Yaffe Tidbits

Building a Mobile-Friendly Website

Part 2 of our Mobile Marketing Series

Last week we dipped our toes into an ever-changing and exciting world of Mobile Marketing.  You enter Part 2 of the Mobile series, armed with knockout customer insights and a vocabulary full of jargon terms you already used to impress everyone at Monday’s department meeting.  The next step is to build a proper Mobile webpage, which will not only convert potential clients into paying customers, but increase positive association with your brand.

 

Seeing Through Your Customers’ Eyes
Access your website through a Mobile device, and see it through the customer’s eyes. As expected, the design and layout of what looks good on a personal computer doesn’t translate well into mobile experience.  If you’re squinting to see the font, so are your frustrated customers. If you’re having trouble navigating through the pages, your customers are contemplating checking out your competitor. If the page is still loading by the time you finish this paragraph, the customer already left.

Cashing In on the Insights
The insights you gathered are a blueprint for your website. After monitoring and analyzing your traffic through Google, you will know what mobile devices your customers are using. iPhone, Android, Blackberry or tablets have different  strengths and weaknesses, so it’s crucial you understand them. For instance: if your customers are primarily using an iPhone, keep in mind that it cannot run Flash (so don’t use it).  Android and iPhone use touchscreen navigation, while Blackberries might not.

Satisfying a Need
Looking at your Mobile Segmentation analysis, ask what NEED does your website satisfy for your customer? Depending on your insights you may arrive at different conclusions. If your customers frequently get lost while trying to find your location, they access your mobile website for directions or your phone number. If that’s the case, make sure that the first page that loads has your phone number and directions.   If they are looking for prices, make it brain-dead easy for them to find and buy items. If they’re looking for coupons, you can offer a special for signing on Foursquare or “Liking” you on Facebook/ following you on Twitter.  Satisfying their need is your first priority. Users who cannot find what they are looking for or are have trouble navigating through the store check-outs, often leave halfway through the transaction, never to return.

Keep it simple. I mean it.
Everybody knows your cool website has flashy graphics, ready-to-download case studies and well-written bios, but nobody wants to see it on their smartphone.  Slow connection speeds and pay-per-byte data plans will make the experience of going to your website expensive and unbearably slow. Keep the graphics to a minimum and focus on satisfying the customer’s needs.

Small Screens = Large Fonts
Unless your customers are rocking an iPad, they’ll have a hard time seeing anything written in regular font.  Make the font larger, and test it on mobile devices. Your mobile page should fit neatly into the screen of the hand-held device and spitting out easily-digestible content. Buttons, links and navigation tools should also be bigger to make navigation between pages easier (especially with touch-screen devices).

Click to Call
If you’re listing a phone number that the customer might want to contact you with, make sure that it’s “click to call.” Once the customer clicks (or touches) the phone number they will have an option to automatically dial it, eliminating the hassle to write it down(while driving).

Listen to Feedback
The biggest mistake you can make is ignore your customers while building a mobile website specifically designed for them. Involve them in the process by asking about and monitoring their mobile use. When the beta version of your website comes out, bring in a few loyal customers you trust and test it out. Observe and improve.

Deep Thoughts About Ending Paragraphs
If you haven’t found a mobile development expert within your department’—congratulations you are the new mobile web development expert of your department! As the newly-crowned mobile expert it is your responsibility to enlist support of digital advertising veterans to make this thing a reality (what about The Yaffe Group? I hear they’re pretty good). Stay tuned, next week brings the final installment of the Mobile Series. Use the internet-comment-machine below to post your mobile thoughts.

 Dmitri Pivtorak, Socially Mobile

Tidbits You Can Use From Brand Camp 2011

For the third year in a row, I attended Brand Camp University Detroit last week and gleaned a little inspiration, a bit of knowledge and connected with some new people along the way. Here are some of the best tidbits from the conference.

The Best Storyteller Wins. Hajj Flemings kicked off the day talking about storytelling. He asked if we ever knew someone who wasn't as qualified as others, but always seemed to get the job or make the sale? It's probably because they're a better storyteller. The fact of the matter is, when you're looking for a job or trying to sell your product/service, there are a lot of others out there that seem to have the same qualifications or product specs. What makes you stand out? It's your story and how you tell it. Does that person have a more compelling LinkedIn profile? Does that brand have a more compelling story?

