My ten-year-old son gave me a valuable lesson in content marketing today.
Sean has a good friend who, to hear him tell it, rarely changes his expression. It’s just who he is.
However, Sean was sharing one of this friend’s more interesting ideas: to build a tall building and put a catapult at the top of it to deliver packages around town.
“Was he serious?” we asked.
“Yes,” said Sean. “He had his explaining face on.”
Clearly, when this boy puts on his ‘explaining face,’ you had better listen.
Sean gives words to an attitude that offers all of us a way to make our content more helpful, more interesting and more engaging.
We just need to put on our explaining face.
Your Selling Face or Your Explaining Face
I’ve got my explaining face on right now. It is different from my selling face.
When I have my explaining face on, my eyes are wider, my eyebrows go up, my jaw is drawn back to help me enunciate.
When I have my selling face on, my eyebrows come down and my forehead furrows. My jaw jets forward. I’m in your face.
How does your content change when you have your explaining face on? Mine does.
A Face for Every Occasion
There is a place for each of your faces.
You should use your explaining face when you are participating in what I call an Attention-managed Zone. As I write in my most recent ClickZ column, an attention-managed zone is a place where we have curated the participants or content.
Our Facebook page is an attention-managed zone. Our inbox and our feed reader are as well.
When you are communicating within one of these attention-managed zones, put on your explaining face.
However, when you have drawn someone to your site, to a landing page for instance, you will want to put on your selling face and be more persuasive. Visitors expect to learn about your offering in these places where they have no control over what they will see.
Advertising in an Attention-Managed Society
Attention management is not something that people think about, but it is what we do when we curate places like our inbox, social news streams, and RSS feed readers.
As marketers and advertisers, we are bombarded with statistics that tell us there is a shockingly small supply of time in the world.
“You only have eight seconds to catch a Web visitor’s attention.”
“The average person is bombarded with over 5,000 commercial messages a day.”
“Today’s multitasking Millennials are doing up to 10 things simultaneously.”
“You have to do something surprising every 10 minutes during your presentation to keep the audience awake.”
I would provide citations for these statistics, but “Article writers only have an average of 15 minutes for research, down from 30 minutes in 2007.” I made that last one up.
We believe we’re dealing with the scarcity of our prospects’ time, and are acting accordingly. Too often, we’re getting “all caps” on our audience, shouting louder, shouting more often, and shouting through more channels. I call that tossing “Jenny” around.
What if we worked the other end of the equation? What if we helped our prospects manage their time better? Could we get nine seconds instead of eight? Could we cut our Millennials down to five simultaneous activities?
Unfortunately, attempts at time management have been thwarted in large part by the social part of our brains, the part that says we need to be laced into the lives of others like tangled doilies.
“96 percent of Millennials have joined a social network.”
“Social media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the Web.”
While you read this, “100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube.”
I can cite these quotes because they come from a “Socialnomics” video that is only four and a half minutes long.
The net of this is that we are spending more time on our digital social pursuits and less time on our commercial messages, such as those found in display advertising.
The Components of an Attention-Managed Zone
An attention-managed zone provides a cone of safety, like a playpen for our children. We check Facebook several times per day because it’s an attention-safe zone. The same is true of e-mail.
When my attention is focused on one of these safe places, I know that:
It will be filled with offerings from people I have vetted at some level.
I can use my time there to refine it, dropping and adding friends, groups, games, etc.
It’s designed for a variety of moods. I can expect to find the informative as well as the entertaining.
I can go there to relieve stress any time of the day or night.
I can participate, helping others manage their attention.
Be Where Attention Falls
My good friend and client Maura Thomas, who is writing the book “Control Your Attention, Control Your Life,” has introduced me to a different way of looking at the time/attention equation that may benefit advertisers.
It seems that we are willing to “kill” time on social networks because it helps us manage our attention.
More and more, we rely on our social graph to keep us in the loop, often 140 characters at a time. Thomas puts this into the category of “attention management.”
The tools we choose and the people we follow make up our attention management strategy. Those places where we implement such strategies – Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon – are “attention-managed zones.”
“Attention wastelands” are those places in which we receive irrelevant information; places that are populated by people and brands that we don’t trust. Prospects must shun these wastelands lest their attention be squandered by fools.
Let me put on my selling face to help persuade you of its value.
Your selling face delivers what your business needs to grow and thrive. If you are afraid to promote your products your online marketing strategies will most likely fail.
Your selling face is a powerful, and you should put it on if you want:
More persuasive copy
Calls to action that deliver leads and sales
A clear focus on reader benefits and less focus on you
If you want captivating headings and pages that turn visitors into readers and then buyers, then put on your selling face today.
Act now and receive a Thinking Face at no additional charge.
Signs that You’re Wearing Your Explaining Face
If you’re new to face management, here are a few signals that you have your explaining face on:
You find yourself telling stories in your writing
You prefer simpler ways to convey a point
You look for more interesting and colorful words
The writing is fun
You feel that you’re helping someone when you click “publish.”
Ironically, these are also the markers of good sales copy, when you should have your selling face on.
Nonetheless, I recommend that you mentally put on your explaining face when you want to write for social media, for your blog or anywhere else that your reader has control.
Your explaining face content will give them reason to stay tuned in.
New Tool Makes it Easy to Find Prospects on Social Networks via Social Appending.
In my most recent ClickZ column, I reflect back on my days as a marketing cog in the corporate machine, a time in which the practice of “appending” was considered “black hat.”
Appending is the practice of adding contact information to records in your prospect database. If you have someone’s name and company, you could “append” their email address and mailing address through a number of services that keep that kind of information.
Companies that sell mailing lists often provide this kind of service.
The thinking was that the prospect hadn’t given you permission to contact them through these other channels, and that it violated the “submit button contract” that is implied when they completed an online form.
Social Media Appending: How Far We Have Come. Source: Unbounce.
We’ve come a long way
Oli Gardner has an interesting infographic on the Unbounce blog. The graphic highlights a tool called FlowTown. This is a social media appending tool. Marketers can use it to find the social media accounts of their prospect list, and begin marketing to them through those social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.
This is where those of us who have been around the block groan, and then secretly cheer.
Social Media Appending: Why this is different
While appending has not been considered a best practice, it happens. In fact, the best way to do this is to send ask your prospects for permission after appending the data; sending them an email asking if they want email messages, for example.
