There is a growing trend among moms. Soccer moms as many of us have affectionately come to know them have gone mobile. It’s time to set aside what you previously knew to be the modus operandi for this segment. Moms today are highly connected, highly informed and extremely app-driven. I like to refer to them as Mobile Moms. Here is why you need to take a fresh look at today’s moms and rethink how you are communicating with them.

According to Nielsen, 1 in 3 Americans own a smartphone. Combined tablet and smartphone sales will exceed desktop and notebook computers in 2011 based on a Morgan Stanley February 2011 research study. According to Babycenter’s 21st Century Mom 2011 Mobile Mom Report, Moms are 18% more likely to own a smartphone than the general population. Moms are mobile power users according to the Babycenter Report. They find value in their smartphones for entertainment (games, social, music), information (weather and health) as well as shopping on her mobile.

The Babycenter report also indicates that when it comes to health, Moms are 50% more likely than the general population to use apps for tracking health and fitness. 80% love looking up wellness information on their phone. If you are a healthcare provider, you need to understand this and get your brand on their smartphone in the form of an app, an ad or a text message. Somehow you need to connect with moms on mobile.

Take a close look at your website on a smartphone. Do you have to zoom in to read it? Can you easily tap links to navigate using your thumb? Answering no to either of these questions means you need to think about a mobile-ready website.

Moms love to shop and their smartphones prove to be a shopping utility. When on the go and at retail stores, moms rely on their phones to aid in the shopping. 46% of moms find the most convenient time to get information about a product is when they are right there shopping for it. Of those that shop with their smartphones, 62% are using shopping apps (data from Babycenter Report). Are you a retailer or e-tailer? What is the experience you are providing moms when they visit your site on their phone? How are you connecting with them in store using technology and mobile devices?

Moms rely heavily on their mobile phone to access their social networks. They are 38% more likely than the general population to use their smartphone for social networking. They use their social networks to socialize and for entertainment as well as to listen to what other moms are discussing and to aid in making decisions. Have you begun reaching moms via social networks? Have you thought about how to integrate social and mobile to get your brand in front of moms and their social networks? If not, you are missing incredible opportunities.

So what are the implications? If you are a marketer and you need to connect with and win over the mom community, you need to factor mobile into your mix. This can take many shapes. It can range from mobile ads to apps to mobile optimized websites. It could also include SMS messaging and many other ideas. The bottom line is this audience segment is prime for a mobile connection. How can a marketer act on this? Begin understanding the types of tools that a mom could use to help improve her life when on the go. She does not have a lot of time to do in-depth research. Give her an app to help aid in her decision process – whether looking for a pediatrician or a new pair of shoes. Of course, these are two different apps we’re talking about. The point is to begin thinking about apps. Start small and grow it.

Other actions you can take are to begin collecting opt-ins to receive text alerts. What type of an alert would your audience desire? In retail, perhaps it is an alert about an upcoming sale. In healthcare it might be reminders for appointments or flu shots. Take a close look at your website. How is it to read on a smartphone? If you can’t read it without zooming in and can’t tap the links with your thumb, you need to think about making it mobile-ready.

Give moms the mobile experience they deserve including mobile-ready sites, text alerts, apps that improve their lives and cater to their ‘on-the-go’ lifestyle. In return, moms will give you their praise, their business as your customer and their loyalty. Want to learn more? Read about our mobile application capabilities. Sign up for our enewsletter – PinPoints. Or, contact us today.

Flickr image courtesy of Fifth World Art.

I attended a great webinar on landing pages recently from the good peeps over at Marketing Experiments– “Live Optimization: What we’ve learned from the last 200 experiments distilled into three basic principles – plus live-optimization examples.” The presentation was great, and the panel gave some really insightful advice they were able to narrow down into those 3 clear and concise points.

In sum, always remember that your landing page should immediately answer 3 questions for the visitor:

1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here?
3. Why should I do it?

These points can and must be answered with an effectively designed landing page which focuses on the content of the page. We typically design a landing page with the offer front and center, a form for a person to fill out, hopefully some visuals or an animation that really connect to your brand/ idea/ product, and finally, add some copy to make sure you know who we are.

The presenter brought up a point early on that really stuck with me. You must differentiate your advertising message to really connect with your customers. If an ad says you’re “The Best” at something, what does that really mean? The presenter likened it to being at a party and introducing yourself as the greatest marketer ever, puffing yourself up with as much gusto as your pay per click ads do (Free Trial? “Let’s do lunch tomorrow! I’ll give you 10% off!”) How effective will that really be at winning friends and influencing people? Same goes for winning customers. Not much at all.

