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Mobile-Friendly Makes Your Business Customer-Friendly

Your audience wants to be engaged and informed.  Establishing and maintaining brand loyalty means connecting your audience to social networks, mail subscriptions and mobile devices. This allows the consumer to receive fast, accurate content through multiple channels, making your business’ customers more accessible. With an audience on-the-go, your company needs a plan to become more mobile-friendly.

Newport Interactive Marketers (sponsored by Designated Editor) is starting 2012 off with all things mobile.  Join NIM as Annette Tonti CEO, MoFuse uncovers the best mobile web practices for advertisers and publishers. Strengthen your multi-channel approach by building effective mobile web content that is convenient and easy to use. “Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly” is an event that is open to the public and begins at 6:00pm on Thursday, January 26 2012 at 41North (351 Thames Street, Newport RI 02840).

You will learn

  • Mobile is Local: What does that mean for marketers?
  • How are people using the mobile web and how will that change in 2012?
  • Mobile Web or App, what is the difference?
  • How do you build effective mobile web content?
  • Every marketer needs to include mobile as part of their multi-channel approach.  Which are the best practices?
  • Why and how has mobile web quickly emerged as the most important landscape for mid-tier and local businesses?

No matter what industry your company is in, there are opportunities for growth on mobile devices. Featured speaker Annette Tonti knows this all too well, as MoFuse defends its reputation for powering mobile sites for customers as different as the State Department and Harper Collins.  They also power mobile sites for thousands of local businesses and marketers who use mobile to build mobile ad campaigns.  From Pandora to Ghirardelli chocolate, both large and small brands are engaging audiences in this new, effective way.

How will your mobile-friendly company engage its audience?

With so many new devices and applications hitting the streets at record speeds, it’s easy for your company to put some of these new devices to marketing use.

  • Build incentive programs (i.e. coupons, contests, etc.)
  • Enable financial services such as PayPal for streamlined billing processes
  • Run surveys – feedback directly from the customer makes them feel engaged and appreciated
  • Promote customer service – build a two-way conversation
  • …and much, much more!

Connect with Annette Tonti via Twitter and LinkedIn before the event, and check out MoFuse, too!

For event details, visit http://bit.ly/NIMmobile2012

Integrating mobile marketing: How and why

Bruce Hershey, Director of Mobile Marketing at Merkle, discuses the importance of marketing. As with any business, one of the first things you want to be able to do effectively is make your brand known, and get your product out there. Marketing is of course, the way to do that. Depending on your product and how you get started, you’ll want a business phone. Establishing this first line of communication is a great way to have clients get in touch with you, and keep the ball that is your business rolling. What comes next? You’ll need computers, internet, and any other form of communication you can get a hold of. You can be reached, but now it’s time for you to the reaching. This is where mobile marketing comes into play.

Why go mobile?

  • Mobile marketing is inexpensive to add to the marketing plan
  • It reaches out to important customers
  • It can be personalized

Important figures

  • Nine in 10 adults, seven in 10 teens, and one in 5 kids have mobile phones
  • 98 percent of young adults ages 22-24 own mobile phones
  • 70 million people use the web on mobile devices each month
  • 64 of the Fortune 100 companies have a mobile strategy

Mobile’s growing usage

  • Google’s mobile search has grown more than 500 percent in the past two years
  • There are thousands of iOS and Android devices purchased every day

Why is mobile unique?

  • The mobile phone is the only device that is turned on all day that the user carries all the time
  • We are in a time where multiple channels have converged into one (mobile = phone +email+TV, etc., referred to as “mobile synthesis”)

Building a mobile strategy

  • 60 percent of companies that start using mobile marketing do not have a strategy (alarming)
  • Strategy is necessary to return results, measure against business goals, and measure increase in revenue
  • Mobile strategy makes customers want to be engaged with the brand

Types of mobile marketing

  • Mobile display advertising
  • QR codes
  • Digital coupons
  • Location-based offers
  • Mobile-tailored web sites
  • Text message
  • Smartphone apps

Mobile marketing successes

  • Target – gives consumers the freedom of choice as to how they want engagement
  • Starbucks – great integration of smartphone app with location-based marketing, reminds you when you are near a store
  • K&G Fashion Superstore – implemented text offer to customers currently in the store to be used instantly, had a redemption rate of 87 percent

Using QR codes properly

  • Uses include link to website, an app, a coupon, registration for newsletter,  video, etc.
  • Tell the user where the QR code is going to take them
  • Strategy should include what your best use of QR code is
  • Have back-end support prepared for when QR code response comes in

Don’t leave non-smartphone users in the dust

  • Only 37% of all consumers have smartphones
  • Combine QR code with SMS – allow text for a scanner if user doesn’t have a smartphone
  • Must optimize website for all web-capable devices