Who will have the best Super Bowl Commercials in 2012? That’s a question CNN anchor Don Lemon asked me on Saturday night.

This year, the cost of a 30-second TV spot on the Super Bowl is running $3.5 million. There are three dozen brands participating in the commercial-fest, including Bud Light, Budweiser, Cadillac, CareerBuilder.com (go chimps!), Cars.com, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Priceline and Volkswagen.

What are the big stories this year? Here goes:

1. Priceline Kills Off William Shatner: It’s true, the man who has re-incarnated his career more often than any other actor in history may have met his match. Rumor is that Priceline will introduce the new spokesperson during the Super Bowl. Will it be Spock? Chekov? Lieutenant Uhura? (My bet is that they’ll reincarnate Shatner — after all, how can you kill Captain Kirk?)
2. Coca-Cola Integrates Social Media Into the Super Bowl: The Coca-Cola Company has decided to reintroduce the Polar Bears in an innovative way. They’ll be running regular 30-second spots, but the Polar Bears will also be reacting to the game and the commercials from a dedicated, live-streaming Facebook page.
3. Cars.com Will Have the Most Talked-About Commercial: The biggest risk in doing a Super Bowl commercial is to spend $3.5 million to bore people to death. There’s no risk of that happening with the new Cars.com commercial that has two talking heads coming from one body. My prediction? It’ll be the most talked-about commercial around the water cooler on Monday — 60% will love it and 40% will hate it.
4. CareerBuilder.com Reintroduces the Chimps: The challenge CareerBuilder.com has always had with their chimps campaign is that people remembered the chimps but couldn’t remember CareerBuilder.com. Will they fix that problem this year? We’ll see next week.

If you’d like to see more information about some of the commercials mentioned above, check out my interview on CNN with Don Lemon below.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

Are you trying to take your marketing campaigns to the next level but don’t know where to start? Does your business already have a large following on Facebook or Twitter but you don’t know what the next step is?

Instead of leaving your marketing program to fend for itself, here are five simple, innovative and fun promotions that you can use to take your marketing campaign to the next level.

1. SnapTags

Interested in trying out a SnapTag? Just take a photo of this logo and text it to 27205. You'll receive a text back from Toyota with a promotion for the Prius.

The continued growth of mobile technologies has brought about a new era of promotions in the form of SnapTags.  Simply put, SnapTags can turn your ordinary brand logo into an interactive marketing experience.  How does the consumer get involved? All they need is a camera phone to simply take a picture of the logo in which a 2D barcode is embedded.   The image can be sent to a code via text message and instantly the user will be provided exclusive information or downloadable content concerning your buiness. The beauty for marketers is that SnapTags can be posted on anything, including Facebook pages, YouTube channels, or pretty much any social media website. Click on over to Spyderlink to find out more information on SnapTags.

2. Virtual Business Cards

Who honestly wants to carry around a stack of business cards in their pocket or wallet all day?  Technology is the driving force behind marketing and promotions today, meaning it is time to trash all those paper cards and experience the world of virtual business cards.  A more direct approach to the SnapTag application mentioned above, virtual business cards serve the purpose of “handing out” your company’s name and information.

The link to social media promotions is that it will be easier to locate a virtual business card already on your phone or in your email.  If somebody wants to follow you on Facebook, Twitter or Linkedln, that information will be readily available on the card and easy to locate. Identyme.com and Mydropcard.com are two websites where virtual business can be created.

3. Hold a Contest

Everybody likes to win! Holding a contest on any or all of your social media pages will allow users to interact with your page directly while providing them with a little incentive. It can be as easy as lets say, Starbucks announcing “the first 100 people to mention their favorite fall flavor will receive a half off coupon for their next purchase.”

Contests are also a great way to obtain more followers.  One example might be “the next 300 people to ’like’ our page will receive 10% off their next purchase.”  You can then send those people a code in which they can redeem the offer.  The idea is to draw attention to your company. Create buzz. Have people talking about this contest all over Facebook or Tweeting to their friends about what they could win.