People make emotional connections with stories. It's all about making yourself stand apart by finding what's different about you and telling that story well. And your story has to have all the elements of a good story. There has to be something that the protagonist overcomes, obstacles to be hurtled. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Or failure turned into triumph. Look at your brand proposition (whether you're the brand or your product or client is). How can you make a compelling story out of it.

Brainstorming Producing a Drizzle? Try Rolestorming. Josh Linkner introduced a concept I like a lot - the idea of rolestorming. The idea is to try brainstorming as a different character or person. In traditional brainstorming, people often hold back on their best ideas, either because they're afraid to share them or because they figure if it was a good idea someone else would have said it. The way to bring down this inhibitions, is to have everyone brainstorm as someone else.

Linkner said they were brainstorming something at ePrize and nothing much was coming out of it. Then they decided to brainstorm as if they were each a character from Mad Men. Suddenly the energy in the room went up and the ideas started flowing. Instead of thinking like yourself, you start thinking about how someone else would approach it. For instance, if you were rolestorming as Steve Jobs, you'd come up with big, grandiose and outlandish ideas. If you were rolestorming as Charlie Sheen, they might be crazy, even illegal ideas. Rolestorming as villains like Darth Vader or Dr. Evil are particularly fun, said Linkner. Sure some of the ideas are way too out there, but out of those ideas the kernel of something great can grow

If You're Starting a Business, You Need a Kitchen Cabinet of Advisers. Melinda Emerson, also known as the Small Biz Lady, talked about needing your own kitchen cabinet of advisers to help you make sure your business is set up to succeed. First, you need a supporter. This can be a spouse, a relative, a friend - someone who is going to give you emotional support and be your cheerleader. Secondly, you need a mentor. This is someone who can give you advice and show you the ropes. Then you need a CPA or a lawyer, who can make sure your business plan is tight and meeting sound business standards. The final two are an entrepreneur and a potential customer. These are all people who are already invested in your success and will be able to support you in different ways, giving you different perspectives.

GMC Trucks Have the Best Use of QR Codes I've Seen.  John Gasloli from GMC trucks showed us how they've completely integrated QR codes into the new GMC catalogs. They use them for engaging their customers with inspirational 4-minute documentary style videos. They also connect to some really great mobile tools via QR codes. For a more in-depth post on their program, read my post on the Social Media Club blog.

It's a Passion Story, Not a Product Story. If you want to build communities and conversations around your brand, it has to be tied to people's passions, not the product. Nobody wants to talk about brands, they want to talk about things they are passionate about. Your brand can be part of their passion stories though. Spike Jones spoke about this. For instance, he pointed out that you wouldn't think their would be a community built around WD40. Then Jones read from a post where a guy was talking about how he has been spraying it on his bait since he was a kid and how it's good to spray on wasp nests on his car, because it doesn't wreak the paint. It's stories about the guys passions that involve the brand. Jones also talked about orange-handled scissors. Nobody would be passionate about them. But people are passionate about scrap booking. That's where you could build passion stories.

Those are just a few of the things I took away from this year's Brand Camp University. How about you? Did you go? What made an impact on you?

Mike McClure, 3-Time Camper

Why There's a Direct Mail QR Code Explosion Happening Now

If you've looked at your mail recently, you may have noticed that much of the direct mail pieces (re: junk mail) you're getting have QR codes on them. You may be thinking, wow this is really catching on. Well, that may or may not be true. But, it's not the reason you're seeing so many of them. It's because the U.S. Post Office is basically paying advertisers to use them.

That's right, now through the end of August, the Post Office is giving bulk mailers a discount on the postal rate if they include a visible QR code on the piece. There are some rules. It does have to be relevant to the piece and not just some random link in order for the mailer to get the postal discount. It does seem that a lot of big direct mail marketers are taking advantage of it.

All this makes now a perfect time to test out its effectiveness with your own marketing. We have talked to our clients about whether or not to use QR codes for some time now. This presented a good opportunity for testing. For most of our clients, we used an "enter to win a prize" carrot to get customers to scan the code. Then, we sent them to the newsletter sign-up page on our client's site. Anyone who signed up for the eNewsletter during the time period of the promotion is eligible to win. That way, we could gather information on those who scanned in the code without having to spend money on creating a new landing page.

We also used a bit.ly code for the QR code and printed the non-bit.ly url below the QR code. That way we can track the number who went to the page using the QR code and how many typed in the url, giving us a good feel for how many understood or could use the QR code.

What about you? Have you or your clients taken advantage of this QR discount? And what has your experience with them been so far?

