Peter James – WSI Digital Marketing Consultant

As a mobile marketing consultant, I have to be mobile!  This is how I stay online wherever and whenever as well as what I do online and what this means for businesses that want to market to people like me.

How I Keep Mobile

In my job as a digital and mobile marketing consultant I travel a lot.  I always need to be online.  I used to lug around a laptop and a mobile phone nowadays I use an iPad and and iPhone.  The iPad is a lot lighter than a laptop and the batteries last a lot longer so for me it’s ideal. Here’s some tips and tricks that have been really useful to me…

1. Don’t buy a 3G/4G enabled iPad – just get the WiFi version.  I have a separate MiFi modem on a different network to my mobile phone.  I bought an ulocked Huawei E586 which I’m currently using on a ’3′ prepaid sim with 3GB of data for 3 months at £11.  I can also use my iPhone as a wireless hotspot tethered modem (just make sure that this is include in your mobile price plan) if I’m out of ’3′ coverage.  Thus, I have two networks behind me so I very rarely get coverage issues.  I can also put a foreign prepaid sim in the modem when I’m abroad to avoid extortionate roaming costs.  It’s important to note that, as well as putting in the sim card into the modem, you need to set the right profile (APN) into the modem.  This is easy to do and you can find details for most networks here for UK and here for overseas.
2. If you’re going to be out for more than a few hours take a spare battery of some sort.  I have one which can charge up my iPad to about 50% and also has adaptors for charging up my MiFi modem.
3. If you need a keyboard then there are a variety of combination keyboard covers for iPads.  I bought one for £20.
4. Use Dropbox to synchronise all your files so you have access from both iPad and iPhone.

What I Do When I’m Mobile

1. Obviously, I have access to email all the time.
2. I use Kindle and Newspaper apps to read newspapers and books.
3. I use Keynote for client presentations.  When online I can also take a client through SEO and website analysis reports.
4. I use the iPhone for weather and travel information including maps.

How To Market to Mobile People

When I’m looking for something local to me I use Google Places.  If you get business from travellers then you need to be listed on Google Places. A mobile website which is easy to view on an iPhone (or similar) without ‘pan and zoom’ is also a good idea.

Last week, I attended the annual WSI Global Excellence & Innovation conference in Paris.  This is where all we WSI Internet Marketing Consultants get together to exchange ideas and best practice as well as listening to some of the world experts in digital marketing.  As well as talking about the conference I’m also going to talk about some practical aspects of mobile marketing and mobile use in Paris.

Internet Marketing Conference

The keynote speaker was Avinash Kaushik.  There were also presentations on the future of organic search and paid search.  Here are some key take aways…

1. Print newspaper advertising in US rose to $60Bn by 2000 but has collapsed to $20Bn since then.  Although 29% of advertising spend is on print consumers only spend 6% of their media time reading print.  Therefore, it seems like print advertising revenue is going to fall further and digital (both Internet and Mobile) advertising revenue will continue to increase.
2. Successful search engine optimisation is mostly about great content.  Only 10% – 20% of searchers click on paid search adverts and 95% don’t look beyond the 1st page of search results.
3. The perfect landing page loads in less than 2 seconds and fulfills the promise in the ad or search results.
4. Think who are the most important (prospective) visitors to your website, how are they going to find you, what would be valuable to them and what you want them to do.

Mobile Paris with an iPhone and an iPad

I recently bought the new iPad and decided that I’d do the trip without a laptop.  The advantages of an iPad over a laptop are that it’s smaller and lighter as well as having a much longer battery life.  There are disadvantages such as you can’t use PC applications (and most of my applications are delivered as software as a service over the Internet anyway) and there is no easy way of getting files off a USB stick but I was able to live with these over a few days.  As long as I had a decent Internet connection I was fine.  Also, using the iPad for reading books and newspapers as well as surfing the web was great.

The other thing I wanted to do was to be online all the time but to avoid extortionate data roaming charges.  I had bought an unlocked mobile WiFi modem in UK and tried it with a french prepaid SIM card.  Unfortunately, this didn’t work (I now know how to do this and will post on that later) but a local Orange WiFi modem with 400GB of data only cost me €54.  So, I was able to use my iPhone to look at maps, work out metro connections (using the excellent Paris RATP apps) and keep up with email throughout my travels.

