How much thought have you put into deciding which app store you should publish your Android app in? If the answer is none, don’t panic; you are not alone. Although many marketers are aware of alternative app stores, many don't know the advantages of using these additional app stores. The vast amounts of app developers initially opt to publish their app in the largest and most popular app store, Google Play. Google Play – The Two Sided Coin With over 25 billion apps downloaded and more than 600,000 apps in the store, Google Play remains the most popular app store for Android apps [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Many times after I’ve spoken on mobile search or mobile marketing, I’m approached by someone in B2B who is wondering if mobile search is just a B2C phenomenon, or if it’s something that B2B organizations can benefit from as well. My answer, always, is: yes, mobile search and mobile marketing are just as relevant to B2B marketers, if not more so. This is not intuitive, as mobile search is associated more with a need-it-now or local mindset, as Jon Miller explained a few years ago on Search Engine Land. However, when you consider the evidence, you might agree that mobile search a [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column | Search Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing

Recently, most users of iPhones, iPads and iPods went on a downloading rampage -- frantically upgrading to the then-just-released iOS 6. This new release includes a number of great features that marketers can take advantage of to increase their reach and presence online. In this article, you’ll learn what an iOS is, how iOS 6 is different, and how you can utilize these changes to improve your marketing. What Is An iOS? Your first question might be, “What is an iOS?” iOS stands for iPhone Operating System and is the foundation for Apple’s mobile devices. Similar to Windows 7 for you [...]

Related Topics: Apple: iOS | Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Gone are the days of broad, fingers-crossed advertising. Advances in mobile location targeting technology now allow large national brands to reach their audience at a local level without the sweat once involved. Finally, the promise of location targeting is a reality…. so why aren’t more national brands using it? Here are five reasons why local targeting will finally show national brands (and the world) the real value behind mobile.  1. Builds Local Brand Awareness (Where Sales Happen!) Whether you’re a brick and mortar-based business or an online retailer, local consumer awareness [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

For once in my life, I hope I am wrong. But I don't think I am. Over the last three years, check-in and local search start-up Foursquare has become the face of location-based services. And while the app has gained a lot of traction among those that run in the social crowds, it has only grown to 25 million members. It sounds absurd for me to be using the words "only" and "25 million" in the same sentence, but, given the growth of image sharing/location-based app, Instagram -- zero to 80 million in a little under two years -- it feels like Foursquare may not gain the traction is needs to b [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Check-In Services | Foursquare | Google: Google+ | Google: Mobile | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Whether we like it or not, the mobile world is growing rapidly around us. There are over a million apps on the market and businesses worldwide are becoming mobile. The time has come. You have finally decided it’s time to take your business mobile. How difficult can it be to make an app? The question is: do you choose to make a mobile site or an app (or both) and what is the difference? [caption id="attachment_23315" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Mobile site or app? Image via Etisbew[/caption] What Is A Mobile Website? A mobile site is a website that has been optimized for viewing [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In a previous column, we covered the ways in which you can get your native mobile apps discovered using Paid, Earned, and Owned media. But what about your mobile website? If you’ve built a mobile site and put redirects in place, your content will stand a good change of getting found via mobile search traffic — assuming, of course, that your desktop site is search optimized as well. If it is, odds are it will rank highly on mobile devices and your mobile site can simply piggyback on this search equity via the redirect. But you can’t depend on this scenario alone. “If you build, it [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Microsoft: So.cl | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column | Retargeting & Remarketing

App-making is a good capacity to develop in your business, since the app market is in a big boom right now, and there are still plenty of gaps left for new app-makers to fill. While there isn't a lot of movement in the top ten apps overall in the main app stores (iTunes and Google Play), there is plenty of movement within the app categories, and there are a number of utilities that still haven't been "done right" for mobile. When I talk to someone looking to make an app, I remind them that it's most important to get a working app, even if it's not feature-rich, out to the app stores as qu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Mobile is hot and shows no sign of moving off marketers’ priority list. Not only is there an enormous, diverse mobile audience that includes tweens to great grandmas, but advertisers of all sizes are growing comfortable with mobile -- because they are always on their own smartphones or tablets, as well. New research further validates mobile’s true purchasing power. In June, we partnered with xAd, a leading mobile local ad network, to better understand specific mobile activities and behaviors across devices and within the Restaurant, Automotive and Travel vertical categories. The xAd-Tel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In my last column, we discussed the conundrum of achieving--and maintaining--optimal visibility in mobile app stores. It's a delicate balance of driving downloads and cultivating engagement and lucky for us, these things can be measured. Download numbers are the simplest aspect of the equation, piped daily into your iTunes Connect or Google Play account. Engagement is a less straightforward metric; the number of times an app is used in a specific time period, actions performed, shares to social networks, are all great top level criteria for measuring the success of your content. How y [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

