By Rafael Lourenco, EVP,

Now’s the time to make sure your store’s mobile experience and checkout are ready for the holidays. Shopify reports that more than half of all Thanksgiving 2017 e-commerce orders came from mobile devices, but cart abandonment is still higher on mobile than desktop. And CNP fraud attempts tend to increase during the holidays. How can you make your mobile site welcoming to holiday shoppers, but not fraudsters? Three key areas to focus on now are how quickly your store’s pages load, how convenient your mobile checkout process is, and how well your fraud program can handle holiday sales peaks.

Speed up your store’s page load times

In today’s m-commerce environment, simply having a responsive website is no longer enough. Mobile users expect the sites they visit to load almost immediately and they’re quick to abandon sites that don’t. Think with Google found that 40% of shoppers will leave a site that takes more than three seconds to load on their phones and nearly 80% won’t shop again with a store that provides a poor mobile experience. And that’s on a typical day.

On a peak sales day, like Black Friday, even major retailers face site slowdowns or even crashes due to heavy traffic. So now is the time to review your site’s performance, load times, and capacity to not only keep visitors from leaving before your pages load, but also to prevent crashes from sending customers to your competitors. To do this, you’ll need to talk with your IT team and your hosting service about how you can speed up your site and stay online even when a crowd of customers is visiting your store.

To get a quick snapshot of your store’s mobile page speed, Think with Google offers a Speed Scorecard and Impact Calculator. You can use the scorecard to compare your site speed to your competitors and you can see how small improvements in speed can yield more sales.

Reduce mobile cart abandonment

More people turn to their phones when it’s time to buy than ever before, which is why m-commerce is projected to have a CAGR of 24% between now and 2023. Despite this trend, the cart abandonment rate hovers around 75%, in part because many consumers give up when it’s time to check out. Review your shopping and checkout processes now to ensure they’re as friction-free as possible for mobile users.

Mobile shoppers tend to shy away from data entry on small screens whenever possible, and many are accustomed to 1-Click checkout on Amazon, which requires no data entry at all. To keep these shoppers from leaving your site and making their purchases from a competitor with a more convenient checkout process, eliminate customer registration requirements and focus on the must-have data—billing, shipping, and payment information.

Avoid holiday fraudsters and fraud-related bottlenecks

Retail e-commerce fraud is still rising, according to the 2018 LexisNexis True Cost of Fraud report, and the cost of fraud is higher for digital and physical goods sold through the mobile channel than for other retail channels. The report found that each dollar of m-commerce fraud costs digital-goods merchants $3.29 on average, compared to $2.78 per dollar of fraud for physical goods and $2.54 for retailers without a mobile channel.

Meanwhile, false declines ranged from 18% to 28% of orders, with digital goods retailers at the higher end of the range. These rejections of good orders are costly over the long-term, because many falsely declined customers won’t return. These facts are concerning year-round, but holiday sales peaks can make false declines increase if merchants don’t have enough capacity to manually review flagged orders. Overwhelmed retailers may be forced to choose between slower order screening, more completed fraud, or more false positives.

Take a look at your historical fraud rates by channel, including peak-season rates, to see how often your mobile channel has been targeted compared to your other channels. It’s also wise to review your false decline rates to see if they’ve spiked during past holiday seasons. If your mobile channel has been heavily targeted by fraudsters or has had more false declines or completed fraud during previous sales peaks, it’s time to upgrade your fraud prevention program and consider outsourcing your manual fraud review. Having outside experts take on this task during sales peaks can keep order decisions on pace while preventing fraud and reducing false declines.

By making your store easy to use on mobile devices, keeping your checkout process simple, and bolstering your peak-season fraud protection program, you can engage the growing number of consumers who prefer to shop on mobile, during the holidays and beyond. You’ll also be in a better position to fight fraud and keep your good customers year-round.

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Rafael Lourenco is Executive Vice President at ClearSale, a Card-Not-Present fraud prevention operation that protects e-commerce merchants against chargebacks. The company’s flagship product, Total Guaranteed Protection, is an end-to-end outsourced fraud detection solution for online retailers. Follow on twitter at @ClearSaleUS or visit http://clear.sale/

The post How Ready Is Your Mobile Channel for the 2018 Holiday Shopping Season? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by By Merilee Kern, MBA.

Nobody starts out automatically caring about your products or services. They care about how you can make a difference in their lives.  No matter the context, all relationships begin with a “handshake moment,” whether literally or figuratively—those first few introductory moments that reveal a great deal about the character of the person standing before you. Why should company interactions with current and prospective customers or clients be any different?