Mike McClure, ECD & QR-Curious

3 Things I Learned from the “Social Media is a Party” Strategy Panel

Last night at 5^th in Royal Oak, there was a party – a social media party! Sola Obayan, online marketing strategist, founded the monthly event called Social Media is a Party in order to provide a unique opportunity for individuals to learn about social media in a fun environment.

Each event begins with a panel discussion on a technology-related topic, and then a Q & A session is offered. An interactive portion also occurs where participants are able to get hands-on experience with a special social media related tool.

As I was able to attend the awesome event last night, here were the three biggest takeaways I got:

Stalk the competition

It’s a dog eat dog world out here and if you aren’t keeping up with the trends, you will get left behind. In order to stay abreast of what’s going on out there, it’s ok to look at what other people are doing. Getting ideas from other people to come up with something even bigger and better is always a great tool, especially for small businesses. Small businesses can learn from the big ones so they can one day be like the big guys.

Everything stays on the internet

This is something we all know and all are aware of but when someone says, “Trying to remove something from the web is like trying to remove urine from a swimming pool," it suddenly hits home and you become more aware of what you put out there. Your content should be clean and error free. It should also be a good representation of yourself and your business. Don’t click post until you are 100% sure about what you are about to show the world. BTW, that hilarious yet unbelievably true quote came from Jason Ryan, Detroit Sales Executive at Groupn and President at Vision Fuel Media.

Twitter Advanced Search

Ok, I’m late on this but I appreciate this being part of the Social Media is a Party presentation because I, as well as others, were able to learn how to use this amazing tool. It is a nice little gift from Twitter that allows you to filter your searches in order to find cool people to follow, find out what’s going on in specific subject areas, or specific places and more. There is so much you can do with Twitter Advanced search and so many things you can do with the results to help you or your company grow socially. For instance, you can search only people tweeting within a certain radius of your store. Check it out!

If you weren’t able to attend the event last night, I hope this post was as helpful to you as it was for me hearing about it. You can find out more about the event and the very knowledgeable panel of this month’s Social Media is a Party at socialmediaisaparty.com.

 

Jessica Mosley - Social Media Partier!

Web-Based Film Endorsements - Trend or Target Marketing?

Let me just start things off by saying I LOVE movie trailers and I always have! If done well, there¹s something so undeniably exciting and enticing about them. I¹ve been watching them closely my whole life. Some are creative teasers that spark your imagination and curiosity like wildfire. Some are basically the best parts of a movie with a popular song attached, tricking you into seeing a longer version of what you already saw in the trailer.

Other trailers are just a big name-dropping list of columnist endorsements praising the film. Even a few years back I noticed a new trend of trailers using the desperate hard-sell technique of imposing the movie title and release date throughout the entire trailer... WEAK SAUCE!

But, last week during game 4 of the NBA finals, I saw something entirely new on a movie trailer... A collective endorsement from a web site. The popular movie review site RottenTomatoes.com has developed a new "Certified Fresh" icon that is being used in the new film "X-men First Class." Stamped on at the end of their trailer, it serves as a seal of approval by meeting the "Rotten Tomatoes" criteria. If you are familiar with the web site, you know it¹s a reliable and accurate resource for reviews. "Rotten Tomatoes" offers reviews from both critics and audience, and they often vary. I found this interesting because the very same day I was talking with a few co-workers about movies and even looking over the "Tomatometer" with them to see results. I left work that day wondering if I had become too reliant on Rotten Tomato for movie reviews... then I saw the X-Men trailer that night with the seal and realized... it¹s not just me.

But the more I think of it, the more I wonder. Will this become a new standard in trailers? Will this approach be taken in other film genres? For example would "Funny or Die" start endorsing comedies of high ranking? Or is this just a one time thing? Maybe the marketing department that worked on the X-men trailer has a great understanding of their young tech savvy audience and realized that they would respect the RT-Certified Fresh Seal. Or maybe it¹s just because that younger, tech-savvy demo never reads the newspaper, so why reference newspaper film critics? Beats me? Should be interesting to see where the next web-based film endorsement comes from. If at all. What do you think? Do you use Rotten Tomato or other online sources for your film watching decisions?

Phil M. Buff - Yaffe Sr. Art Director

The Culture of FutureMidwest: A 1st-Timer's Perspective

I have experienced so much for only having been at The Yaffe Group for just two months and so far, one of my favorite experiences has been attending FutureMidwest. This was my first time at the conference and I was able to learn so much; from the predictions that Detroit will have a successful transit system in the coming years, and the idea that curation is the next big thing, right down to the overall culture of the conference.

