Naperville IL Office Opening

Announcement
December 17, 2011

Today we announced the opening of our new sales office in Naperville IL, just west of Chicago.

"This is another positive step for Illinois. Umbrelly, as a company, represents the right kind of player for the new economy we’re building – one that values education, innovation and the future," said Naperville councilman. "I’m thrilled they’ve chosen to locate here."

The new Umbrelly office will be primarily focused on sales, marketing, customer care and support and is part of our national effort to open sales and marketing centers in locations where there's are great energetic and eager workforce. We plan to hire hundreds of people for the new office in the coming years.

Umbrelly’s Naperville office will offer all the workplace amenities that Umbrelly has become known for such as gym memberships, free lunches, and competitive compensation packages. We are looking for a range of new employees to support a variety of sales and marketing operations and have several job postings listed on our website already.

The positions currently posted range from account managers and sales reps to regional operations and IT support staff. Umbrelly prides itself on hiring the best and brightest and we’re encouraging qualified applicants to begin applying on our website at www.umbrelly.com/workhere.

SEO, PPC, or Social Media?

A recent survey conducted by a California based marketing company suggest that SEO or search engine optimization is more effective than than other forms of online marketing such as PPC (pay per click) and social media marketing ie Facebook and Twitter. We at Umbrelly can not independently corroborate or dispute these findings however our internal date suggest that SEO seems to be most effective for "informative marketing" as opposed to conversion marketing for example, a search query like "spousal support divorce" would likely yield less PPC ads and for good reason.

A query such as that is more likely someone researching before taking action where as a query like "experienced Chicago Divorce lawyer" is more of an action motivated query and much more likely to yield a conversion and that queerer is much more likely to click a PPC ad as they typically provide a faster call to action ie call back form or phone number.

In the case of Social Media Marketing, Market trends are telling us that Social media marketing is taking on a more dominant role in online marketing primarily because it allows advertisers to target customers by ages, sex, likes, dislikes and social interest far beyond the limitations of any search engine algorithm primarily based on cache and cookies and keywords.

In the end however there is no one size fit all method. One form of advertising may be more effective than others for different types of companies and industries. Lucky for you, Umbrelly covers nearly every method of advertising and marketing both online and off so log on to www.umbrelly.com today and together we'll find what works best for you!


James Web
HOI Online Marketing
Umbrelly Chicago

Mobile Marketing: Make Sure Your Business Doesn't Get Left Behind

Experts predict that in the coming years, more than 80% of online web browsing will be done on mobile devices. Smart businesses are already advertising on the mobile web, here's how not to get left behind.

When asked about adopting trendy marketing tactics, we typically advise caution and encourage our clients to wait a year before adding to their marketing mix. In the case of the mobile web, however, we at Umbrelly believe this is a trend that's affecting your business whether you are aware of it or not.

Think of your own daily routine. How often do you search on your phone for a nearby restaurant or shop? Having a strong mobile presence helps you get in front of consumers in the moment they are looking for your business.

Mobile searching has become second nature, and is now a key element of the purchase process. According to a recent survey of mobile device users, nine out of 10 consumers have taken action as a result of a mobile search, with 77% calling or visiting a business. And it's not just retail shops. Many Business to business companies are finding that mobile is a valuable path for qualified sales leads. After launching a mobile campaign, Box, a start-up focused on cloud content management, found that mobile ads drove one-third of their overall conversions within the first full month of running the campaign.

Before we get you started in mobile marketing, we'll first consider the options that are right for your business. Here are a few simple ways businesses are making the move into mobile.

1. We'll determine how mobile your business already is.
We will take a look at the traffic on your website and identify how much of it comes from mobile devices. Mobile searches have grown 4X over the past year, and most business owners are astonished by the amount of web traffic coming from mobile devices. If your mobile volume is significant, we'll ensure that your website is optimized for mobile viewing. Your Umbrelly account manger will work with you to create a mobile optimized site.

2. We will make it easy for people to take action. mobile device users typically click and type less than those using a desktop computer. Whether you have a physical or digital storefront, mobile ads help convert search into sales by putting your business at people's fingertips. To get the most out of your advertising budget, we'll set up a separate mobile campaign to take advantage of mobile ad formats that help users find information faster. Our Advertisers experience, on average, an 23% increase in mobile click-through-rate when running a mobile-specific campaign.