Sure, “content marketing” has been a crucial ingredient impelling the evolution of traditional marketing into today’s more personalized approach, bridging the gap between cookie-cutter TV, radio, and print mass marketing to highly customized digital and social media-driven communications. Even so, today’s more personalized digital communications have plenty of challenges, all too often falling on “deaf ears” and “blind eyes” amid a marketplace becoming highly desensitized to the glut of advertising and marketing messages its exposed to any given hour of any given day…year in and year out.

So, how can brands can make and maintain meaningful connections and create a lifetime value with customers in ways that’ll set them apart in a “noisy,” increasingly jaded and discriminating marketplace? How can businesses tell an authentic story so as to foster maximized marketplace engagement and breed brand loyalty?  According to Kevin Lund, author of the new book, “Conversation Marketing: How to be Relevant and Engage Your Customer by Speaking Human,” the proverbial key to the Kingdom is for companies, no matter their size and scope, to simply “speak human.”

In this new book  Lund, who’s CEO of T3 Custom—itself a content marketing firm helping brands learn to “speak human” and supercharge ROI reportedly by as much as16-times, provides an in-depth analysis of what’s required to succeed in today’s modern marketing era, which he’s aptly coined the “Conversation Age.” Specifically, he details key principles critical for driving the more evolved conversation marketing approach, which can help companies amplify results on multiple fronts.

According to Lund, “Those who are wildly successful at conversation marketing understand the strategy is not simply about propagating online content and sharing through social media accounts. Rather, it’s a disciplined approach to communicating with a target audience in a way that tells a simple, human story that will educate, inform, entertain and, most importantly, compel customers in a way that fully captures mind–and-market share through messaging that truly resonates. Companies must stop talking ‘at’ their customers and, instead, connect with them by simply speaking human. And, it’s far beyond that initial ‘handshake moment—it’s through a constant stream of congenial engagements with each individual consumer, or the marketplace at large, based on trust and performance.”

Think it’s complicated to be an adept conversation marketer and speak human to your constituents? Think again! Below are eight of Lund’s tactical strategies from the new book that can help companies large and small become more engaging and relevant with customers, and the marketplace at large:

1. Earn Attention

To gain attention in today’s crowded marketplace, it’s prudent to do the opposite of what most everyone else is doing. That means don’t deliver clichéd, boring content that’s written for robots—search engines or otherwise—and for generic consumption. It’s unsustainable for you and your brand as well as frustratingly futile for the audience you’re trying to reach. Instead, speak human by engaging your audience with eye-level language in order to gain their attention and set your brand apart. Learn to use language that educates and entertains the audience.

Earning attention starts with asking yourself what you and your company are passionate about and conveying that genuinely in that all-important “handshake moment” of first contact—online or otherwise. Assume you’re meeting the person on the other side of the screen for the first time. Think of what you can say that’s new, memorable, a standout, and jargon-free. Also, understand and adapt to your audience. You wouldn’t talk the same way to an aging Baby Boomer as you would to a teenager.

2. Tell a Story

How do you hold someone’s attention long enough to break down a topic and engender his or her trust, but also in a way that’s unforgettable and leaves that person feeling more knowledgeable than before? The answer lies in good storytelling.

Good conversations are filled with good stories and anecdotes. But be mindful that the hero of the story isn’t your company or its products, but rather how your product or service will have a positive impact in your customers’ lives. If you can elicit an emotional response, you’re onto something.  Some standout companies have figured this out. Apple’s story, for example, isn’t about devices. It’s about innovation and how our lives are being changed for the better with Apple technology in them. Learn how to make your story short, to the point, and easy to share online.

3. Stay Humble

Being humble begins with letting go of ego—that instinctual part of the psyche that screams for a marketer to make too much noise about products or services and brag about themselves. Sigmund Freud developed a psychoanalytic theory of personality he coined the “id,” and marketers often tap into their own ids by telling the world how great their company and its products are, and how great a potential customer will be for buying them. The id operates based on the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification of needs.

In conversation marketing, speaking human dictates that your customer’s needs, not your own, are top priority. Your audience wants to know what you can do for them, and that means stop talking about yourself and drop the megaphone. Instead, embrace a different approach that thoughtfully and humbly explains why you do what you do and why it can make a difference in someone’s life instead of focusing on your bottom line. Stop beating them over the heads with the fabulous features and benefits of your products. Instead, tell stories that inspire and resonate with their own life experiences.

4. Pick Your Party

Equally important to the “how” of your conversation is the “where.” It should all fit seamlessly together and feel natural and organic in that moment.  Part of learning how to talk to your audience and engage them in any form of conversation is deciding where to talk to them in the first place.

This means doing the footwork to learn where your potential customers gather, and meeting them on their own ground. Where do your potential customers hang out on social media? What are they saying, and what challenges are they discussing that you can compellingly weigh-in on? Easily available research tools can help you join the right conversation at the right time and in the right place with consistency.

