Author Archives: AllyLevin

5 Mobile Fails You Should Learn From

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As smartphone sales continue to grow like crazy, especially as we enter the jolly holiday season, it’s no surprise that mobile is the new dot.com bubble. And many companies are paving highly effective ways to engage. Actually we’re all just now figuring it out and grasping the question – how do consumers interact with their mobile devices, what roles do they play in their lives, and how can we tap into that?

So as the learning curve goes, and marketing trial and error takes its course, there are bound to be some fails and missteps. Let’s take a look at five of the mobile fails we can all take a lesson from as we plan our strategies for 2012.

  1. The dying trend, check-in apps. Daily deal offering sites like Groupon and Living Social met the same fate earlier this year. It was enticing at first, and then consumers get bored with it. Oldest story in the book. Gowalla and Foursquare were cool a year ago, but as retailers started to catch on to the trend and created their own shopping apps with check-in incentives, the enthusiasm began to ween.
  2. Forgetting that mobile is a whole different animal. In case anyone out there still questions it, you CANNOT just take your web stuff and throw it on a mobile site. No no no. Mobile is a whole new opportunity to interact. There are benefits, challenges and strategies completely separate from your PC web tools. If you avoid the copy and paste trap in re-purposing the web, you can take advantage new capabilities, such as HTML5.
  3. If you’re doing mobile, do it right. A lot of you are experimenting with mobile tools, such as QR codes and social media, without creating a mobile-optimized destination for visitors. So just when you get them right where you want them, your mobile visitors land on your PC site. Ew! I can promise most of these visitors are not coming back. That’s a lot of lost conversions and sales.
  4. Agencies aren’t focusing on the big picture. Mobile web and mobile strategies can’t just be an afterthought in your bigger plan. But for this fail we blame your marketing agency. We can’t emphasize enough the significance of the mobile experience in the focus of your brand, and in driving further mobile growth. A lot of brands are still just missing the boat on this one.
  5. Manufacturers are still playing catch up. RIP feature phones. I can still remember the simple days, when my phone’s buzz alert could only mean a text message. Now it could be an email, Facebook message, tweet, status update, check-in or any of the thousands of other connections. It was a sudden and unexpectedly rapid death that manufacturers were not ready to capitalize on.

(Thanks to our friends at Mobile Marketer, see their original article.)

Invitation to the White House’s Baltimore Business Leaders’ Briefing

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Any invitation to the White House is an exciting one, and we’re even more psyched to be invited as part of the Baltimore Business Leaders’ Briefing, with about 35 other Maryland-based companies.

The agenda includes voicing our perspectives about the economy, technological innovation, healthcare reform, tax reform, and other pertinent issues.

Although our Columbia, MD office is only a short drive from Pennsylvania Ave., it often feels like the small business community doesn’t hold much consequence in the deliberations of our policy makers. So when any invitation is sent our way to voice our perspective on the condition of our local small businesses, we’re going to jump at it!

Max, our CEO, left the office all smiles this afternoon, no doubt with high hopes of receiving a more personal invitation to go golfing from Mr. Obama himself.

We’ll see what happens from today’s briefing, but either way it’s an honor to be personally chosen by the president’s right hand men as a representative of Baltimore businesses.

Read more about the event in Baltimore Business Journal’s article.

Happy Movember! No-Shave November – Day 1

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It’s the rich tradition that men all over the world have been propagating for generations since 1999. This annual, month-long event entails the growing of mustaches during the month of November.

First celebrated by a group of men in Australia, the festivities and reports of facial hair have spread nearly worldwide.

Charitable organizations have also evolved around Movember’s significance, helping to raise money and awareness for men’s health issues, including prostate cancer and depression.
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Easy Halloween costumes for the procrastinating marketer

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The air has turned brisk and the still-green grass is hiding beneath a thin layer of auburn-stained leaves that faintly crackle and rustle with each step you take. We’re approaching the final days of October, people, and you know what that means… HALLOWEEN!

So please ignore the glistening trees, shiny ornaments and alluring bows of holly that for some reason already adorn the aisles of your local Target and Walmart, and for a few more days let’s relish in the holiday which year after year gets pushed aside like the inconsequential step-child of celebrations. Halloween is not just for kids, my friends, it’s a serious event!
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What it takes to be Steve Jobs

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“Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?” Wiser words never uttered by a man more influential and responsible for single-handedly transforming the computing and mobile landscape.

Steve Jobs told us to be crazy. He told us he wanted to put a ding in the universe. He didn’t put a ding, but he sure left an Apple.

A single glance at the non-stop media coverage, and you’d think America’s greatest superhero finally befell to his kryptonite. #SteveJobs, #iSad and #ThankYouSteve rotate Twitter’s trending topics, and pictures of our generation’s Thomas Edison continue to flood Facebook’s news feeds.