Which got me thinking. We spend so much time and effort attempting to drive conversions through our landing pages. I understand it’s crucial to catch a lead through a form or a call to your sales team, but it’s also important not to abandon them in the process. Spend some quality time with the text on that landing page. Make sure you focus on that #1 question: “Where am I?” Chances are, not everyone spends as much time as you do with your brand. Stop for a second. Introduce yourself. Be polite… open the door for them! Remember your manners! Let someone get to know your company if they want, and then let them decide for themselves if they’re going to act on your call to action.

IN SUM: When it comes to designing a landing page, the content you put in that landing page is equally as important as your call to action.

During the webinar I was surprised to see the team analyzing web pages that seemed to me to be home pages. (All were submitted by webinar attendees.) I was expecting to see more pages that were of the “fill out this form” ilk and it struck me as quite interesting that sometimes we can forget that our most important landing page of all is the home page. Despite pointing our advertising efforts to hidden landing pages on a site, more times than not, an interested customer will end up on the home page, the biggest landing page of all. And my point applies here as well, if not even more so: don’t ever take the copy on your homepage for granted. You never know. Someone might actually read it.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user …-Wink-… under Creative Commons license.

In the race to have the latest shiny object, chasing cool has become the siren song of the tech/marketing moment.

And at this moment, it’s cool to have your own branded, mobile/portable app. We can’t go a day without a large B2B or B2C company producing an app or a tech company picking sides in the Android or Apple OS “war.”

Every. Single. Day.

But because of competitive envy or sheer bravado, so many company branded mobile apps that get produced are half-baked or woefully missing the point. That doesn’t mean app development is dead, it’s just that marketers need to stop the assembly line.

Branded mobile apps must deliver a consistent brand message and experience that understands the consumer. For the owner/creator, the app must provide useful feedback and insight (data).

I recently came across a hospital system promoting a mobile app that helps patients find the nearest emergency room with the shortest wait time. On the surface, it achieves cool, but is also functional. It provides a service that ER-goers wouldn’t have otherwise, and the hospital system (in theory) can at least get some usage and/or geographic statistics from users.

In this instance, the app crossed the chasm from cool to useful.

To make the leap, there must be substance. Anyone can build an app these days. Google’s announcement that we all can build our own Android app (We are all developers?), proved that.  The publicity you could potentially receive from telling the press “LOOK AT ME, I HAVE AN APP!” is running on fumes. At one point, it didn’t matter what type of app companies came out with, if you were the first baby bottling company from Louisville to have a branded app, that was enough.

No more.

Anything in marketing worth a dime must provide value, to both sides. No matter how cool.

I’ll admit it. I’m an organizing junkie. I organize everything. And I’ve become really, really good lately at cramming as much stuff as possible into its container. Loading the dishwasher is a nightly battle to the death to get absolutely every last pan, bowl and lemon zester into that box. And I gotta tell ya, just thinking about packing for our upcoming vacation gives me goose bumps. Two adults, one baby, a car seat, booster seat, stroller, coffee maker, food, bottled water, bathing suits, towels, and at least 5 pairs of shoes for me assembled into our Tiguan for an 11 hour drive? YES!

Image courtesy of Flickr user billaday

I wonder how much of this “talent” has evolved from my 9-to-5 skills. As an interactive designer, I am faced with a similar challenge  to cram elements into their own little boxes on a daily basis. Think about it. A basic banner ad should contain a minimum of:

1. Logo
2. Call to action (a button, a click through, something to pay for this ad!)
3.  A message
4. A photo would be nice. Or an animation. Just something visual to catch the eye.

Normally just assembling all these into a tiny box is pain enough. But designers must be cautious and approach the problem with a critical eye. Adjust spacing and size of each element so each fits just right, so that the viewer’s eye can calmly float from one element to the next in the correct visual hierarchy in order to achieve maximum banner appreciation bliss.

Or that’s the dream, anyways. The reality is that we designers must fight with these competing elements, we are skilled with finding the best way of doing so. That’s the designer’s job. It’s what we’re good at. It’s what makes us think every time we load the dishwasher, or organize our sock drawers. Without the necessary thought and practice required for visual organization, chaos occurs.

For more information about our interactive marketing firm, contact us today.

My big project this week is a full blown product launch campaign. It’s got everything– print ads, banner ads, landing page, email campaign, social media components… you name it, we’re thinking about it. And that’s really the way advertising should be thought of– your customers are everywhere, and you want to reach them at that point of relevancy that exists out there in the ethos somewhere. And when you think about it, if you put all your parts together, you can integrate a campaign message into all your outgoing efforts pretty easily.

