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A Mobile Marketing Crash Course for Small Business Owners

2011/08/01 By 1 Comment

Unless you live in the Land of Nod, you most certainly must recognize the rapid increase in the use of mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, and Adroid-powered smartphones over the past 2-3 years. As a business owner, you have to be wondering how this is impacting your business, and where all this is headed?

To help answer these and other important questions about mobile marketing, I have out together an article series that addresses the primary tenants of mobile marketing from the SMB perspective.

In this series, we explore the following topics:

  1. Why Text Message Marketing is Important
  2. What is SMS Software and Why Do I Need It?
  3. Bar codes, QR Codes, Tags and Why Should I Care?
  4. Mobile Marketing With Mobile Apps; Are Apps Right For Your Business?
  5. How to Improve Your ROI with Mobile Website Marketing
  6. What’s Best for Your SMB: A Mobile Website or Mobile App?

This blog series was also put together in the form of a White Paper which dives into these issues and offers solutions for small business owners, which you can download free by clicking on the button below.

These are important issues that depending on your type of business, your size, and of course your business marketing objectives, you will need to respond to in some way shape or form. The series and the white paper are meant to give you a real-world way of looking at these issues and offer practical ways to approach each of the these mobile marketing strategies for your SMB.

 

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile, Tips Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Annual Update: Year 2010 – A look ahead at the mobile web and inbound marketing

2011/01/10 By Leave a Comment

Hard to believe that a year has come and gone without us posting an update to the product section of our blog. Contrary to the likely perception, this does not mean we haven’t been busy with product. On the contrary, we have some exciting things to share.

To begin, earlier this year we rolled out a new demo of our mobile-friendly website solution known as Smart Sites. A smart site is a WP site with the AC Smart Site theme, a theme that simplifies the view of your product or business with a minimalistic design that is compatible across multiple web browsing platforms. It was derived from the AC Merchant Theme which was created for use on merchant sites at AutoConverse.com.

The theme design is ideal for tablets such as iPad or Samsung Galaxy. It is also fresh on smart phones such as iPhone and Droid.

Smart sites are also functional and aesthetic on a desktop or laptop, no matter what browser resolution. You can demo the smart site in action by texting AUTOBURST to 41513 from your phone. You will be sent a link to our demo smart site.

The Mobile Factor

Why is this important? Because connecting and communicating with customers is now a real-time ordeal that must be in synch across multiple platforms at any given time. People and customers are going from PC to laptop, to mobile, to car, etc., often consuming the same information across more than one platform. Businesses ability to cater to this will have a growing impact on the customer experience in years to come.

We are well poised for this future with the early adoption of this Smart Site technology. It makes for a terrific compliment something else that will be new for us this coming year…the CMP Mobile theme.

The new CMP theme is a skin that can be used to create a mobile-specific site for any product or business. Inspired by the .mobi system that arose early in the mobile computing space, the CMP theme is a WordPress theme designed to give users a web-based interface that is similar in design and function to the famous iPhone app view of icons displayed neatly in 3 columns on your phone, giving you one-click access to everything available on the site.

We will be offering a demo soon of this new product.

Change in Supply and Demand

So while 2010 proved another difficult year for many small businesses, those who have been able to weather the epic storm could be in high demand soon as the economy improves and small businesses obtain access to more capital. The market has been saturated in recent years with Internet marketing specialists and while the number of new people and businesses entering this space compared to the number of those exiting this space might cancel each other out, more and more businesses are expected to start embracing a lot of the inbound marketing practices that are proving to be highly effective for some agencies.

It goes without saying that anytime demand increases and supply decreases, suppliers may finally get to earn their keep soon.

Famous Quote

I heard once that…“[T]he more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it is to determine what you should be doing”. I don’t remember where I came across this, but it has stuck with me for a long time.

So this year, we will be making a point to be more diligent with our postings here about product updates. If you would like to receive these updates, plus information about the types of things we do so you can learn or at least understand, then subscribe to the site to receive an email alert each time we publish something new to the site. This could be as often as once or twice a week but more likely once or twice month. Subscribing is free and you may cancel your subscription at any time.

Also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Thanks and let’s make 2011 a spectacular year!

Filed Under: Announcements, Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Bad Press Equals Good Google Rankings?

2010/12/07 By Leave a Comment

We’ve all heard the saying, “Any press is good press,” but few of us considered bad press an important aspect of internet marketing.