Many social media platforms allow us to easily “unfriend” or block unsavory marketers. This puts the opt-out capability in our hands. So asking for permission ahead of time is less of a problem.
But there is a right way to inject yourself into someone else’s conversations. It’s called a Content-oriented Social Media Strategy.
Only “append” people who have expressed an interest in your industry or products. This is how you know your content will be relevant.
Begin with non-promotional content. “How-to” and “10 Ways” style articles test well.
Use social landing pages, such as a blog or Facebook page to “keep it social”
Measure what you send. Stop sending content that doesn’t generate clicks, shares or comments.
If you’re going to jump into the social conversations, do it right, or it will backfire in a very public, viral way.
It is rare that my visual live blogs are less visual than the original presentation, but Dan Zarrella’s presentation on Twitter and Facebook optimization is SO choc full of graphs, that I could barely keep up.
So I resorted to banal prose in my notes.
As a fellow scientist (Dan is the Social Media Scientist), I am happy to borrow from his work in doing my own. Here are my notes from Dan’ presentation at PubCon Masters Group Training. I was glad to share the stage with him.
Dan Zarrella Twitter and Facebook Optimization Notes.
Getting More Followers
“The best way to get followers is to follow people.”
To get more followers:
Finish your profile.
Put a link to your website.
Upload a picture.
Twitter
The twenty most retweeted words:
please retweet
follow
top
social media
help
you
blog post
new blog post
retweet
free
twitter
how to
Twitter Stats
Over 50% of retweets have links.
Retweets tend to have larger words. You don’t have to dumb things down.
Retweets use “novel” or less-used words.
Retweets are noun-heavy, third person.
Retweets have more punctuation, even exclamation marks.
Retweets are less emotional, more conceptual.
Social behavior is retweeted.
Men retweet opinion, women retweet entertainment.
Retweets happen later in the day, after 4:00pm ET.
Women follow more people and tweet more.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
New technology renders emails invisible. Customer Chaos Labs suspected.
Everyone who seeks to do good in the world will inevitably be challenged by an arch-nemesis; someone who’s view of the world is diametrically opposed to yours.
At Conversion Sciences we have Customer Chaos Labs, whose motto is:
If we’re not working for you, we’re working against you.
They are an organization who seeks to lift their clients’ online Web success by simply bringing everyone else down. We see them as basically evil.
This week, one of our clients became the victim of a new Customer Chaos technology: an email invisibility ray.
The results are devastating.
Don’t fall victim to invisible emails.
Proof of the Invisibility Ray’s Existence
The folks at J’Tote Bags crafted a beautiful email, with professional photography, strong reasons to buy, and clear calls to action.
Then, J’Tote sent the email to eager prospects and customers. Somewhere in transit, many of these emails entered the range of the invisibility ray.
The invisibility technology rendered the email almost completely invisible to the human eye. Clearly, an invisible email is going to be read less, depressing open rates and clicks.
Conversion Sciences Defense Technology
Conversion Sciences has worked with the major email clients to develop a “de-cloaking” technology. For example, recipients can restore the email by clicking “Display Images below” in Gmail, or “Click here to download pictures” in Outlook.
Most email clients have implemented something similar.
The problem is that many recipients of your emails may not find a good reason to click on the de-cloaking links if they can’t see the email.
Clearly, this is not an ideal solution.
Defending Yourself Against the Invisibility Ray
A detailed analysis by Conversion Sciences has exposed some weaknesses in the invisibility ray.
It only works on images
Apparently, the invisibility ray doesn’t affect text, but only images. Thus a proper defense against this kind of attack is to use images more sparingly in your email and place text strategically around the email.
This will allow readers to understand the point of the email if the images have been inviso-rayed.
Image “Alt” Text is Sometimes Impervious
If you look closely at Exhibit B, you will see some text appearing in places where the images would have appeared. This is the images’ “alt” text and is created using the “alt” parameters in the HTML <img> tag.
Here’s an example:
<img src=”picture.jpg” alt=”Text that describes the image” />
Use the “alt” text to tell the reader what they will see if they click “Display images below” and invoke the de-cloaking technology.
This does not work in all email clients. Microsoft Outlook won’t show these cues, for example.
However, some email clients will actually allow you to format your “alt” text, making it different sizes and colors.
Conversion Alert: Don’t Fall Victim to Invisible Emails
Email remains one of the most effective online marketing tools available. No wonder the foes of good marketing have targeted it for disruption.
Let a Conversion Scientist review your email strategy. This will ensure that
You are using best practices to maximize deliverability, open rates, clicks and conversions.
You are sending content that is relevant and interesting. This gives you permission to continue sending email to desirable prospects.
You are sending with the right frequency. Sending too often or too rarely can render an email strategy impotent.
You are defended against the invisibility ray and other weapons of chaos. Enough said on this one.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
What is your social media ROI? Can you measure the increase in traffic quality coming to your site from your social media actions?
Tell me your social conversion rate
“Social media is revolutionizing customer care.” Yawn.
“Social media is helping brands build awareness.” That’s sounds interesting (not).
“Social media increases the quality of the traffic coming to your site in measurable ways.” Now you have my attention.
Don’t Hate Me for My Myopia
It is my choice of career that has given me this singular focus when it comes to online marketing. There are other people to create brand image. There are smart, dedicated people trying to improve their company’s customer service.
I say “you go!”
But, I want measurable, tangible data on how social media gets qualified prospects to a web property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
I can already hear Qwitter messages landing in my inbox. I hate Qwitter personally, but it is a FABULOUS metric, the equivalent of email’s unsubscribe rate. So, I have to listen. It’s an measure of my social media Return On Investment, my social media ROI.
What is your social media ROI? Can you measure the increase in traffic quality coming to your site from your social media actions?
This Attitude is Good for Social Media ROI
How many times do you have a great conversation in the social space only to find the company’s website opaque, posing, and irrelevant?
Social media won’t work if we’re transparent in our social graph and obsequious everywhere else.
Let’s encourage businesses to put content out that draws people to their website. They will quickly begin to realize that certain content works (educational, entertaining content) and certain content does not (home pages with self-aggrandizing copy).
ROI is the great informer for these companies.
The Importance of Social Media ROI
If our stuff is worth talking about, why hold it back?
There is a camp of social media digerati that believe social channels are not for promotion, that it is evil to advertise where conversations are the norm.