But in no jest, he was a hero to millions, probably billions, of people he never met. He changed the way we think about and interact with the world. Every time you have to ask your kid a computer question, remember, he’s the reason.

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Back to Basics: What is your Marketing Objective?

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When it comes to this whole marketing thing, do you sometimes feel like you’re in over your head? Maybe you’re new to the “branding” concept? You hear so much talk about “engaging your audience” via Facebook and social media, but are you completely lost in where to even start?

I’m not surprised. Go ahead, just try Googling “marketing ideas.” You’ll get 40,200,000 search results.

Talk about information overload. No wonder most business owners don’t even want to think about their marketing, so they put it off for as long as possible. I’m thinking you need a little direction. Am I right?

I’m gonna level with you – doing it right is not as easy as it looks. That’s why there are millions of professional marketing firms out there. And for the most part, the professionals will do a good job for you. But whether you’re coming up with the creative ideas, or you’re paying someone else to do it for you, you should NEVER go into your own marketing strategy blindly. It’s EXTREMELY important that you get involved. After all, who knows your clients, your product and your company’s needs and goals better than you do?

So before you delve into the details of how often to Tweet and which keywords to base your SEO around, let’s start with the basics. I just want to get your feet wet and get you thinking. Always start by figuring out what your marketing OBJECTIVE is. Everything else will come from there.

What’s your Objective?

1. Awareness – Potential customers must know of, or be reminded of your existence, your location, your product, your price range, and what makes you stand out from the competition

2. Build Contact List – Your mailing list is like gold. It’s what you rely on for promoting any campaign, and it takes a lot of nurturing to build and keep.

3. Get Involved – Your business is not soul-less. Companies are made up of people, and people like to patronize companies that they know go out of their way to help other people. Your company’s positive image reinforces the perception that you are genuinely caring and sharing.

4. Staff Incentives – A cared for and happy team makes for a harmonious, smooth operation. Customers can tell when your employees don’t want to be there. Think about the grouchy, frowning cashier at the supermarket. Make sure your employees feel appreciated!

5. Excitement – This is the kind of energy and excitement that makes you stand out from the competition. This is when you need to turn on your thinking cap and come up with some really creative promotions.

6. Frequency – When you’re trying to be “the place to go.” This is a brand loyalty thing, and keeping them coming as frequently as possible.

7. Publicity – For this one you’ve got to be interesting and newsworthy. Maybe you’re doing BIG things for the community, or you’re doing something so completely out of the box that it’s a story too good to pass up.

8. Generate Traffic - Simply getting people in the door or on the website is your goal here. Contests are great for this! You want to get potential customers to complete some sort of action, whether it’s entering the contest or downloading a form.

9. Branding – Image is everything. Period. If you don’t define your company and your brand, the market will define it for you. And that’s never what you want!

10. Increase Sales – a.k.a. Up-selling – This is every CEO’s favorite! From the sneaky but ingenious psychological tactics (a la putting candy, gum and magazines in the grocery checkout line) to having an in-depth understanding of how your industry works, there are really unlimited opportunities to do this one.

11. Creating Activity - Most industries have their “slow” periods during the year, but that’s not set in stone. This is where you will get creative to make the slow season profitable.

12. Trial Offer – Who’s gonna turn down a free sample? Come on, you’ll love it. This is when you really want to get those potential customers who are living on the edge to finally make the plunge – but without any of the risk.

(Great list compiled by Tom Feltenstein – And if you’re looking for a good book on the basics, try Tom’s “Encyclopedia of 401 Proven Killer Promotional Tactics”)

Neighbor marketing when you’re the new kid in town

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When I started high school I didn’t know anybody. Literally, the first day I school I walked through those hollow halls and did not know a single soul. We had moved that summer, to a brand new house in a brand new town and a brand new state. Everyone else around me had known each other since kindergarten. They already had their clicks and social classes established. I was the new kid in high school. I bet you don’t envy me that.

And I don’t regret it a bit. Trust me, being the new kid has its perks. It’s a fresh start. You can create your image and define yourself to your neighbors. You can be whatever you want to be! That’s what I liked about it in high school, and that’s what i like about it still today, as we settle in to our great big new office space in a new neighborhood and new part of town. We get to be the new kids again, and meet a whole new set of neighbors!

I don’t just mean the local businesses near our Columbia office. I mean our new friends who work in the other offices of our complex. I never had trouble making friends back in high school, and things haven’t changed since then. If you’ve ever spent time in our office, you know that we aren’t shy.

So how do we plan on meeting the new neighbors in style? The same way we carry out any serious initiative… By planning an (inexpensive) full campaign around it, of course. What better way to get acquainted to our new surroundings (and network with people who know other people) than to host a “conversations and cocktails” office-warming party.

We’ll share a few drinks and funny stories, compile a list of birthdays,

I can’t even emphasize how important first impressions are. So be excited to be the new kid in town!