4. Flash Mob

Get those dancing shoes ready! While browsing through various social media promotions, I stumbled upon the flash mob idea at www.sitepronews.com.  Flash mobs have become the fun, new way to reach the younger consumers by gathering a group of people in a public place to participate in some organized action, the most popular being dancing.

As the business owner, you can Tweet a time and place for your followers to gather while providing specific details, like wearing a certain color or choreographing a dance routine with your friends.  Everyone who attends can receive some type of compensation like free products, samples, or coupons.  Even go as far as holding a flash mob contest on your YouTube channel or Facebook page.

Participants can post videos of their flash mobs to your page and have people vote on the best one.  Try providing specific instructions like incorporating your product into the video or developing some kind of cheer.  This type of promotion should create a lot of excitement for you social media followers.

5. Picture This

We have all heard the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  Social media is the perfect outlet to get your product noticed or message heard through something as simple as a picture.  Does your business have a new product coming out? Try taking a picture and posting it on the web for potential buyers to view before it even goes to market.  Maybe you’re offering more of an edible product.  Snapping a quick picture of a freshly baked good or recently prepared beverage and posting it to your page can quickly grab the attention of any loyal follower.  A picture reveals exactly what is being offered.  All that is left for the consumer is the experience, which should follow if this style of promotion is used effectively.

Key Take Aways: Remember, don’t limit yourself.  Discover what you want to promote, how to promote it, and then go for it.  There is a high level commitment associated with promoting through social media, especially if you choose to take the contest route, but the attention and buzz created will certainly pay off.

Know of any other promotional ideas perfect for social media? We would love to hear your comments and reactions!

Westley Phillipi is a marketing analyst and a contributing writer for the 60 Second Marketer.

On average, readers only spend about 2 seconds looking at a print ad. Given the short amount of time you have to grab their attention, it’s important that any ad you create 1) grabs the reader’s attention, and 2) encourages them to buy your product or service.

Most print ads are composed of a strong visual, a headline, body copy and a logo or signature. But producing a great print ad isn’t as simple tossing these elements together. There are several do’s and don’ts that are essential to creating effective print ads:

DO THIS:

• Agree on your SMART goals. Your objective should be more than to simply “increase sales.” Get more specific with your goals, such as to “increase lunchtime store visits by 30% in 3 months” or “drive 15% more customers into our retail locations over the course of 60 days.” Specific goals are called SMART goals, which stands for Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Realistic and Timebound. Design your ad around SMART goals and be sure to hold yourself accountable to them.
• Hook the reader within 2 seconds. On average, readers only spend 2 seconds looking at a print ad. It’s important to use visuals and headlines that cause the reader to stop and look at your ad. Headlines that evoke an emotion from the reader are more likely to catch the reader’s attention. Using white space and bullet points in an ad have both proven to stop readers in their tracks and produce a higher response rate as well.
• Use high-impact visuals. In the 2 seconds a reader takes to look at your ad, 1.5  seconds are dedicated to visuals while only 0.5 seconds are spent looking at your copy. Use bright, clear images to promote your product. Research shows that people recall photographs 26% more than artwork and are more likely to look at an ad where the subject’s eyes are looking directly at you. That said, your visuals should always support the concept of the product or service you’re selling. Using attention-grabbing visuals just so you can stand out can have a negative impact on your brand.
• Put strategy before creativity. Many advertisers sacrifice targeted content for witty or appealing messages. Even if it would be interesting to use a cartoon to advertise your product, would that really be appropriate in an ad about fine jewelry? Think about where your ad will be printed as well. The message you might want to use to sell your orange juice will be different in a local newspaper than it would be in a specialty magazine.

DON’T DO THAT:

• Don’t stuff your ad with too much information. Less really is more. Too much copy or too many images can actually cause the reader to skip the ad because they feel overwhelmed. In most cases, brand-oriented ads should only use one or two images, have a one-sentence headline and keep the copy to four sentences or less. (There are exceptions to this rule such as when you’re running a promotional/retail ad. But if you’re running a branding ad, it’s a good idea to keep your ad clean and uncluttered.)
  

