfeld said that the art of telling a joke was to get as much information packed into as short a sentence as possible. In similar fashion, the more content you pack into each sentence, the crisper and more fulfilling the video will be.
The 60 Second Marketer YouTube channel has more than 50 short online tutorials to help you improve your marketing. Click the image above to visit our channel.
A committee will kill a good video. As with most things creative, the more people who are involved, the more likely a good concept will get watered down. Keep things simple, crisp and efficient.
Add variety. Use photos up front, then cut away to a short interview, then come back to a pie chart, then show more photos — the more variety and texture in your video, the more your audience will stay engaged.
Don’t ad lib. Plan your video out. Write a script. Record it. Drop in the visuals and graphics. Don’t wing it — if you do, it’ll show.
Script writing secrets. Write your script. Then write it again with 25% fewer words. Then cut that back by another 25%. The secret is to keep things short. People are used to watching 30-second commercials. Two minutes is an eternity in online video world.
Keep the transitions between scenes simple. There are over 100 ways to transition from one scene to the next. Do you know how many of those Hollywood uses? One. It’s called a dissolve and it’s still the simplest, easiest, cleanest way to move from one scene to the next.
It’s all about the lighting. What separates the pros from the amateurs? Lighting. In fact, the third person hired on a film crew in Hollywood (after the director and the director of photography) is the lighting director. Use good lights. And use more than one to shoot like the pros do.
It’s not about the lighting. Of course, if you’re just using still photos and PowerPoint (or Keynote) to create a short video, then you don’t have to worry about lighting at all. That’s a solution for people who don’t want to buy a lighting kit.
Create your own YouTube channel. If you’re going to shoot a lot of videos, create your own YouTube channel like the one The 60 Second Marketer has. That way, people can subscribe to your videos and get updates whenever you upload a new one.
Use TubeMogul. Looking for a way to upload your videos to over 20 different channels on the internet with the flip of a switch? Then use TubeMogul. It’ll save you hours and hours of time.
Get comfortable with QuickTime. QuickTime, like all things Apple, is easy-to-use and the standard for online video. If you’re still using Windows Media Player, dump it and get with the program.
Hire an outside video production firm. If you don’t feel comfortable with your own video production skills, hire someone to do it for you. 60 Second Communications produces online videos for its clients. So does TGCMedia and plenty of other companies around the country.
Check out Veeple, which is a cool, new video production technology that allows you to make certain spots on your video clickable. That way, people can click a video of a document to download a hard copy, or they can click on a video of a website to visit the website. Cool.
Follow the 2 second rule. The average 30-second TV spot has between 15 to 30 shots. If you keep the shots in your video to under 2 seconds each, you’ll keep your viewer engaged the same way a 30-second TV spot does.
Don’t follow the 2 second rule. On the other hand, you could go the other direction and just shoot one person on camera for 3 minutes like Mike Turner did. It’s proof that for every rule, there’s an exception.
Are you looking for a list of the top social media management tools? Well, good news — you’ve come to the right place. A lot of people have been asking me about this lately, so here goes.
Let’s dive in:
Ping.fm: Though there are many one-click publishing applications, Ping is the most popular site for aggregating your social media channels. It allows you to simultaneously update accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr through their web interface, text message, email or instant message.
HootSuite: This is a tool that allows you to manage multiple social media channels through one dashboard. If you have a company with more than one contributor to your social media program, HootSuite is a good solution.
TweetDeck: Like HootSuite, TweetDeck provides a way to track many of your social media channels on one dashboard. It can be a time-saver and a productivity- enhancer, assuming you’re not easily distracted.
Cotweet: CoTweet is perfect for companies who have multiple people contributing to their social media campaigns. In addition to organizing and monitoring your Twit- ter and Facebook pages, it allows you to assign updates and social streams to members of your team based either on their expertise or who is “on duty” at a certain time.
Seesmic: Manage your Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Ping.fm, Foursquare and Goo- gle Buzz accounts all from one simple interface. Whether you want to access your social networks from the web, a desktop application, or your mobile phone, Sees- mic has a solution.
