Damien Saunders » Mobile Marketing

50 Completely Useful stats for social media & mobile marketing

Damien — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:27:18 +0000

To understand more about Social Media and Mobile Marketing its important to get a few facts together on current trends and insights. 50 completely useful stats for social media does just that.

Why do this? well it helps to create some drive … and helps to understand why anyone or any business needs to do more in social media and mobile marketing.

50 completely useful stats for social media & mobile marketing

View more presentations from Damien Saunders.

HOW TO: Google Maps Local claim your business

Damien — Wed, 12 May 2010 07:00:57 +0000

Google Maps is the first site that any business should visit before starting mobile or geospecific marketing. Google Maps Local provides a range of tools to make it easy for anyone to check their details and claim your business.

Why do you need to claim your business on Google Maps?

We all know the phenomenon that is searching for something on Google from a Mobile – so as more people have Android phones or iPhones or other smartphones, more people will use Mobile Internet for Search. Google is already enabling Search results limited to the users current location so it’s important to keep your listing up to date.

For anyone into SEO then Google Maps is another good place to promote your business and increase your keywords, link juice and so on.

In many cases, Google Maps data is sourced from 3rd party directories and it could be possible that your business is listed, but with information from some other website. In this example, you can see the Google Maps has detail for mmchanel not mmCHANNEL – which is a misspelling and the map data is from a 3rd party website.

Easy Guide to Claim your business

Go to Google Maps – try http://local.google.co.uk/ or http://local.google.cm and search for your business. Then click on the link for Business Owner?

If you have a new business or can’t find your listing then go to http://www.google.com/local/add/

Then you can choose to edit your listing, suspend your listing or add a new business at that location.

There are a number of steps to claim your business including updating your business details, writing more blurb about your company and at th end you will need to verify you as the correct business contact. You can do this by phone, text or snail mail (takes about 3 weeks).

Why Mobile? Why Now? – short guide to mobile marketing

Damien — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 15:16:15 +0000

A short guide to mobile marketing is as short as it can get – and provides just enough insights, trends and key facts to help make the most of mobile marketing. What’s included in this is 8 quick suggestions how to include mobile marketing in your marketing strategy.

Why mobile why now

View more presentations from Damien Saunders.

b2b Marketing – how to increase your content sales and improve your content

Damien — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 22:29:59 +0000

A short guide with b2b marketing tips for improving your content sales and improve your content using mmCHANNEL’s new API.

1. Got an upcoming marketing campaign? Need Content?
Now any marketing campaign can include digital content like tones, songs, games from a selection of mmCHANNEL manages.

2. Drive traffic to your website or fanpage
You can setup a content shop in your existing website using the mmCHANNEL b2bAPI with no need to build any other platforms

3. Increase your depth of content catalogue
You can extend your content shop and use the mmCHANNEL b2bAPI to include all the digital content that we manage.

4. Refresh your mobile strategy
Mobile Content – for sale or free to download – is a great way to get people coming to your mobile site and the mmCHANNEL b2bAPI allows content downloads by SMS or from a mobile internet site

5. Its cloud computing but not as we know it
Because the mmCHANNEL b2b API is available everywhere in the world you can think of this as cloud computing with the difference that people are there to help you all along the way.

Call or email me to find out how to do this.

3 Reasons SMS marketing will die this year

Damien — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:55:13 +0000

Have you had a funny feeling in your pocket lately? Have you noticed a distinct lack of marketing SMS or that you only get SMS from your bank or your mobile operator – no more unwanted SMS. Smart digital agencies and mobile marketing specialists are already moving their clients from this type of communications.

There are 3 very good reasons that this year is the year SMS marketing will die.

1. High Cost of SMS Marketing Campaigns

Sending an SMS campaign still has real costs – typically these costs would double if you want customers to able to reply to your ad message (for example – to get a free code, answer a quiz question or just to reply with STOP). So a campaign with a set of 1000 numbers may cost you up to £100 – and if only 5% respond then your campaign costs are £2 per response.

The same £100 budget could be used smartly on a Google Adwords Campaign and a trial budget of £1 a day would last about 3 months! You would serve out 1000′s of impressions a week and get more CTR or leads.

Targeting Mobile Search or Mobile SEO would also be an attractive option for would be marketers.

2.Limited Marketing Budgets for 2010

Many companies are cutting their budgets again for this year. Predictably, high cost campaigns with low response rates will be the first to go. SMS campaigns that focus on buying something, going somewhere or ones from unsolicited sources are all suffering. Even banks will stop sending balance alert SMS’s unless it can be adfunded.