  It may be tempting to use attention-grabbing visuals in your print ads, but research shows that if you go too far, as Budweiser did in this ad, readers will remember the visual and not the product.

   

• Don’t force unrelated connections. It may be tempting to use a funny visual of a baby with food all over its face in your ad, but if your ad is for a new desktop computer, the audience might not make the connection. Worse yet, research indicates that when an association in an ad isn’t clear, the audience will forget about the product and simply remember the funny visual — in this case, the baby with food all over its face.
• Don’t create negative associations. You might think its clever to compare your energy drink to a cheetah, but the second you mention that a cheetah hunts and kills its prey, the audience automatically applies that association to your product. It’s difficult to avoid some negative associations when using analogies in your messaging, but think through all of the possibilities before printing your ad. In the same vein, try to forgo offensive or stereotypical associations in your message. What may be funny to one person might enrage another and forever damage your brand image.
• Don’t let your brand disappear. It’s not unusual for a brand to disappear in a print ad. When the integration is stretched or when your logo and signature are not prominently displayed, people can forget what product an ad was about entirely. Be sure to place your brand’s logo at a readable size in one of the corners of your advertisement.

A few final thoughts: When crafting a print ad, compose your elements in a way that’s eye-catching, creative, thought-provoking and positive. Be sure to avoid clutter, negative association and bad integration. Print ads are still a prominent form of advertising and can be an incredible tool for your marketing when done correctly and effectively, so use these tips as guidelines the next time you create an ad for your product or service.

Francesca Pefianco is a marketing analyst and writer for the 60 Second Marketer.

Email has emerged as one of the most cost effective ways to deliver content to your customers, but is your email campaign performing as well as it could? There are many ways to judge success of an email campaign, but by looking at these 5 metrics, you can get a well-rounded picture of how well your campaign is performing … and how you stack up against other email marketers.

Open Rate: This metric, as measured as the percentage of people on your email list that open your email, used to be the dominant metric used in email marketing. However, since open rates are determined by adding a piece of code to your email, there can be discrepancies across email clients depending on when the code is called that can skew your open rate data. This inconsistency coupled with the fact that open rates do not reflect how engaging your email content is, has led to more people relying on clickthrough rates to determine the health of their email campaigns. However, open rates can help you evaluate the quality of your subject lines and can alert you if a large portion of people are completely ignoring your communication. For companies that send out emails frequently, you should look to achieve a 20% open rate or higher.

Clickthrough Rate (CTR):  This metric is the most popular way to measure email success, with 92% of email marketers tracking CTR. Calculated by dividing the number of people who click on a link in the body of the email by the total number of people who open the email, this metric gives you a better idea of whether or not people are engaged with your content. According to MarketingSherpa, an average click through rate runs around 6.64%, depending on how long your email campaign has been live.

Delivery Rate: While this may not seem like a significant factor, this metric can help you identify the health of your email list. Figured by dividing the number of emails unable to be delivered by the total number sent, most established email campaigns have a delivery rate of 96% and higher. If you are receiving a lot of hard bounces, emails that are not able to be delivered to the email address you entered, you may need to clean your list. Taking out all hard bounce addresses, and reaching out to your consumers for their current information will help you improve your delivery rate.

Conversion Rate: Using a service such as Google Analytics, you can track how many of your email recipients convert on the website. Whether your goal is to get consumers to fill out a web form or make a purchase, you can track their behavior on your site to monitor how many people are being driven from email to do these particular actions. The only downside here is that you cannot track in-store purchases made as a result of receiving an email unless you include specific promotion codes. However, this metric is still valuable in benchmarking your emails. Marketing Sherpa reports that though only 41% of companies capture this information, those companies see an average conversion rate of 1.37%. Applied to a list of thousands, this can translate into significant revenue you can attribute to your email campaign.