5. Be Relevant (on a Molecular Level)

True listening is about far more than hearing words. It’s also about fully understanding the message and concepts being imparted—whether they’re needs, wants, desires, or even complaints. Being relevant means making sure you’re talking about topics that are of sure interest to your audience, and that’s often achieved by addressing their pain points. Before a marketer can aptly communicate and speak to such pain points, however, he or she must first hear what the prospect, customer or marketplace has to say. It can be dangerous, expensive and ultimately futile for companies to presume to inherently know what should be said in conversation marketing.

6. Start the Conversation 

How do you gain audience attention in a way that prevents you from just being part of the noise? It’s no longer a question of whether you should insert yourself into the world of content marketing. It’s a matter of when you’re going to start talking, what you’re going to say, and how you’re going to say it. One good approach is to base that initial conversation on your unique value proposition for the given audience.

It’s important to always remember that your target audience doesn’t care about you. They care what you can do for them. If you’ve done your research, you’ll be familiar with their pain points and better prepared to offer answers that address their needs. Don’t be a “me-too” marketer who dishes out the same information as everyone else. Instead, develop a unique angle with a thought-provoking headline that sparks attention—even better if it disrupts conventional thinking. In addition, know your topic inside out before communicating, and make sure any other people handling your communications are experts in the field. You don’t want to risk sounding trite or inaccurate.

7.  Stop Talking

Unlike a monologue, a conversation is a two-way endeavor. Knowing when to stop talking is as important as knowing what to say and when to say it. It’s the only way to truly get a sense of what your audience (or your potential customer) is thinking in reaction to what you’ve offered, and whether to stay the course in your strategy or tweak it on-the-fly. Once you hear preliminary reaction, you can respond to questions and concerns before moving ahead or otherwise course-correct as needed. Also bear in mind that what your audience isn’t saying can be just as impactful as what they do convey.

Once your message is out, take a step back and “read the room.” That could mean monitoring online response to your blog post or using various tools to learn which of your resources are drawing attention. Are people engaged? Are they adding to the conversation? What should you do if the feedback is bad? Don’t consider a negative response or lack of response necessarily a failure. Instead, see it as an opportunity to adjust, make changes, and perhaps find ways to better meet your audience’s needs.

8. Ditch the Checklist

Before every takeoff, airline crews verbally work through an extensive checklist. There’s a detailed set of tasks to cover before the plane can even push back from the gate. However, in an ebb and flow conversation marketing context, this adherence to a certain protocol can pose limitations. Indeed, one problem with simply sticking to a checklist is that a content marketing strategy will never evolve with the times or differentiate itself in any way from what everyone else is doing.

Successful marketers endeavor to open new horizons. They take a step back and ask bigger questions about themselves and their companies’ ultimate goals, as well as what sort of new challenges their audience or customers might face over time–how to aptly adjust when needed.

Lund also suggests finding sources of inspiration. “Explore some of the successful content marketing plans that showed passion, ditched the tired old language, zeroed in on what customers needed, and started a real conversation with the market,” he urges. “Then scrutinize your own strategy and see where it might be lacking, so that you can continually refine your own checklist.”

The post Speak Human: 8 Conversation Marketing Hacks, Game-Changers appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Fernando Saiz, CMO at Tappx.

The rewarded video ad format is adored by the mobile gaming and advertising worlds. We now finally have an ad format that satisfies the needs of advertisers, publishers and gaming audiences. Rewarded video ads provide gamers with a reward for watching the entire length of a video ad. In the mobile gaming world, this format works extremely well in mobile games. For developers, rewarded video ads offer the potential to increase in-app purchases and lengthen play session times, therefore increasing loyalty and retention. Also, they provide advertisers with advantages that stimulates higher ROI and engagement levels. Finally, many users express greater amenability for watching rewarded video ads over any other ad format.

Can rewarded video ads help drive in-game purchases?

Imagine if you’re playing a game, and you’ve just finished an end-of-level boss with a life remaining. Following this level, you watch a rewarded video ad and you’re then given an extra life. This method of non-disruptive advertising gives players the chance to extend play time, without hassle or interruption to game play. Extending the amount of time spent in a game is perhaps the single most important way players become more invested in games, thus building loyalty. This then translates to increased gaming session times and retention. As players invest more time and energy into their games, this leads to greater levels of excitement, therefore increasing the probability that they will conduct in-game purchases. Also, developers can receive a higher CPM for rewarded video ads than static ads. In addition to earning more, developers benefit from displaying ad formats that positively contribute to the overall user satisfaction within a game.