3. Strong Smartphone sales means you need to use a mobile website or app

All smartphones will come with unlimited monthly internet plans and have access to some kind of app stores. The better smartphones will be more like pocket computers with big screens, HD video playback and more. Customers will be able to connect almost anywhere with your brand.

Strong Smartphone sales including Androids (from manufacturers like Google, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola) will increase in popularity along with iPhone and maybe Windows 7 mobiles. Nokia will continue to have some dominance in mass market 3G devices.

Finally .. now is the time to build a mobile marketing plan that is integrated – think mobile search and SEO – check what your website looks like on your mobile phone. Then contact me.

Now have your say … will SMS Marketing die in 2010?

5 Essential tips for promoting your charity or cause using mobile marketing

Damien — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:44:59 +0000

For non-profit organisations, charities and cause related marketing the mobile can provide the best integrated marketing solution for campaigns. There are a number of tools and techniques which can be used to promote your cause or help to raise donations.

1. SMS Premium Text Donations

Making donations using your mobile is as simple as sending a text to a special number. For the not so concerned and the lazy its a quick way to send a few dollars, euros or pounds to a worthy cause. The SMS premium text solutions that you choose must work across all major operators and the solution should mean that the service provider and operator minimise their cost for the charity.

2. Mobile Apps & Games – Branded Content

For cause related marketing and integrated marketing mobile apps and branded games are a viral marketing tool. Today’s mobile phones allow for fun based games which also can teach the user about your cause (ie teaching people how to take care of their land or water supply). Development of an app does take budget – but the rewards are something fun that can be easily promoted via the iTunes Store, Android Market or your own web or mobile site.

Of course any app should link to your mobile site and allow the user to sign-up for email alerts or status updates.

3. Mobile Internet and Websites

Mobile websites are no longer the little brother. As more people get smartphones with richer functions a fully ‘grown up’ website can be created for customers to experience. The same points apply – allow people to sign up for alerts to stay in contact or to download any mobile app straight to their phone.

4. Campaign Tools & SMS Status Alerts

Once you have people opted-in to receive status alerts, you will be able to quickly let people know about important events and invite them back to your mobile website to make a donation or find out how they can help. It makes sense to have a solution that integrates with a mobile and email CRM allowing for campaign promotions.

5. Branded Content – Videos, Music, Tones, Images & Wallpapers

Branded content is one of the best ways to get recognition of your brand. Wallpapers can be downloaded to desktops or saved on phones (even shared with friends!). Content like videos can also feature your brand as part of the digital overlay or a pre-roll or post-roll sequence

It is also easy to build your own digital download content shop into any existing web or mobile site using solutions that mmCHANNEL provides (who I currently work for).

Now have you say … are you working with Charities?

Mobile Marketing Strategies – Mobile CRM

Damien Saunders — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:47:42 +0000

Until recently mobile devices were often overlooked by marketing managers in favour of online campaigns or traditional paper-based direct marketing. However, brands, ad agencies and telecoms operators are increasingly using mobile as part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy.

The rapid growth in smartphones spurred by the iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android has given mobile marketing a major boost. The latest devices offer fast and easy web access, often with flat-rate charges. This has sparked a flurry of development in a range of formats, including thousands of mobile apps, as well as in music content, search and social media.

The latest handsets can add location and web browsing behaviour to the streams of customer data, such as call statistics and purchasing behaviour, that mobiles already generate. This data can be harvested or saved to improve customer service and increase sales from existing customers. In theory, the more a company knows about its customers, the better it can match communication to behaviour.

[via new media age]

Mobile SEO – Google extends click to call to mobile search

Damien Saunders — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:11:31 +0000

In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking closely at Mobile Search and Mobile SEO. This week will be a round up of features on Google Mobile Search

Click to Call

Click to call has been a feature of WAP and mobile portals for sometime, however the mobile phones needed to support this action.

Google has now added Click to Call to Adword Mobile Search Results

Anyone running SEO or Adword campaigns should make sure they have configured the mobile search results as well and to now include the primary phone number for customers or clients to ring in on.

[Source: Google Mobile blog]

What kids do online: UK Internet Usage

Damien Saunders — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:56:25 +0000

Recent indepth report from New Media Age in the UK focused on the internet usage habits of kids.

Kids research is hard – the age group is from 7 – 13. They are already exposed to a lot of marketing, aware of trends and ‘peer pressure’, but still very much aware of having to please their parents all of the time. It’s also very difficult to ask questions about anything anti-social, illegal due to the young age and formative, questioning minds.