Of course, I used Google Places to find reviews on all the restaurants and cafes that we considered and also wrote Google Places reviews on them afterwards.  Google Places is now an essential marketing tool for any business (such as a restaurant or bar) with mobile customers.

It’s now important to know how to maximise the effectiveness of mobile technology both as a consumer and as a marketer – to find and to be found!

Here is a picture of an unhappy website – it’s very lonely.  It’s lonely because it’s not getting many visitors.

How do you help a lonely website?  Simple, you bring it more visitors by doing two things…

1. Make it easier for people to find.
2. Make it engaging so that people want to visit it.

Search Marketing – How to be Found on the Web

Imagine that you’re going to a sales presentation in a really big conference centre that has loads of rooms.  You’re going to need very good directions and signposts to find the right room.  Well, you can imagine that the Internet is like a conference centre with over 50 Million rooms so your going to needs some really good directories and signposts to help visitors find your site.

Signposts for your Website

You’ve got to market your site to search engines so they can help visitors find you – this is known as search marketing (or search engine optimisation) and these are some of the things that you need to do.

1. Make sure that Google indexes your website  against the search terms that prospective customers will enter when looking for your products and services.  Google will use titles, headings, link names and descriptions (not just keyword tags) to index your website.  You want to make sure that these titles, headings, link names, descriptions and keywords match up to the terms that people will use when searching for the products and services that you provide.  It’s particularly important to make your description tage compelling as this is what will appear when your website appears in search results.
2. Build lots of inward links into your website from other sites.  This has two uses.  First, Google ranks sites higher the more inward links they have so if you have lots of (relevant) inward links then you will appear higher in the Google search results (you need to aim to be on the first page at least).  Second, you are setting up more places on the Internet that will point visitors to your site – just like signposts.  Article sites and business directories are the best ways of building inward links to your site.
3. Make sure that you’ve set up your Google Place.  This is another free directory entry and will appear in search results when people search for your products and services along with a geographic reference (e.g. a city or region).
4. You can also use paid search advertising to drive visitors to your site.  This is useful in the early days as the indexing and link building will take some time to work.  Depending upon your business you may want to consider using Linked-in or Facebook for paid advertising in addition (or instead of) search advertising.

 Make Your Content Valuable

search engine optimisation brings website visitors

Once prospects have found your website they not only need to actually visit it they also need to make money for you buy buying stuff (or at least contacting you or signing up for your newsletter so they may buy stuff in the future).  This is known as ‘conversion’ (i.e. converting visitors to customers).

You do this by making your content and sales offers valuable (and hopefully unique).  The content has got to be engaging – interesting, useful or entertaining.  The visitors need to be given reasons for conversion (i.e.to  do what you want them to do).  These reasons need to be very clear and the path through your website blindingly obvious.

If you do all these things right then your website won’t be lonely any more as it will have lots of visitors!  Also, you’ll be happy too because those visitors will be buying stuff from you.

Most small firms do not have their own in-house internet marketing or web development capabilities.  This is because they do not have the need (or the funding) for a full-time dedicated Internet Maketing specialist.  Therefore, small companies will need to outsource their Internet Marketing and Website Development to an external consultant or specialist.  This Internet Marketing Consultant will work in partnership with the company to use digital media to help grow the business.  Such companies will need to choose that consultant carefully as a good partnership is vital for business success.

Here are some tips for helping choose an Internet Marketing Consultant for that vital partnership. 

What to Look for in an Internet Marketing Consultant

1. The consultant should not only know his or her stuff about Internet Marketing (and maybe Mobile Marketing if required) but should be able (and willing) to explain that stuff in terms that the business can understand.  The emphasis should be not only on how Internet Marketing services and solutions work but also how they can benefit the business.
2. The consultant should also know your stuff.  He or she must be able to understand your business and your customers needs.
3. The consultant should have the tools, knowledge and experience to analyse your online competitive position and to make recommendations.  The consultant should be able and willing to explain the analysis and recommendations.
4. The consultant should have access to a range of digital marketing solutions and services to implement the above recommendations.  He or she should be able to provide you with a single point of contact to implement those solutions and services as well as reporting on progress and issues.
5. The consultant should be able to customise these solutions and services to your particular business needs.  Identikit solutions will probably not work very well as every company is different.  In any case, do you want to have exactly the same digital marketing approach as your competitors?
6. If you are a small company then you will probably want to deal with a small digital marketing consultancy.  This way you will get a more personal service from somebody who understands small companies.  Make sure that they have good connections to other companies who may provide some of the solutions.  A franchise operation, like WSI, is a good choice as such an organisation will have a strong network for knowledge sharing and training as well as powerful economies of scale for purchasing from other suppliers (you will also have back up if your consultant has problems).