But, if conversations are going on around a brand or a company, why deny the social citizenry of a chance to own or use their offerings?
It’s just plain selfish to hold back.
When buying is an outcome of conversation, ROI tells a company how it’s doing in starting and continuing those conversations.
Online communities are arbiters and aggregators of ROI
Let’s face it. We want the support of companies as we complain and cheer about their products. We want them to hear us, to reply to us, and to see things our way.
And we are not above the occasional bribe.
How many times have you started a complaint with, “I spend $_____ with your company every _____, and I expect… .”
We regularly use ROI as a way to get attention.
Communities that raise their hand get more attention. They drive it, highlight it and can take it away. They should be rewarded for their financial contribution to companies with increased support, more say in product design… and the occasional bribe.
What do eBook Groupies and Designer Laptop Bags have in Common?
I’ve recently begun working with J’Tote Designer Laptop Bags, and heard a story that illustrates this concept perfectly.
It seems that the women of an eBook community have developed a love for J’Tot’e’s chic laptop bags. How do we know?
Mysterious spikes in J’Tote’s Web traffic led to the discovery that people were posting about them on the forum.
Boxes of bags were soon waiting to be shipped to the group’s members.
Visitors from this community stay on the J’Tote site longer than average, view more pages, and have a very low bounce rate (a measure of the number of visitors who leave immediately after visiting a site).
The folks at J’Tote now make it a priority to tune into the conversations on the forum, and are certain to give them warning when inventory clearing sales are imminent.
Companies speak ROI
It is the lingo of the bottom line; the babble of budgets; the conversation of the coin. If we want more companies to engage in social media for all the “right” reasons, we need to communicate with them in this language: more visits from interested conversationalists who buy their products.
We need to speak to them with ROI.
It’s one thing for a company to monitor our conversations attempting to gauge positive or negative sentiment. It’s quite another for them to know that their Facebook page is generating additional visits and sales.
There is a catch
Companies that don’t measure the ROI of social media won’t get the message. They’ll continue to ignore important communities, cut social budgets and generate plenty of negative social sentiment in the digital conversationsphere.
If you’re not measuring, you’re not listening.
J’Tote is listening. Are you?
On July 21, I’ll be showing you ways to measure your social ROI, and in particular, your social conversion rates.
Did you know there was such a thing as a social landing page? It’s nothing like your landing pages.
Did you know that there are six major conversions that happen when you add social media to your sales funnel?
My presentation is just one part of a spectacular Master’s Group Training being held in Austin by Webmaster World, the PubCon people.
Only, you don’t have to attend a full PubCon to go.
Not only will you learn from me how to measure your social media efforts, you’ll learn how to do the things that make social media work.
Andy Beal will tell you about social media reputation management.
Dan Zarrella will give you the low down on Twitter and Facebook optimization.
Brett Tabke will show you how he reached influentials in his social graph and put PubCon registrations slashed his marketing budget.
Oh, and there is also an search marketing track going on at the same time. Yawn.
We’re going to make people love your business through your website at The Conversion Scientist. Subscribe to learn the strategies and tactics that turn more of your visitors into leads and sales.
I want measurable, tangible data on social conversion rates, on how social media gets qualified prospects to an online property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
Tom had two sites targeting the same audience, and getting about the same traffic. Both had analytics installed. This was a rare opportunity to see how two very different approaches to website design affected online sales conversion out in the real world.
Read this before changing your website.
It’s time-consuming to offer 45 minutes of my time to anyone who wants to improve their online sales conversion rates. I just can’t think of any better way to introduce businesses to conversion concepts.
And the people I meet on the phone are priceless.
One such person is Tom Jackson of Heliski.com. His is a rare and instructive look at the power of the written word and the ineffectiveness of standard design strategies when it comes to conversion.
Tom had two sites targeting the same audience, and getting about the same traffic. Both had analytics installed.
According to him, one was “dated, awkward, wordy, but it’s working.” The other, he said, was “newer, looks better, better organized but WAY underperforming in lead gen.”
Take a look at Tom’s two sites. Which would you pick as the hands-down winner? Which would you image would have cratered his income had he relied exclusively on it?
How analytics (and a session with the Conversion Scientist) saved one business’s online sales.
I did a complete evaluation of these two pages in my Search Engine Land column, and you might be surprised at my conclusions: strong copy beat slick new design.
Two very different sites: one “dated, awkward, wordy;” the other “newer, looks better, better organized.” So why was the “dated, awkward, wordy” winning the conversion game so handily?
From a distance the two home pages couldn’t look more different. HeliskiingReview.com uses non-standard layout. Text is knockout white on blue, usually considered more difficult to read than Heliski.com’s black on grey.
The newer site uses a more “image- or brand-oriented play, establishing its value proposition as “the ultimate heliskiing destination.” Unfortunately, you can’t heliski on the site, so this is an empty promise.
The body copy couldn’t be more different in approach. HeliskiingReview.com uses plain language with specific, value- and benefit-oriented points in easy-to-scan bulleted format. Specifics are almost always important for conversion.
A designer might say that the big star with “send me info” was “too TV.” However, it certainly does draw the eye to an important call to action.
and the conversion champ is…
HeliskiingReview.com had a conversion rate of 2.27% vs. Heliski.com at 1.99%. That’s 14% better. However, HeliskiingReview.com delivered much more qualified prospects. Tom was able to book trips for 15.29% of the HeliskiingReview.com leads. Heliski.com had a close ratio of only 1.33%.
That’s 1146% more bookings and tens of thousands of dollars in sales.
What we can Learn from Tom (or How Analytics Saved One Business’s Online Sales)
The moral of the tale is that Tom measured his sites’ performance. He had the analytics in place, and was smart enough not to make changes to his site without being able to measure their effect. By leaving both sites up, he was able to rollback the changes.
Do you know how changes to your site affect your business? You should.
I’m offering a two hour short course on June 11 in Austin entitled Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices. This is an Austin Entrepreneur Network short course, which means that it’s only $25. We love our entrepreneurs.
Join me and find out how you can avoid huge mistakes – mistakes that rob you of leads and steal your sales. This is the second time I’ve done this presentation.
Conversion marketing is about bringing visitors to choice. B2B conversion marketers carry this same burden.
Can marketers in more conservative industries use techniques proven to increase online leads and sales in B2C markets?