Here’s the story: A designer eyeglasses seller called DecorMyEyes (I’m not going to link to them) followed shady business practices with its customers, harassing them, overcharging them, and threatening lawsuits.  As a result, the company was rewarded with high rankings on Google.  How did this happen?  Vitaly Borker, owner of DecorMyEyes, received so much bad press from reputable sources such as the New York Times and Bloomberg that Google rated him as having high levels of credibility.

A Google fellow, Amit Singhal, wrote, “We were horrified. I am here to tell you that being bad is, and hopefully will always be, bad for business in Google’s search results.”

Although the business received complaints on numerous sites, these complaints were not increasing the site’s rankings; it was the media’s bad-press articles, which often linked to the site, that were driving the increased rankings.

This story does have a happy ending, but not for DecorMyEyes.  The underhanded company dropped from their competitive first page ranking for ‘designer eyeglasses’ and is now ranked somewhere near the 14th page.

This doesn’t mean that harassing your customers should be the latest tactic in search engine optimization, as Google has altered their algorithm to weed out bad businesses.  How they can do this is a mystery, but I suspect they are utilizing sites such as Yelp and The Better Business Bureau to qualify businesses.  It wouldn’t surprise me if Google figured out a way to read star ratings on business-rating sites, but, unfortunately, the enigma that is the Google algorithm remains secret.  This does not, however, affect strategies for mobile marketing and other internet marketing strategies.

We’d all love a link from The New York Times, as one such high-quality, high-authority link can skyrocket a site on SERPs, but this example shows us that there is no easy (evil) way to get into these sources.  The best we can do (imho): continue to write quality content and press releases and hope the big-time media sources pick up on them.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Women Show Increased Interest in Mobile Coupons

2010/11/01 By 2 Comments

The relatively new concept of locating and using coupons via the internet on mobile phones is expected to greatly increase in popularity within the coming years, and new research shows that women are leaders where this new technology is concerned.

A survey conducted by miBuys showed that two thirds of women who use the internet on their mobile phones would be interested in obtaining coupons using that device.  Here are the results:

  • 67.89% – Yes, they would use mobile coupons
  • 21.49% – Would not use mobile coupons
  • 10.63% – Not sure

When compared to a 2009 survey conducted by Honeywell, which found that 71% of women would not use mobile coupons, these findings show a dramatic increase in mobile coupon interest among females.

When asked for which services they would like coupons, mobile internet users worldwide responded:

  • 53.49% – Retail
  • 27.37% – Concerts/events
  • 16.23% – Dining
  • 7.31% – Cinema
  • 1.60% – Cinema

According to Mark Bamber, CEO of miBuys, “Mobile phones and devices can already play a significant role in connecting retail brands with their customers. It is perceived that women are only just embracing mobile services, but the truth is they’re already well beyond this point and now want access to the entire high street through their phone.”

This is good news for mobile internet marketing, which may utilize online coupons for mobile devices to attract new customers, and many social media marketers and search engine optimization specialists are seriously considering this new method of attracting visitors and customers.

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile Tagged With: , ,

How to build a text-based website for mobile use

2010/05/17 By Leave a Comment

In February 2010 we looked at how to use the text-based coupon codes in the CMP Mobile system. Prior to that we looked at the key components of the CMP Mobile system. These included how to create a group, create a keyword campaign, set an auto responder, and more. This month CMP Mobile is back with a third demonstration on the basics of their text-messaging system.

In this final demonstration in the series that began in January 2010, Guest Presenter Brian Collins will be showing us:

  • Why mobile sites are important today
  • How to create a mobile website within the CMP Mobile system
  • How to generate a URL for your mobile site
  • How to shorten the URL to insert into text message campaign
  • How to insert url in text message campaign

By the end we will have created a mobile website on the fly that you will be able to view on your mobile phone. Webinar attendees will have an opportunity to test the mobile system live by opting in to receive this link to the mobile web page from their phone so if you can not text while on a call with your mobile phone then you will want to call in using a different phone so you can participate in the live demo. For questions about this please contact us.

SPECIAL: Text AUTOBURST to 41513 from your mobile and show up for this web cast and receive a free mobile website for your business for 30 days.

To register for this free event use the button below. If you are already registered with the AC Mobile series then you would have already received an email notification from GoToWebinar about it and there is no need to re-register.

