Build bridges to your smart phone using prospects.
Obviously, there is some disconnect between a few ad agencies and/or many advertisers with the more than 36% of the population who use smartphones. For some strange reason, many agencies and/or advertisers fail to use a mobile landing page when they place an ad with a QR Code in a newspaper. A digital ad on The Blade’s news Web site or newspaper should link in a way that detects the prospective customer’s browser and then redirects to mobile-friendly content, like a VIDEO (hint hint), or a mobile friendly coupon or Web site. Again, mobile friendly.
Here’s why
It is an inconvenience for your target market to have to manipulate your content to make it work on their smart phone. If you are trying to sell something, then please make it easier to see your offer. If a prospect is mildly interested and scans your QR Code, activates your link and it is difficult to display, then they will probably just skip it and do something else while waiting for an appointment with a hair dresser, doctor’s office, bus or whatever…
The numbers
It makes sense to carefully look a little closer at mobile strategy. The Blade can assist your business to jump forward to harvest the benefits from mobile interactive advertising.
Please contact me at paulhem@toledoblade.com or 419-862-5252; Twitter @PaulAtTheBlade; Skype paulmhem
The University of Toledo College of Business and Innovation’s Interactive Marketing Initiative is offering a digital marketing certificate beginning June 8, 2012.
“Innovative marketing tactics and techniques have never been more important than in these continually challenging times,” said Dr. Iryna Pentina, co-director of the UT Interactive Marketing Initiative. “This program focuses on helping business owners and marketers build and sustain successful, integrated digital media marketing programs.”
Local digital marketing experts will help students understand and apply new strategies and tools that can dramatically help their business.
Topics and presenters include:
• Digital Strategy: Integrating Your Interactive Marketing Assets and Tools to Achieve Measurable Results, Instructor: Iryna Pentina, Ph.D., UT professor and faculty director of the UT Interactive Marketing Initiative
• Email Marketing: Generating Leads and Boosting Sales with a Strategic Email Program, Instructor: Michael Temple, MBA, President, Temple Development Company and UT adjunct professor
• Web Design, Instructor: Peter You, Ph.D., director for Faculty Support and Special Projects, UT Learning Ventures
• Inbound Marketing: The Next Phase of Marketing on the Web, Instructor: Patrick Giammarco, MBA, founder and owner, PWG Marketing and UT adjunct professor
• Examining Social Media Networks for Brand Value, Instructor: Patrick Giammarco, MBA, founder and owner, PWG Marketing and UT adjunct professor
• Content Development Strategies for Digital Marketing, Instructor: Dee Drummond, UT associate lecturer, Communication Department
“Digital marketing techniques are now a requirement for business success,” Pentina said. “Upon completion, attendees will be better able to connect with customers and other businesses through digital channels and adjust their marketing mix accordingly.”
For additional information and to register, click: Here
About UT Interactive Marketing Initiative
Established in 2010, the UT College of Business and Innovation Interactive Marketing Initiative strives to be a regional leader in discovering, generating and disseminating knowledge in the interactive marketing field through academic and applied research, industry collaboration, practitioner-oriented conferences and seminars, and student-related activities. For more information, visit http://utinternetmarketing.info.
** Full Disclosure: I am married to Dee Drummond, one of the instructors. Therefore, I would indirectly benefit from successful recruiting for this course. Additionally, should BGSU, Lourdes or another area university have a course similar to this one, then I will be happy to post it on this blog.
92.5 million! That’s closing in on a third of the population of the United States.
A poll by Ipsos found that 27% of respondents preferred receiving digital coupons and deals as opposed to getting them offline, compared with 33% who still preferred print versions. Of those that favored digital, eight out of ten said the convenience of digital deals made them preferable, especially their direct delivery to email inboxes. Seven out of ten liked the ease of management that digital deals offered, saying they facilitated comparison shopping and were easy to share.
The Blade has more ways for advertisers to display coupons than any other media in the market.
- QR Codes used in The Blade newspaper can be designed to display a mobile friendly coupon landing page. And that’s the best of both worlds – something that no other media in the market can match. 60% of the users depicted in the graphic, above, would use either digital or print for their source of coupons.
- The Blade’s iPhone, iPad, and Android apps are also great platforms for your coupons. Of course, the eBlade is already displaying weekly advertising of great prices from the area’s retail outlets.
The Blade has what you need to succeed with online and print with your coupon campaign.