A partnership For Business Growth

Avove all, remember that your relationship with your Internet Marketing Consultant is a long term partnership.  Your business and the consultant should work closely together with lots of interchange and communication.  There must be no barriers between you.

Mobile marketing is a great way to communicate with both customers and prospects.  New advances in technology mean that it is now an excellent and cost effective technique for small and medium sized companies.  This article is a brief introduction to mobile marketing with links to other articles which have more detail. 

Google Places

This is an easy way in to mobile marketing.  Most companies already have a free Google Places listing.  There is a Google Places App for the all the major smart phones.   When a user launches this App, it will list businesses near to the user’s current location (from the GPS).  The user can select a particular business type (e.g restaurants) and get all those nearby listed.  The user can also select another location for listings (e.g. a city to be visited).  So, if you validate and complete your Google Places listing this gives customers and prospects an easy way to find your business.  For more information see Mobilise Your Marketing and Google Places.

Text Marketing

Text marketing is a great way to connect to customers and prospects but you need to do this carefully so that you don’t alienate them.  There are many text marketing services that allow you to send out text messages to your customers and prospects.  Text messages have a much better open rate than email messages.   The services will give you a shortcode ( a five digit number) which allows you to send and receive from your subscribers.  The services will also give you a keyword (e.g 2BUY) which subscribers can text back to the shortcode so that they can accept an offer.  Texts back to the shortcode are collected so that you can contact them (e.g. to confirm a booking).  There is more information and some guidelines at Text Marketing.

QR Codes & Microsoft Tags

These are like two dimensional bar codes.  You can put these on printed material (leaflets, adverts, shop windows, products, vehicles etc) and when scanned by a smartphone app they can cause it to display details about your products and services, take users to your website, display contact details etc.  Think of it as a link between the online and offline worlds!  You can find out more information at QR Codes & Microsoft Tags, QR Codes and Microsoft Tags.

 Mobile Websites & Apps

Anybody with a smartphone  should be able to view websites.  Being able to reach out to mobile users is a great way to promote your business as well as connecting with customers and prospects.  Remember, more and more internet access is happening from mobile devices and a recent Ofcom report says that a third of UK adults use a smartphone.  Here are some ideas to help make this work for your business.

You should probably develop a special mobile website or pages.  Most devices can view a normal website but they are quite difficult to navigate around and often slow to load (and can take up a lot of bandwidth credits).  Keep it simple.  Don’t use Flash (or at least without detection and a decent alternative).  iPhones, iPads and iPods won’t display flash.

Mobile Apps are applications which run on a mobile device.  They are generally downloaded and installed  from the phone operating systems supplier (e.g. Apple or Google Android).  They will generally (but not always) communicate with the internet and/or with your systems.  They can be for entertainment, for customers to order stuff from you, for information or to provide services.  For more information see Mobile Websites & Apps.

 Location Based Services

Location based services are applications that provide information or entertainment to a mobile device that is based on the user’s location.  Some of these services also offer augmented reality where that information is overlaid onto a real time picture (taken through the device’s camera) of the location. An introduction to these emerging services along wth some ideas on how they might be exploited by businesses can be found at Location Based Services.

 My full range of mobile marketing articles can be found at Mobile Marketing.

Although August is traditionally the ‘silly season’, there have been some significant events in the mobile marketplace.  Here’s a summary of them with the implications for mobile marketing.

