Your 12-Point Checklist for Mobile-Optimized Landing Pages. Who knew Disney (Walt, not the corporation) was such a prognosticator of things to come? Visionary, yes. Impresario, of course. But who knew that “It’s a Small World,” that cloying little ditty you can’t get out of your head for hours after taking a 12-minute motorized gondola ride, would foretell the future of marketing? For digital marketers, even as the opportunities expand, the playing field is shrinking -- to a space about 2 inches by 3 inches: the smartphone screen. Also shrinking is the time to reach consumers: 75 percent of online searchers take an action within a few hours, and 36 percent of them take an action immediately.
Yes, the market for tablet devices is growing rapidly, but the latest figures show more than 6 billion smartphones in use worldwide, about 90 percent of the world’s population. So as a lead generating inbound marketer, you must master optimizing your landing pages for mobile marketing, too. 1) Be Visible 2) Scale to Size 3) Be Concise 4) Be Available 6) Be Slim. 3 Mobile Trends Every Search Marketer Must Know. When I last blogged about mobile trends in 2011, I had predicted that mobile, i.e., smartphone + tablet traffic would be 10% of all paid search traffic by the end of 2011. I had also predicted that mobile traffic would be between 16-22% of all traffic. It turns out, at least for a few categories, that I had under-predicted the rise of mobile.
An analysis of mobile traffic of a cross section of advertisers reveals up to 25-30% of all paid search traffic is now mobile. It is now more important than ever before to pay attention to your mobile targeted search campaigns. In this post, I shall talk about three key trends that every search marketer would do well to know. Trend #1: Mobile Traffic Is Rising Fast… Faster Than You Think The chart below shows the breakout of mobile clicks on Google between smartphone and tablet as a fraction of total traffic for a sample of our customers.
That’s over one in four paid clicks! Trend #2: Tablets Currently Have A Much Higher ROI Than Desktops. The mobile trends that marketers should focus on: Gartner. Mobile Web Users: Media Consumption, Mobile Activities, Ad Tolerance, Demographic Profiles. Among US mobile Web users, mobile media (via phones and tablets) was the most popular way to consume media content in the second quarter of 2012, accounting for 2.97 hours of the total 9.00 hours spent consuming media via all platforms during the day (some 32.5% of total consumption), outpacing TV at 2.35 hours, according to a report by InMobi. Moreover, on average, US mobile Web users spent 1.60 hours per day using a PC or laptop, 1.50 hours listening to radio, and 43 minutes reading newspapers and magazines. Below, additional findings from InMobi for the second quarter of 2012, developed in partnership with OnDevice Research.
Mobile is easy and ever-present Mobile phones have been adopted across the US consumer market due in part to convenience, according to the report: 65% of mobile users say they prefer mobile because "it's easy to use. " 56% of mobile users say they use mobile most because it's constantly with them. M-commerce is growing Mobile ads are welcomed—and influential. How to Optimize Your Mobile Website for Search. Making your company website more SEO-friendly requires strategic effort. At the current rate of on-the-go users, it's important not to neglect the mobile version of your site. More than 70% of marketers plan to spend more money on mobile in 2013, and Microsoft reports that 70% of PC search tasks are completed in one week, while 70% of mobile search tasks are completed in one hour. In short, mobile should be top of mind, because if people are searching, it's because there's an intent to do something.
“Mobile users are not tethered to a desktop. Mobile expert and MeritShare co-founder Kevin Nakao says the best place to start your mobile strategy is to determine whether you will use the same site for mobile and desktop. "Assuming mobile is on-the-go only, the user's experience needs be optimized," says Nakao. Nakao stresses that it's equally important not to block the bot. SEE ALSO: Google Shows Startups How to Master SEO in 10 Minutes [VIDEO] 1. 2. 3. Google Analytics Mobile App: This Week in Social Media.
Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news. To help you stay up-to-date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention. What’s New This Week? Google Analytics Launches New Mobile App Analytics: Google Analytics has “a new set of reports in beta called Mobile App Analytics that help marketers and developers better measure their mobile apps.” These new Mobile App Analytics reports are "tailored for mobile app developers and marketers. " YouTube’s Google+ Integration Makes it Easy to Change Outdated YouTube Usernames: Did you choose a cute username for your YouTube account and now you want to change it? "If you are currently YouTube user joeysam87, you can now appear as Joey Samson, the full name from your Google+ profile (with an actual space in the middle!)
Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Mobile Landing Page Optimization - 10 Best Practices for Success. Landing pages can be used for PPC ads, mobile app downloads, promotional campaigns and more. Optimization tactics are intended to boost conversion, improve PPC quality scores, and provide a better user experience.
Yet with so many companies "not ready to do mobile", the mobile landing page experience has basically been ignored. With mobile web use dramatically on the rise, marketers can no longer ignore the impact. There are over 4 billion mobile phones on the planet, and Google estimates by 2014 more people will use mobile phones than PCs to go online. How much of your web traffic is mobile? A Case for the Mobile Landing Page... When it comes to landing page optimization, a simple A/B test may yield a 20-30 percent increase in conversion. For example, let's say 1,000 users visit your landing page, and 2 percent (20) of them convert. "88% of mobile searchers take action within 24 hours. 10 Ways to Make Your Landing Page Mobile-Friendly It's time to adapt your strategy. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. The New Mobile SEO Strategy.
No more guessing games. Not only has Google come out and supported a mobile strategy, it comes with specific SEO friendly recommendations at no extra cost. Talk of the importance of presenting users with mobile friendly content has been echoing for some time now, so it makes sense that Google would provide some rules to follow depending on your set up. 3 Ways to Serve Mobile Content The end result of all this is quite simple. When a mobile user requests a particular URL: Serve the same HTML as the desktop version of the page and use CSS3 media queries to change the look of the site (ideal).Serve HTML and CSS that is different from the desktop version of the page.Redirect a user to a different URL utilizing mobile optimized content.
Using the starting point of a mobile user requesting a desktop URL, here are some details for the three options listed above. 1. This has become the industry standard for several reasons and those reasons typically fall under two umbrellas: 2. 3. Connected Life Gives Sales Boon to Asia Pacific by 2020. GSMA and Machina Research are forecasting a six-fold increase of connected devices in China — currently worth US$116 billion (S$147B) to $707 billion (S$899B) by 2020, bringing forth the Connected Life. Connected devices include smartphones, tablets, consumer electronics and devices that have machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity. No, it’s not the Terminator’s Skynet taking over the world, it just means your car can communicate with your house and notify the wife your ETA home so she can get ready and meet you by the door. Your car can locate the nearest charging station and tell you to juice up or else you will be walking home.
(Image courtesy of GSMA and Machina Research) This future may not be so far-fetched, because connected devices are driving innovation and advancement in crucial industries across Asia-Pacific. China is growing in huge spurts economically, and is leading all other countries in the connected devices segment. Study: Affluent Consumers & Luxury Mobile Apps. By Johanna Cox | 10 May 2012 A recent study released by the Luxury Institute examines how affluent U.S. consumers engage with luxury smartphone apps. The report found that 60 percent of wealthy Americans (defined as those with an annual income of or exceeding $150,000) own a smartphone, and 80 percent of those affluent smartphone owners have downloaded a mobile app.
Just 12 percent of wealthy smartphone consumers, however, have downloaded a luxury brand’s app, signaling a missed opportunity in the category. Of those surveyed who had downloaded a luxury smartphone app, the most popular, in order, were: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Gilt Groupe. The study also found that 93 percent of wealthy consumers claimed to have had a “positive” experience with luxury mobile apps and 40 percent said they would be interested in downloading an app that provided a secure path to purchase. Like | Tweet | inShare | Email. Mobile Search [Infographic]: 72% of smartphone users look for information on the go. I’m a fan of gallows humor. So, as a Borders shareholder (until it went bankrupt), I love the sign a Borders store employee posted as the chain was going out of business … Sorry No Public Restroom Try Amazon.com It’s hard to deny that e-commerce has significant advantages over the traditional brick-and-mortar store: Lower overhead and inventory costsOpen 24/7, often to any customer in the world with a connectionHigh gas prices that convince customers to drive lessNo sales tax (although that playing field will likely level in the near future)The ability for customers to easily find what they’re looking for, comparison shop, and respond to offers But now it’s time for B&Ms to fight back … at least when it comes to that last advantage.