• Integrate campaign elements into your website. Consider updating visuals or language on your homepage to bring in the campaign’s message.
• Integrate into your social media properties. If appropriate, consider changing or updating your profile icons to reflect the new campaign’s overall look. Make sure your core brand identity is still clear; this way, your followers will notice your tweaked icon and (hopefully) wonder what you’ve got going on.
• Integrate into your identity. Add a campaign connection to your email signature or voice mail message.
• Integrate the integration. Include links to your site and social media properties in banner ads and email campaigns. Consider including them in your printed materials if they add value.
• Integrate into your tracking metrics. One of the great things about a campaign with multiple online components is the ability to track each  component and gauge its success– both in message and location. Compare all your campaign components to see what’s working and what is not.
• Integrate with your customers. Finally, none of your social media efforts will bear fruit if you fail to involve your followers. Don’t just spit out tweets; ask questions, take polls, involve and engage your followers to create a larger conversation.

Keep an eye on the big picture, with all your components in mind, and your integrated efforts will work. Your direction just has to be clear.

For months there has been speculation that the new iPad would be the second coming of technology. Sadly, it appears the iPad will not solve world hunger nor will Steve Jobs be awarded the Nobel Prize. It’s no wonder that a few days after their announcement, Apple’s stock dropped over 20 points.

What’s missing? A lack of a USB port, bandwidth challenges and no physical keyboard are a few on the long list of grumbles. But what the list doesn’t take into account is the most important feature of all: delightability. It’s that spark that we feel when we hold and touch something that delights us in unexpected ways.

Using an example we’re all accustomed to by now, the iPhone is loaded with delightability. Yes, Android is great and an up-and-coming platform, but it lacks the pure delight that one feels with an Apple product. It’s like comparing Disney World to all the amusement parks within a short drive. All are amusing, but only Disney is designed from the ground up to delight.

So let us not focus on “should have or could have,” but rather on what might be with the iPad. Here are 10 delightful marketing opportunities that the iPad is accelerating:

1. The door to video has been pried wide open—think video, video and more video at all levels of marketing.
2. Mobile providers are taking one more step to being pure data providers. They have no choice—data wherever and whenever will be our reality and reaching people will only get easier.
3. Advertising will evolve and create new opportunities to develop richer and more connected messaging. Check out Time’s thoughtful video below.
4. If you can think of it, there will be an application to help sell it.
5. The death march for bookstores will accelerate. Books will be cheaper and easier to access and start to integrate video. Yes my friend, Moby Dick and all your favorite classics will have embedded imagery.
6. Words alone will feel naked. Expect commercials in books or contextual product placement.
7. Hand out more shovels for the hole being dug for video stores. Just a few more feet to go.
8. The movie studio will evolve into something else based on a different access and pay model.
9. Look for vertical market applications that redefine entire industries. Start with healthcare.
10. And of course, the biggest of opportunity of all: the idea that hasn’t be thought of (yet).

Don’t underestimate this device. Wait till the delight begins. Look instead to new user experiences that we never dreamed of.  I can’t wait, I’m already dreaming. Looking for more marketing tips? Subscribe to our RSS feed.

According to data from PointRoll, rich media advertising for the healthcare industry is more effective and tends to get more interaction than most other industry verticals.

The chart below outlines this:
Healthcare banner ads received an average of a 6.79% interaction rate.

• Data Collection: 7.91%
• Instant Email: 8.02%
• Interactive Video: 7.96%
• Interactivity: 7.22%

In addition to high interaction rates, rich media advertising for the healthcare industry enjoys excellent interaction time and CTR when compared to other verticals’ interaction rates.

This shows great promise for banner ads that includes interactivity that’s beyond a simple “click here” message– utilize the message medium and collect information from viewers, like an email capture. Test including multiple panels of information to see what viewers are really interested in. And include video in your banner advertising. It’s been shown to improve banner performance by 71% overall.

The bottom line? Rich media advertising works, and if you’re in the healthcare industry, it will really work for you.

Thanks to our friends at PointRoll for sharing this data.

I recently attended a webinar about Online Video Advertising for Healthcare Marketers, and learned some startling information.

It seems we Americans have a rather voracious appetite for viewing videos online. For starters, the number of adults online who watch videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube has doubled in the last three years, thanks in part to widespread availability of broadband connectivity. There are 100 million video viewers each month, with each person viewing about 6 hours of video on average per month. And it’s not just bored teens and college students checking out the latest viral video. Online video viewing is growing across all age segments.

And get this: video watching surpasses most other popular online activities including using a social networking site, downloading a podcast, or using status updating sites like Twitter. We’ve integrated video into our daily lives. Even our TV and movie watching are moving to an online video experience.