Facebook commissioned mobile games research has reported that mobile gamers are a staggering 18% more likely to conduct an in-app purchase when served a rewarded video ad, versus non-choice based advertising. See the May 2017 report here.

The key point is to build the right rewards, and to then decide when are the optimum moments to serve rewarded video ads, and balance the timing for delivery of ads during gaming sessions. The main objective is to provide gamers with a taste of all the benefits of a game, whilst earning a remnant revenue. Don’t let these ads eat into your main source of revenue, so be considerate about your content and it’s delivery times.

Constantly review your metrics and decide whether or not to deploy rewarded video ads. What’s the conversion rate from player to paid player? What’s your ARPDAU? Or what are the valuable items that remain unsold and should be promoted? Rewarded video ads can serve as a research A/B machine for testing new features and getting acceptance from your current ones.

How do Rewarded Ads benefit the Advertiser?

The key thing for advertisers to note is that users choose to engage with rewarded video ads. Therefore, the user is engaged with the video and is incentivised to complete watching the video ads. What’s more, the video is guaranteed high viewability. The developers also have the incentive to place as many rewarded video ads as is practical, such as between game levels or during loading screens. This provides the potential for repeat ads within the game, thus promoting brand recall. Some of the key benefits which rewarded video ads offer advertisers include high viewability, engagement, and completion rates, as well as increased brand recall.

Why are users excited about rewarded video ads?

In one survey done, almost 80% of gamers expressed interest for watching rewarded video ads in exchange for in-app benefits. For mobile gamers, these benefits could be in the form of in-app virtual money, extended gameplay life or other in-game assets. All of these examples enhance the quality of the user gaming experiences, which makes gamers increasingly happy. In the best case scenarios, rewarded video ads can deliver rewards that extend the user’s play-time, which benefits both the gamer and the developer.

Secondly, rewarded video ads work best when they give the user the option to engage with them. This way, the user feels that they themselves have made the decision to exchange their time for watching an ad for a reward. Game apps which provide the option to pay or watch ads receive a 10-15% boost in user reviews.

The proportion of mobile users that does conduct in-app purchases is relatively quite small, so it’s advisable to deploy rewarded video ads to convince users about the benefits and value of additional (paid) game features. A comprehensive survey conducted by Facebook reported that 71% of mobile gamers prefer to ‘pay’ for in-game content by watching video ads. The same survey reported that almost half of US gamers prefer rewarded video ad over any other ad format. This all clearly shows that rewarded video ads are hugely popular and effective, as they expose players to paid in-app features, they assist in increasing retention, LTV and more importantly, revenues.

The post How Rewarded Video Ads Can Drive In-Game Purchases appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

How Useful are Responsive Mobile Sites?

Responsive mobile sites should be the cornerstone of any good marketing strategy. While a solid desktop website can be professional, studies show that the number of visits on mobile between 2016 to 2017 rose from 57 per cent to 63 per cent, the mobile bounce rate dropped from 52 per cent to 47 per cent, and time spent on websites from a mobile grew from 40 per cent to 49 per cent. Responsive mobile sites not only give credibility to a business, but unresponsive sites are the fastest way to turn off potential customers. Responsive mobile sites differ from a mobile-friendly site, which simply means it looks good on mobile. Responsive mobile sites create a seamless experience for mobile users, that they would generally expect on a desktop. Easy navigation and a customer journey focused map of the site means that customers can be directed where you want them to go while also fulfilling the reason they came onto your site. The user focused environment created by the responsive website will also aid the business in its SEO efforts for optimizing the website. SEO in recent years has become crucial in how a business drums up customers. Not only is the end product of the website important, but the breadcrumbs left for customers to find the website also plays a large part in how successful it is.

How Useful is On-Site Content?

Content is one of the biggest marketing buzzwords of recent years, so it stands to reason that there is some importance to it. On-site content not only further shows a customer what your brand is about and what your key marketing messages are, but it also helps position you as an expert in your field through the blog. Infographics and blog posts can be used as references for customers and other likeminded businesses. The more you know about a topic, especially one you purport to be helping a customer with, the more likely they are to choose your business over a competitor. For example, chocolate spread brand Nutella have a segment of their website dedicated to recipes using Nutella as a key ingredient. Wink Bingo offer information on bingo terminology, how to play various styles of bingo, and other tidbits of information on their blog. Construction game brand Lego have a variety of videos on their site showing how the finished models look and how they can be used. Clothing retailer Topshop has a section of their website devoted to articles and blogs about style trends and what people should be wearing. Companies can use their on-site content for SEO purposes too, ensuring keywords that would be searched for are delivered in a way that adds meaning for the customer.

How Useful is Social Engagement?