The power of mobile lies in our ability to utilize the deep location-targeting technology available to focus advertising campaigns in a way no other medium has achieved before. There are a variety of location-based data signals available to the mobile industry which have shaped a diverse landscape of products and services. As in real estate, there is a home amid this data for every campaign. But the task at hand is in properly educating the industry on the various data “property types” available, and their unique characteristics. Mobile location data signals range from the more ge [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In my last column, we discussed the dilemma of when to build a mobile web site vs. when to build a native mobile app.  I find this question comes up almost daily now in conversation with colleagues -- especially with the many talented engineers with whom I'm lucky to work. Their point of view is that HTML5 can now support so many of the same functions of a native app, that you are better off building a mobile website instead. Why Bother With The App Store? In many cases, they are correct -- building a mobile site will often be faster and more cost-effective and enable you to avoid the fr [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

One of the most common problems I encounter in the course of my work is the issue of optimizing for mobile. If app-makers don't optimize their site for mobile before using our service, the apps don't look professional, the spacing is wrong, the sizing is wrong, and the apps get poor rankings in Google Play. A few weeks ago, Rachel Pasqua posted an article on mobile website optimization. Her analysis of the options is quite thorough, and an excellent read. My goal here isn't to cover the territory she already covered, but to give you the specific names of services and how their options work. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Two recent mobile case studies illustrate how marketers that make thoughtful investments in the mobile user experience and take mobile advertising seriously are reaping early rewards vs. their competitors. The two cases I discuss below involve Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Time Warner Cable. It’s already well documented that mobile ads are today driving higher conversions at a lower customer acquisition cost than ads on the PC. This is equally true in paid search. It remains the case, however, that most marketers are “not valuing mobile correctly, not bidding correctly,” accord [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

There are a few questions I'm asked almost daily in the course of my work. For example, "is the iPad a mobile device?" And, of course, the classic "Is this the year of mobile?" (Yes, they're still asking....) One of my favorites is, "What should I develop first -- a mobile site or a mobile app?" It's an easy question to answer, at least in most cases. But if it is a question you are trying to answer within your organization, you need details. So let's proceed with the long explanation. Consider the Customer Journey The easiest way to approach the app vs. web conundrum is to frame it wi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Mobile phones are, after all, phones, so it's natural that they respond well to voice commands. So it's no surprise that voice search has grown dramatically given advances in the technology. According to Google, speech inputs have grown 6X in the past year, as shown in the graph below. As voice technology continues to improve, voice search is quickly becoming more important in mobile content discovery and site optimization. [caption id="attachment_10016" align="aligncenter" width="554" caption="Source: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/search-trends-to-watch-2011"][/caption] The fanfare [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column | Search Marketing

Marketers are all talking about the massive growth in mobile web access, both in the United States and around the world, but something important to note is that web development teams have been a bit slow to provide mobile specific experiences. This article will look at what percent of sites have developed a mobile-specific website experience and how they are presenting the mobile content to their users across different mobile handsets. Once the Quantcast Top Million US Sites Data from 2011 was made public, a company called Mongoose Metrics created a bot that was meant to crawl all these [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Too many marketers are relying on clicks and CTR as mobile success metrics. While CTR has validity in PC search campaigns, clicks are a lazy or sloppy metric in mobile that don't tell you that much about how your campaign is actually performing (in most cases).  It's therefore critical to go beyond the click and look at a range of metrics to gain a true sense of mobile ROI. Comparing Mobile Ad Networks Let me illustrate with a real-world example. In addition to my role as an editor here, I also work as an analyst with a firm in San Francisco called Opus Research. Late last year we sought to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Earlier this week, Cindy Krum gave readers sound advice on URL structures for mobile so it makes perfect sense to follow-up on her excellent column with some additional thoughts on how to actually develop your mobile web content. It’s a topic that could -- and does -- fill several books, but every marketer should be aware of the basic options for mobilization of a website and how to select the right one for his or her brand. As we explore those options, keep in mind that in most cases a mobile web site isn't a completely new product -- it's a re-imagination of an existing desktop site. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In the marketing game, numbers are crucial. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. There's a reason why MarketingLand has a whole area designated for analytics. If you're a website owner or marketer, chances are you spend a lot of time looking at Google Analytics for your website. Do you give your mobile site and app the same kind of attention? Why Use Analytics For Mobile? The main reasons to use analytics for mobile are the same as the reasons for using analytics on any website. Analytics answer a number of important questions: Where is traffic coming from (for mobile web)? [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column