What’s Hot in Mobile This Week

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If you didn't get the chance to see Mike Ricci on Big Brands on Small Screens at BlogWorld in NYC yesterday here are the key takeways from that talk:
  • Plan early! Assume your digital strategy includes mobile and tablet devices, and plan accordingly at the start of campaign planning.
  • Do your homework and follow best practices and a strategy framework – allow audience insights to drive your tactic and technology decisions.
  • Commit to executing a truly mobile strategy including a great user experience.
We'll have recaps from Justin Kistner and our partner Dennis Yu who were at BlogWorld too. Mike also shared with us what he is watching this week in mobile:

*Does this iPad2 finally have a formidable competitor? Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition review

*This just underscores how important mobile devices are to retailers ... better have a solid smartphone and tablet strategy and an effective means of measuring mobile traffic to enhance user experience. eMarketer: Tablets Beating Smartphones For Mobile Shopping, Commerce | Mobile Marketing Watch

*HTML5 offers a great deal of promise. Whether it will encourage brands to forgo the app store is a question that won't immediately be answered. But, fascinating to see what's being done in this arena. Can Modern Mobile Web Apps Loosen Apple's Grip on Tablet Publishing?

*Not only are smartphone sales up but it's pretty clear that together with tablets --they are becoming an effective platform in reaching the wealthiest Americans . 61pc of wealthiest Americans own smartphones: study - Mobile Commerce Daily - Research

*Driving the explosive growth of the mobile marketing industry. Smartphone Sales Up 85% Year-Over-Year

If you’ve got questions about mobile for Mike or topic you’d like to see covered here – share your thoughts with us below or any of our social channels (Facebook, Twitter or in our User Forums)

5 Key Tools for Effective Facebook Marketing

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You have a mandate to grow your presence on Facebook, but you're wrestling with the fundamentals: * How does Facebook marketing drive value? * What should it cost? * What strategies are most appropriate for your brand? * What kind of results should you expect to see and when? Last week at Webvisions, we shared the 5 key tools for effective Facebook marketing: Website integration, Pages, Ads, Apps, and Analytics. To be successful at Facebook marketing is to drive user engagement and to equip your power users to market on your behalf. Thus, smart advertisers leverage Facebook's ad and application platform to create endorsements that are kick-started with paid media and then spread virally. The takeaways from the session were: * Website Integration: Like buttons are an extremely powerful tool for marketers. They drive traffic and create audience segments that can power ad targeting. Tap Facebook's audience through smart integrations with you existing website. * Pages: Fan pages, place pages, event pages, and more offer different functionality for brands. Set up your brand presence to maximize the kind of value you need. Boost your post quality score to maximize the reach of the wall posts you publish on your pages. * Ads: How many people are in each demographic or interest category, how many fans do competitors have and why? Segment users into fans, friends of fans, and potential targets by tying in appropriate messages to each group. Image selection: Which images work and why. How to combat ad burnout and create an ad testing framework. Using connection targeting to grow the fan base quickly. * Apps: Apps are the landing pages for social campaigns. We'll discuss how to use reveal tabs and social widgets to drive fans on and off the Facebook page, with and without ads. Facebook contest rules: what is allowed and not allowed, plus which strategies drive sharing. Building your email list with Facebook Connect: collect user information without any forms. Other engagement apps: scoring, quizzes, nomination, badging, spin the wheel, face off, and others. In which situations do each of these apps perform best? * Analytics: What is the value of your Facebook fan page? How to use Facebook Insights and the Post Quality Score metric to measure engagement and troubleshoot problems. Facebook marketing in tandem with other marketing channels: how to attribute credit when there are multiple touches. Determining who are the the most influential fans and how to adjust campaigns to get more of them.

How The Telegraph Quickly Tweaked Its iPad Strategy by Learning From Its Customers.

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How can you be 100% certain that your mobile app is what your customers want? Launch it and watch how they actually use it. Join us for a webinar tomorrow to learn how The Telegraph in the U.K. followed their iPad app data to prove many of their strategic plans were correct, and refine the experience for continued growth and investment. Mark Challinor, the Director of Mobile will address:
  • The shifting landscape of media and the tablet opportunity for brands and publishers.
  • The Telegraph's early tablet strategy, and how they adjusted it in the first few months.
  • New insights about their tablet readers, and the differences from traditional PC readers.
  • How they used an understanding of their readers to improve the experience in their iPad app over time.
Following the webinar we'll have an open Q&A on our blog if you're not able to attend the webinar join us here with any questions you have.