One of the biggest coups for marketing has been social media. Social media allows marketing messages to be sent out cheaply with a potentially hugely-wide reach. With many different platforms – from Instagram for personal trainers, to Pinterest for wedding planners – businesses can ensure they are showcasing their products and services, sharing their on-site content through posts that deliver meaning and drive engagement. Social engagement can even take on a life of its own if a post goes viral or is linked up with an influencer who can help drive further engagement for the brand. Social engagement can also involve a paid element and entire campaigns can be developed with an objective in mind. These can work effectively to ensure the messages are delivered to consumers, goals are achieved, and the money spent on doing so is far less than what may have been done through more traditional methods of marketing such as print advertisements, billboards, or TV spots.

Should There Be a Holistic Approach to Marketing?

While each approach has its strengths, the only true way to ensure a strong marketing strategy is to implement all aspects. Responsive mobile websites work in tandem with referrals from social media. 61 per cent of people in the United States view social media from their mobile phone, meaning that’s where they are likely to see the link to your website. Complete the customer journey by directing them from the social media with a clever and engaging strategy to the responsive website. If both are engaging and working well enough, they should create a positive business profile in the mind of the customer. This can be furthered through the use of useful and informative content. Good uses of text and graphics, not to mention video, can ensure that any doubts potential customers may have are obliterated and they choose your business to complete their transaction.

When it comes to marketing, there is no single fix solution for a good strategy. While a responsive mobile site – and desktop site – customers get a taste for your business and your professionalism and ability to fulfill their needs. With on-site content, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and provide valuable information to keep the customer happy. With social media marketing you can disseminate your marketing messages further and wider and for little cost. Ultimately, applying all three strategies at once is the best way to create a solid and effective marketing plan.

The post What is the Most Effective Tool in Mobile Marketing? appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post from Alani Setalsingh, a Mobile Strategist and Business Analyst at Propelics.

Agile is one of the biggest buzzwords in business today. Companies are either starting to utilize Agile methodology as a means to run their businesses or are beginning to explore how to properly “be Agile.” Agile methodology helps business groups show progress and results more quickly and effectively than in the past. Although many companies confidently claim to be Agile, after review it becomes clear that not only are they not properly implementing Agile, but in fact they are using this methodology as a way to justify indecisiveness. Companies need to understand that if a business process is working well, then the entire business may not require adjustment. Many successful companies don’t use Agile yet will continue to be successful-even when compared to Agile businesses.

Agile is often described as “a process based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile methods or Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.” 

Agile methodology is a great option if implemented properly. But oftentimes it can lead to longer development cycles and out of scope project specifications that only complicate tasks. It’s not enough for a company to simply decide to use Agile. They must also invest in training their employees to properly understand the benefits. Companies must also be willing to try new tools, invest in training and implementation, and take the time to give the methodology a chance by starting small (versus altering the entire company). That’s not to say these companies have no chance of success once they’ve given Agile a chance and failed, but there are necessary steps and points to keep in mind if being effectively Agile is the end goal.

Though this is only a start, the following points will certainly help companies better utilize all the advantages of an Agile methodology:

Firstly, companies must be willing to try new tools specifically designed to facilitate a more Agile approach. Tools like JIRA exist to better help companies plan their projects and more effectively track things like releases, sprints, bugs and tasks.

Secondly, companies must be willing to train employees on Agile and ensure they know how to implement the lessons they have learned. Without training, people will create their own versions of agility. Sometimes these may work, but more frequently they will be time consuming and costly for the overall business.

Lastly, it is of utmost importance not to give up after your first failed agile project. Process changes take time for people to accept and fully utilize. Rather than giving up, learn from the mistakes made and work to limit these issues in the future. Granted, this is a lot easier said than done. But with the right mindset, many businesses can reap huge benefits and rewards from going Agile.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alani Setalsingh is a Mobile Strategist and Business Analyst at Propelics. Alani earned his MBA from Suffolk University and has guided numerous Fortune 500 Companies on their internal mobile apps programs. Alani helps clients redefine their business processes to support a fertile and robust mobile environment. He is most passionate about Healthcare Mobility and all the myriad benefits it can bring to patients and caregivers alike.

The post Using Agility as an Excuse for Indecisiveness appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post to MMW from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark, a Toronto-based explainer video agency with a focus on ROI.

The consumption of social media has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade. Instagram, the mobile social network that Facebook acquired for one billion dollars in 2012 is now worth hundred times more. In terms of monthly active users too, this social media platform has grown from 500 million in June 2016 to one billion two years later.

This dramatic rise in social media consumption has contributed to the growth of a new breed of influencers and micro-influencers. These are social media users with a large following of users who are interested in specific niches.