“Although there are several different types of 2-D barcodes, the open-source QR code remains the advertising industry standard with almost 90% market penetration, according to Competitrack. And advertisers appear to be deciding on a case-by-case basis whether they need to explain to their target audiences how to use mobile barcodes, which generally require a dedicated code reader app. Earlier research has found that, though many consumers may not recognize the trade names of such codes, they know what to do when they see one.”
“Only 4% of print ads in the US contained 2-D mobile barcodes in 2011, but their use is growing, according to advertising tracking firm Competitrack. A February 2012 report by the company found that well-planned campaigns put mobile barcodes in attention-grabbing places, and then gave customers a clear call to action to lead them to content.”
The Blade has been a leader in assisting our advertising customers and agencies to use QR Codes in the most effective manner to reach their target market with content that will motivate them to further engage and buy.
Content is king. QR Codes can make your ad in The Blade interactive for your target market by offering video tutorials, ‘how tos’ so the target market learns how to use your product to achieve their goals, a Google Map with directions to your place of business, and a “text to win” campaign. These are only a few of the ways that QR Codes can be used.
Give The Blade a call at 419-724-6350, we can help to make your advertising results meet your expectations.
A colleague and I were discussing that The Blade’s iPad app views grew after the holidays. We agreed that a fairly large number of people received iPads as gifts. That conversation morphed into an “obviously mobile is growing faster than even Gartner’s December 2009 study” revelation.
The colleague and I began discussion what The Blade can do for our advertising customers.
First. The Blade has excellent advertising opportunities in all of our mobile applications and mobile Web sites.
Second. The Blade can create mobile Web sites that can assist your customers to find useful information about your products while using their mobile devices.
Third. The Blade has the expertise to assist your use of QR Codes to provide content that would allow the convergence of your digital message to your prospects and customers with print.
Comment here or email us at paulhem@toledoblade.com for more information.
Facebook rules as the marketing tool most effective for small business.
eMarketer’s recent story regarding the use of social media marketing by small businesses reaffirms what most of us knew. And that is: Not only are small businesses aggressively adopting Facebook, they are getting results, too.
Facebook is rated as at least moderately effective as a marketing tool by 83% of U.S. small businesses who use social media, and Twitter isn’t exactly a slacker either coming in second with 46% feeling the same about it.
U.S. small businesses seem to be slow in adopting mobile sites. For example, in order to use the ubiquitous QR Codes, there must be content that works with a mobile device.
The Blade is nationally ranked in more than one area by The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The Blade’s mobile presence is unparalleled by any other media outlet in the area. Not only is The Blade offering iPhone and iPad apps, but it’s Android applications are also very popular.
The Blade has the social media experience, mobile platforms and advertising reach to assist area small businesses who want to develop their own programs. Many agencies work with The Blade and also have social media marketing expertise. Contact me at paulhem[at]toledoblade.com for more information.
Morning and evening seem to be the time more people use mobile devices
The ComScore graph indicates that phones and tablets see their relative news consumption highest in the morning and in the evening. During the day (probably while at work) the news consumption percentage for computers is highest. Remember, these are not absolute numbers. The Y-axis is percent. However, we can derive from the graph that while individuals use a multitude of devices, they tend to use their tablet devices to consume news at the highest rate in the evening. Again, since this is a percent, we can’t see which device is used the most, just the relative news consumption percent for each device.
Retail advertisers may want to promote different products by taking into consideration of the higher percentage use of mobile devices for news consumption in the morning, during the day and evening.
Business to business advertisers may want to look at the fact that people are heavily engaged with news consumption during office hours. It is possible that even businesses that rarely advertise may want to consider advertising their engineered solutions to their target business prospects at the time most people are at work. Certainly, a SIC code study for the areas in Ohio and Michigan that The Blade covers would provide an idea what industrial and office supplies prospects would have an interest in.
The Blade offers multiple platforms for its audience. Not only does The Blade have a top-rated Web news site, toledoblade.com, but also iPhone, Android, and iPad apps that advertisers can use to engage with their target market. It is also worth noting that The Blade’s Android app works well on most of the Android tablets, as well as the smart phones.
The Blade’s newspaper is a great vehicle for engaging with mobile device users through the use of QR Codes..
What do you think? How would your company or advertising agency use this information?
I recently attended the second “Connected in NW Ohio” LinkedIn Group networking event that was held in Toledo at The Admiral’s American Grill at the scenic Docks location.
As with the last event Bob Koenigbauer, our group manager, did a great job preparing the venue and activities. As a result, another successful networking event was held.
