One of the first key pieces to good mobile marketing is ensuring your site renders well across all devices and browsers. After all, conversions on a small, difficult-to-navigate site are not easy to come by. There are two tools (more than that really!) you can use to test your site against mobile web standards.

The first is mobiReady from dotMobi. According to dotMobi’s site, “the mobiReady tool evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices and standards.” This tool is free and offers a score 1-5 as well as an analysis of your site’s performance on a mobile device.

mobiReady Test

The second tool is the W3C mobileOK Checker. This tool checks “the markup validity of web documents” in a variety of languages. These standards are set forth by W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium.

W3C Mobile Checker Test

mobiReady incorporates pieces from the W3C mobile checker and usually provides a very comprehensive overview of your site and any necessary changes. For a complete list of quality assurance tools recommended by W3C, visit their toolbox.

It seems as if mobile coupons are everywhere. There are apps, websites, and text-to-phone coupons. You can even access mobile coupons through the Google Local Business Center. You don’t need a smartphone to get them – a simple SMS campaign can deliver coupons to any device that accepts text messages. But the question remains – are mobile coupons a valid offering for your business?

While adoption rates still have room for growth, several studies say the potential is out there. According to a Yankee Group study, 73% of consumers say they would be interested in receiving a coupon, but only if it is free. According to an eMarketer study, two-thirds of female mobile web users said they would be interested in getting coupons on their mobile device. The recession could be a factor for growth, but another interesting factor could be the ability to provide personalized coupons at just the right time using location targeting. It’s when a brand can deliver a coupon while the shopper is in a small radius relative to the store, restaurant or entertainment that mobile coupons become enticing.

There are a variety of mobile coupons available but the two most common are alphanumeric and the bar code. Alphanumeric coupons are versatile and simple with everyone understanding the coupon and brands being able to redeem them efficiently. While bar code coupons are easy to create and helps prevent fraud, there are not a high percentage of retailers that can redeem them using current technology. These bar code ads are also served on the mobile web which restricts the number of users that have access.

Bar Code Coupon

With any new technology or idea also comes problems. In the case of mobile, technology has not quite caught up to the world of bar code scanning and reading. Some problems include

• Poor quality of camera phones;
• Smaller screen sizes and screen distortion;
• Multiple coupon code types require multiple readers;
• Not having instantaneous coupon redemption at the point of sale; and
• Increasing hardware investments and replacement costs

While the industry might not be there *yet*, getting involved and learning the market early will always put you one step ahead of the curve. Considering mobile coupons are expected to grow into a $66.9M industry by 2013, I think it best to start exploring now.

This week’s tip is really simple. Before diving into mobile, you need to determine two things – 1) is your target audience using mobile and if so, 2) how are they using it. Do they only make phone calls? Do they communicate by text message? Do they surf the web or play with apps? Do they only use iPhone or Android? Are they outside of the USA?

One of the best resources for stats and demographic information is the Pew Research Center. In an Internet, broadband, and cell phone statistics study conducted between November 30 and December 27, 2009, Pew found that 93% of adults between the ages of 18-29 own a cell phone. This means that you have a pretty good chance to find your audience somewhere near a mobile device.

But how do those 93% use their phone? 55% of American adults connect to the Internet wirelessly, either through WiFi or their mobile device. 32% of Americans have used a cell phone to access mobile Internet for emailing, to gather information or instant messaging. This number increased from only 24% at the end of 2007. Approximately 19% of Americans access the mobile web daily.

If your demographic audience involves teenagers (beware marketing to minors) then you might consider the use of SMS, or Short Message Service. A recent study study by Pew says that a typical American teenager sends more than 100 texts a day. Three-quarters of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones.

SMS marketing might not be just for teenagers, however. Messaging is available on approximately 98% of all cell phones whereas mobile web is only available on approximately 21% of cell phones. Video and photo are also popular across all age groups.

The above stats are just the tip of the iceberg for mobile. We haven’t even touched on mobile device usage or usage around the world where cell phone ownership has outpaced computers. As a field that is constantly growing and evolving, you must stay on top of the current trends and technologies to remain successful.

