I was going through my EkoBuzz emails, i subscribe to mobile marketer newsletter. I read this really interesting article A sector by sector look at the Mobile Marketing Opportunities for 2009. The article highlights innovative ways mobile marketing can be used in different industry, here are some of the excerpts from the article. 

Apparel and accessories business marketers can use their stores, shopping bags, email newsletters, loyalty cards, wired and mobile websites to encourage their customers to sign up for mobile loyalty program.   

Entertainment Industry can put short clips of movies and TV shows, songs, ringtones, trailers, theater locations, SMS alerts of premieres and concerts, discounted tickets, mobile coupons, mobile fan clubs, backstage passes, mobile games and links to mobile sites. 

Automakers surely not the desired advertisers but mobile can help them build customer loyalty.  Websites can be used to encourage visitors to sign up for mobile alerts from dealers – new models, test drives, markdowns, dealer events.

The article is a must read for all mobile marketers. In a nut shell whichever industry we are in, mobile marketing is a must have weapon in our marketing plan. The beauty of this channel is that its performance and results improve with integration. There are measures available to gauge the success of mobile campaign so don’t shy away. Accept it and ‘build better relationships’ with your customers 

Keep reading and post your comments

kriti Jaising

According t o Newsweek magazine Barack Obama is the most powerful man in the world. Soon to be the president of the United States of America Barack Obama has created a history for being the first African American President. The charismatic president elect launched a fully integrated marketing campaign for his 2008 Presidential Election but the highlight of the election campaign was the innovative use of mobile channel.

The Barack Obama election campaign used all facets of mobile campaign. The primary target audience for the mobile campaign was young voters that are digitally savvy and politically inclined. The young voters were encouraged to visit Obama’s website and register for text message program to stay on top of the latest news. The campaign included downloadable ring tones, wall papers, text message alerts on Barack Obama’s local events, other big news, coupons to buy items at candidate’s online store etc. The mobile channel was optimized to reach voters in a continuous but non-intrusive way and the frequency was kept to 1-2 messages per week.

A special iPhone application was also launched to engage iPhone user. The application allowed users to read campaign news, press releases, photos and video highlights. Other impressive features of the application were “Get Involved” that was based on GPS location technology to get information on closest Obama campaign office, “Call Friends”, “Local Events” and “Donate” link at the bottom of the page.

Clearly the objective of the mobile channel in the campaign was to drive voters to vote besides getting donations. The campaign achieved its aforesaid target very effectively; thousands of people went for advance voting. The campaign also helped Obama team to build an extraordinary database of the young voters with pivotal information like mobile numbers, email addresses, zip codes etc.

Texting is truly has a phenomena and the success of Obama campaign has unveiled the true potential of mobile channel then
WHAT ARE MARKETERS AND CORPORATES WAITING FOR??

Please send in your comments and share your favorite mobile marketing success story.

Kriti Jaising

Looking for a new channel or medium to promote your brand, want to break the advertising clutter, trying to position your brand contemporary and tech savvy and also have shoestring advertising budget then look no further. Your prayers have been answered. Mobile advertising , yes it is the future. Still not sure whether it will break the grounds like online advertising did just couple of years ago. A recent report by The Kelsey group indicated that the U.S. mobile advertising market would grow from $33.2 million in 2008 to $1.4 billion in 2012

There are different forms of mobile advertising derived mainly from its predecessors like online, print, TV etc. It is too early to predict the winner amongst the current mobile advertising options. Some of the forms of mobile advertising are

Mobile Banners – has great potential to be successful like online banners. The acceptance and usage of mobile banners is dependent on Mobile Web (WAP). The sooner customers use mobile web the greater are the chances that advertisers will push traffic to mobi sites via mobile banners.

Mobile Search – the Google on mobile. Anytime anywhere mantra is the key to the success of mobile search, the more people get attracted to use mobile search the more advertisers will use mobile search as an media to promote brands.

Mobile TV – Television still is the most dominant advertising medium attracting billions of dollars from advertisers and brands and is still considered the most effective medium for brand building and brand recall. The TV commercial spots are expensive and has lot of clutter. The idea for mobile is to pick the success ingredient from television and implement to mobile TV.

The mobile advertising for sure is the future; marketers, advertisers and small businesses are inventing newer ways to maximize the use of mobile phone. Mobile’s portability and accessibility makes it a unique platform and we are all waiting eagerly for its success.

Keep reading and post your comments.

Kriti Jaising

Social Networking!! You got it the most happening and the most talked about marketing channel. It got to be because it is the least expensive too. Small business owners, marketers, product mangers, software developers to managing directors and CEO’s of big companies are using social networks to expand and revive their connections.

Young teens initiated Social Networking as a way to make friends online and business professionals have added the marketing twist to this concept. From casual teen talk medium to top executive PR platform, social networking has come a long way. It is so effective that it is used as an integral element in online marketing plan.

The benefits are immense and immediate from finding the jobs to vendors relationships are key. To facilitate the use of social networking I have complied a list of most popular social networking websites.