Return on Ad Spend: As with every type of campaign, we recommend calculating your Return on Ad Spend or ROI. This is the most comprehensive tool to evaluate your email campaign, as well as benchmark it against other media you are using to see which tactics are most cost effective for your business. Though it depends highly on your business structure, for active email campaigns, a ROAS of 4,000% is a reasonable goal to strive for.

Posted by Nicole Hall, Account Manager with Mobilize Worldwide. Mobilize Worldwide develops mobile apps, mobile ad campaigns, mobile websites and just about anything else related to mobile marketing for brands interested in growing their sales and revenue using this new and emerging medium.

In direct marketing, conversion is king. But too often we throw around the word, without truly understanding what a conversion actually is.

A major misconception is that a conversion rate only has to do with sales, but the truth of the matter is a conversion is simply getting a consumer to do what you wanted them to do. If your goal is to up email signups, each form filled out is a conversion. If your goal is to increase sales driven from your landing page, a purchase is a conversion.

Optimize your campaigns based on these 4 factors and watch your conversion rates soar.

So now that we’ve established what it is, how do you get a consumer to convert? Well, according to Marketing Experiments, the probability that a consumer will convert is a function of five factors:

1. Motivation of the user
2. Clarity of the value proposition
3. Incentive to take action
4. Friction elements of the process, and
5. Anxiety about entering information

While the motivation of a user is somewhat out of our hands, our job as marketers is to increase the clarity of the value proposition and provide incentives to take action, while decreasing the friction elements and anxiety over entering information. How these objectives can be achieved is dependent on what type of campaign you’re running, but the basic principles are the same.

Decrease Anxiety Over Entering Information: The easiest way to decrease users’ anxiety over providing information is to establish credibility. Third party endorsements and privacy guarantees help establish this credibility, but transparency in the process is also important. Letting consumers know exactly what they should expect after they provide their information, and sticking to those promises, is a good way to reduce their uneasiness about providing information.

Decrease Friction Elements in the Process: Friction in the process is anything that may slow down or distract the user from doing what you want them to do. So don’t get in your own way, cut out any steps that are not 100% vital in the process. In a Marketing Experiments test, decreasing the number of pages on a form from 8 to 4 increased conversions by 68%, while still allowing the company to gather all of the necessary data. Getting rid of unnecessary ads, pop ups, and links will also decrease the friction and streamline the process for users.

Increase the clarity of the value proposition: Very distinctly outline what the consumer stands to gain from clicking on your ad, filling out your form or making a purchase. Instead of framing your offer as what you and your company do, frame it as what problem you can solve for them.

Provide Incentives: This is the basic tenant of marketing, and I’m sure you have more than a few tricks up your sleeve in this department. Providing discounts, exclusive sales, or even just more information can all be reasons that people are willing to give you their information or their money. Just be sure that your incentive is truly driving the behavior that you want, and you’ll be good to go!

Interested in learning more about how to get consumers to convert? Then check out our post on 14 Most Powerful and Effective Words in Marketing. It’s packed with great stuff.

Posted by Nicole Hall, Account Manager with Mobilize Worldwide. Mobilize Worldwide develops mobile apps, mobile ad campaigns, mobile websites and just about anything else related to mobile marketing for brands interested in growing their sales and revenue using this new and emerging medium.

The Social media sphere is an area where businesses and marketers need to be, but many are unaware of how to move beyond the initial faze of creating a Facebook page. For those of you that have a page, but are not quite sure where to go, this blog is for you. Adding a Facebook application can not only move your page from ordinary to extraordinary, but also help increase traffic and interaction from your fans and followers.

So where do you start? Below are the top 10 Facebook applications that can help take your Facebook page to the next level.

1. Wildfire

This is a great application for those interested in implementing a social media marketing campaign. Applicable for businesses, bloggers ad agencies and non-profit organizations, this application helps you design branded interactive promotions.

