MelvinBlog

A blog that chronicles my journey on online marketing, blogging, social media, technology and life.

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Leveraging Mobile App Discovery

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This is a guest post by Paul Malicki.

On October 30-31, the 7th Search Engine Marketing Conference took place in Hotel Intercontinental. The event featured some of the biggest digital marketing agencies and speakers from the Philippines, US, Australia, and Europe. Among various theme related primarily to new trends in SEO and search engine advertising, only a few speeches extensive elaborated on mobile marketing. My topic, i.e. “Leveraging Mobile App Discovery” was probably the only one, which fully focused on mobile.

Marketing objectives VS app discovery

Any business engaging in mobile app industry (on a different note, isn’t it a right time to start referring to it as an “industry”?) should start with defining the objectives of their campaign. There are two main marketing objective, one being direct response and the other– branding. Let’s treat SEO as an external universe to these two, although we all know that SEO primarily aims at increasing conversion rates. Thus, during the user acquisition stage most of the efforts should focus on the former. Branding is a great way to increase the brand loyalty and brand awareness and it should be underestimated. However, still many businesses underestimate the fact that user acquisition demands separate type of marketing. Whether these are Facebook ads or AdWords or even social media content, choosing the right type of bidding, tracking and target URL is a must. Once we define the objectives we can finally understand what app discovery is all about. Just look at the definition below:

Most successful app discovery channels

How do most of the users find out about your app? The results shown by the biggest research I found on this topic, suggest that mobile is a totally different world. Remember all those articles about how great Google AdWords and SEO is for the desktop conversions? Leveraging mobile app discovery is not anymore about Google AdWords and SEO. Focusing on app reviews, positive word-of-mouth, and social media seems to be key to increasing the user base. As much as 63% of the users find out about the app through… searching in the online store! Nearly 50% – by speaking with their friends or family, while another 34% – browsing through certain categories in the app store. The fact that a typical digital marketing channel comes only on the 5th place signifies to the fact that creating good vibes and optimizing app store present are a must!

How do we do it at Easy Taxi?

Let me briefly introduce you an interesting startup. Easy Taxi is world’s biggest taxi hailing application, available on iOS and Android devices. With the app you can easily, with one-click, request for a taxi (and track it in real time). Although the company has been present globally for nearly 2 years, the local operations and marketing are so unique, that each local branch we initiate is a true startup.

Mobile ads

Our approach to marketing is very holistic. In the explanation below I would like to focus on my favorite user acquisition channel, which is Facebook ads.

Have you noticed that social media was mentioned as the 5th most popular channel in the diagram above? Not without a reason. One unique thing about using Facebook as an acquisition channel is that it creates a brand environment that surrounds an ad. Each viewer is able to see the fan count, company description and additional graphics, which accompany brand’s Facebook presence. This makes them more convinced about the product. And although the relative conversion rate is quite low, in the developing countries, where advertisers don’t fully utilize that platform, you can easily get a Click-Through-Rate on mobile of 2%+, which assures the Cost Per Click which is close to zero.

What are the features of a good mobile ad on Facebook? Let’s analyze a sample ad of Easy Taxi.

1. Pricing Model

Choose Cost per Install. It’s good for user acquisition since Facebook will automatically optimize the best performing ads.

2. Campaign Structure

This is a general structure I recommend to all advertisers. It’s simple and straight to the point. At the same time it allows you to distinguish between the test and main campaigns and track what works and what doesn’t.

3. A/B Testing

I don’t recommend doing the test without accruing at least 50 clicks. Just choose the best ad and replace the current if it’s underperforming. You can follow this diagram to better understand the process:

4. Targeting

  • Please note the following:
  • Target competitive fan pages and phrases
  • Consider targeting users with higher education
  • Technology Early Adopters tend to produce lower CPA
  • Target precise interests and job positions

5. Creatives

A good ad is engaging and has a call-to-action. It also features an image which clearly explains app usage or a user case.