If Apple’s acquisition of Quattro didn’t firm up the idea that mobile is important to the computer giant, perhaps the new iPad will. This newest revolution in computing power will affect everything from display ads to e-commerce. With a large, interactive touch screen built on a portable mobile web platform, marketers can build a richer mobile experience through traditional outlets including search, email, and display as well as non-traditional outlets such as e-book readers and mobile applications.

Google came to the court prepared. A new Gmail interface built specifically for the iPad will allow users a two-pane view with conversations on the left and messages on the right. A You-Tube application comes built in allowing users to view videos in HD while reading and making comments. Local advertising will benefit from having an enhanced maps application using new high resolution imagery including a new terrain view. Users can search for local businesses and get directions on the spot.

Interested in paid search marketing? Because the iPad runs on a mobile platform, advertisers can target all mobile devices which will include iPad. Google developers are working on a solution to target the iPad only and will appear in the coming days when you want to “target only selected mobile devices.” Display advertising will see new ad units, however, because the iPad can’t run flash, display make take a step backwards.

So, it’s fancy but is it enough to revolutionize mobile? In our opinion, the iPad does have the capability of changing the face of mobile marketing. Even though you can’t make phone calls on the tablet, users can consume data and information on the go, increasing access and capability. Users can easily access the web and their favorite mobile applications to accomplish exactly what they want, when they want – and on a larger, easier-to-read screen.

What does this mean for marketers? With mobile, you could reach your audience on the go. With the iPad, you can do an even better job of it. This tablet brings local search to a whole new level – combining interactive, portable information with rich compelling media. Marketers will be able to think outside of the text ad or banner and start using books, movies, music and much, much more.

To fully understand mobile web, you have to look past traditional Internet. A user experience on traditional web is far different from a user experience on mobile web and these differences must be taken into account if you are to run a successful campaign.

The first obvious difference is audience. A recent study by Experian Simmons identified five unique user groups – Mobirati, Social Connectors, Pragmatic Adopters, Mobile Professionals, and Basic Planners. These segments offer insight into different kinds of demographics that can be coupled with traditional information such as gender and age. All these factors help determine where your target audience is and how likely they are to accept or reject your campaign. Don’t assume mobile web demographics are similar to web demographics – in fact they are very different.

The times when users access the mobile web and mobile social platforms differ between mobile and social web. Advertisers who run campaigns on Facebook or Twitter for traditional web, for example, will not reach the same audience as mobile web.

Because the smartphone audience is limited on a global scale, advertisers need to understand the demographics of smartphones verses other devices. Along with understanding device demographics comes a need to understand the individual devices themselves. Different interfaces, content formatting, download times and 3G verses 4G speeds will dictate the user experience.

All of these factors, along with many others, may cause users to perform certain tasks on mobile web that they wouldn’t consider doing on traditional web, and vice versa. Take the time to understand your audience, how the audience interacts with mobile web, and what devices the audiences interacts with.

You have probably heard the cliche a million times – practice what you preach. But it really does hold its own. This week our social media management team sat down and hashed out our social media service offering to make sure we are on top of the game. In doing so, we learned the best guinea pig to test new ideas and confirm our practices is on ourselves. Practice what we preach.

In practicing social media as a brand – as a company – we have first hand experience with a long list of social media. We understand the amount of effort and time it takes to set up a great profile. We understand how important it is to define goals and establish specific tasks to meet those goals. We understand the importance of measurement so our clients can justify to their managers or board why social is a good strategy.

Because we practice what we preach, we are constantly evolving and redefining our strategies. With this first-hand knowledge, we can properly educate our clients on social media and help them define their own goals and strategies. And all of this doesn’t come from reading a book or scanning the net – it comes from experience.

In a recent study published by InsightExpress, researchers found mobile ad campaigns were five times more effective than online campaigns.  This is probably why 97.8 percent of agencies see mobile advertising as a valuable part of the media plan and expect to see increases in mobile budgets across nearly all services, according to Mobile Marketer’s 2010 Mobile Outlook (which can be downloaded here).

While online campaigns still have their place in advertising, mobile campaigns were found to offer higher levels of engagement with more technical capabilities. When you couple that with a low clutter environment, you have a campaign that is more likely to increase brand impact, according to InsightExpress.