If you’re interested in doing a contest, sweepstakes, product giveaways or giving out coupons this application can help.  This app gives you the ability to design your promotion with their customizable promotion builder. They also make it easy for you to publish your promotion to all of your social network platforms so all of your fans and followers are made aware of the campaign.

Running a sweepstakes or contests is a great way to build brand awareness, increase followers and their engagement as well as drive traffic to your site.  After all, according to Jupiter Research, companies that run contests or sweepstakes have twice as many fans on their sponsored social network pages as those that don’t.

2. Wizehive

This application helps you build a web-based contest. They make it easy for you to create contest forms and surveys through their Facebook contest software. This app allows you to customize your forms and voting system, so if you want the public to decide the winner or have a randomized selection process, they can make it happen.

If you’re interested in turning a profit, Wizehive allows you to charge a fee through their system to generate revenue for entries. This application may not be the most affordable, so check out their site to see if it’s right for you. They offer three different plans that range in price from $750 (silver plan) to $7,500+ (platinum plan).

3. Votigo

This is a full-service photo and video contest application that allows you to do a lot with your Facebook fans and customers. Not only does it allow you to create customized promotions, but it also allows you to tap into the registration data so you can learn more about your contestants and build a more extensive customer database. This app focuses on user-generated content allowing for video and photo submissions, comments, voting and support for YouTube embedded content. Their services range in price, but start around $5,000.

4. SocialFly

This application acts as your personal secretary. It’s a great way for marketers to  keep in touch and keep up with their  businesses contacts. The application has a notes system that allows you to create and setup reminders as well as develop notes to help you organize your contacts. Their location feature allows you to identify where each of your contacts live or where you have to be at your next meeting.

5. Telephone and Voicemail

These applications allow you to communicate with your fans and customers on a more personalized basis. You can talk, IM, leave a voice mail and voice chat all through Facebook. It’s a great option for those that want to interact more with their customers and allows those in business to communicate more efficiently.

6. Networked Blogs

This is a great app for all you bloggers. It basically provides you with a community of bloggers allowing you to connect with others,  promote yourself and promote other blogs on your Facebook page. It’s an easy way to import your blog feed through your Facebook page, so all your fans and followers will be updated with your recent posts. The app also helps categorize the different blogs you read, making it easy to navigate through your favorites.

7. Web Trends Analytics

Want to learn more about your fans and the success of your campaigns? This is a great tool to do just that. This app pulls information from your Facebook page allowing you to track your social media efforts. You can track conversions, engagement, who you’re active followers are, what they’re doing on your page and the ability to earn more about their demographics. It’s pretty simple and very effective at pulling insights, allowing you to dig deeper into your Facebook audience.

8. Buddy Media

Buddy Media calls themselves a power tool for your Facebook page. And they’re right. They have the ability to amp up your page and take it to the next level. Their platform helps you build your audience, increase engagement, drive fans to your site, launch pages, track feedback and make updates easily.

9. Context Optional

This is a pretty cool company that helps major companies design and manage their brand on social media platforms. Their sophisticated technologies provide businesses with analytics tools to track their social marketing campaigns and measure results. Their Social Marketing Suite is designed to help you create and publish applications and find solutions for your brand’s Facebook page. Context Optional has created effective branded pages, interactive branded applications and has helped businesses develop integrated social marketing campaigns.  You should check it out.

10. Virtue

Virtue is a web development company that can do a lot for your company. They specialize in web application development, web site promotions and developing software to run across your social media platforms. What can they do for your Facebook page? Step-by-step, they help you design a branded page, your own branded application as well as market your application through their SEO services. They focus on concept and strategy so you’re not just creating a page or app to create one. They give it purpose and the ability for you to track your results and find opportunities to advance your social presence.

We may have missed a few cool Facebook Apps that you’d like us to mention. If so, let us know about your favorite Facebook App in the comments section below.

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Posted by Rebecca Wilson, Marketing Analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.