In my Ion Interactive webinar, I use two B2B landing pages to illustrate how these B2C techniques can be used: Mary O’Brien Adwords Advantage landing page AdwordAdvantage.com and CoverActionPro.com.
The elements are the same for B2B conversion marketing as they are for B2C webpages.
“Business to business copy sucks. It’s horrible to read. There is a need, that when someone recommends a site to their boss that you look professional, but it doesn’t mean you have to write like an idiot.”
Ready for B2B Conversion Marketing?
Anna Talerico Hosts Conversations on B2b Conversion Marketing
Certainly you can deliver a high-converting experience without harming your online brand, like CoverActionPro.
You have to work harder. You can’t ask a committee of executives to review your pages. You have to know how your page is performing and how changes are affecting your results.
You can learn more about analytics and their proper application at my AEN Short Course “Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices” on June 11, 2010.
Location marketing finds interesting ways to connect geo-relevant businesses to passionate, influential mobile customers or prospects.
I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Tim Hayden recently, and overheard him talking real-life targeted banner advertising: billboards that connected with your mobile phone as you passed by.
I could only imagine what a billboard would say to me.
But the more I listened to Tim, the more I became intrigued with his vision for the future and the present.
Tim was nice enough to answer some questions on his birthday, of all days, and my summary of what I learned can be found in my ClickZ column “Mobile Marketing and Your Digital Geo-relevance.”
My favorite quote didn’t make the editing process:
“We aren’t wired to sit on our asses all day and stare at Twitter,” says Hayden.
Tim asks businesses the question, “How can we have compelling touchpoints, beyond the device that will bring people back to the device to engage us?”
Einstein has given me some doubts about where I am. He demonstrated that time and space is really quite malleable. It leads to the conclusion that you can never really be sure that you are where you think you are; you can also never really be sure you are when you think you are.
Fortunately, we have these little computers we carry around called mobile phones to tell us both when and where we are…relatively. It turns out that these devices are fine for fixing us in time and space, unless you are standing too close to a neutron star.
These devices are also good at telling advertisers where we are, where we want to be, and where we’ll be in between.
Is “Mobile” Necessary?
The term “mobile” already seems a bit quaint. It’s like calling an automobile “out-of-home transportation.” It’s not necessary. It’s a car, and we “drive.”
Likewise, a device that is with us always really doesn’t need to be called “mobile.” All we have to do is “be” somewhere. The rest is implied. When I turn on a device that has GPS capability, I begin to “be” somewhere in the digital sense of the word.
Famed VC John Doerr admitted that we don’t have a word for the next mobile/social/new commerce “wave.”
“Geo-relevance” is written more frequently these days. And I like the double entendre: we can know what businesses are relevant to us geographically, but mobile device users are also making themselves more relevant wherever they are “being.”
Tim Hayden prefers the term “mobile lifestyle” to describe what he calls “passionate and influential” smartphone users. He also likes the term “digital out of home advertising” My personal mobile strategy has been limited to adding a mobile theme plug-in to my CRO blog, so I’ve asked Tim to give me his view of the mobile space.
Location, location, location.
Location Marketing Helps with Geo-Relevance
Just as mobile devices determine where individuals are “being,” business can “be” somewhere in a digital sense as well. Let’s consider some ways businesses can use their “being” to connect with customers.
All we need is some way to figure out when we are “being” in the same place as a business is “being,” and magic starts to happen. Because of the Internet, that business can send a message through this intermediary suggesting that I start “being” in their store instead of nearby. Coupons, menus, and hot new products may entice me to shift my location, and my digital beingness along with it.
Location marketing finds interesting ways to connect where a business is being to where a prospect is being.
Though subtle, the distinction is important.
You “are” where you physically stand. You are “being” where the Internet thinks you are. Where you “be” is different from where you live or where your computer is. As a business you can “be” in many places.
Tim imagines a day not too far in the future when a smart roadside billboard can be a place where your business is “being,” reaching out to passing mobile devices.
Communicating Location via Social Media
We tell our friends where we are “being” by communicating a business’s location. An e-mail with a link to a map is sufficient to establish a bar, coffee shop, or restaurant’s geo-relevance to others. There are some other, more interesting ways of borrowing a customer’s geo-relevance to enhance your businesses digital location.
Foursquare is a popular “being broker,” encouraging visitors to build a business’s being by associating it with their being, sharing it with all of their social connections.
As a business, you should start by encouraging customers to check in through Foursquare or Gowalla. Install Wi-Fi. “Being” somewhere does not an ad make, so check out Foursquare for Business for opportunities to advertise to visitors and their social network. Brightkite is another, more venerable mobile marketing or being broker.
Search and Place: The Power of Location Marketing
Search engines with geographic features such as maps and routing act as the intermediary for your future being. If you want a hamburger; if you need a new dry cleaner; if you want to know where to buy a lab coat in a strange city, search combines prospect intent via keywords with their location. Search is your place intermediary.
Search engines know the business’s geo-location, but you should help them legitimize and optimize your locations. Leverage Google My Business listings to indicate your geo-relevance. David Mihm of GetListed.org packed a great amount of local search strategy into his presentation at InnoTech Portland this month.
21 Quick and Easy CRO Copywriting Hacks
Keep these proven copywriting hacks in mind to make your copy convert.
43 Pages with Examples
Assumptive Phrasing
"We" vs. "You"
Pattern Interrupts
The Power of Three
"*" indicates required fields
Mobile Devices “Wire” Our Touchpoints
Tim offers the example of a nightclub that issues cards with RFID chips in them. When a card-carrying patron comes to the door, the host can see on her terminal who has come and their preferences for seating, drinks, and appetizers. Tim believes that these “smart touchpoints” are well suited to leverage the digital location defined by our phones.
Tim asks businesses the question, “How can we have compelling touchpoints, beyond the device that will bring people back to the device to engage us?”
Mobile Applications
“I applaud anyone who is reaching out to mobile users who are passionate and influential,” says Tim when I ask about the value of mobile apps.
He prefers promotional microsites designed for the small screen. They can have more impact and are often easier to implement.
Some businesses are a natural fit for apps. There are services, such as MobBase, Kyte, and Mobile Roadie that can make it easy for any business to develop a third-screen presence.