Right now, mobile web is the strongest mobile marketing tactic followed in close suite by SMS and mobile video.  Even thought mobile video is still fairly young, research showed it on par with SMS in terms of increasing brand awareness. According to the study, the following industries had a much higher response to mobile than online:

• Mobile entertainment purchase intent effect is four times higher than online entertainment intent.
• Mobile travel purchase intent effect is five times higher than online travel purchase intent.
• Mobile technology purchase intent effect is seven times higher than online technology purchase intent.
• Mobile automotive purchase intent effect is four times higher than online automotive purchase intent.
• Mobile retail purchase intent effect is eight times higher than online retail purchase intent.

As a company, we have been experiencing exponential growth across all of our departments over the past year. With that growth comes a need to effectively manage projects, resources, and of course, people’s time. Regardless of where your company falls on the size spectrum, the need to allocate time and budgets to projects are a necessity.  We tried a few time tracking solutions before finally landing on Harvest.

Harvest is definitely one of the nicest packages we found in terms of usability, interface, and integration with other applications. Businesses can track time, expenses and revenue, invoice clients, and more. There were a few key selling points on our end. First, the integration with Basecamp was much easier than other software we had tried. Being able to import projects and users made the companies move to a different tracking software much less painful.

Second, the desktop widget is simply amazing. Sleek and easy to use, employees just choose their client and project from a drop-down menu. Users only see projects they are assigned to and simply click the Start/Stop button to record time. Once they save, time sheets in Harvest are automatically updated.

Harvest does have a 30-day free trial but paying for the upgrade is well worth the cost if you are managing a large team with many clients. There are other solutions on the market that offer free versions such as Toggl or  Tick. Both of these solutions track time but do not come equipped with some of the more advanced features offered by Harvest. Of course, Harvest is not the end-all solution for every company either. You should review your companies needs, test drive a few solutions, and determine which one best fits your needs.

By now, you may have heard. Google is personalizing everyone’s search results. *GASP* Even if you are not logged in! For the average user this might prove useful. Who wouldn’t want to see sites they like at the top of search results? On the flip side, though, search results may start to look very similar despite what users search for.

Search Engine Land did a great piece on the new Google search results including how to disable these customizations. As an SEO Management company, we are not running around crazy screaming at Google just yet. To fully understand what this means for our clients, we are going to be paying close attention to our analytics data.  Is traffic decreasing? Are we seeing less conversions?

We are also going to spend time educating our clients on why it is important to disable personal customizations. If they are continuously searching around their terms and clicking on their links, obviously their results are going to start looking very good. The bad news? The same will also happen with their competitors.

Only time can tell the true impact of Big G’s decision. Unfortunately this feature comes standard and it is up to individual users to disable. The majority of internet users will never know this feature exists, let alone that it can be turned off. Is this the demise of SEO? Not at all – but it is going to make our work much more difficult.

As we learn more about the impact of personalized search results, we will post. So stay tuned…

Last week, Tarla wrote an excellent post on how to report your SEO success. Definitely give it a once-over if you haven’t already! For this weeks tip, I wanted to take those tips and push them one step further.

One comment (or question rather) I often hear is “Why?”  As Tarla mentioned, clients have every right to fully understand the campaign they are paying for and it is our job as the experts to make sure they are not left with unanswered questions.

After you have gathered the heaps and heaps of data and placed everything into nice charts and graphs, do your clients a favor and explain what that data dump actually means. Great! You ranked in position one in Google…so what? If you can begin to accurately answer all of those “so what” and “why” questions, then not only will you be providing much needed campaign insight to your client, but you will be proving the true value of your SEO campaign. By forcing yourself to answer these questions, you too will gain insight into your campaign that will help with optimization.

From the start of the campaign explain why certain keywords were chosen instead of others. How will these keywords impact traffic volume? What kind of search trends do you see with these keywords? Why do some keywords work and others do not? Of course, some of this might be subjective but, by using your handy dandy toolkit you should be able to give some kind of working estimate.

Instead of only showing one month’s position report, consider showing trends – or at the very least several months at a time. Is there a certain grouping of keywords that are trending better? Why would one downward trend of keywords not matter as much as a downward trend of another keyword? What does the overall performance look like over 3 months time, 6 months, or a year? Using these trends, your client can compare quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year and see the benefits in black and white (or color, depending on your print properties).

We know our industry. We’re the experts. If we can’t answer all of our clients questions then we are not providing high-quality service. In the perfect world, however, we will be able to answer all of those questions before our clients even ask.