Twitter, launched in July of 2006, has emerged as one of the top social media platforms enabling users to connect with friends and companies and stay current with constant streams of information. With over 200 millions users generating 190 million tweets a day, Twitter has become a great resource for businesses to engage with consumers.

So, what can you possibly say in 140 characters or less to help your business expand and increase traffic to your website? Well, Blogstrategies.com, Mashable and ChrisBrogan.com have identified a few tactics businesses should keep in mind while Tweeting.

Here are the top 10 you should check out:

1. Hashtags: You should familarize yourself with this symbol (i.e., #) and make it your friend. Put this hashtag in front of a keyword or your company website and Twitter will convert these hashtagged words into searchable keywords. What does this mean for you? Anyone searching for something can find all tweets containing your hashtagged word in a single location, thus making it easier for them to find your tweets even if they’re not one of your followers. Search the database for hashtagged questions pertaining to your business or topics of your expertise and connect with these followers. You’ll find you not only do you have more readers, but possibly more customers as well.

2. Engage with your followers: Simply sending out tweets and not responding to your followers will get you nowhere. It’s important to respond to those that tweet at you and answer any questions they might have. Each time you interact with your followers, make sure it’s a personalized message. No one wants to feel like their receiving a mass tweet. If they feel your message is sincere and they like what you have to offer, the chances of them retweeting your information is even greater, thus ultimately exposing your business to more followers.

3. Combine your platforms: Make it easier on yourself by synchronizing your Twitter account with all of your other social platforms. You can do so by associating your Twitter account with the RSS feed of your company website, Facebook page or blog. By doing so, every time you make an update it appears across all of your platforms, meaning you only have to make one update at a time. Sounds efficient, right?

4. Update your profile: Although most of your followers are only reading your tweets and not your bio, it’s important to have a profile in place that’s up-to-date and professional. Think of it as an extension of your brand. Potential new followers and customers will be checking out your profile to see what you’re about before hitting the golden “Follow” button.

5. The power of a list: This Twitter feature has helped companies gain followers and spread their knowledge to a larger audience. A Twitter list is somewhat similar to a Facebook group. Basically a compilation of followers, grouped together for whatever reason you come up with. You can use these lists to your advantage by promoting and rewarding customers. How? Try creating a list comprised of all your valued customers and reward those on the list with a 20% off coupon or free gift with purchase. Lists can also help your business internally. By creating a list of all employees and those that tweet on your behalf, it’s an easy way to manage these tweeters and aggregate accounts. Once you’ve created your list make sure people know about it by adding it to a list directory such as Listorious.

6. Keep track: It’s important to track your followers and identify whose really paying attention to your tweets. You can do so by tracking retweets, clicks, messages and hashtag mentions. This will give you the opportunity to engage with your loyal followers and maintain these relationships.

7. Ask questions: Get feedback from your followers by asking the right questions. Find out what you’re doing right, what you need to work on and what they want more of. This shows not only that you’re listening, but can provide you with valuable insights about your followers and consumers.

8. Tweet about others: You don’t always need to talk about yourself and your company. It’s important to integrate other’s ideas and links into your tweets. Retweet what your followers have tweeted, share their links and let your followers know what you find interesting about a particular tweet. This lets your followers know that you’re human and are interested in what they have to say as well. Not to mention it’s a great way to build and expand your community.

9. Promoted tweets: This is a new feature of Twitter that enables businesses to speak to a larger audience, even those that don’t follow them. How does it work? First, send a tweet to your followers and then promote that tweet. The promoted tweet then appears as content in search results, so those looking for something pertaining to your tag will see it in the search engine. Twitter offers these promoted tweets on a cost-per-engagement basis, meaning you only pay when users retweet, reply or clicks on your tweet.

10. Customer Service: Best Buy is a great example of how to use Twitter to provide real-time customer service. Create an account in which users can tweet questions about products or services to you directly and tag the answers with a hashtag back to your company website. This allows you to interact with your consumers and provide them with something of value. Best Buy is leading the ranks with over 2,900 employees on board to answer questions and have responded to over 38,000 inquiring tweets. You could be next.