For instance, a pastry maker who posts pictures of their desserts is bound to gather a following of users interested in pastries. Similarly, a gym instructor posting videos of their training sessions is likely to gain a following of fitness enthusiasts. Using these users to promote your bakery or fitness equipment is a great way to not only reach a targeted audience, but also win the trust of these prospective customers.

At the outset, influencers are much like celebrities who endorse brands in exchange for money. But as the industry has grown, we are witnessing a noticeable evolution in the way the industry works.

Size is not everything

One of the most noticeable evolution in this space is the follower size commanded by an influencer. Traditionally, influencer or celebrity based endorsements have relied on the overall authority commanded by the endorser. Not surprisingly then, the highest paid athletes or celebrities are often those with the biggest following. Their endorsement carries more value than one made by a low ranking celebrity.

With influencer marketing however, the focus is not on the number of followers, but how niche the following is. Marketers routinely advise their clients to seek influencers with less than 5000 followers or so.

There are two reasons why this is the case. Firstly, such influencers have a high percentage of followers that meet a brand’s target group. Consequently, your campaign is likely to reach a larger chunk of users who are prospective customers. Compare this with a celebrity like Kim Kardashian who enjoys several millions of followers who do not all fall into the same demographic.

Secondly, such influencers also offer better ROI. This is because at a low follower count, influencers tend to be less demanding and offer a more thorough review of your product. This is likely to bring greater exposure to your brand and consequently higher conversions.

Focus on conversions, not branding

Influencer marketing is essentially the social media equivalent of celebrity advertising. The focus in its early days was brand building and media exposure. Not surprisingly then, some of the biggest social media influencers were also those who were media celebrities. However, the objective of influencer marketing has seen a significant shift in recent times.

Like most other forms of digital advertising, influencer marketing today is highly monitored for conversions. One ‘Psychology of Following’ study of over 4000 consumers published by Olapic shows that over 31% of these respondents had purchased a product based on a social media influencer post. This also follows the pattern of other similar studies in the past that showed that an overwhelmingly large number of users rely on social media recommendations while making a purchase.

Focusing on conversions is a better way to gauge the success or failure of an influencer marketing campaign. This is particularly vital for micro-influencer campaigns where brand exposure and visbility is not of much consequence. Measuring the conversion rate also enables a marketer to benchmark an influencer marketing campaign vis-a-vis other forms of digital marketing like paid advertising.

Personalized campaigns

Traditional endorsement campaigns that had branding as their sole objective did not deviate much from their core messaging. But with modern micro-influencing campaigns, marketers have begun experimenting with both influencers and the message that they want to market.

For instance, brands may hire several micro-influencers, each with their own niche following, and market various products and offers to these distinct audiences. There are a few advantages to this strategy. If you are launching a new line or are not sure about the most effective positioning statement for your brand, it makes sense to experiment with different ideas in silos to measure and identify the best path forward for the product.

More importantly, the turnaround time to measure conversion rate is pretty short with micro-influencers. Brand building can take several months, if not years. Small businesses with bootstrapped budgets may have well depleted their marketing budget before they can realize the ROI from their campaigns.

While these changes have made marketing using influencers much more palatable to the bootstrapped marketer, this is not to say that traditional influencer campaigns do not have a place in the industry today. Even on social media, celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Selena Gomez continue to be the biggest influencers. They continue to be popular for brand building campaigns and for those products that do not need a niche audience group.

But at the same time, such campaigns are increasingly being used by startups and small businesses to market their wares and build a following for their brand and business.

The post Op-Ed: The Changing Face Of Influencer Marketing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is a guest contributed post by Keith Petri, Chief Strategy Officer, US, at Screen6

Ad tech is struggling to transition to a state of full maturity, and that’s largely due to the continued acceptance of half-truths and inadequate technological shortcuts. As an industry, we need to demand better, and we need to hold vendors accountable to the claims they make. “Cross-device” is not a term that was made up for marketing materials. It’s a legitimate need among marketers today, and the entire supply chain needs to begin treating it as such.

The truth is that cross-device is being inadequately addressed by many players within the marketing industry, and the vast majority of companies that say they’re enabling cross-device are either openly lying or seriously bending the truth. Why are industry players obscuring the truth about cross-device? Quite simply, because they can.

A Culture of Box-Checking

DSPs and SSPs know they need to be able to list “cross-device” among their capabilities. Unfortunately, most platforms right now are only doing the bare minimum to be able to check this box for their clients.

When marketers say “cross-device,” they mean they want to be able to identify an individual across their various devices and tailor their ad experiences based on knowledge of this individual. But this isn’t the idealistic definition that’s being applied to their campaigns.