The opportunity to interact with such an innovative and diverse group is exhilarating. Our shared interest in using social media to enhance business indicates that our group is forward looking and as individuals we are not afraid to use new tools to educate ourselves and others. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) And yes, we discuss the latest events and technologies that might interest us.
Please believe me when I tell you that I am not some crazed QR Code fanatic – honestly! I might be a little evangelical about QR Codes, but not overly so. Right?
At the event…
So, a friend from an advertising agency mentioned that a person who was not named (probably because the friend thought that I would hunt that person down… that’s a joke, folks), claims that the QR Code fad has peaked.
Here’s my response.
After I calmed my self, I was able to explain that just the other night I had seen a QR Code on Herman Cain’s campaign bus. OK. So what if Herman Cain was in the news because of less than favorable allegations? It’s still a QR Code, right?
See? If a presidential candidate’s marketing people think QR Codes are cool, then they ARE cool, right?
What do you think? Are QR Codes dead? Would you put one on the side of your building? In an ad? Why? Or why not?
“Trick or treat!” Some turn their porch lights off and don’t engage with neighbors’ children. They are usually antisocial during the rest of the year. Others go all out and use dry ice to create fog and set up mock graves with sound and light shows complete with family members and friends dressed up as ghouls. The majority turn on porch lights and enjoy the parade of cute kids while handing out goodies.
Ignore or embrace it, Halloween isn’t going away, neither is social media.
Some people go all out and purchase scary pop-up zombies.
Some firms are confused about how to approach social media. Should they go all out, hire some social media “experts” and put on a huge production like the Halloween dry ice fog people? Or should they hunker down with their lights off and hope this all passes by with the next day, and avoid their neighbors for the foreseeable future? If your success depends upon engaging with many B2B prospects or customers, then it would be advisable to use social media.
Can your business survive without social media…?
Can your business survive without social media in the B2B world? If you have a small business that caters to one large corporation, then you will probably survive, depending upon the management of the larger business and other industry participants. However, if you, like most of us, exist by selling to a number of companies, then the outcome is less certain, as time goes by.
…approach social media in exactly the same way you approach any other aspect of business.
What are you doing now to market your product? Do you attend trade shows, advertise, and engage in other brand-promoting activities? If you do, then you’ll want to integrate social media in that effort. Approach social media in exactly the same way you approach any other aspect of your business. You analyze where it fits into your organization and plan implementation using a strategy that works for your culture and business personality. Before you hire another full-time employee, assign someone on your staff to set up a executive briefing. At The Blade, we used The University of Toledo, Business College Executive Center for Global Competitiveness (ECGC).
An executive level briefing or Q&A presented by a business college is the best way to obtain information that your leadership can rely on. Or, perhaps, like the neighbor with porch lights off, you may be blocking social media at your organization’s perimeter.
Fallacy: Social media is blocked at our company.
Banning social media is not practical
There are some macro issues that flow across your entire organization. Here’s the boogeyman for many Command and Control organizations: Employees using social media on the job… – Your employees in finance, transportation, in your plant break rooms and everywhere else are using social media. How? Well, you know those smart phones that you see your employees carrying around? Among other things they are using them for is posting updates on social media. Even though your company Internet firewall blocks social media, it can’t block your employees’ cellular data connection capability in many – if not all – areas of your building(s). Of course there are some heavy-handed actions that you could take. One would be to to purchase a cellular frequency jammer. However, the jammers don’t discriminate. They will cause every phone in their reach to fail. Some governments have attempted to block social media. To date, they have had very little success. And I’m not just talking about South Asia or the Middle East.
Bloomberg interview regarding the U.K. government considering blocking social media
The best course of action is to just accept the inevitable. More and more of your employees will be posting updates on different social media.
If your employees don’t know how you would like them to use social media, then outcomes are less likely to be those that you would like. So, AFTER you have developed your social media integration strategy for marketing, sales, customer service, finance, production, logistics etc., then you can address what’s going on now in your offices, plants, warehouses, vehicles, etc. by creating policy.
And that’s the key. Social media must be integrated into your current strategy in marketing, public affairs, customer service, not a stand-alone. Try not to repeat the “Yeah, we have a Web site, too.” process that failed in the 1990s. Let’s face it, many, if not most firms did just that. They set up a Web site that had little of real value to visitors, other than the same brochure marketing images and messages that they had received in the mail, or left behind by sales professionals. Of course there were exceptions, but they were few and far between.
Let’s try to make social media a useful tool internally and externally. The best way to get that started is via your local colleges and universities. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree?