Click to enlarge That one fact along could literally change the face of retail marketing. If a customer is searching for a product, marketers can show him that they have the product in-stock (even better than next-day delivery, no?) Sources Related Resources Mobile. The ‘Smartphone Class’: Always On, Always Consuming Content. Armed with fast, high-powered smartphones, a new class of consumers, 100 million strong and growing, is rerouting the path to purchase and redefining cultural norms in the US. Members of the “smartphone class” stand apart from other Americans in the way they shop, communicate, consume media—even how they use their spare time. Its members define themselves by their connectedness and their sense of empowerment through unfettered access to real-time information. “What others do with a PC, they do with their smartphones,” said Catherine Boyle, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “The Smartphone Class: Connected Consumers Transform US Commerce and Culture.”
“Their phone is their workplace, entertainment center and their marketplace. They watch videos in coffee shops, social network at concerts, play games in waiting rooms, scan barcodes in stores and shop with their smartphone from anywhere at any time. The smartphone class is not defined by age, gender, income or race. Data Points: How We Use Our Mobiles. Context is everything. Some mobile habits overlap, but there are significant differences in how consumers use their tablets and smartphones which marketers need to understand to effectively use the devices. Like portable personal assistants, smartphones accompany us everywhere. They tend to be used primarily for task-related activities, like sending email, going online and sending text messages, so text message and shorter ads have been successful in this environment. Tablets, meanwhile, are most likely to be taken out at home and used for long-term media consumption, so users may be more tolerant of longer ads as long as they don't get in the way of their media experience.
Infographic: Carlos Monteiro. Mobile Marketing With QR Codes and MS Tags. Consumer behaviors are changing, and mobile technologies are among the predominant influences affecting the shift. More than 50% of all local web searches take place with mobile devices. That spells opportunity for businesses that have a mobile marketing strategy. Does your business have a mobile strategy? Why QR codes/MS tags? Success with mobile marketing starts with understanding your customers and then implementing an appropriate strategy. This has proved to be true with QR codes. 2d codes activate or trigger the mobile cycle. Microsoft realizes QR codes and MS tags, in addition to other technologies, all serve distinct purposes.
The MS Tag Manager makes it easier for marketers to use QR, MS tag, and other mobile technologies not just to reach consumers, but also to brand the experience and gather rich data for delivering even more favorable experiences in the future. The Microsoft Tag Platform with Tag Manager. Technology Is Just the Trigger for the Mobile Experience Local Social Mobile. The 17 R's of Savvy Mobile Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC] Do you know what the top three Google searches are for mobile marketing? The first is “mobile marketing,” and the second is “mobile media.” But the third most popular Google search about mobile marketing is “What is mobile marketing?” Data like that suggests that businesspeople are still trying to wrap their heads around this growing and evolving industry. If people are still asking what mobile marketing is, then they’re probably also struggling with how to use it to drive leads for their business.
With that in mind, we’ve written this blog post and created an infographic called The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing. The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing, which we elaborate on below, should help you ease your way into the world of mobile and show you some best practices for using mobile marketing to generate leads for your business. 1) Review your web analytics to determine what percent of your visitors are using mobile devices to access your website. 9) Respect the frequency of mobile message use.
A Marketer's Complete Guide to Launching Mobile Apps. According to former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps Alex Ahlund, the average cost to develop a mobile app is $6,453 -- and the cost can skyrocket to as much as $150,000 depending on the complexity of the app. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, the money and resources you dedicate to conceptualizing and developing a truly great mobile app can all be put to waste if you don't orchestrate a proper mobile app launch.
In fact, in December 2011, the 1 millionth mobile app was pushed to market. To give you an idea of just how quickly these mobile apps are being released, at the end of 2010, there were 300,000 mobile apps. That's a 233% increase in just 12 months. In other words, that's a lot of clutter in mobile app stores (and we won't even get into the fact that 1 in 4 apps, once downloaded, are never used again.)
Step 1: Define Success If you're aiming for a successful mobile app launch, you need to define what success looks like. Step 2: Claim Your Social Media Accounts Step 3: Create Content. The Future of Mobile Shopping. Why 2012 Is the Year of Mobile Advertising. How to Grow Your Business with Mobile Paid Search. What to Expect from Mobile Marketing Tech in 2012. Don't Have a Mobile Marketing Strategy? 5 Mobile Tactics You Need Now!