Most platforms are currently hacking the concept of cross-device. Some of them do this through simple IP matching, where they tie multiple devices to a single profile based on their use of the same IP address. But IP addresses are not identifiers for individuals. Not even close. These addresses can, but rarely, represent a single device, a router or even a cell tower communication channel. Many people and devices—computers, cell phones, streaming video players, etc.—can communicate over a single IP address, even simultaneously. These addresses can’t be used to identify an individual. They can’t even reliably be used to identify a household.

Many platforms also mislead marketers when they claim to have access to certain cross-device audiences. Let’s say a platform claims to have an auto intenders segment across mobile and desktop. That’s cross-device, right? Not necessarily. It’s more likely that this given audience segment includes auto intenders on mobile and auto intenders on desktop—but they’re not the same people. The mobile audience members are entirely distinct from the individuals who are using their desktops.

DSPs and SSPs today don’t have an interest in building out true cross-device capabilities because they’re not being incentivized to do so, nor are they being penalized for not doing so. This brings us to another deficiency in the marketplace: attribution and verification providers that aren’t accurately measuring cross-device activity.

The Attribution Deficiency

Marketers are partnering with any number of attribution and verification providers today in order to understand the effect of their media spends and ensure all of their supply-chain partners are delivering what they say they’re doing. Such third-party monitoring is designed to keep DSPs and SSPs on the straight and narrow, but that’s not happening in the realm of cross-device. That’s because most verification vendors aren’t handling cross-device attribution appropriately – if at all.

Attribution and verification vendors understand that marketers today are looking for multi-touch attribution solutions that account for cross-device activity. But, like the platforms, they’re only taking bare-bones steps to check the right boxes. Most of them do, in fact, measure activity across channels, but they’re not connecting the activity on different channels and devices to an individual. They’re measuring IDs, not people. Unfortunately, every ID represents only a fraction of a given person.

The marketing industry has been talking about the need and the promise of cross-device for a long time, and rightfully so. I think we can all agree that the need to create seamless experiences for customers and prospects across their ever-multiplying devices is a topic worthy of discussion.

But here’s the problem: thanks to the amount of time we’ve spent heralding the importance of cross-device over the past five years, most advertisers have come to believe that we’ve solved for it. And we haven’t. Not by a long shot.

The post Cross-Device Isn’t As Adopted As You Think appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Indeed, with the average user engaging with their apps around 15 times a day, there is a whole world of opportunity out there, but the downside to this is that there’s also an awful lot of competing content.

That’s why it’s so important to understand the different mobile marketing techniques and how best to use them. Luckily for you, we’ve created this brief rundown of the big four to help you…

Promotional campaigns

The number one way to spread the word about deals and new content, mobile promotional campaigns should be included in your marketing plans from day dot. An integral means of sharing enticing offers, such methods are used by numerous big name brands to get easy sells, such as the Betfair free casino bonus or the latest two for one from well-known eateries out there. Although they can and should be employed as part of your ongoing lifecycle marketing, they also have a place in highlighting time-limited offers, where a sense of urgency and big flashing letters are invaluable.

Transactional campaigns

Promotional campaigns are an integral part of successful mobile marketing, but so too are their transactional counterparts. Although their branding potential is frequently overlooked, such messages can actually be very useful. The way these messages work is that they pop up following a transaction, such as a sign-up or purchase, or when a confirmation is needed. Going along with the automatic message or email sent out to confirm this action, they’re a great way to communicate your brand values and coordinate your campaigns.

On-boarding campaigns 

If you’re not already familiar with them, on-boarding campaigns are a way of welcoming customers to your company and getting them started on the right track. Although they vary greatly according to the functionality of the individual website or app, the premise behind them is simple: to introduce your brand ideals, help users get the most from your mobile content, and lay the foundations for consistent future engagement. With studies showing that 55 percent of people who are engaged with in the first week after download are retained, such campaigns really are worth pursuing.

Opt-in priming campaigns 

Last but not least, opt-in priming campaigns are your friend. Priming for push notifications or other permissions has been proven to vastly improve a company’s opt-in rates, so you definitely need to know how to do it. Basically, these campaigns focus on finding the very best moment to share the value of opting in with your customers, so a gentle, persuasive nudge can be delivered when they’re most receptive to it. If you need some help with working out how to do that, take a look at this link for eight essential rules of good practice plus examples.

Isn’t it time you improved your techniques and gave your mobile marketing the boost it needs?

The post Four Types of Mobile Marketing Campaign You Should Know About appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

By Dale Lovell, Chief Digital Officer, ADYOULIKE

By definition, native advertising is a form of paid media where the advertisement is relevant to the consumer experience, integrated into the surrounding content and is not disruptive. Simply put, native advertisements look and feel like the content that surrounds them. The ads sit within the editorial feed sections of websites, and the ad works in the same way as existing editorial; for example, you normally will have to click on the content in order to interact with it.