Mobile Advertising via Ad Networks
As I write this, I’m receiving the news that the Google AdMob merger has been approved. The Mobile Marketer article, “Google becomes world’s largest mobile ad network: 9 implications,” spells out the implications.
Because of Google’s self-service search advertising model, this merger bodes well for small and medium-sized businesses that want to begin leveraging mobile advertising.
Mobile Marketing and Privacy
Tim falls squarely into the “privacy is dead” camp. While we should have more control of our privacy on our personal devices, Tim acknowledges that where we “be” reveals plenty about us.
Influential smartphone users leverage the wholesale transparency implied by this utter lack of privacy. These users produce “earnest to visceral” user-generated content. They are building a public personal brand for themselves, and are exactly the people that businesses of all sizes should reach out to.
It’s hard to think about mobile marketing when we’re just getting our heads around search and display advertising. Still, businesses must do what they can to establish their digital “being” now and keep an eye on the intermediaries that can connect them with passionate, influential mobile device junkies.
NOTE: Portions of this article originally appeared on ClickZ.
Your Explaining Face Will Change Your Content Marketing
Conversion OptimizationMy ten-year-old son gave me a valuable lesson in content marketing today.
Sean has a good friend who, to hear him tell it, rarely changes his expression. It’s just who he is.
However, Sean was sharing one of this friend’s more interesting ideas: to build a tall building and put a catapult at the top of it to deliver packages around town.
“Was he serious?” we asked.
“Yes,” said Sean. “He had his explaining face on.”
Clearly, when this boy puts on his ‘explaining face,’ you had better listen.
Sean gives words to an attitude that offers all of us a way to make our content more helpful, more interesting and more engaging.
We just need to put on our explaining face.
Your Selling Face or Your Explaining Face
I’ve got my explaining face on right now. It is different from my selling face.
When I have my explaining face on, my eyes are wider, my eyebrows go up, my jaw is drawn back to help me enunciate.
When I have my selling face on, my eyebrows come down and my forehead furrows. My jaw jets forward. I’m in your face.
How does your content change when you have your explaining face on? Mine does.
A Face for Every Occasion
There is a place for each of your faces.
You should use your explaining face when you are participating in what I call an Attention-managed Zone. As I write in my most recent ClickZ column, an attention-managed zone is a place where we have curated the participants or content.
Our Facebook page is an attention-managed zone. Our inbox and our feed reader are as well.
When you are communicating within one of these attention-managed zones, put on your explaining face.
However, when you have drawn someone to your site, to a landing page for instance, you will want to put on your selling face and be more persuasive. Visitors expect to learn about your offering in these places where they have no control over what they will see.
Advertising in an Attention-Managed Society
As marketers and advertisers, we are bombarded with statistics that tell us there is a shockingly small supply of time in the world.
I would provide citations for these statistics, but “Article writers only have an average of 15 minutes for research, down from 30 minutes in 2007.” I made that last one up.
We believe we’re dealing with the scarcity of our prospects’ time, and are acting accordingly. Too often, we’re getting “all caps” on our audience, shouting louder, shouting more often, and shouting through more channels. I call that tossing “Jenny” around.
What if we worked the other end of the equation? What if we helped our prospects manage their time better? Could we get nine seconds instead of eight? Could we cut our Millennials down to five simultaneous activities?
Unfortunately, attempts at time management have been thwarted in large part by the social part of our brains, the part that says we need to be laced into the lives of others like tangled doilies.
I can cite these quotes because they come from a “Socialnomics” video that is only four and a half minutes long.
The net of this is that we are spending more time on our digital social pursuits and less time on our commercial messages, such as those found in display advertising.
The Components of an Attention-Managed Zone
An attention-managed zone provides a cone of safety, like a playpen for our children. We check Facebook several times per day because it’s an attention-safe zone. The same is true of e-mail.
When my attention is focused on one of these safe places, I know that:
Be Where Attention Falls
It seems that we are willing to “kill” time on social networks because it helps us manage our attention.
More and more, we rely on our social graph to keep us in the loop, often 140 characters at a time. Thomas puts this into the category of “attention management.”
The tools we choose and the people we follow make up our attention management strategy. Those places where we implement such strategies – Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon – are “attention-managed zones.”
“Attention wastelands” are those places in which we receive irrelevant information; places that are populated by people and brands that we don’t trust. Prospects must shun these wastelands lest their attention be squandered by fools.
Let me put on my selling face to help persuade you of its value.
Your selling face delivers what your business needs to grow and thrive. If you are afraid to promote your products your online marketing strategies will most likely fail.
Your selling face is a powerful, and you should put it on if you want:
If you want captivating headings and pages that turn visitors into readers and then buyers, then put on your selling face today.
Act now and receive a Thinking Face at no additional charge.
Signs that You’re Wearing Your Explaining Face
If you’re new to face management, here are a few signals that you have your explaining face on:
Ironically, these are also the markers of good sales copy, when you should have your selling face on.
Nonetheless, I recommend that you mentally put on your explaining face when you want to write for social media, for your blog or anywhere else that your reader has control.
Your explaining face content will give them reason to stay tuned in.
P. S. Don’t for get to read my ClickZ column Advertising in an Attention-Managed Society.
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Social Media Appending: How Far We Have Come
Conversion Marketing Strategy, Lead GenerationIn my most recent ClickZ column, I reflect back on my days as a marketing cog in the corporate machine, a time in which the practice of “appending” was considered “black hat.”
Appending is the practice of adding contact information to records in your prospect database. If you have someone’s name and company, you could “append” their email address and mailing address through a number of services that keep that kind of information.
Companies that sell mailing lists often provide this kind of service.
The thinking was that the prospect hadn’t given you permission to contact them through these other channels, and that it violated the “submit button contract” that is implied when they completed an online form.
Social Media Appending: How Far We Have Come. Source: Unbounce.
We’ve come a long way
Oli Gardner has an interesting infographic on the Unbounce blog. The graphic highlights a tool called FlowTown. This is a social media appending tool. Marketers can use it to find the social media accounts of their prospect list, and begin marketing to them through those social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn.
This is where those of us who have been around the block groan, and then secretly cheer.
Social Media Appending: Why this is different
While appending has not been considered a best practice, it happens. In fact, the best way to do this is to send ask your prospects for permission after appending the data; sending them an email asking if they want email messages, for example.