What are some of your favorite tips on using Twitter? Did we miss any you think we should add? If so, let us know in the comments section below. While you’re down there, how ’bout Re-Tweeting this post for us!

Posted by Rebecca Wilson, marketing analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.

What’s on the mind of all marketers today? Mobile.

Because of that, King Fish Media, Maxmiser, HubSpot and Junta42 conducted research to understand the plans, trends and measure-ability of mobile marketing. The online study collected responses from 560 participants including both corporate management and marketing/sales management professionals.

So, what did they find? Lots. Let’s break it down.

Given the low (but growing) penetration of Smartphones, it’s no surprise that King Fish Media found that mobile marketing is actually in its early stages. Only 33% of the companies that responded currently have a mobile strategy in place. For larger companies (those with 100 + employees) that number rises to 45%.

Where does mobile fit into the budget? Only 12% of brands’ marketing budget is spent on mobile, however 82% plan to increase their spending over the next year. According to their research, 30% of the increased funds will be taken from traditional marketing and advertising.

So what are marketers aiming to do with the their mobile marketing initiatives? Build relationships. This seems to be the core focus, which explains why social media, branded, email capabilities, geo-location/maps and general reference are the top content types right now.

What about mobile applications? There are hundreds, I know. So, are companies really involved in creating them? Well, 28% of companies are using native apps and their development is predicted to increase to 43% by next year.

The iPhone seems to be the most popular platform for application development with 75% of all companies planning apps on this platform. We’re also seeing a significant rise in apps using the iPad platform, 41% to a 76% increase by next year.

What are the take-aways from all this? There are several.

1. Track your followers. Nearly 60% of companies are tracking visitors to their website from mobile devices. Google Analytics is a great tool to help you track visitors and see where they’re coming from.
2. Realize the benefits. Mobile marketing can help improve customer retention and help establish closer relationships with customers. Want to gain new customers and strengthen your relationship with current consumers? I’m assuming the answer is an unfiltered, YES.  These are cited as two of the many relationship benefits for mobile marketing.
3. Develop different mobile strategies to build relationships. Original branded content, ads, expert content and videos are popular types of content used by consumers. Find a way to tap into what their using to establish and build relationships with your consumers.

Mobile may still be in its infancy, but consumers are using it more and more frequently. If you’d like to differentiate your brand, then mobile marketing may be just what you’re looking for.

If you’d like to read the full report, click King Fish Media, HubSpot, Maxmiser and Junta42.

If you like what you read today, you can have these blog posts delivered to your in box each morning by clicking here. Or, you can sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter by clicking here.

Posted by Rebecca Wilson, Marketing Analyst for the 60 Second Marketer.

We all know that testing your email headlines, website layouts and creative concepts is the best way to improve the results of your marketing campaigns. But we also know that A/B split testing can be a pain. So, we took a look at the Which Test Won? website and found new research that reveals 5 ways you can improve the conversion rates on your campaigns.

Here they are:

1. Add a Video: The infamous music downloading company, Napster, tested 2 landing pages, one that featured a “What You Get With Your Subscription” video and one without. The page featuring the video got 18.5% more free trials and paid subscriptions.
2. 

   Grow your conversion rates with these simple tweaks.

   Use a British Accent: Now that we’ve established you should have a video, you should take into account the test done by Eyevision, a video marketing company which found that using a British accent voiceover on a video on the homepage resulted in a 6% lift in free downloads.  Interestingly though, in the UK an American accent upped downloads 8%.