6. Others

On the top of that don’t forget about the following features / functions:

  • High Ad Rotation
  • High CTR = low CPC. Quality Score matters
  • Register your app with Facebook. Use native SDK or third-party SDK for tracking, not iTunes or Google Play ID
  • Understand Facebook bidding model
  • Make sure you don’t display your ads towards existing users
  • Analyze. Analyze. Analyze.

On a final note, let me outline a few recommendations to anyone who wants to start with mobile marketing. The main one is to try different things and stick to those that work. But before you do that, calculate your Customer Lifetime Value. It might happen that your app just won’t monetize and then your efforts will be pointless.

  • Before you start, calculate your cLTV (Customer Lifetime Value)
  • Measure your results regularly and make sure that your CAC (Cost per Customer Acquisition) is low
  • The only right approach is a holistic approach which puts an emphasis on various mobile strategies
  • However, there are usually 1 or 2 channels that work best
  • Find a partner
  • Humanize your brand and do something for others
  • Offline is not dead

The Anatomy of a URL: The Components of an SEO-Effective URL

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This is a guest post by Emma-Julie Fox.

The URL or Uniform Resource Locator is the representation of a website’s server IP address. Instead of an alphanumerical long-tail address that will be impossible for people to quickly recognize, let alone memorize, URLs are designed to be easily recalled and read by Internet users.

SEOmoz.com has an excellent graphic image published in 2009 that clearly shows the parts of the URL and what each component is called.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-cheat-sheet-anatomy-of-a-url

The illustration clearly shows what the components of a URL are. There might be some confusion between the folders/paths and the page titles in the URL. Let the diagonal slash be your guide. The folders/paths are indicated by succession diagonal slashes. The page title is the set of keywords right after the last diagonal slash in the URL.

It is usually a sensible sentence or phrase because it is the actual title of the article or topic discussed in the page. The words are separated by hyphens, sometimes underscores, both of which are usually used in lieu of the spaces between the words in the title.

SEO Concerns in URL Construction

If you recall, there was a time during the 1990s wherein using general words in URLs, particularly in domains, was the smart thing to do. At that time people were still warming up to the Internet and still learning how to use search engines. Instead of searching for keywords alone, many would make the mistake of adding a .com at the end of a query.

This was why it was a clever move to simply use general keywords in the domains because it increases the possibility of appearing first on the SERPs.

At present though, this is considered old-fashioned and no longer valuable for SEO purposes. Internet users now know better. It is now considered tacky to use keywords for the URL of a business website that has a perfectly good-sounding company or brand name. Besides, it only confuses users when they see the header of the website bears a name different from the one they see on the domain.

However, evidence shows that incorporating keywords in the URLs can still give a website more bearing on the SERPs. This leads websites to the following compromise: since it’s not a good idea marketing-wise not to use the brand or company name in the domain, the relevant keywords are therefore delegated to the folders/paths, page titles, and named anchor in the URL. These are the components that can help increase the SEO value of a URL.

So how does one come up with an SEO and user-friendly URL?

1. Buy them from domainers.

Domainers are people or companies that create SEO-friendly domains and sell them to any interested individual or business. Many domainers even develop the URL prior to their purchase, parking it and publishing relevant content on the dummy page. This makes search engines recognize the URL, giving buyers significant leverage for their future SEO campaigns.

Some of the most popular domain sellers are GoDaddy, NameCheap, Name.com and 1and1. You may find cheaper rates at lesser-known sellers that are equally good at their job, like Lawrence Ng’s oversee.net.There are also individual sellers that you can find in domain selling markets, like Sedo, Digital Point Forums, and NamePros.

2. Do a keyword research.

Non-brand domain names start with a very thorough keyword research. If you don’t have a brand name or don’t want to use your company name for your website URL, search for keywords that are commonly used by searchers of your niche. Keep things simple and short so that people can easily remember your website.