Twitter
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Facebook
linkedIn
Flickr
YouTube
Slideshare

Add new tag

Mobile Marketing is undeniably the epicenter of today’s marketing world. Marketers are talking about mobile marketing, trying to understand how to measure the success of campaigns, what metrics to be used. But still not all the issues pertaining to mobile marketing are clear thus lot of uncertainty. As much as marketers want to add mobile marketing in the marketing mix, they are unable to solve this puzzle as there are pieces missing. In this tough economy, mobile marketing can actually help marketers save some dollars. If well integrated with other marketing tools mobile marketing can give us desired results. But there some issues still unanswered.

1. How to tackle Customer Privacy
2. Educating and ease of accessing content.
3. Multiplicity of platforms
4. Slow adoption of multimedia
5. Lack of metric transparency
6. Lack of consumer acceptance
7. No uniform standards
8. Uncertainties in cross-media integration
9. Inventory of content

We all are working together to integrate and implement mobile marketing campaigns effectively and how to measure their efficacy.

If you have other issues that i have missed, plaese add in this list to help others.

Keep reading

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

September 4, 2008

Mobile Marketing is the new love child of marketing industry. Mobile phone ownership is growing much faster than computers. Every newspaper, e-newsletter, magazine covers how mobile marketing is gaining momentum, exponential growth in customers using mobile phones as a communication tool, how many more text messages they are sending, how many are subscribing to data plans to excess mobi sites and reach their friends via mobile social networks.

Mobile marketing can be classified as mobile advertising, mobile search, and mobile social networking. Mobile advertising can be in a form of banner as a simple text based SMS or MMS, games, videos, music etc. ‘Relevance’ is the key to mobile advertising that makes it different and much more effective than traditional form of advertising. Currently SMS text messages are the most popular and used form of mobile advertising as not very many mobile subscribers have opted for premium services that allow downloading of games, music, video etc.

Mobile being an extremely personal medium, advertisers and marketers are cautious of walking on the fine line. Invading the consumer privacy is another reason that marketers and going slow with mobile advertising. The future holds tremendous potential with the latest location based mobile services. The newer mobile phones are equipped with satellite–positioning technology that will open new door to the success of mobile marketing. Geographic targeting, sending mobile coupons based on consumer location is gaining acceptance and more and more advertisers are spending marketing budget on these newer ways to reach target audience at the time when they are ready to spend.
Mobile search, thanks to Google mobile the search results pages will be on small mobile screen. Typing salon will bring up the ad of the closest salon along with the organic search results.

Consumers are surely in for a surprise with marketers, mobile operators and mobile applications providers working hard every day to make every day a special day.

Please send your feedback and comments

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

EkoBuzz the leading self service email and mobile marketing campaign service, announced today that they have joined the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). The Mobile Search Committee was established to develop common business models, operating procedures and technology interfaces that help operators offer an integrated, carrier branded mobile experience to their subscribers. The committee also helps content providers monetize their opportunities in the mobile ecosystem.

“We are delighted to be a part of the MMA to be a part of the mobile community and to help foster collaboration among the key players in the mobile community,” said Kriti Jaising, Chief Marketing Officer at EkoBuzz. “Having built our mobile marketing campaign technology from the ground up for mobile, EkoBuzz offers a simple yet stylish mobile campaign solution and enables our customers to have a unique insight into reporting and tracking of mobile campaigns.”

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global association that strives to stimulate the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies.

Mobile Advertising, mobile marketing association, mobile marketing campaigns

I have been working on optimizing my company’s website EkoBuzz and in the process came up with the thought of sharing my experience and resources with other people who are interested in learning optimization and doing it themselves. I started reading Bruce Clay blogs, attended Jill Whalen Organic SEO Training Class and enrolled for SEMPO Institute’s Insider’s Guide to SEM program.
SEO is an elaborate step-by-step process of improving a website’s search page results ranking. It is critical to know where to find the correct and legitimate information. Understanding and following the guidelines of search engines is pivotal to the success of SEO.
Most SEO’s have their own mix of tools and techniques to optimize pages, create & build links, and track search engine results page ranking. To make it easy and convenient for people like me I am putting together a list of the most relevant websites and resources essential to understand and do Search Engine Optimization.
Lets look at it from the beginning, SEM Search Engine Marketing include Search Engine Optimization SEO and Search Advertising also known as pay-per-click PPC. Search Engine Optimization process involves understanding of Links, html tags like title meta tags & anchor text, directories, keywords & phrases, SEO web design, copywriting for SEO & PPC, SEO Roadblocks, how to find ways to avoid these roadblocks, how to submit a website and how to track and design reports.
The following are some of the very helpful, effective and popular free and paid search engine optimization tools
Free Tools
Analytics Tools
www.google.com/analytics
Server Tools
www.seotoolsset.com/tools/free_tools.html
www.dnsstuff.com
Keyword Analysis
www.keyworddiscovery.com
www.livekeywordanalysis.com
www.seomoz.org/tools/kwtool.php
Ranking Monitors
www.alexa.com
www.mcdar.net/dance/
www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank
Links
www.linkpopularity.com
www.marketleap.com/services/freetools/
www.elixirsystems.com/tools/linkpopularity.php
Copywriting
www.copyscape.com
http://tool.motoricerca.info/similarity-analyzer.phtml
SEM Glossary
www.seobook.com/glossary
SEM ROI
www.pageviews.com/resources/roicalculator
Report Spammer
www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html