When I walked through the doors of Eastern Market into the Quicken Loans pavilion for the first day of this two-day digital conference, I couldn’t help but notice how many people were so engaged in technology. I too pulled out my phone and began multitasking between tweets, Facebook updates and check-ins. After all, technology, fun digital things and social media were a huge topic at the FutureMidwest conference. After my first tweet, “#FMW11 with my Yaffe crew,” I followed the hashtag #FMW11 for the next two days and realized I was in the company of some pretty cool people.

Tech guys, social media folks and PR pros were among some of the professionals who attended FutureMidwest. Presenters and spectators both had great ideas and thought-provoking opinions. Everyone there seemed to be so knowledgeable at their craft, enhancing the outcome of the conference.

As FutureMidwest took flight, I began to observe my surroundings even more. Most people in the venue had an iPad, iPhone, Android or Blackberry in their hands. Of course most people now-a-days have one of these devices, but it was just awesome to see a room full of people with one of these savvy pieces of technology, and they were all on it at the same time. I also noticed a certain type of fashion throughout the room. I picked up that more than half of the male presenters wore button down shirts, jeans and a blazer. This certainly speaks for the culture of the conference in saying that people in this business are hip and trendy. One presenter even apologized for wearing a suit during his presentation, further proving that this is a pretty laid back, fun business. Women there were fashion-forward as well, wearing their hipster riding boots, well-fit jeans and trendy jackets.

Above all, since the conference was about learning, I definitely learned a great deal about the future of the Midwest, new technologies and advancements and creative ideas to use with clients. But I also learned that, as a new-comer to this particular professional world, I certainly fit the culture with my iPhone and riding boots.

How about you guys? Were there any first timers who enjoyed being in the presence of so many with the same interest?

Jessica Mosley - FutureMidwest Newbie & loving it

Future Midwest Photos by: Brandon Chesnutt

14 Fascinating Facts from Future Midwest

Besides the inspirations and new ways of looking at things, Future Midwest speakers throw out some very interesting statistics during their presentations. I thought it would be interesting to compile a few of them together. Here's some of the ones I heard at this year's conference.

 

 

1. Smartphone ownership will overtake feature phones by the third quarter this year.

2. 77% of consumers engage with brands online for incentives and ad offers.

3. 28% of consumers will provide an email address or engage with a brand online with promise of incentive.

4. Many online new businesses eliminate the middle man between consumers and the product/services they want.

5. The majority of colleges (85%) look at applicants info posted online (including social sites) before deciding to admit that student to their university.

6. 86% of iPad owners would prefer to put up with ads in order to get free content rather than paying a nominal monthly fee.

7. In Michigan, only 1.01% of the people are on twitter, compared to 47% on Facebook.

8. However, the ones who are on twitter have much larger followings/communities online than those just on Facebook.

9. Teens today send about 300 texts per month, but tend to make only three phone calls during that same time.

10. Over 700 billion minutes per month are spent on Facebook.

11. 70% of connected consumers have participated in a branded sweepstakes or contest.

12. The average consumer is exposed to over 3,000 messages per day

13. Email offers that have specific relevance to those receiving it get five times greater conversion rates than full list email blasts.

14. 47% of consumers consider their mobile devices to be essential to their lives and keep them within arms reach at most times.

There you have it, 14 fun facts I heard from the Future Midwest speakers this year. What other pieces of info did you hear that stuck with you?

Mike McClure, Playing digital trivia and #winning

Creativity and Curation at Future Midwest 2011

Last year I walked away from Future Midwest armed with new knowledge and inspired by passionate speakers. This year's edition provided more of the same. The conference took place last Thursday and Friday. Quite a few of the people here at Yaffe attended. We plan to get together soon and compare notes and what we gleaned and how we can use it for our clients. In the meantime, here's a couple nuggets I picked up from this year's speakers.

Creativity has become the currency of success. In his opening keynote address, Josh Linkner, former CEO of ePrize and author of Disciplined Dreaming, talked about creativity in whatever you do is the key to success these days. That's something I've believed for some time, but he brought it into clarity. He pointed out that while GM & Chrysler were taking bailouts and going bankrupt, Ford doubled down on innovation - and you can see how well they're doing now as a result of that. Faster and faster, new companies are knocking off old ones. The time has come for all of us to double down on creativity and innovation.