3. Follow your sitemap for interior page URLs.

It is customary for all other pages within a website to have lengthy URLs. They are made up of the domain and the folders or navigational links under which they belong. As much as possible, use the folder names in the URL so that page viewers will get the gist of the page’s location by merely looking at the navigational links. This can also help crawlers index newly-published pages more quickly thanks to the logical placement and labeling of the webpages.

4. Use the brand or business/company name.

Using it for a website URL is a smart move as far as branding and SEO is concerned. Coupled with marketing for the products or services offered in the website, people will be able to easily recall brand-oriented URLs.

Branding is closely associated with SEO in the online arena since the goal is basically to become a thought leader—that when people think of your niche or general products and service you can provide, it’s your company or website that they will think of first. By having the brand or company name in the URL, you can simultaneously optimize your website and your brand name.

How to write an SEO-effective URL is another matter that is worthy of its own discussion. The items in this article are merely suggestions on how you can start with choosing/buying/creating a URL.

Emma-Julie Fox writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Vancouver based SEOcompany that caters to businesses across North America. If you would like to invite the author to write on your blog too please contact www.pitstopmedia.com.

3 Non-Scammy Ways to Add Advertising to Your Website

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This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

To ad or not to ad, right? For most website owners, that is the question. If you’ve got a highly visible website with a regularly-updating blog, you probably know that your increased web presence brings hundreds if not thousands of visitors to your site every day. (Even more, if you’re using SEO properly.)

So you’re well aware that adding advertising to your site can turn those pageviews into cash, but you’re probably hesitant to pull the advertising trigger. You’re a designer, after all. You like clean lines and unified themes. The last thing you want is one of those scammy “Take 6 inches off your belly with one weird trick” ads cluttering up your right sidebar.

Luckily, there are a few tried-and-tested ways to gain ad revenue without having to add weight-loss scams or dancing mortgage men to your beautiful, carefully-crafted website. If you’re averaging more than 100 pageviews per day, you’re leaving money on the table unless you implement one of these options.

Google AdWords

Google AdWords are those tiny ads that appear on the sides and bottoms of webpages. They’re visually discreet but can earn you a large chunk of money if you have a regular following. Unlike the other solutions in this article, there’s very little you get to choose about Google AdWords; you get to decide where the ad is placed on your site, but Google does all the rest. You barely notice the ads are there until you get an email from Google with the subject line “You’ve Been Issued a Payment.”

AdWords uses suggestive advertising, so if you write about using Photoshop to create a logo, it’s likely to generate an ad for a Photoshop tutorial. This is good for your readers, because they are able to read your blog and then find relevant information by clicking on the AdWords links.

Like most aspects of advertising and SEO, Google AdWords changes its algorithms regularly. This means you need to stay up-to-date by following people like Rich Gorman, the SEO and advertising guru who regularly reports on new AdWords developments. That way you can continue to write posts that generate the best suggestive AdWords, which in turn earns you the most clicks and the most money.

Amazon Affiliates

The Amazon affiliate program works in two ways. First, it pays you every time someone buys a product by clicking through a recommendation on your site. Second, it pays you every time someone clicks through a recommendation, doesn’t buy the recommended product, but buys something else instead.

The easiest and cleanest way to use the Amazon affiliate program is by including Amazon affiliate hyperlinks in your blog posts. Write a post about how much you love Edward Tufte’s book series, and then hyperlink every time you mention a specific Tufte book. Readers click on the links and are taken to Amazon’s page to buy the Tufte books immediately. Whether they buy their own copy of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information or they buy something else, you get paid.

Amazon also creates clickable icons you can embed either in blog posts or on your sidebars. Each icon shows the image of a specific product, and it is possible to create a carousel of icons under the header “Tools I Use” or “What I’m Reading.” These are great ways to gain additional revenue without covering your website in garish ads. (They’re also a great way to answer the question “what tools do you use,” because I get that question all the time.)