It also provides some great insights into what kids say they are doing with their mobiles, about a fifth or 21% say they are already going online with their mobile phones.

[via new media age]

Looking for insights on Mobile and Retail Sector?

Damien Saunders — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:00:04 +0000

GS1, a global standards organisation dedicated to the design and implementation of global standards and solutions in supply and demand chains worldwide, has released a Whitepaper looking at the opportunities for mobile in the retail sector.

The Whitepaper, ‘Mobile in Retail’, seeks to identify the potential for mobile to brands and retailers. It highlights 10 areas, including coupons and loyalty, where mobile is deemed to have a particular impact. The executive summary points to a number of areas of potential gain for businesses adopting mobile as a consumer engagement channel. These are increased sales; increased customer satisfaction and loyalty; and additional value to physical products and experiences through digital services.
In preparing the Whitepaper, GS1’s researchers were granted substantial access to key decision makers among the world’s FMCG manufacturers and international retail chains.

The report includes four case studies of operational schemes from around the world. One of these, SHOP SCAN SAVE, is a mobile marketing programme operated by Mobilize, which is currently available in over 23,000 convenience outlets throughout the UK. It has been running for over two years and demonstrates the value to retailers, brand owners, and consumers alike.

You can download the Whitepaper here.

(via Mobile Marketing Magazine)

Where to start building mobile apps for large screens – mobile agencies beware

Damien Saunders — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:28:57 +0000

Where to start with building a mobile app or going mobile has been a popular topic for some time. Many FMCG brands and agencies are requesting only quotes for mobile apps – forgetting the less popular java app or branded mobile game. At the expense of budget – haha – focusing on a mobile app can be a costly exercise starting from about 10k to 100k plus.

Marketing Agencies and their Brands need to go and reconsider their mobile strategy – and if you’ve already built a mobile app – you maybe disappointed how it looks on the larger screen devices.

The announcement of a large screen Apple iPad and netbooks running Google Android will be exciting for consumers – essentially these are mobile devices with wifi and 3G mobile broadband. For marketers its another screen that needs its own plan.

Recently, I attended a workshop on an Android powered Netbook – the developers present, some of them with popular music apps were, with one voice crying foul about the screen size. It’s one thing to make an app work on small mobile screens – its another to make an app work on a 7″ wide screen notebook thingy.

2010 will bring a number of problems for mobile apps – the easiest strategy is to get someone in to help you build up your mobile website.

How to include mobile marketing into your advertising

Damien Saunders — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:02:11 +0000

It’s easy to create effective mobile marketing campaigns using apps and games … this short video aims to demonstrate whats possible

Mobile Advertising and Mobile Games

How to use Competitions & Social Media to grow your mobile marketing

Damien Saunders — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:18:16 +0000

Running competitions using social media is a good way for brands and businesses to create welcome visitors and friends to their sites. You can now take that competition mobile using mobile apps, games or mobile websites and you don’t have to use SMS.

Using Social Media to get your customers discovering you on their mobile

Your marketing messages on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can direct existing customers to discover your mobile website or to download a mobile app. Read up on whats currently hot in social media.

Mobile internet usage is really popular for smartphones like Android and iPhone with good screen size and great browsing experience. It means your customers can always access your shop or website when they are not in front of their PC. It’s now even possible to go direct to facebook fan page via the mobile.

Create Competitions on the Mobile that don’t use SMS

In the past marketing campaigns focused SMS messaging for competitions. This allowed a business to build a flat file or excel spreadsheet of ‘customers’, but the data was useless outside of the competition unless there was an opt-in for marketing message. 2010 will be the year when it becomes more popular to use Social Media and Mobile not SMS, brands can now ‘engage’ customers and ‘create conversations’. Customers will tell you more and love to use mobile apps and mobile games.

How will you make mobile part of your marketing strategy?

Vote in my Mobile Marketing and Mobile Apps Poll

Damien Saunders — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:59:49 +0000

Take a vote … what do you do for mobile marketing and have you tried any mobile apps?

http://polls.linkedin.com/p/69091/tbhgt

Social Media & Marketing Round-up of some good reading

Damien Saunders — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:36:22 +0000

The problem with doing research on social media and mobile marketing is the overwhelming amount of noise you get from doing searches on Google, Delicious and Twitter.

Here are a few links of really useful and easy to consume ‘research’

best ‘inspirational’ video on social media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

map of social media world
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasabibratwurst/3128711125/sizes/l/

top 100 companies by media spend
http://adage.com/globalmarketers09/