Advanced Paid SEO Tools
www.advancedlinkmanager.com
www.clicktracks.com
www.omniture.com
www.tamos.com/products/smartwhois/
www.seotoolset.com
www.trellian.com/seotoolkit/
www.webposition.com
www.wordtracker.com
www.webtrends.com

Hope these tools are helps to you in a successful SEO process. Keeping reading as I’ll share the most effective SEO Resources in the next blog.
Thanks for your time. Please share your comments.
Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

Add new tag, Bruce Clay, EkoBuzz, Mobile Marketing and SEO, sem

The term SMO was coined by Rohit Bhargava. Lets begin this writing with defining SMO. It’s a comparatively new term and SMO stands for Social Media Optimization yes the entire buzz around social media and networking. SMO is a form of online marketing that focuses on how to use social media websites to drive traffic, create buzz, build brand recognition and add quality links back to a website. This phenomenon is ready to invade the Search Engine Optimization. Soon we’ll find Social media optimization and marketing experts providing consulting services and writing books.

Social media websites have different categories and depending on the type of business one can decide where to promote the business. Social media websites include social news websites, video sharing websites and social networking websites. The changing face of online marketing is making SMO the new SEO as SMO can be as powerful and effective in building large number of links back to a website thus improving the website popularity and ultimately organic search ranking.

One of the myths about social media is it’s demographics. Most of us believe that teenagers are the ones spending time on social networking. The truth is social network with million of members has millions of adults too. Adults do like to stay connected and interact with their old friends and make new friends via social media. Adult members do share pictures, video etc with their loved ones.

Businesses are aggressively integrating social media in their marketing plan. Social media do helps in achieving marketing objectives like building brand recognition, positive brand & corporate image, promote new products, customer feedback, etc.

Some of the interesting website are mybloglog, myspace, youtube, linkedin,  twitter, etc. MyBlogLog is a great way to get way to get people visit your website and learn more about your business. Twitter is a free social networking service, members can send short messages upto 140 characters to twitter friends. LinkedIn is extremely popular amongst business professionals. The website lets business professional network and interact with like minded people. YouTube and Revver are social networking websites focused on sharing videos.

Online is an open world and SMO is all about honesty, if you are not able to establish credibility you cannot go anywhere. We are sharing information both business and personal so good faith is the key to the success in the world of Social media. Share relevant information, post the information at appropriate websites, build quality links, quality is more important than quantity , stay on top, do it religiously to be on the front page of social news sites. 

Please send your feedback and comments

Kriti Jaising

EkoBuzz

Rohit Bhargava, SMO, Social Media Networks

With over 2.2 billion mobile users across the globe, mobile is the obvious medium choice for marketers and brand mangers to reach the mass audience. We have seen numerous successful mobile marketing campaigns in different parts of the world and most of them are SMS based. SMS (Short Messaging Services) or Text Messaging is the most popular and commonly used form of mobile marketing services. Besides SMS mobile marketing also includes MMS (Multimedia Messaging Services), Mobile Internet, Mobile Video, Voice Messaging, Mobile Advertising, LBS (Location Based Services) and Mobile Social Networking.

Each category of mobile marketing services is meant to address a different marketing challenge. Not very many marketers and agencies are currently concentrating on MMS, LBS and Mobile Social networking. SMS is simply a text-based message sent to targeted mobile consumers. It is easy to use and is acceptable to all types of mobile phones.

Voice Messaging has tremendous potential as it provides a personalized human touch and consumers are already familiar with this functionality on their mobile phones. Voice can be used as a great customer engagement tool and to drive them to more advanced services like video, downloads, internet etc.

Voice messaging can have different applications – Mobile Advertising, Content Downloads, Streaming Content or Alerts, Viral Voice Application, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Voice Chat Services and Voice Search.

Mobile Marketing Services providers have different voice messaging options that can be well integrated in the current traditional, non-traditional and digital campaigns.

Voice services will help raise awareness and ultimately, educate consumers who aren’t familiar with mobile data services. Voice provides an easy means of access to an application where consumers can then be sent text messages, multi-media messages, or other access for the voice services.
What is the future of Mobile Marketing? Mobile Web is gaining traction: according to Nielsen Co., In the U.S., 16% of mobile phone owners routinely access the Internet from phones, while 57% use some kind of non voice service, such as sending messages.
Mobile Web, the future has arrived and the mobile phone companies are focusing on selling the new phones with the ability to access the Internet.

Please send your feedback and comments

Kriti Jaising
EkoBuzz

mobile marketing, mobile web, voice messaging, WAP sites