Project Wonderful

Suppose you’re the type of designer who doesn’t want ordinary ads. Suppose you want artistic ads, created by design artists just like you. That’s where Project Wonderful comes in. Created by Ryan North, the man behind Dinosaur Comics, Machine of Death and other uber-projects, Project Wonderful allows artists to design their own ads and bid to place them on other sites.

You get to choose the size of the ad, the placement of the ad, and the types of ads you will accept. Maybe you only want web developers to advertise on your site. Maybe you’re fine with webcomics or musicians advertising on your site. Whatever you choose, you’re guaranteed to get a striking, well-designed, often quirky ad that reflects your own commitment to artistic work and creative thinking.

Use these three ideas to get some non-scammy advertising on your site and start earning more money. The next time you ask “to ad or not to ad,” you’ll know the right answer.

Word of Mouth Advertising isn’t Dead; Altered Maybe but not Dead

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This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

In the days of the internet and social media, word of mouth advertising has altered a bit. This doesn’t mean it is dead just because it has changed shapes. In fact the opposite is true. Personally, I think it is stronger than ever. There aren’t any statistics to prove this, or at least I haven’t found any. But I am one to pay attention to marketing and the strategies that businesses take and the success each approach offers.

Think about your Facebook or Twitter feeds. How many times do you come across a post that shares a deal or a new item that was recently purchased? Well, my friend, that is word of mouth. Better yet, how often do you see one of your “friends or followers” ranting about a product that just irked them when they tried it? I see it at least a few times a day and between work and play, I don’t spend as much time on social media as most.

Just a few weeks ago I updated my profile picture on Facebook. This new picture wound up with 117 likes and 70 plus comments. I was impressed, thought I must have really looked good. But the truth is that picture was taken by an aspiring photographer. She is a good friend and needs to build her online portfolio. Always one to help I sat through the awkward session and let her snap away.

Through my picture she gained recognition and booked a wedding and a few pregnancy sessions from people that would have never known about her otherwise. This too is a type of word of mouth advertising in our current world.

Giving away free gifts is another twist on word of mouth. No it’s not simply saying, “I love such and such company and I think you should love them too.” But if you are forcing people to share information essentially it falls into the same category.

Another story that comes to mind happened a few months back when I was looking into renting new office space. I was given a pen by a lady who worked in one of the buildings. I love pens. It is maybe somewhat of an obsession. As a writer, I soak in the moments I get to take it back to my roots and put pen to paper. So for me this was the perfect way for me to not only remember them but to talk about them to my friends later.

Today I am working in that space, and while the pen isn’t the sole reason for that… it was definitely a selling point. They made me remember them and now I have an item that I use regularly and has been the start of many conversations.

If you don’t have branded office items that will start random conversations you may want to change that. InkHead is where we purchased our customized pens, apparel, and electronic accessories and they had everything we wanted plus some. All of which came without breaking the bank.

Marketing comes in many forms, but without doing the little things that cause people to talk about you randomly, you will not find the amount of success you are really looking for. Even bad publicity is still publicity. While you are always aiming for positive feedback, just be thankful when people are talking about you.

4 Simple Tips for Effectively Marketing your Blog

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This is a guest post by Amanda Green.

Marketing your blog effectively is not rocket science if you know what you’re doing. While there are many different things that you need to do to get your blog’s marketing right, the first key thing to focus on is building a strong foundation. In the article below we discuss a few tips to help you build this very foundation to market and grow your blog.

1. Brand Your Blog

In order to stand out of from the other bloggers and to look “different”, you should customize the overall appearance of your blog with a logo along with a unique blog design. Just the way you’d use a branded conference app to reach out to your target audience at a convention or trade show and be unique in yourself, branding your blog will help you connect with your visitors in spite of the competition.