Many social media platforms allow us to easily “unfriend” or block unsavory marketers. This puts the opt-out capability in our hands. So asking for permission ahead of time is less of a problem.
But there is a right way to inject yourself into someone else’s conversations. It’s called a Content-oriented Social Media Strategy.
If you’re going to jump into the social conversations, do it right, or it will backfire in a very public, viral way.
Visual Live Blog: Dan Zarrella on Twitter, Facebook and More
Conversion OptimizationSo I resorted to banal prose in my notes.
As a fellow scientist (Dan is the Social Media Scientist), I am happy to borrow from his work in doing my own. Here are my notes from Dan’ presentation at PubCon Masters Group Training. I was glad to share the stage with him.
Dan Zarrella Twitter and Facebook Optimization Notes.
Getting More Followers
“The best way to get followers is to follow people.”
To get more followers:
Twitter
The twenty most retweeted words:
Twitter Stats
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Visual Live Blog: Andy Beal Reputation Management
Conversion Marketing StrategyHere are my notes from Andy Beal’s excellent PubCon Masters Group Training on reputation management.
You can see Andy as well as an incredible lineup of talent at the PubCon Las Vegas Masters Group Training, November 8.
Reputation Management Infographic
Andy Beal: Your Google Reputation Stinks Infographic.
Andy Beal Reputation Management Favorite Excerpts
Six key tips from Andy:
When Under Attack
Be sure to get an early alert. Do a Google audit monthly.
Protect your online reputation.
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Conversion Alert: Invisibility Ray Hurts Email Open Rates and Click-through Rates
Conversion OptimizationEveryone who seeks to do good in the world will inevitably be challenged by an arch-nemesis; someone who’s view of the world is diametrically opposed to yours.
At Conversion Sciences we have Customer Chaos Labs, whose motto is:
They are an organization who seeks to lift their clients’ online Web success by simply bringing everyone else down. We see them as basically evil.
This week, one of our clients became the victim of a new Customer Chaos technology: an email invisibility ray.
The results are devastating.
Don’t fall victim to invisible emails.
Proof of the Invisibility Ray’s Existence
The folks at J’Tote Bags crafted a beautiful email, with professional photography, strong reasons to buy, and clear calls to action.
Then, J’Tote sent the email to eager prospects and customers. Somewhere in transit, many of these emails entered the range of the invisibility ray.
The invisibility technology rendered the email almost completely invisible to the human eye. Clearly, an invisible email is going to be read less, depressing open rates and clicks.
Conversion Sciences Defense Technology
Conversion Sciences has worked with the major email clients to develop a “de-cloaking” technology. For example, recipients can restore the email by clicking “Display Images below” in Gmail, or “Click here to download pictures” in Outlook.
Most email clients have implemented something similar.
The problem is that many recipients of your emails may not find a good reason to click on the de-cloaking links if they can’t see the email.
Clearly, this is not an ideal solution.
Defending Yourself Against the Invisibility Ray
A detailed analysis by Conversion Sciences has exposed some weaknesses in the invisibility ray.
It only works on images
Apparently, the invisibility ray doesn’t affect text, but only images. Thus a proper defense against this kind of attack is to use images more sparingly in your email and place text strategically around the email.
This will allow readers to understand the point of the email if the images have been inviso-rayed.
Image “Alt” Text is Sometimes Impervious
If you look closely at Exhibit B, you will see some text appearing in places where the images would have appeared. This is the images’ “alt” text and is created using the “alt” parameters in the HTML <img> tag.
Here’s an example:
<img src=”picture.jpg” alt=”Text that describes the image” />
Use the “alt” text to tell the reader what they will see if they click “Display images below” and invoke the de-cloaking technology.
This does not work in all email clients. Microsoft Outlook won’t show these cues, for example.
However, some email clients will actually allow you to format your “alt” text, making it different sizes and colors.
Conversion Alert: Don’t Fall Victim to Invisible Emails
Email remains one of the most effective online marketing tools available. No wonder the foes of good marketing have targeted it for disruption.
Let a Conversion Scientist review your email strategy. This will ensure that
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Mobile Marketing, Social Media and Conversion: Show me the Money (NSFW)
Conversion-Centered DesignJen Wojcik and Brian Massey at the Austin AMA
If you follow me, you know I’m not big on “safe” marketing.
I turn things up a few notches in this open discussion at the American Marketing Association.
I apologize in advance for my language.
Tom Myer herds the cats:
Yours Truly, the Conversion Scientist
Tom Hayden of Blue Clover and Jen Wojcik of Pinqued in a panel discussion entitled “Show Me the Money: Make Marketing Work for You.”
Tim was our mobile marketing expert, Jen handled social media. I just played Devil’s Advocate.
I hope you will enjoy the audio of this slide-free discussion.
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Social Media Delivers More Than Just ROI, But I Don’t Care
Conversion OptimizationTell me your social conversion rate
“Social media is revolutionizing customer care.” Yawn.
“Social media is helping brands build awareness.” That’s sounds interesting (not).
“Social media increases the quality of the traffic coming to your site in measurable ways.” Now you have my attention.
Don’t Hate Me for My Myopia
It is my choice of career that has given me this singular focus when it comes to online marketing. There are other people to create brand image. There are smart, dedicated people trying to improve their company’s customer service.
I say “you go!”
But, I want measurable, tangible data on how social media gets qualified prospects to a web property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
I can already hear Qwitter messages landing in my inbox. I hate Qwitter personally, but it is a FABULOUS metric, the equivalent of email’s unsubscribe rate. So, I have to listen. It’s an measure of my social media Return On Investment, my social media ROI.
What is your social media ROI? Can you measure the increase in traffic quality coming to your site from your social media actions?
This Attitude is Good for Social Media ROI
How many times do you have a great conversation in the social space only to find the company’s website opaque, posing, and irrelevant?
Social media won’t work if we’re transparent in our social graph and obsequious everywhere else.
Let’s encourage businesses to put content out that draws people to their website. They will quickly begin to realize that certain content works (educational, entertaining content) and certain content does not (home pages with self-aggrandizing copy).
ROI is the great informer for these companies.
The Importance of Social Media ROI
There is a camp of social media digerati that believe social channels are not for promotion, that it is evil to advertise where conversations are the norm.
But, if conversations are going on around a brand or a company, why deny the social citizenry of a chance to own or use their offerings?
