This post is the second in a three-part series with practical tips for marketers to pursue social and digital innovation. Read the first post on maximizing your personal social media usage here.
Want to be the go-to guy or gal on your team with the flashiest new apps? The one dressing Instagram photos with never-before-seen filters and stamps, using emoticons our Japanese counterparts only released yesterday?
It can be time-consuming to stay current in social and digital media, so here are some effective ways to quickly surface and assess the hottest toys.
1. Assign yourself playtime. My playtime is Sunday evening after “Mad Men.” I pull out my iPad and iPhone and I furiously start downloading new apps. I jump over to the Featured and Top Charts sections of iTunes to see if there are any new additions. I download them, bring them to the forefront, launch them, create a new account, follow the top accounts (if applicable), invite a few friends and make time to revisit them later in the week. If it’s a photo app, I try out some photos and push them out to Facebook to see how they look. If it’s a news app, I load it up... Read more
Tagged 'iPhone' 
Ten Ways to Optimize your Mobile Marketing Efforts
(Hint: Focus on the Fundamentals)
I can’t believe the holidays are almost here. As the year quickly draws to a close, Jumpstart is busy putting the final coat of polish on our clients’ 2013 digital marketing strategies.
Around this time each year, as we shore up campaigns for the next twelve months, I ask departments within our organization to develop best practice snapshots for the road ahead. Whether it’s fine tuning successful tactics from the past or exploring what’s exciting on the horizon, our yearly informal think tank nets some interesting results.
I thought I’d share the following highlights from input our product team offered when asked the ways Jumpstart could optimize our clients’ mobile marketing efforts next year. I couldn’t help but think all marketers could benefit from the advice.
1. Remember the fundamentals first.
Sure, mobile is a marketing game changer, but the best campaigns still rely on good old fashioned business principals. In this case, it’s bad business to put the technology cart before the marketing horse.
Identifying what your customers want and need and then leveraging these insights to communicate the benefits of relevant solutions you offer before you decide which mobile strategies to use is always the best first... Read more
Auto’Mobile’ Marketing Driving the Innovation Highway
The statistics1 are overwhelming. This year:
• There are 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide
• All mobile phone users will reach 242.6 million
• 94% of smartphones users will be mobile internet users
• Mobile internet users will reach 113.9 million
• Mobile shoppers will reach 72.8 million
• Tablet users will reach 54.8 million
• iPad users will reach 41.9 million
• In the U.S., 25% of mobile Web users are mobile-only
We all know mobile is big and we all know it has enormous marketing potential. What many advertisers don’t yet know (and what’s probably more overwhelming than these statistics) is the most effective way to harness its power.
It’s understandable given challenges such as complications with the myriad of handsets and technologies available, privacy and spam concerns, tiny supplies of valuable ad inventory and obstacles to streamlined mobile commerce.
It’s also understandable why this year, mobile ad spend continues to represent a mere 1 percent of total worldwide ad spend. And why last year, more than half of companies surveyed (58 percent) said they don’t even have a mobile strategy primarily because they’re not sure how to get started2.
What we all seem to clearly understand, however, is that the more consumers buy and use smartphones and tablets, our ability as marketers to leverage this... Read more
Marissa Mayer's Smartphone Giveaway – What it Means For Your Content
Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer has done something of an Oprah, promising all Yahoo employees a new Apple, Samsung, Nokia or HTC smartphone. As part of the same bold move, Yahoo is discontinuing IT support for its employees' Blackberrys.
Ouch. That sound you hear is not a ringtone, but another nail punched into the coffin of RIM, maker of Blackberry.
Actually, that was fun to write, but not really fair. As a former Blackberry user who just sent his new but defective HTC phone back to its maker for exchange, I can tell you that I was always able to depend on my Blackberry back when I had one. So why is Blackberry's market share shrinking to a number smaller than my infant son's shoe size?
The rise of mobile is tied to the rise of the visual.
You can't take a meeting in Starbucks these days without hearing somebody talking about mobile being on the rise. We are taking in content on our phones and tablets, so it makes sense that the devices we like are those with bigger screens, more processing power, and capable of sucking in bigger bandwidth.
Since my contact with brands has become visually driven, I experience those brands as... Read more
5 Mobile Rules from Top Marketers
Portions of this article appeared previously on Mashable.com.
Let’s face it: mobile advertising still has a long way to go. Facebook finally announced its latest and greatest mobile-ad effort last week, but smart industry folks say it still leaves much to be desired. And even though more money’s flowing toward mobile, the dollars spent on mobile marketing still don’t come close to aligning with the amount of time we spend with smartphones in hand. In fact, some say that the only reason mobile pulls in ad spend is because it’s so damn cheap.
Even so, it seems inevitable that mobile’s share of spend will continue to increase – if only because it already owns such a significant share of mind. Mobile also has serious potential to perform for marketers. A Nielsen report out this week showed a shorter time to purchase and dramatically higher purchase rates among mobile consumers. And leaders at trailblazing agencies are putting serious effort into setting the mobile agenda for the rest of the marketing world.
Mobile has transcended its role as a connection and convergence device. In the words of Starcom MediaVest Group’s Jesse Missad, “it will be part of every communications plan.”
I spoke with Missad and... Read more
