Online Marketing By Marc Levin

Mobile devises are becoming a bigger part of our lives.  We are all consumers and since smartphones are now able to tell us where we are and what business are close-by, there is an opportunity, particularly, for retail business owners to take advantage of mobile marketing.  A growing number of mobile users want to receive location-specific advertising and location-based coupons.

Good news for mobile marketing newbies

Most of small business owners don’t have the time, budget or skills to develop and implement a mobile marketing strategy.  Good news!  There are websites that are available to help with getting your mobile marketing strategy started.  There are social media websites such as Foursquare, Facebook Places and Yelp that are geared to mobile users and are popular places to start.  These websites motivate users to “check-in”  to provide  information  about their experience with a brick-and-mortar business and also offer a choice of promotional offers for you.  It is s meant to encourage word-of-mouth advertising.

The rise  of Mobile Enabled Websites

Developing a mobile-enabled website is becoming a must for small businesses with storefronts and those without.  And whether you’re focued on local business or international.  In the near future, there will be more people accessing the Internet via mobile devises (smartphones, tablets and Ipads) than a  desktop.  Because of this trend it is essential that your website be optimized for these hand-held devises.

The basic elements of a mobile-enabled website are;

• Fast page-load times
• Simple navigation
• Larger Font for easy readability
• Click-to-call button
• Maps & directions

Mobile users often just want basic information about your business and a easy way to call for more information.  Therefore, a 6 page site is typically all that is required for your initial jump into the mobile marketing waters.  It is a relatively small investment that can drive positive returns for local retail business owners.

Let me know if you’d like more information about a mobile marketing strategy.

Tags:Mobile marketing, mobile websites
Posted in Mobile Websites, Online Marketing

Do you have a Mobile-Optimized Website?

Consider these projections:

• Mobile users will overtake the number of desktop Internet users within 5 years
• Smartphone adoption is now an avalanche. In Q4 2010, over 100 million smartphones were sold, up 87% from the same time period in 2009
• Manufacturers shipped more smartphones than personal computers in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to the Financial Times
• In 2011 marketers are forecast to spend $14 billion in mobile marketin
• By 2013 it is predicted there will be more smartphone users than PC users

If the numbers above don’t sway you, then you can always look at the metrics for your own website currently. I  can almost guarantee that you’ll see a compelling trend of mobile visitors to your existing website.  We’re typically seeing four-fold increases of mobile visitors within just a single year.

The question for your business: are your mobile visitors getting the content and the user experience that will convert them into clients? Or are they leaving because they’re not getting what they need?

You may want to also read a recent article on Techcrunch.com. Click Google Likes Mobile sites.

Google announced that websites that are optimized for mobile will now factor into ad quality.  Google Says Mobile Optimized Sites Will Factor Into Landing Page Quality and Perform Better In AdWords…

Now Google  will be considering the mobile optimization of a website as a new factor of mobile ads quality for all AdWords campaigns that are driving mobile traffic.   Google says that last year it began to limit ad serving on smartphone devices if they pointed to landing pages with Flash-heavy content, in order to improve the experience for users.

I recommend every B2C have a mobile-optimized site before the holiday season gets here.  It is not hard to to create a mobile -friendly website to compliment your primary site and they are very affordable.

Posted in Mobile Websites, Online Marketing, website conversion

Comparing Inbound Marketing to Outbound Marketing

I’d like to  further discuss the methodology of Inbound Marketing. Most businesses, large and small, still employ outbound marketing techniques as their fundamental business strategy. Direct mailers, telemarketing, trade shows, and email drip campaigns are prevalent outbound marketing strategies. But, do they yield results? And, are they cost effective? Can results be measured?

Internet technology has empowered the end consumer with information. Today, people perform a significant amount of their product and services research online, leveraging a variety of sites to put together the information they need to render a buying decision.

read more »

Tags:Inbound Marketing
Posted in Marketing, Online Marketing

Recently, we’re hearing a lot about Inbound Marketing, also called Pull not Push Marketing. Inbound marketing can provide a B2B company great results,  while at the same time saving the client from the frustration of cold calling, direct mail or widespread e-mail ad campaigns.

Using Internet marketing techniques developed by the digital marketing agency, a B2B company can obtain quality leads that will save the them time and expense in finding excellent businesses to become steady customers. This can be achieved by targeting only those businesses that already have expressed an interest in what the client has to offer.

The budgetary advantages for the B2B company are potentially huge.  Rather than waste time cold calling, the client, with the help of an digital marketing agency skilled in creating an excellent inbound marketing plan, has only to wait for people and businesses, already  interested in what the they’re offering, to be drawn to their website.

The centerpiece of an expertly designed B2B inbound marketing plan is the unique precision of its message to the prospective customer/searcher.  Having the advantage of knowing the details of what the inbound web visitor is seeking (because it’s the client’s own business product), the precise relevant information that’s going to benefit the inbound visitor can be freely offered , thereby forming a relationship from the very start. read more »

Tags:Inbound Marketing
Posted in Online Marketing, Search Marketing

Hello again!

I am reading stuff on online marketing everyday so I take a make the mistake that everyone knows what are the basic elements of successful online marketing.  there are more than 3 but I have selected the ones below  and have giving you a link to an excellent whitepaper the will explain others that you need to know before you invest your time and money into an Internet marketing plan.

Here are just 3 tips I came across when I reading a recent Hubspot whitepaper:

• Keyword Research: You probably selected the he most popular industry  keywords for your website.  This generally not deliver the rankings you hope for.   Those popular keywords are very competitive and are very difficult to get page one presence for.  A better approach is to focus on less competitive  long-tail keyword phrases.
• Free Social Media Monitoring Tools: There are a ton of  very good social media monitoring tools out there. Three of them are FREE and easy to use. They are Google Alerts, Twitter Search and Facebook Insights. If you’re not already using these tools to monitor your social media campaign, you’ll want to check out this Hubspot whitepaper
• Do You Need to Look into Mobile Marketing: Some gurus say that by 2014, more people will connect with the internet using their mobile devices than by using desktop PCs. Given that, shouldn’t you be optimizing your website for mobile? To learn how to do that,  download the  Hubspot whitepaper and read the section on mobile marketing.

What do you think? Are you using these tips with your Internet marketing strategies, let us know how it’s working for you. Leave your comments in the box below.

Tags:Keyword Research, mobile websites, social media
Posted in Online Marketing