Likewise if you have an interest in subjects like this and can not make this particular webinar, you can view our schedule of events or sign up to receive email and text alerts for all upcoming webinars. We do record our webinars and make them available for viewing on our Viddler channel and on our new website www.AutoBurstWebTV.com.

Click here to register for the AC Spotlight Webinar Series

For questions or assistance with AC Webinars contact Ryan Gerardi. Thank You.

Filed Under: Tips, Videos Tagged With: , , ,

New mobile component for AC List Builder

2010/04/08 By Leave a Comment

Hey folks. This week’s webinar for AC Mobile Webinar was not advertised because we are doing something that is product-specific, thus we are not opening it up to the public.  We are recording it so once we have completed the edited version then we will be releasing a public version that will be used primarily for demonstration purposes.

The topic for this private webinar is on the new mobile component we have been building in to the AC List Builder program. Specifically we will be looking at:

  • The new email auto response with mobile opt-in information and link to mobile site
  • The new mobile site options
  • Pricing for the new mobile component
  • Upgrade options to full mobile version
  • How we are incorporating the new mobile component into AC List Builder

You can see there is much to cover and will likely require more than an hour to run through, thus another reason it is not open to the public because it is too much information for one sessions.

Some of you may have received an email communication from GoToWebinar about the AC Spotlight Series going on tomorrow. That communication was a mistake and has been corrected. The next AC Spotlight session is set for May 6.

We have updated the training schedule on our website so please check there for now. You can see that we are implementing a new theme at the moment for this website so please bare with us on any discombobulated pages.

To join the AC Mobile Webinar Series you may click here or the button below. By registering you will receive an email notification from GoToWebinar reminding you of each webinar within this series. If you are not able to or are not interested in attending a specific webinar within that series then there is no obligation to attend. You can disregard the notification.

Click here to register for the AC Social Webinar Series

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Using Coupon Codes in your Mobile Marketing Strategy

2010/02/26 By 2 Comments

In January we explored specific areas in the CMP Mobile Marketing Interface. You can view the edited version of this on our Viddler channel.

This month, we are back with a follow-up episode and with guest Presenter Brian Collins, one of the founding partners of CMP Development Group. Collins has been building awareness of mobile marketing with business and auto dealerships in the Philadelphia metro and suburban areas. His vision for local businesses and consumers is for them to continue using mobile communications to interact and to make purchases.

TOPIC

The subject matter for this webinar will concentrate on the use of coupons codes in the CMP interface. Coupons are increasingly useful for everyone because they offer incentives to engage in business and with mobile technology you can place your incentives in the daily lives of people in your audience.

AutoConversion has teamed with CMP as an affiliate provider to offer limited benefits of its service to local dealers and businesses. By doing this, businesses participating in the AC Insider program offered by AutoConversion and its affiliates, benefit from mobile marketing initiatives managed by us.

As always, the webinar begins at 11:30 am EST Thursday March 4. We begin promptly going through a 5-minute orientation before diving into the material itself. Our webinars are typically recorded for edited versions to be published onto our Viddler channel.

Register using the button below. If you are already registered with this series then you need not register again.

Click here to register for this webianr

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile, Videos Tagged With: ,

Mobile Marketing ideas with online coupons

2010/01/20 By 2 Comments

Mobile marketing and text messaging are becoming more and more favored with people today which means it is becoming increasingly important to consider the mobile marketing aspect of your message and product. By doing so you will find new ways to connect with people which has its benefits. But like with everything else, you want it to create the right experience so that your business can benefit.

In our next webinar we will take a first-hand look at a specific mobile marketing interface offered by CMP Development Group. We call it DD8 Mobile Marketing because of their automotive business known as DealerDominance.com. The DD8 system is a complete mobile marketing interface that enables you to drive mobile subscribers into your buying funnel.

The system comes with the ability to create graphic-based mobile websites, build web scripts to capture mobile numbers, and manage keyword campaigns with dynamic coupon codes and groups to architect a comprehensive mobile marketing process in your business.

We also will be utilizing the AC wiki for part of this experiment which offers a simple and practical use of the wiki for mobile interfacing. Be ready with cell phone in hand for this webinar so you can test drive the system live with us.

As always, the webinar begins at 11:30 am EST on Thursday January 21. We begin promptly going through a 5-minute orientation before diving into the material itself.

Register using the button below. If you are already registered with this series then you need not register again.

Click here to register for this webianr

Filed Under: Marketing, Mobile, Videos Tagged With: ,