Conversely, Josh talked about the Creativity Crisis, highlighted in last July's Newsweek magazine. He pointed to legos - at one time they were about creativity - you made stuff, tore it down and made something new. Now, they come with huge booklets to build something like a death-star, that you build once and put on the shelf. The most alarming statistic he gave us: if you ask kindergartners if they think they're creative, almost all of them will say yes. If you ask recent graduates if they are, only 2% of them say they're creative.

Some of this lack of thinking we're creative has to do with only certain professions being seen as "creative" and some has to do with people being afraid to put themselves out there and speak their ideas out loud.As a leader, it’s your job to foster that creativity in all your staff. Foster your team into being a jazz combo rather than a structured orchestra where everyone ridgedly plays their part. Awaken curiosity. That is the building blocks of creativity.

Curation is the next big thing. A number of speakers spoke about curation. Oliver Starr, of Pearltrees, defined curation as the selection of, care for and presentation of whatever group you are curating. Aggregation is not curation. Curation needs to be organized - more like a museum than a warehouse. Almost everyone is a curator of some sort and it's changing the way we view the web.

Curation helps you better find what you really want. Search engines are starting to break down, are easily gamed, have too much content and are controlled by the few search giants. Curation dramatically improves your content by adding context, opinion, nuances and other factors that make the content more relevant to you. It allows you to produce meaningful insight without having to depend completely on your own content. And if you make it easy for your audience to curate the content you create, you become a part of a larger conversation.

Oliver went on to list a number of tools you can use to aid in curating the content you find interesting or relevant. One very interesting one, was his own Pearltrees tool that allows you to create your own content tree around the factors that are relevant to your brand or site. Embedding that tree into your site also adds to your SEO juice. Other tools he mentioned include Storify, BagTheWeb, CuratedBy and KeepStream.

Michael Morin, EVP & Lover of Knowledge

Mobile Technology and Healthcare: a Love/Hate Relationship

When it comes to the latest mobile digital technology, healthcare is about 10 years behind the rest of the world, but it's growing fast. That statement is according to Jason Joseph of Spectrum Health Systems, who spoke at Mobile Monday Detroit last week.

There are several reasons healthcare lags in mobile technology. For one thing, there are security issues. You can't have private patient information traveling over an unsecured internet channel. So, even texting that type of information from nurse to doctor in a hospital needs to happen over the hospital's secure intranet. And retrofitting some of these big, old hospitals with their own wifi is very expensive. Also, healthcare is not an integrated enterprise. There are often as much as six different silos in one hospital, each with their own system.

However, there are great opportunities to help patients and doctors, streamline processes and improve service using mobile healthcare or mHealth, as it's called. Doug Zeller, of Logic Solutions talked about some of the amazing apps that have been created for mHealth purposes.

One app for doctors has 3D models of all the body's systems. These renderings have been approved by the American Medical Association as being anatomically correct. So, docs can use them to see exactly what goes where and what they're looking for.

Another app, called JEMS, connects cameras inside the operating room to the mobile devices of experts not in the room. This includes the cameras that go inside the patient. The app allows the doctors to have a real time consult with an expert who could be down the hall or in another country, during the surgery. Of course, this all has to be encrypted for patient privacy issues.

The third speaker of the day, Caston Thomas of Voalte Inc, talked about an iPhone that had two leads you could connect from the phone onto your chest and get an EKG, right on the app.

Those were just a few of the mHealth breakthroughs discussed. Overall, it was estimated that apps like these have resulted in billions in health systems savings already. And Mobile monitoring technologies are estimated to save almost $200 billion over the next 25 years. So, healthcare may hate the regulations and issues that have put them behind the curve in adopting these technologies, but they seem to be coming on strong and should love both the benefits and savings of mHealth moving forward.

If you're in the healthcare arena, what mobile technologies are you using? How do you see your world changing over the next decade?

Mike McClure, healthily mobile, thank you.

Looking For Inspiration: Watch Future Midwest - The Video

The Future Midwest conference is this coming this Thursday and Friday. As I've mentioned in a previous post, a lot of folks from our office are attending. Based on the past two years, we'll learn new things at this conference and be inspired to develop new ways to help our clients.

As a primer for those of you who haven't attended a Future Midwest before, here's the video they kicked off the first evening's keynote address with. It's both inspirational and informative. Enjoy.

 Future Midwest 2010 Opening Video

I hope to see you at the 2011 edition!

Mike McClure - pumped up for knowledge & inspiration