Healthcare consumers are using online video to research medical conditions and treatments for themselves or a loved one. They’re actively searching for information, and they’re passing it along to family and friends. As a marketer you need to think about incorporating a video strategy into your marketing communications plan.

It’s not about coming up with an idea that will go viral. Those are few and far between and almost impossible to predict. It’s about producing content that is relevant and helpful to your audience. And it’s about making it easy for them to find you by properly promoting it through online platforms where they are actively seeking information.

Now that’s something worth watching. Curious about online video marketing? Contact us today,

I recently read an article that stated a fact we all know: Americans are trying to avoid advertising. We DVR shows, we station surf on the radio or subscribe to satellite  and now many Americans are avoiding websites that has overly intrusive ads. For us marketers this only means we have to try harder and harder, and get more creative, in order to reach our desired audiences. The TV show Desperate Housewives seems to have glommed onto this idea and is getting creative with its advertisers.

I was watching the show this past Sunday and started to fast forward (yes, even I do it) through a commercial break. Then I noticed list, the kind of list Santa Claus uses, with all the characters names on it. Curious as to what that was about, I rewound and watched. It was a Wal-Mart commercial with gifts for the main characters. (I did try to find the spot for this post, but it was nowhere to be found. So while I am touting Wal-Mart for being creative and creating this one-time use spot, I am disappointed in them for not posting the commercial on YouTube, or creating a cool social media campaign around it. How cool would it have been to give the characters what YOU thought they deserved from the Wal-Mart website?!) Now whether this spot stuck with me because I’m in advertising or because I was intrigued by it, I don’t know. The point is it worked. I stopped fast forwarding, rewound and watched the spot. Once it was over, guess what…I fast forwarded through the remainder of the commercials.

Recently, Sprint did a similar thing with the launch of the Palm Pre. They worked with the writers of DH to create the “Another Desperate Housewife” mini-mystery (see above video for part 1). A new spot would appear weekly with the enticing plot line of a philandering husband whose wife caught him when he received a text from his mistress. Basically it was an 8 week, :50 miniseries within a commercial break. I feel that these were even more effective than the Wal-Mart spot because there was an evolving plot line that kept viewers wanting more. And for those that missed one, the spots are also housed on abc.com (where they also served up a :30 pre-roll video from Sprint before each spot began). There were even some comments from people asking for more spots!

In both of these instances placement played a major role. The commercials were the first spot in a break, and therefore did not get lost in fast forwarding. To be effective, all elements had to be just right, and in these instances I think they hit the nail on the head.

Have there been any recent commercials that have sparked your interest?

We are about to begin the redesign of our own website. The current site has been in place for a few years and has served us well. Its main focus was always to be a showcase of our work. As we have begun blogging and focusing on content more over the past year, we have outgrown it and are looking forward to a shiny new toy at the beginning of 2010.

I encourage you to take a look at your site as well, and ask yourself if your site is in need of an update. Here are 5 key components I think a modern web site should have. Obviously these tips are regardless of the type of product or service you provide, your core site needs can vary, but in the end, everyone should have these basic fundamental pieces of information on their site.

1. A blog
   That’s right. In 2010, content will remain king. Even if the core pages of your site have remained the same since 1999, you must add fresh content. You don’t have to blog every day, or every week, but just take a small amount of time when you can to let your web site visitors know that you’re still there.
2. A way to connect
   From a simple email address to a link to your new Facebook account, please make sure visitors can connect with you, and make sure that contact method is as visible as possible. A standard contact link within your site footer or header that displays on every page of your site is a great feature.
3. A homepage that actually says something
   We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, content is king. To connect to your visitors and add a boost for your site’s position on the search engines, please overhaul your homepage to include as much text as is appropriate. The era of nonscrolling homepages is over. A page that doesn’t extend the height of a browser window appears shallow and unneccessary.
4. Truly informative information on what you do
   Our current web site is guilty of this. Nowhere on the site do we actually say that we’re a marketing and advertising agency. We always took for granted that people would know what the heck Point to Point is. Guess what? Sometimes they don’t. Your site must include a basic statement of who you are and what you do.
5. Something memorable
   Ah, this is always the tough one. Once your web site has been filled with content, and a way to connect with you, you must make the visit memorable. The question is no longer should you have a web presence, everybody has a web presence. In fact, back in 2008, Google found there were over one trillion web pages on the entire interwebs. How will you stand out from the competition?? The answer is key: provide not just a web site, but a memorable web site experience. By including video, audio, animation or even some extraordinary pdfs to download, you must connect and engage your web site visitors to stand out.

For more information, visit our interactive web design capabilities page.