Google Buys Motorola’s Mobile Phone Division

This puts Google into a similar position as Apple whereby it can control both the hardware (from Motorola) and software (Android) on its mobile devices (both phones and tablets).  This will result in Google branded devices with better user experience as the hardware and software will be managed as a whole rather than Android being spread out over many different devices.  There will also be a solid Google Android focus for the competition against Apple.  It’s worth noting that the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS both outsell any other smartphone and that no other tablet has come even close to the iPAD (I reckon that Amazon have the best chance with a Kindle tablet).  The implications will be a better controlled platform for Android App development and lower prices as there will be a clear competitor to the iPhone.  However, HTC and Samsung (who make Android based devices) must be getting nervous.  RIM (Blackberry) have been losing market share to Android and this will accelerate.

HP Withdraw From The Mobile Device Marketplace

HP are giving up on WebOs and will be withdrawing from making smartphones and tablets.  Their much touted tablet offering failed to gain any traction at all (until its price was slashed to less than £100).  Generally, the problem faced by Apple competitors is that people don’t want a tablet – they want an iPad!  Again, this will focus competition.  One wonders now what will happen to RIM (under heavy competitive pressure) and the train crash that is Nokia.

Apple Announces iCloud

iCloud is Apple’s cloud based service for music/file storage and email/calendar/contact synchronisation.  It replaces the (somewhat unreliable) Mobile Me (which incredibly was more expensive than Google Apps).  The immediate benefit will be that you do not have to sync your iPad/iPhone/iPod with your computer – all your music etc will be held in the cloud and kept in sync automatically.  There will be a file storage service along the lines of Dropbox although I have my worries about reliability (I had a lot of problems with Mobile Me) and convenience (Dropbox has ‘normal’ folders in your directory structure that are kept automatically synced and backed up).   I expect we will see similar offerings from Amazon and Google.

The Internet is a great tool for giving companies a much wider (even global) reach.  With the Internet’s reach, companies can market and sell to customers far and wide.

However, the Internet can also help those companies who just sell to customers in their local geographic area.  Over 15% of searches on Google are related to a geographic area.  People will search for shops, restaurants, hotels and services near where they are or near where they’re going to be.  Also, many will use their mobiles for such searches.

So, if you have a local business you can use the Internet to bring in more business from people searching for products and services in your area. 

Local Search Essentials

When somebody searches for a company, product or service and adds in a geographic qualifier (town, county, post code etc) then Google Search will return a set of entries and a map (Google Places).  Something similar will happen when the Google Places app is used for a search on a smartphone.

Local Search Optimisation

Optimising for local search follows the same basic principles for standard SEO but there are a few extra things to look out for.

1. Make sure that your Google Places entry is complete and correct.
2. Make sure that you have entries in the main online business directories.  These should be a mixture of national, regional and town directories.  Ensure that all the different directories are consistent (ideally using a common directory submission service or an experienced Internet Marketing consultant).
3. Get lots of customer reviews for your service (particularly on Google Places).
4. Make sure that your website content and template is properly optimised for your locality as well as for your products/services.
5. If prospects are likely to search for you on a smartphone then make sure that your website is mobile friendly.

This could bring you in a lot of extra business.  Remember, your competitors may well be about to grab your market share using local and mobile search optimisation.  If you need help then please contact me.  You can find more information from some of my related blog posts.

• Search Marketing
• Google Places
• Text Marketing
• QR Codes & Microsoft Tags
• Mobile Websites & Apps
• Location Based Services

Location based services are applications that offer information or entertainment, to a mobile device, that is based on the user’s location.  Some of these services also offer augmented reality where that information is overlaid onto a real time picture (taken through the device’s camera) of the location.  This article gives an introduction to these emerging services along wth some ideas on how they might be exploited by businesses.

Location Based Services

The most basic location service is GPS.  This shows a map of where you are and can give you directions on how to get somewhere else. All location based services draw upon GPS data to determine location.

Google Places (see my earlier blog post on this) is a location based service whereby users can find information on services around them alon with reviews.  Google Places invites you to rate registered businesses near your location.

Wikihood is a location based service that pulls information, from wikipedia, that is relevant to your location and nearby.  The information can be on geographic features, towns, history, entertainment and whatever it cound find.

Foursquare is a location based service that not only gives you information on places around you but tells you about any offers they have for Foursquare members.  You ‘check in’ to a location and can rate, review or comment on it.  The opportunity for businesses is you can advertise to prospects who are ‘checked in’ near your location and can make time sensitive offers (e.g. a restaurant can offer 10% off a meal to visitors in the next 2 hours).