NutshellMail: This is one of my favorite tools. If you’re easily distracted, NutshellMail may be the tool for you. This tool, much like TweetDeck, helps you track all of your social media channels, but instead of constant updates, sends you a single email per day describing your ac- counts’ activity.
Sprout Social: Another organizing tool, Sprout Social manages multiple social networks from one dashboard, allowing you to optimize your outreach in each channel, identify people interested in your brand and convert them to loyal consumers.
PostRank: This dashboard aggregates what is happening with all of your content across the web in a constantly updated feed. This way you can see what type of engagement your content is getting across different channels right as it happens.
thisMoment: Their recently introduced Distributed Engagement Channel (DEC) uses thisMoment’s publishing platform to combine their design, your content and multi- media user generated content into one “channel” that can be pushed to many dif- ferent social media outlets.
Awareness Social Marketing Hub: This platform is ideal for larger social media campaigns with multiple people monitoring and executing the program. In addition to aggregating social network information, the Hub allows marketers to set up workflows in order to coordinate efforts across a marketing team.
MarketMeSuite: MarketMeSuite goes beyond social media management to give you a proactive marketing suite. As their website says, you can start conversations, follow people, brand yourself and shout “I’m Here, and I want to Take Social Media By Storm!”
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoyed the post. If you did, please feel free to hit the Google +1 button above. Thanks!
In Go Mobile, the book I’ve written with Jeanne Hopkins from HubSpot, one of the things we tried to do was to simplify and demystify mobile marketing. Our thinking was that people are a little intimidated by mobile, so we wanted to provide a simple, step-by-step roadmap in the book.
To our surprise, mobile marketing isn’t all that difficult. In fact, creating a mobile website, running a QR code promotion or developing a mobile banner ad campaign is actually pretty easy.
To help people wrap their minds around the whole mobile marketing thing, I created the comic below that shows 5 things you can to do get started in mobile marketing today. It’s designed to be a fun, easy read — and it even has a bit of edgy humor. But overall, it should give you a clear sense of just how easy it is to get started in mobile.
If you like what I’ve done below, feel free to download it or let your friends know about it.
A few years ago, The Coca-Cola Company approached movie theaters with an interesting proposition.
They wanted to install Coke vending machines in the lobbies of movie theaters that were already selling Coca-Cola fountain drinks.
Of course, most movie theaters declined the offer because they feared that the vending machines would cannibalize existing fountain sales. But one enterprising movie theater company decided to test the premise assuming that they could always take the vending machines out if they saw a large decline in fountain drinks.
The Coca-Cola Company found new ways to grow market share by encouraging some of their customers to take a calculated risk. What calculated risks are you taking with your business?
To the movie theater company’s surprise, when the Coke vending machines were installed in the lobbies, fountain sales didn’t decline at all. What’s more, with the addition of the Coke vending machines, overall sales of Coca-Cola increased for each theater!
Who would have expected those results?
Lessons Learned
The movie theater company that took the risk with the vending machines learned several important lessons:
Sometimes you have to look in unexpected places to grow sales
Taking calculated risks is a necessary part of growing your business
Every time you think you’ve got consumer behavior figured out, consumers surprise you with unexpected nuances
Action Steps for You
Here are some action steps you can take today based on the story above.
Brainstorm 15 unexpected new revenue streams with key executives from your company. Be sure to employ the “no idea is a bad idea” rule
Do a cost/benefit analysis of the top 10 ideas you come up with
Test the best idea you generated. Be sure to set expectations for the test and track results rigorously
Even if your new idea isn’t a clear winner, you can sometimes test your way into success. Don’t give up. Refine the idea until it begins to show positive results or until it dies an ugly death.
Other Articles of Interest from the 60 Second Marketer Blog:
The 60 Second Marketer is a free online magazine brought to you by BKV Interactive and Direct Response. We try to provide quick updates on the newest tools, tips and techniques in marketing. We also try to accomplish that with a dose of humor or levity. As it turns out, we're pretty good at providing tools, tips and techniques, but we're not actually all that funny. Which would explain why people don't call us "funny" as much as they call us "laughable." Bummer. Our offices, for those of you who are interested, are located in Atlanta (404-233-0332) and Kansas City (913-648-8333). We also have offices on Bora Bora, but they don't have the phones installed yet.
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