Make sure you use unique images/colors on your blog. Also, the theme and the colors should be consistent throughout the blog. The aim here is to create a unique brand that your readers will feel familiar or at home with over time. The more you focus on the branding of your blog, the better it is.

2. Don’t Make Your Visitors Think

Keep your blog clean and simple. Make the navigation easy to understand and have a sitemap included to guide new/old readers around the blog. For example, there are different types of plugins available (both paid and free) that let you customize and organize your blog posts along with links to any related content. The overall look and feel of your blog should be straightforward. Don’t have too many bells and whistles that confuse your visitors.The less they think when moving through your the blog, the higher are the chances that they will return for more.

3. Post on a Regular Basis

If you look around you’ll find that most of the reputed blogs post regularly. This gives them enough content to connect with the existing and as well as new readers. Marketing a blog becomes difficult when the posting frequency is inconsistent. People that read blogs are always looking for fresh ideas and unique tips. By giving real and consistent value to your readers, they will perceive your blog higher than the other blogs that don’t give such value. Although this isn’t the only step when branding your blog, it is indeed an important one.

4. Create Top Notch Content

How will you market a product that isn’t of good quality? Your blog is a product in itself and in order to market this product, you have to infuse value into it by writing and publishing great content. There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there but only a few succeed because they work on providing unique content that gets shared all over the web. Yes it takes real effort to create good blog content, but the effort that you put into doing it will pay off when your readers read and spread the word about it.

Even if one of your blog posts goes viral, it can result in thousands of free visitors and hundreds of targeted subscribers. So the more time (or money) that you invest into creating better blog content, the easier it will be for you to market the blog.

Using Email to Grow Your Blog

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This is a guest post by Reuben Dickison.

It is a Catch-22. Polls consistently find that people choose email as their preferred method of being contacted and updated. The same polls find that the highest source of irritation to online consumers is spam. This brings up the obvious question of –

What is the difference between Email and Spam?

Much like beauty – it is in the eye of the beholder. If it is of interest to the person, even if it is pure direct advertising, it is a welcome email. If the person receiving the email is not interested, it does not matter what the message is – they will consider it spam. This is the biggest factor in deciding how to use email to increase traffic to your blog or website.

When implementing email marketing campaigns more is not better. If you have something genuinely useful to say and it is timely it will probably be well received. It is a reasonable presumption that if a person visited your site, registered, and provided an email address then they have some interest in your site or products. This does not mean they all want a daily update on your site.

The purpose of your email updates or newsletter is very simple but often overlooked. It should be to drive traffic back to your website. I subscribe to one blog that I follow quite closely. I get a newsletter once a week (which is too often for most in my opinion). It contains the complete article of new posts. While I find it interesting it does in fact mean I have not actually visited the website in months as I have no need to. This is drastically reducing the value of any advertising they use to support the blog.

To run an effective email system there are some basic steps.

  1. You need to have email addresses. To collect email addresses you must actively solicit them. A call to action to register and to subscribe to newsletters must be highly visible.
  2. The emails or newsletters sent out must be for the purpose of directing traffic to the website. Highlight the most popular posts and pages in the email with a link to go to the complete post. Use your web analytics to determine the most popular.
  3. The more tailored the message the more effective it will be. If the reader can choose categories they are interested in then their emails should focus on those categories.
  4. It should not look like a cloned email every time. Aside from your logo, change up the look and format frequently to encourage them to actual read it as opposed to opening then immediately moving to trash or spam as “the same as always”.

There are numerous free plugins to use to set up email and newsletter campaigns for either specific or ongoing use. The better ones require more set-up and include an email verification (click here to confirm subscription type email) system.

If you want to grow your website or business through the use of purchased or shared email lists then always use an alternative email account to do the mass unsolicited mailings. This will prevent your primary site email from being tagged as a spammer account by the major email servers.

Hiring professional services sometimes makes sense, particularly if there is an e-commerce portion to your website. Whether it is to simply purchase a list or to conduct a full marketing campaign check to make sure that you have access to the account the emails get sent from. If you purchase 5000 emails in a list and 2000 of them are bounced as undeliverable you need to know that and be able get refunded or new to replace them.

