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