It’s just plain selfish to hold back.
When buying is an outcome of conversation, ROI tells a company how it’s doing in starting and continuing those conversations.
Online communities are arbiters and aggregators of ROI
Let’s face it. We want the support of companies as we complain and cheer about their products. We want them to hear us, to reply to us, and to see things our way.
And we are not above the occasional bribe.
How many times have you started a complaint with, “I spend $_____ with your company every _____, and I expect… .”
We regularly use ROI as a way to get attention.
Communities that raise their hand get more attention. They drive it, highlight it and can take it away. They should be rewarded for their financial contribution to companies with increased support, more say in product design… and the occasional bribe.
What do eBook Groupies and Designer Laptop Bags have in Common?
I’ve recently begun working with J’Tote Designer Laptop Bags, and heard a story that illustrates this concept perfectly.
It seems that the women of an eBook community have developed a love for J’Tot’e’s chic laptop bags. How do we know?
Visitors from this community stay on the J’Tote site longer than average, view more pages, and have a very low bounce rate (a measure of the number of visitors who leave immediately after visiting a site).
The folks at J’Tote now make it a priority to tune into the conversations on the forum, and are certain to give them warning when inventory clearing sales are imminent.
Companies speak ROI
It is the lingo of the bottom line; the babble of budgets; the conversation of the coin. If we want more companies to engage in social media for all the “right” reasons, we need to communicate with them in this language: more visits from interested conversationalists who buy their products.
We need to speak to them with ROI.
It’s one thing for a company to monitor our conversations attempting to gauge positive or negative sentiment. It’s quite another for them to know that their Facebook page is generating additional visits and sales.
There is a catch
Companies that don’t measure the ROI of social media won’t get the message. They’ll continue to ignore important communities, cut social budgets and generate plenty of negative social sentiment in the digital conversationsphere.
If you’re not measuring, you’re not listening.
J’Tote is listening. Are you?
On July 21, I’ll be showing you ways to measure your social ROI, and in particular, your social conversion rates.
Did you know there was such a thing as a social landing page? It’s nothing like your landing pages.
Did you know that there are six major conversions that happen when you add social media to your sales funnel?
My presentation is just one part of a spectacular Master’s Group Training being held in Austin by Webmaster World, the PubCon people.
Only, you don’t have to attend a full PubCon to go.
Not only will you learn from me how to measure your social media efforts, you’ll learn how to do the things that make social media work.
Oh, and there is also an search marketing track going on at the same time. Yawn.
We’re going to make people love your business through your website at The Conversion Scientist. Subscribe to learn the strategies and tactics that turn more of your visitors into leads and sales.
I want measurable, tangible data on social conversion rates, on how social media gets qualified prospects to an online property, and how it helps me carry on a conversation with them making them more likely to buy.
Read this article if interested in improving your social media conversion rates.
How Analytics Saved One Business’s Online Sales
Ecommerce CRORead this before changing your website.
It’s time-consuming to offer 45 minutes of my time to anyone who wants to improve their online sales conversion rates. I just can’t think of any better way to introduce businesses to conversion concepts.
And the people I meet on the phone are priceless.
One such person is Tom Jackson of Heliski.com. His is a rare and instructive look at the power of the written word and the ineffectiveness of standard design strategies when it comes to conversion.
Tom had two sites targeting the same audience, and getting about the same traffic. Both had analytics installed.
This was a rare opportunity to see how two very different approaches to website design performed out in the real world.
Which would you pick as the conversion winner?
Take a look at Tom’s two sites. Which would you pick as the hands-down winner? Which would you image would have cratered his income had he relied exclusively on it?
How analytics (and a session with the Conversion Scientist) saved one business’s online sales.
I did a complete evaluation of these two pages in my Search Engine Land column, and you might be surprised at my conclusions: strong copy beat slick new design.
From a distance the two home pages couldn’t look more different. HeliskiingReview.com uses non-standard layout. Text is knockout white on blue, usually considered more difficult to read than Heliski.com’s black on grey.
The newer site uses a more “image- or brand-oriented play, establishing its value proposition as “the ultimate heliskiing destination.” Unfortunately, you can’t heliski on the site, so this is an empty promise.
The body copy couldn’t be more different in approach. HeliskiingReview.com uses plain language with specific, value- and benefit-oriented points in easy-to-scan bulleted format. Specifics are almost always important for conversion.
A designer might say that the big star with “send me info” was “too TV.” However, it certainly does draw the eye to an important call to action.
and the conversion champ is…
HeliskiingReview.com had a conversion rate of 2.27% vs. Heliski.com at 1.99%. That’s 14% better. However, HeliskiingReview.com delivered much more qualified prospects. Tom was able to book trips for 15.29% of the HeliskiingReview.com leads. Heliski.com had a close ratio of only 1.33%.
What we can Learn from Tom (or How Analytics Saved One Business’s Online Sales)
The moral of the tale is that Tom measured his sites’ performance. He had the analytics in place, and was smart enough not to make changes to his site without being able to measure their effect. By leaving both sites up, he was able to rollback the changes.
I’m offering a two hour short course on June 11 in Austin entitled Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices. This is an Austin Entrepreneur Network short course, which means that it’s only $25. We love our entrepreneurs.
Join me and find out how you can avoid huge mistakes – mistakes that rob you of leads and steal your sales. This is the second time I’ve done this presentation.
Or you can book your own session!
Read my full report on Search Engine Land, and I hope to see you on June 11.
B2B Marketers Must Embrace Conversion Marketing
Conversion Optimization, Lead GenerationWhat are you afraid of?
The goal of my Ion Interactive presentation “What Can We Learn from the Bad Boys of Marketing?” was to shake things up a bit.
Conversion marketing is about bringing visitors to choice. B2B conversion marketers carry this same burden.
Can marketers in more conservative industries use techniques proven to increase online leads and sales in B2C markets?
In my Ion Interactive webinar, I use two B2B landing pages to illustrate how these B2C techniques can be used: Mary O’Brien Adwords Advantage landing page AdwordAdvantage.com and CoverActionPro.com.
The elements are the same for B2B conversion marketing as they are for B2C webpages.
Check out Secrets of The “Bad Boys” of Online Sales Conversion for a detailed description of these Useful B2B conversion marketing elements.
I go as far in the Webinar to state:
Ready for B2B Conversion Marketing?