Reuben Dickison is semi-retired freelance writer and blogger currently living in the United States. He is writing for email marketing services from emailergo.com. He holds degrees in Marketing and Public Administration with past jobs including consumer financial management, general manager of a multi-million dollar retail business, and private business management training and consulting.

Increasing Brand Awareness with Word of Mouth Marketing

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This is a guest post by Amanda Revie

“If you like it, tell your friends” translates into “If you like it, tweet about it” in the age of social media. Word of mouth marketing for brand awareness is all about creating compelling and engaging content that people will want to share with others. A successful strategy for increasing brand awareness often combines different platforms on which to share your content and release it into the world. It is easy, relatively cost free to market your brand through different platforms, but done in the wrong way and it will never work. Planning and strategy are the keys to raising brand awareness.

Constant Updates Don’t Raise Awareness

Spamming is the absolute worst thing you can do. It is easy to think that the more content you post the more likely you will interest someone, but in fact constantly updating is a big turn off for users. It is therefore a huge waste of your time to be on social media and actually driving interest away.

Think quality, not quantity and you will begin to build awareness around a brand that people will want to engage with on social media platforms and share your content with your friends.

However, don’t make the mistake of posting too little. People enjoy fresh content, even if it’s something small. If you don’t update regularly then people will stop checking your site. This is why a content strategy is important, so you know what to post and when. This also means you can do it beforehand and have it automatically post for you if you’re away.

Striking a balance is of the utmost importance.

Variety is the Spice of Life  

If all your updates are promoting you, your products, events or services then the people who receive your updates will become bored and go elsewhere. Raising brand awareness is doing just that- raising awareness of your brand and not necessarily what your brand sells. Let your reputation and your brand identity sell your products. Take Innocent Drinks on Facebook as an example. Most of their posts are in line with their overall personality as a business. They use casual humor about nature, animals, fruit and veg, and bad jokes that they find amusing as posts for their Facebook page. They do occasionally post about their products, but it by no means dominates their page.

Even content that seems completely irrelevant can have a positive effect on your brand awareness. Social media and content marketing company Red Rocket Media, for instance, promoted their ‘best office dog’ competition through their Facebook and Twitter pages. Over the two months of the competition, the reach of their Facebook increased by 4,495 per cent. This demonstrates how even seemingly irrelevant, but engaging and compelling content can increase awareness of the brand behind it.

Going Viral

A viral marketing plan takes a lot of planning and an inspired idea. A video is the type of content most likely to go viral, as it is eye-catching and easy to engage with. If we think that the video is funny, fascinating, or weird then we are more likely to share it instantly with our friends on social media platforms. A viral video is the ultimate in word of mouth marketing.

A video that has gone viral is often short, simple and entertaining. If it’s for a brand or a business, it’s never obvious or advertorial.

Google considers video to be more engaging and ranks it higher than blogs or articles so it will gain more exposure. However, you can’t rely on Google to do the work for you. If you want to make the video go viral, then there are a few things that you can do to help it along. Make sure that the thumbnail image is intriguing and your title will spark interest. You should share your video with your network on all your social media platforms, and ask them to share it. Make sure you share it with the right people too, such as bloggers, writers and sites with millions of visitors. If it’s successful, then people will share it without any obligation to you, thus promoting your business by pure and simple word of mouth.

Content is King

Word of mouth marketing starts with social media and if you do it right it will expand and expand. The things that you post need to be consistent with your brand’s identity but varied enough to retain interest. You also need to make sure that you strike a balance between posting too much and not enough. Above all, the content needs to be engaging. As the saying goes, content is king.

Author  Bio:

Amanda Revie is an online social media marketer and SEO expert at the WebMarketing Group. You can follow them @webmktinggroup on Twitter