Augmented Reality

These are mobile applications that use a combination of the GPS and the camera (often along with a compass and accelerometer) to detemine local information or directions.  Information or directions are displayed as labels on the camera picture displayed on the phone’s screen.

Wikitude  will display location tagged information on the screen.  It also allows you to type in a search phrase.  For example, if you type in pizza it will display notes about every pizza related place around you.

The London Tube iPhone app will show directions to the nearest tube station on the camera screen.

Try some of these appications out on your smart phone.  Then contact me to discuss how we can make them work for your business.

Anybody with a smart phone (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, Nokia Symbian) should be able to view websites.  Being able to reach out to mobile users is a great way to promote your business as well as connecting with customers and prospects.  Remember, more and more internet access is happening from mobile devices.  Here are some guidelines and ideas to help make this work for your business.

Mobile Websites

1. Mobile websites can be launched from QR Codes or Microsoft Tags (see my last blog post).  You can put these codes or tags on paper adverts, on flyers or even on your shop/restaurant window.
2.  Mobile websites can also be launched from local directory apps on mobiles.  An example is where somebody uses Google Places (make sure you’ve developed your free listing on this) on their mobile to search for a business (e.g. a restaurant) near where they are now.
3. You should probably develop a special mobile website or pages.  Most devices can view a normal website but they are quite difficult to navigate around and often slow to load (and can take up a lot of bandwidth credits).  Keep it simple.
4. Don’t use Flash (or at least without detection and a decent alternative).  iPhones, iPads and iPods won’t display flash.

Mobile Apps

1. These are applications which run on a mobile device.  They are generally downloaded and installed (easily) from the phone operating systems supplier (e.g. Apple or Google Android).  They will generally (but not always) communicate with the internet and/or with your systems.
2. They can be purely for entertainment, to promote a brand, such as Barclay Card Waterslide (which is linked to a major advertising campaign which you should look up on YouTube) – try it it’s amazing! 
3. They can also be used for customers to order stuff from you.  Domino’s Pizza in US has promoted a mobile app to ‘build’, order (and pay for) delivered pizzas.  Amazon has an iPhone app to order stuff from them.
4. They can be informative, giving your customers information which is useful to them as they move about.  They can also provide services.  For example Sky have an app which lets me find out what TV programmes are on and set them to record – from anywhere.
5. Such mobile apps are no longer prohibitively expensive and the province of large corporations.  They are becoming available for economic use (with great ROI and competitive advantage) for small and medium sized companies.

As ever, if you want advice on how your business can benefit from mobile websites and apps then please do not hesitate to contact me.

What does this mean to you?

QR Code for Peter James

This is a QR Code.  It’s like a two dimensional bar code. 

Pick up your smart phone.  Download a QR Code reader app.  With an iPhone you can download QRReader or i-nigma 4 (there are others).  The same or similar apps will be available from your Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone mobile.

Once you’ve downloaded the app then launch it.  Point it at the code above and it will tell you all about moi.  But, it doesn’t have to be about me – it can be about you and your business!

Imagine, have a QR code on your shop window, in your adverts, in your leaflets or anywhere you publish marketing material.  Prospects just need to point their smart phones at it to download details about your business.

Is this fascinating?  Is it compelling?  Believe me, this is going to be big!  Look around and you’ll see QR Codes everywhere: in newspapers, on adverts and in shops (bar codes are just so last century). 

Imagine, your customers and prospects can get details about your company and products easily displayed on their mobile phones!  Do you want to exploit QR Codes before your competitors?  If so then contact me – I can help you, this is what I do.

The only thing which might stop the advance of QR Codes is a rival product from Microsoft – Microsoft Tags.  Microsoft Tags are much more advanced and flexible than QR Codes but their adoption is not as widespread (however, they may catch up).

Microsoft Tag for Peter James contact details

Down load the Microsoft Tag reader onto your smart phone – it’s TagReader in the iPhone App Store (it’s free).  Then launch it and point it at the tag above.  You get my contact details which you can download into your phone.  You could also set up a tag to launch your website.

Which should you use?   How do you make them work for your business?  Contact me and I’ll help you. I make the web work for you!