Native advertising has experienced significant growth in recent years, as marketers have sought to break through the increasingly cluttered digital landscape. However, to date, marketers have treated native as just another format—another arrow in their digital advertising quivers. Quite frankly, this viewpoint sells native advertising short.

“Native advertising”—although the term comes from the advertisement matching the look and feel of the editorial surrounding it, in that it is native to the publication it sits on—is actually better used as a term to describe the advertising format that is indigenous—native—to online. Native advertising isn’t another digital ad format. It is the digital ad format.

Think about it. Banner ads were essentially adopted by early websites to replicate the standard ad blocks seen in newspapers. A banner says, “This is where the ads can sit—in these standard block units.” Video ads, even still today, are quite often repurposed TV ads. All are formats that came before the advent of the internet.

Native advertising is different. Like the digital medium itself, native ads take elements from other media, but use them correctly for the digital world. Native advertising is the first “native” advertising format of the digital world. We are barely 20 years into mass internet usage, and far, far less for mobile browsing. Native advertising is the format all future digital advertising will take.

Native advertising is in part a consequence of and reaction to some major digital consumer trends—mobile, social media, video, content, ad blocking, the decline in print and many smaller and subtler changes. It’s only when you look at the journey that digital has taken over the last 20 years that it all suddenly clicks into place. For some people, native advertising is the solution that digital publishing has been waiting for—the format that will transform the fortunes of struggling digital publishing business models and usher in a new golden age in publishing. For others it’s a symbol of the death of publishing as we know it, the death of editorial independence and the last-ditch—“dead cat bounce”—effort of an industry that has been searching for a business model for 20 years or more, and failing.

But native advertising is fundamentally not a revolution in advertising—despite what many vested interests may try and tell you. It’s an evolution. It is a medium born out of major changes in consumer habits online. It’s the evolution of advertising formats for a mobile-first world. It’s the evolution of advertising content for a world that is continuously engaging with the feed, where interruption is only OK if you do it in an entertaining or informative way. It’s the evolution of publishing and platform revenue models for publishers that can no longer afford to rely on dwindling returns from print. It’s the evolution of the newsroom and editorial jobs. It’s a technology that can actually help against ad blocking and help distribute the countless pieces of content brands that publishers are creating on a daily basis.

Native advertising will continue to influence and affect our daily lives for many years to come. In today’s era of privacy, particularly with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect on May 25, native advertising’s importance will be accelerated thanks to the inherent and overt value exchange it provides to the consumer. It behooves marketers to immerse themselves in the creative, technological and commercial aspects at play behind these ads. Going forward, they will not just represent an important part of the digital ad ecosystem. They very likely will represent its entirety.

The post Rethinking Native Advertising: Why It’s More Than Another Format appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Yet, the arrival of online trading has ensured that just about anyone can do this, now with a better chance of success. How has this method become so popular that it is seen as a mainstream option for just about every type of investor?

A big part of the success of the online approach to trading is how it has been marketed as an easy and enjoyable way of making money. This has blown away the traditional image that many people had about trading.

Clever New Technology

Marketing teams all around the world now know that people love to see great new technology at work. To help convince you that trading can be fun and modern, these sites use slick platforms that are a pleasure to work with.

You can typically pull up interesting graphs, useful statistics and all sorts of other handy information. This makes it is easy to feel like a professional no matter when and how you trade.

Of course, at its heart, this process is still pretty much the same as it ever was. The basic concept of buying and selling stock or other commodities hasn’t really changed but the ways of doing it have definitely moved with the times.

Free Demo Accounts

We all love to try something for free, especially when it could make us money. To this effect, marketing teams have realized that demo trading accounts are an excellent idea. They give newcomers the chance to get comfortable with the idea of trading without risking their own money.

With a demo trading account, it is possible to try trading and choose the level of account you need accordingly. The type of account you choose then determines how much you can trade and the level of support you receive.

Putting your own money at risk is thrilling – but using a demo account first makes it seems like a natural progression rather than a leap into the unknown.

Mobile Trading

Mobile marketing is a huge part of any brand’s approach, shown by the fact that in 2016 just over half of all digital advertising budgets went on mobile ads. And it makes double sense to target potential traders with it: most people now have a mobile device close to them all day long, it makes a lot of sense to trade with one, too, and it is incredibly simple to stay on top of the markets all day.

All of this makes trading more accessible and enjoyable for lots of people who might not have otherwise tried it. Anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to invest in this way now knows that it is simple to give it a try.

The post Online Trading Has Been Cleverly Marketed and Its Popularity is Increasing appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.