3. Use Fewer Words in Headlines: A test done for World Class Driving confirms that when it comes to Pay-Per-Click headlines, less is more. By cutting the verbage down from the explanatory title “Drive 5 Supercars. The US Supercar Tour” to “Life is Short. Drive Fast” they increased conversions 34%!
4. Include A FAQ Box in Checkout: Van der Valk Hotels & Restaurants wanted to increase the conversion rate amongst customers who visited their reservations page. The hotel group surmised that one of the reasons people would abandon the site at an advanced point in the process was due to incomplete information and unanswered questions. So they looked at the questions that were received most by their customer service lines and put the answers up to the right of the reservations page in a FAQ box. The results were a 9.2% higher conversion rate for the page that featured the FAQs.
5. Use People-Focused Language: In a test done for Hubspot in which they were hoping to increase free trials, the company tested a page which asked the visitor what their goals were: “Use Web to Grow My Business” or “Deliver More Quality Leads for Less” against a page where they asked who the visitor was: “I’m a Business Owner” or “I’m a Marketer.” The page that focused on the visitor’s role, as opposed to their goal, won out and increased free trials 49.1% for the site.

Though the results of these tests cannot be universally applied to all businesses, the outcomes can provide insights into the way consumers think when presented with marketing materials. And if nothing else, taking the quizzes on which version won is a good (and slightly nerdy) way to kill an afternoon.

Posted by Nicole Hall, Account Manager with Mobilize Worldwide. Mobilize Worldwide develops mobile apps, mobile ad campaigns, mobile websites and just about anything else related to mobile marketing for brands interested in growing their sales and revenue using this new and emerging medium.

What’s the secret formula for Coke? That’s the question that’s been on everybody’s mind for over a century.

But NPR’s “This American Life” (produced by Chicago Public Radio) thinks they may have the answer. Apparently John Pemberton, the pharmacist who created the soft drink in 1886, developed something called Merchandise 7X (a.k.a. the secret formula) and left it in a leather-bound notebook.

What's the Secret Formula for Coke? The 60 Second Marketer has the answer.

Coke’s recipe for their soft drink is one of the most closely-guarded secrets in business. After Asa Candler bought out Pemberton in 1887 for $2,300, the exact recipe for Merchandise 7X was placed in a vault in an Atlanta bank.

According to published reports, only two company employees know the secret ingredients and how they’re mixed at any given time. The secret is so closely held that those two employees aren’t allowed to travel together out of fear that an accident might take both of their lives.

Company historian Mark Pendergrast was quoted in Yahoo News as saying, “I think that it (the alleged secret formula) certainly is a version of the formula. It’s very similar to a formula that I found” in one of John Pemberton’s notebooks when he was doing research for his book.

So what’s the secret recipe that was revealed on “This American Life”? The ingredients are provided below, but if you want to know the real secret formula for Coke, keep scrolling past the recipe and read on.

The Alleged Secret Formula for Coke:

Fluid extract of Coca: 3 drams USP
Citric acid: 3 oz
Caffeine: 1 oz
Sugar: 30 (unclear quantity)
Water: 2.5 gal
Lime juice: 2 pints, 1 quart
Vanilla: 1 oz
Caramel: 1.5 oz or more for color

The secret 7X flavor (use 2 oz of flavor to 5 gals syrup):
Alcohol: 8 oz
Orange oil: 20 drops
Lemon oil: 30 drops
Nutmeg oil: 10 drops
Coriander: 5 drops
Neroli: 10 drops
Cinnamon: 10 drops

Okay, now that you know the recipe, would you like to know the real secret formula for Coca-Cola?

Here goes:

M(0.4) + D(0.4) + E(0.5) + P(0.00002) = the secret formula for Coke

where, M = marketing horsepower, D = scope of distribution, E = brand equity (built up over the past century) and P = product.

Said more simply, Coke’s secret formula all boils down to their marketing, distribution and brand equity, with a little dollop of product differentiation added on top for good measure.

And there you have it. The secret formula for Coke has very little to do with their recipe and a great deal to do with their marketing, distribution and their brand equity.

If You Like This Post:

You might also be interested in reading Coke vs. Pepsi, The Taste Test They Don’t Want You to Know About on the 60 Second Marketer website.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media.