Anna Talerico Hosts Conversations on B2b Conversion Marketing
Certainly you can deliver a high-converting experience without harming your online brand, like CoverActionPro.
You have to work harder. You can’t ask a committee of executives to review your pages. You have to know how your page is performing and how changes are affecting your results.
You can learn more about analytics and their proper application at my AEN Short Course “Web Analytics: Tools and Best Practices” on June 11, 2010.
Enjoy the Webinar and don’t miss Anna Talerico’s Conversations on B2B Conversion Marketing podcast. Or give your sales a boost. Check out our lead generation solutions tailored to your industry.
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Mobile Marketing and Geo-Relevance: The Power of Location Marketing
Conversion OptimizationI had the pleasure of being on a panel with Tim Hayden recently, and overheard him talking real-life targeted banner advertising: billboards that connected with your mobile phone as you passed by.
I could only imagine what a billboard would say to me.
But the more I listened to Tim, the more I became intrigued with his vision for the future and the present.
Tim was nice enough to answer some questions on his birthday, of all days, and my summary of what I learned can be found in my ClickZ column “Mobile Marketing and Your Digital Geo-relevance.”
My favorite quote didn’t make the editing process:
“We aren’t wired to sit on our asses all day and stare at Twitter,” says Hayden.
Einstein has given me some doubts about where I am. He demonstrated that time and space is really quite malleable. It leads to the conclusion that you can never really be sure that you are where you think you are; you can also never really be sure you are when you think you are.
Fortunately, we have these little computers we carry around called mobile phones to tell us both when and where we are…relatively. It turns out that these devices are fine for fixing us in time and space, unless you are standing too close to a neutron star.
These devices are also good at telling advertisers where we are, where we want to be, and where we’ll be in between.
Is “Mobile” Necessary?
The term “mobile” already seems a bit quaint. It’s like calling an automobile “out-of-home transportation.” It’s not necessary. It’s a car, and we “drive.”
Likewise, a device that is with us always really doesn’t need to be called “mobile.” All we have to do is “be” somewhere. The rest is implied. When I turn on a device that has GPS capability, I begin to “be” somewhere in the digital sense of the word.
Famed VC John Doerr admitted that we don’t have a word for the next mobile/social/new commerce “wave.”
“Geo-relevance” is written more frequently these days. And I like the double entendre: we can know what businesses are relevant to us geographically, but mobile device users are also making themselves more relevant wherever they are “being.”
Tim Hayden prefers the term “mobile lifestyle” to describe what he calls “passionate and influential” smartphone users. He also likes the term “digital out of home advertising” My personal mobile strategy has been limited to adding a mobile theme plug-in to my CRO blog, so I’ve asked Tim to give me his view of the mobile space.
Location, location, location.
Location Marketing Helps with Geo-Relevance
All we need is some way to figure out when we are “being” in the same place as a business is “being,” and magic starts to happen. Because of the Internet, that business can send a message through this intermediary suggesting that I start “being” in their store instead of nearby. Coupons, menus, and hot new products may entice me to shift my location, and my digital beingness along with it.
Location marketing finds interesting ways to connect where a business is being to where a prospect is being.
Though subtle, the distinction is important.
You “are” where you physically stand. You are “being” where the Internet thinks you are. Where you “be” is different from where you live or where your computer is. As a business you can “be” in many places.
Tim imagines a day not too far in the future when a smart roadside billboard can be a place where your business is “being,” reaching out to passing mobile devices.
Communicating Location via Social Media
We tell our friends where we are “being” by communicating a business’s location. An e-mail with a link to a map is sufficient to establish a bar, coffee shop, or restaurant’s geo-relevance to others. There are some other, more interesting ways of borrowing a customer’s geo-relevance to enhance your businesses digital location.
Foursquare is a popular “being broker,” encouraging visitors to build a business’s being by associating it with their being, sharing it with all of their social connections.
As a business, you should start by encouraging customers to check in through Foursquare or Gowalla. Install Wi-Fi. “Being” somewhere does not an ad make, so check out Foursquare for Business for opportunities to advertise to visitors and their social network. Brightkite is another, more venerable mobile marketing or being broker.
Search and Place: The Power of Location Marketing
Search engines with geographic features such as maps and routing act as the intermediary for your future being. If you want a hamburger; if you need a new dry cleaner; if you want to know where to buy a lab coat in a strange city, search combines prospect intent via keywords with their location. Search is your place intermediary.
Search engines know the business’s geo-location, but you should help them legitimize and optimize your locations. Leverage Google My Business listings to indicate your geo-relevance. David Mihm of GetListed.org packed a great amount of local search strategy into his presentation at InnoTech Portland this month.
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Mobile Devices “Wire” Our Touchpoints
Tim offers the example of a nightclub that issues cards with RFID chips in them. When a card-carrying patron comes to the door, the host can see on her terminal who has come and their preferences for seating, drinks, and appetizers. Tim believes that these “smart touchpoints” are well suited to leverage the digital location defined by our phones.
Tim asks businesses the question, “How can we have compelling touchpoints, beyond the device that will bring people back to the device to engage us?”
Mobile Applications
“I applaud anyone who is reaching out to mobile users who are passionate and influential,” says Tim when I ask about the value of mobile apps.
He prefers promotional microsites designed for the small screen. They can have more impact and are often easier to implement.
Some businesses are a natural fit for apps. There are services, such as MobBase, Kyte, and Mobile Roadie that can make it easy for any business to develop a third-screen presence.
Mobile Advertising via Ad Networks
As I write this, I’m receiving the news that the Google AdMob merger has been approved. The Mobile Marketer article, “Google becomes world’s largest mobile ad network: 9 implications,” spells out the implications.
Because of Google’s self-service search advertising model, this merger bodes well for small and medium-sized businesses that want to begin leveraging mobile advertising.
Mobile Marketing and Privacy
Influential smartphone users leverage the wholesale transparency implied by this utter lack of privacy. These users produce “earnest to visceral” user-generated content. They are building a public personal brand for themselves, and are exactly the people that businesses of all sizes should reach out to.
It’s hard to think about mobile marketing when we’re just getting our heads around search and display advertising. Still, businesses must do what they can to establish their digital “being” now and keep an eye on the intermediaries that can connect them with passionate, influential mobile device junkies.
NOTE: Portions of this article originally appeared on ClickZ.