Customer Insight : New uses and EU legislation for cookies in B2B Marketing

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In a recent article for B2B Marketing Magazine, a UK-publication dedicated to being B2B marketing information resource, focused on coping with new EU legislation. Conrad Bennett outlines the three steps you need to take: 1. Make sure you are aware of all cookies in use on your site The legislation includes both your own cookies, which will usually be first-party, and cookies set by any third party. As the site owner, you are responsible for how the cookies are being used and whether you conform to the legislation. 2. Check that your privacy policy is up to date Ensure you make it clear what information you are collecting, as well as the purpose and the method used. Provide information on how to reject or delete cookies. Install the option to opt-out. Make your privacy policy easy to find from every page. 3. Consider how you use cookies, and all variations of cookies It should not be necessary for you to stop using cookies, but you need to carefully consider their use, and make it very clear to site visitors that you are using them. Don’t be tempted to start using other methods of tracking such as Flash Local Shared Objects as these are no different from normal cookies as far as the Directive is concerned. Visit B2BMarketing Online for the full story from Alex Blyth who investigates "Cookies have been with us since 1998 ....why is everyone is suddenly talking about them."

Sponsored Stories and Getting Facebook Fans For Cents

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While most Facebook ads are lucky to get a 0.050% CTR, we've observed Sponsored Stories get as high as 0.400% which equates to 18 cents fans.

There are two types of Sponsored Stories for Facebook pages:

  • A Sponsored Like (Page Like Story) which targets friends of your fans.
  • A Sponsored Post (Page Post Story), which shows messages to existing fans.

If you have merged your page and place together or just a place page, you'll have an addition option of a Sponsored Check-In (Check-In Story) will show activity at your location.

So how are Sponsored Stories different than standard Facebook Ads? We recently ran a Sponsored Like ad campaign for Gordmans. It's highly targeted against the regions where they have their 68 retail locations, a female demographic, and interest terms for bargain hunting. The Gordmans brand motto of "Something Unexpected" resonates well with this audience. Incidentally, targeting fans of JC Penney, Kohls, and other competing department stores fared better than standard marketplace ads, but not as well as the one shown here.

Webtrends > Gordmans Stats from Sponsored Stories DECONSTRUCTING THE NUMBERS This campaign drove a 0.400% CTR on the first day, which fell by 45% within 48 hours to 0.220%. Ironically, the cost per click decreased over that time period, going from 26 cents to 15 cents. Therefore the eCPM (what we pay per 1,000 times we show the ad) went from over a dollar at the start to 33 cents at the end. Two days in, this ad drove 515 clicks for $76 and gained 418 new fans. That works out to 18 cents per fan and a click-to-conversion rate of 81%. Most brands are getting fans at between $2 and $10, the former via self-serve and the latter via premium ads. Thus, 18 cents for a new fan-- a person giving your brand permission to talk to them— is a great cost of acquisition.

The fall-off in CTR is common with all Facebook advertising. Ads burn out quickly because of the frequency people check Facebook, the lack of frequency capping (Facebook is well aware of this), and advertisers who follow the "set it and forget it" model of traditional paid search. WHY DOES THIS PERFORM SO WELL? The Sponsored Like is a relatively new ad unit, so consumers are getting used to the novelty. There are more curiosity clicks, as with any new ad type. The Sponsored Likes and Posts are also featured by themselves on a page, or if there are regular ads on the page, shown above those. Thus, higher placement also contributes to the higher CTR. Facebook doesn't yet report on average position, so we can only speculate on the position as it relates to CTR. TAKE AWAYS Net net, the key to success with Facebook advertising has been leveraging the endorsement of your existing fans. People are far more likely to click on events that are associated with what their friends are doing, as we demonstrated in earlier research. Expect more ad products from Facebook that leverage the social graph— making ads more like welcome messages from friends that interruptive, irrelevant spam. Check out more stories from our customers and see what they’re doing with social marketing!