3. We direct customers to your business.
Your location is especially relevant to mobile users, and smart mobile marketing will increase foot traffic to your store as mobile searches often have more "intent" than desktop searches. If you have a retail storefront, we will direct prospective customers to your store with directions and a map. Hyperlocal ads will also show distance information within the ad, alerting customers to how close they are to your business.

4. We'll integrate mobile into your Umbrelly ad campagns. Mobile usage increases in the evenings and on weekends, when people are on the move. Since mobile ads can be location-targeted, you can entice nearby shoppers who may not have otherwise walked in your doors. If you are running an in-store promotion or special offer, we can place a coupon directly into your ad and customers can email or SMS your offer to themselves for future in-store redemption.

5. We'll monitor and adjust the mobile strategy. As with any marketing campaign, it's important that we regularly analyze results to create mobile marketing strategies that are most successful for your business. Analyzing your mobile ad campaigns will help us better understand the users visiting your site, the actions they are taking, and their path to conversion. We can then use this data to improve your website and marketing campaigns, and better track results against desktop campaigns.

Mobile marketing is increasingly becoming an essential part of Umbrelly's arsenal of tactics. People are already on mobile 24/7. We'll make sure your businesses will be there too.

Embracing Social Media Marketing

There has been a frenzy of recent reports about the fast paced growth of Google’s new social network, Google+. In fact, as we’ve reported before, Google+ hit the 25-million-user mark faster than almost any other social network in history, including Facebook and Twitter.

While those numbers may pale next to Facebook’s 800 million users or even Twitter’s 200 million, there’s no question that Google+ is on it's way at Umbrelly we've been monitoring this process very closely as we know this presents yet another opportunity and platform to get our message across to even more potential customers and perhaps more so than other areas considering the vast reach of Google.

Google+ is embedded in most of the company’s other services — along with the toolbar that constantly prompts users to check their accounts. And recent comments by director of product Brad Horowitz made it clear that Google’s new social network is going to become part of everything the company touches.

With the amens amount of user data that Google has on its hundreds of millions of users, in theory, we'll be able to specifically target customers not only just by age, gender and demographics but perhaps even by conversations their having using the technology currently used in Gmail.

By: James Web
Umbrelly

Prepare to take on the world: With only your phone?

Is it possible? Using your smart phone as a credit card, driver's license, transit pass, digital coupon collector, house key, hotel key, corporate ID?
It is possible and it's gonna happen faster than you think. The world's largest tech companies are developing mobile phone applications to make this futuristic concept a reality some of which have already begun releasing beta versions. So what's all this mean? It means that mobile marketing and advertising is becoming more important than ever! That's why at Umbrelly we've been working non stop on new and innovative ways to make sure your message is in the the pockets of millions of potential customers. Imagine someone is having car trouble and have a flight in 20 or so minutes wouldn't it be great if their phone suggested calling your taxi service? Or a husband forgets to make dinner reservations for his anniversary, Would it be awesome if his phone suggested your local restaurant? Apple's new "humble personal assistant," named Siri, is a step in that direction. "Mobile phones are definitely becoming a center of all of our lives, I think," Freed-Finnegan (of Google) said. "When you're carrying around this small computer, you can do all kinds of things with it." This is the future folks, and Umbrelly commited to making sure advertisers are not left behind

The age of data mining: What are the benefits?

In a recent CNN new article there was mention of a Chicago based company seeking "Predictive Modeling/Data Mining Scientists and Analysts" to work through November 2012 and given the company's political ties to President Obama it is rumored that these "scientist" will be active on the Obama 2012 election campaign. Now, I'm sure many of you are scratching your heads wondering what the heck data mining is and why is it so "scientific"?... Well, I'll explain, data mining is a new highly effective method of advertising by "mining" for data such as names, genders, birthdays, current cities, religions and political views we can target your customers more specifically and it doesn't stop there... we can also recover information about their friends and their friends friends allowing us to build a virtual profile of your customers. With Umbrelly's vast network of brands and partners, we are able to build a highly effective database of potential customers and by sharing that information across our network, It only gets better

Umbrelly Has Reached 4.5 Million Suscribers. Thanks For Helping Us Get Here.

Umbrelly took a few moments during its team meeting this morning to show off some unbelievable stats. At the rate of 4,100 subsribers per day, Umbrelly is signing up more than 100 thousand active subcribers per month. That's a lot of people. Umbrelly's momentum has taken it from zilch to one of the fastest growing dotcom platforms in the U.S. in two and a half years. Perhaps Umbrelly has sufficient reason to be smug, as it has surpassed many previous competitors and is on the heels of some of the largest online companies to date.