Why Retail-Minded Marketers Are Intrigued by Pokemon Go’s Forthcoming Ads | Adweek

July 15, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Google Adwords, the digital giant’s paid search offering, has long been a go-to platform for ecommerce players looking to increase sales. More recently, it has represented a lucrative source for direct-marketing retailers trying to drive mobile consumers into their stores. Google charges brands on a cost-per-click basis for the ads, guaranteeing a website visit for their cash but not necessarily in-person patronage.

All of which makes Pokemon Go’s forthcoming sponsored-locations product intriguing, since it will reportedly be designed to only charge advertisers when consumers—glued to their smartphones playing the game—show up at their stores. Indeed, foot traffic, the lifeblood of old-school retail and the Holy Grail for brick-and-mortar shops that lean on digital.

8 Tips For Converting Blog Readers Into Customers | Getentrepreneurial

July 13, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

When it comes to content marketing, getting visitors to your website is hailed as the ultimate goal.

So, what happens when you reach that goal? What happens when you publish a blog post for your business which goes viral overnight or your blog becomes a huge hit, reaching millions of people who then click and land on your website?

Do your phones starting ringing off the hook? Are you bombarded with sales, leads, orders, sign ups? Does your brand become a household name? Is your business front-page news?

Having created ‘viral content’ for businesses on a number of occasions, I can categorically (and unfortunately) say that the answer to all of those questions is no.

5 Ways to Target Millennials With Text Message Marketing | All Business

July 7, 2016July 6, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve spent any time at all around Millennials, then you know how much they love texting. Millennials rely on texting for just about everything—so much so that, a recent survey by OpenMarket reports, 75 percent would rather give up using their phones make voice calls them to text.

Why do Millennials love texting so much?

76 percent say texting is more convenient and allows them to communicate on their own schedule

63 percent say texting is less disruptive than voice calls

53 percent just say that they’d rather text than call

19 percent say they never check their voice mails.

What does this mean to your business? There’s a huge opportunity to reach out to Millennial customers via text message marketing. For instance, according to the survey, three-fourths of Millennials say text reminders are helpful, but only 30 percent get them from businesses that they patronize.

10 Statistics About Content Marketing in 2016 You Won’t Believe | Inc.com

July 6, 2016July 6, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

2016 is gearing up to be a game-changer for content marketing, and there’s finally plenty of data to back it up. I forecast some big purchases of media platforms from major brands aiming to start pushing niche content to already-loyal audiences.

But it won’t just be content produced on a whim. I think this will be the year where marketers start to use data to develop better strategies, in order to create better content (with smarter distribution).

I’d like to think that’s the direction things are heading, but I’m blown away by some of the statistics I’m seeing that might actually prove me wrong.

Here are 10 that stood out to me the most.

How a Sweet, Simple Instagram Photo Gave Rise to a Sweeping Global Travel Brand | Adweek

July 5, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Little did Murad Osmann know that he would start a viral photo series when he snapped a seemingly simple picture of his then-girlfriend, Nataly, and uploaded it to Instagram while on vacation in 2011. The couple was spending a few extra days in Barcelona after a work trip when Murad took a simple shot of her walking through a door spray-painted with graffiti, his arm outstretched to hold her hand. “She grabbed my hand and pulled me forward,” Osmann told Adweek. “I took one photo, and then we published it—that’s how we started doing this.”

7 Ways To Crush Email In 2016 | The Startup Magazine

July 1, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

We recently saw email being named “the technology which has had the greatest impact in transforming how we work over the last ten years”, above smartphones. This trend isn’t going to slow down in 2016. As email evolves through cloud computing, automation, integrating into social and becoming more focused around mobile, we need to make sure we keep up in order to make the most of this medium as both a sender and recipient.

In this post, I’ve gathered a list of tools that’ll make sure you crush email (in a good way) in 2016:

5 Ways to Make Content Marketing Easier This Summer | Entrepreneur

June 23, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Summer is here, and that means vacation season is upon us. We’ll all be traveling more, taking a little time off and soaking up the sun. But, as an entrepreneur, you may find it strange to leave behind your passions and projects, even for a few weeks.

One of the hardest projects to leave completely alone is your content — it’s coming from you, after all. And consistently creating more remains a challenge for teams everywhere. In fact, 60 percent of marketers in one survey said content creation was their biggest challenge last year.

And, honestly, the warm summer months that pull you away from your desk, to the lake (or mountains or ocean), don’t make that challenge any easier.

Make No Apologies for Marketing Your Business | Entrepreneur

May 18, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

I had lunch at my local art museum today — their scallops and black rice are my favorite. As the waiter left our check, he invited us to look at his photography in the museum store. He half apologized, saying that the store manager told him to tell all of his customers that his work is featured in the store. He did not need to apologize. When you are an entrepreneur, you can’t afford to apologize for marketing your work.

How Your Small Business Can Benefit From ‘Keep it Simple’ Selling | All Business

May 17, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Albert Einstein once said, “Things should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” I agree. These words certainly apply to selling. Here’s how to keep it simple.

Simplify your number of offerings.

Some salespeople have to write proposals to make their sales, and others don’t ever write proposals. Whether you write proposals or not, you need to decide how many choices to present to your customers. Some salespeople think that offering a lot of choices is better to make more sales. They’re wrong. Salespeople should offer fewer choices to simplify their selling.

Here’s why. If you offer too many choices, you overload your customers–it makes it harder for them to make buying decisions. This may have happened to you when you were trying to make a purchase. It recently happened to me.

Why Balancing Skippable and Non-Skippable Ads Creates Better Brand Awareness | Adweek

May 12, 2016 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Around-up report from eMarketer, specializing in mobile advertising, recently landed in my inbox. On page three, a table of completion rates for U.S. digital pre-roll caught my eye. It claimed that, on average, completion rates for pre-roll ads on smartphones was 77 percent, rising slightly to 79 percent on tablet.

By themselves these stats seem pretty unremarkable—depending on the creative, 70 percent to 80 percent completion rate is a fairly standard result for a non-skippable pre-roll campaign. But there’s the catch: unremarkable for a non-skippable campaign.

The vast majority of brands and advertisers understand the difference between a non-skippable pre-roll, which obliges a user to watch an ad before viewing video content, or a skippable format, which allows the user to decide whether or not to watch the ad. What is perhaps less well understood is the difference in performance across KPIs that these two buying options will deliver. A non-skippable pre-roll can achieve the highs of 80 percent completion pretty easily (after all, how many people abandon watching a video because of a 15-second ad?) whereas a very successful skippable pre-roll would be looking at a 40 percent completion rate.