Monthly Archives: June 2009

Geosocial Networking

Posted on June 23, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

Geosocial networking is social networking that is relative to where you are – and in my humble opinion, it’s where this communications revolution will be headed next. I’m not talking about information posted about a place, like the restaurant reviews in Yelp, though that is geosocial media too.

I mean the kind of posts people make when they are out on the town, relating real-time experiences as they happen.

  1. The biggest example of geosocial media can be seen in the news coming out of Iran these days – a coup is under way, and it is fuelled by Iranian citizens’ ability to post video about what is going on in their region now. It is the kind of media attention the major news outlets simply cannot capture themselves, and they know it – which is why they keep using the footage themselves.

  2. Politics starts at home, and now it can be viewed by the entire world. So if you are a politician and you turn evil, you’d better expect your neighbor to train a camera on you from now on.
  3. Smart phone apps have all the ease-of-use of a laptop when it comes to networking. They are also capable of pinpointing your location via GPS. When these phones become truly mainstream, people will be willing and able to post about where they are and what they’re doing. When people use their cell phones to post remotely to Twitter that they’re out somewhere doing something, that’s the heart of geosocial networking right there.
  4. Posts that tell people that you’re sitting at your computer, again, are boring. The biggest complaint people have about Twitter is that it’s a bunch of people posting, “Eating chicken for dinner,” as if anyone would care. Geosocial media allows you to go out into the world and see new things.
  5. This kind of networking is fun – and can add to your experience. Disney knows this – they are currently working with Verison to develop a park navigation app for visitors. It’s a smart application of existing technology no one else had considered before. Once it takes off, expect to see more of this kind of thing at malls, swap meets, state fairs, and other large area events and locations. (Once the people who go to the state fair have smart phones, of course.)
  6. These applications also allow you to share images of where you are and what you’re doing. Again, this is a whole lot more interesting than pictures of you sitting at your desk at work. (I’m not pointing fingers – I have a LOT of those in circulation myself.)
  7. Facebook is going to need to grow into a new space. While they currently dominate the market of social networking sites, they have the same flaw MySpace had: Too much talking, not enough listening. It is possible to spend hours on Facebook loading picutres, watching videos, and playing games without ever talking to anyone. Even if one did, on average a person’s followers are friends they know in real life anyway. Since geosocial is about meeting people in your immediate vicinity, whether you know them already or not, it would introduce a lot of users to that aspect of social networking a lot of us like the most: Making friends and learning something new.
  8. Photography sites like Flickr and Picasa, as well as video sites like YouTube, already have geotagging functions in place. With all of the camera phones out today, this lets people not just create photo albums but placecards of where they’ve been to go with the pictures. Now that the iPhone and G1 have video recording as part of their standard packages, expect to see a lot more videos geotagged as well.

If you want to look into how geosocial works, check out some of these sites and see if one of them works for you. My personal choice is Brightkite – I used it extensively to record my trip to Disneyworld earlier this year. You may feel more at home with one of these others:

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Posted in Mobile Marketing, Social Networking

Hire Film Students to make your YouTube Videos

Posted on June 23, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 5 Comments

Years ago, my friends and I would make movies. We’d come up with these wild little concepts, draft our friends into being in them, shoot some scenes, have some laughs… and occasionally we’d even finish them. At the time there didn’t seem like much point in putting a lot of effort into them, because there was nothing to do with them once they were done.

Today that’s no longer a problem. YouTube is the greatest distributor of video content the world has ever seen. According to their own blog,  the channel receives 20 new hours of content every minute. If you figure a feature length film runs 2 hours, that’s like having 14400 new features being released each day. Clearly, there’s no longer any problem finding a distribution channel for video, as long as you don’t mind not getting points on a back-end deal. Since it’s all free, YouTube is the only one making any money.
So now there’s an open door for filmmakers (well, videographers) to show off their talents.
There’s also a wealth of advertisers trying to “break out” on YouTube in some meaningful way, and usually failing to do so. The problem is that if a company puts time and energy into creating something to show, they feel they have to justify the effort by making it a full-on advertisement. They also aren’t typically interested in creating content, just promoting – so the end result is poorly executed.
Film students, on the other hand, have passion. Even the ones who make commercials for class work or a show reel aren’t primarily thinking of how to show off a product, they’re in it to entertain. This isn’t necessarily a good thing if you’re making a commercial for television broadcast, but it’s exactly what’s needed if you’re trying to get noticed on line.
Think of the Mentos/Diet Coke videos – the people who made those weren’t working for either company, and weren’t trying to promote either brand. Still, how many Mentos mints do you think people bought because they became aware of them through YouTube?

Film and video students are skilled at the technical realities of shooting footage and editing it, but are also keenly aware of pacing and tone – intangibles that decide whether something is entertaining or not.
I cannot understand why no one has yet approached a film school to get students to produce pieces for them on YouTube. Doing this would give artisans the chance to do their thing, and companies would get gifted new-comers to make interesting on line content for them.

That content would also have a greater chance of becoming “viral” than anything a marketing department might come up with. Film students still have edge, something that gets lost once you’re consumed strictly with marketing and promotion.

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Posted in Uncategorized

My Decision on Bing.com

Posted on June 19, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 2 Comments

I was with everyone else when the announcement of Bing.com was made. “A conversation engine? What the hell is that!?!”

Well of course, kids, that’s marketing. Microsoft couldn’t beat Google at search, so they just changed “search” to “decision.” So now they own the “Decision Engine market” because Google never thought of that particular euphemism. It’s not unlike when Starbuck’s started serving “Frappuccinos.” Ice blended drinks had been around for years, but since no one thought to call them, “Frappuccinos,” Starbucks became the winners in the Frappuccino business.

But so what? Bing’s been out a little while now, and I’ve had a chance to tool around with it. And I am happy to announce, Microsoft has effectively become Ask.com. The layout and sidebar features offer the same content, and the results are of the same quality. If Ask is paying attention, they really might want to consider whether or not they’ve been in the decision engine market all these years.

Their media searches are much better than they have been, but this is more a sign that Microsoft has learned to catch up. It has videos from the major sites (Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler, Metacafe) as well as the media outlets and their own video. (Fox, NBC, USA Today.) The results are far less anemic than I remember MSN or “Live” results being. Welcome to the party, Bing.

Ditto for the image searches – a lot of content, not a lot of deciding. Is that unfair? Perhaps – but Microsoft made this label up, so they should have to answer for it. If I do an image search for, “pizza,” how exactly is this different than if I do an image search on Yahoo?

The web search results (I have to stop calling them “decision results” – it’s silly) are roughly the same quality as Google. The layout incorporates that “Universal Search” philosophy that has taken two years to become an overnight success. But those maps and images and accompanying information appear at the bottom of the page instead of the top. IMHO, It’s a rather lame way to differentiate themselves from their search brothers.

I also find it rather disappointing that Bing didn’t incorporate one of Google’s better features, offering the correct spelling of a word if you search using the wrong spelling. You see, I had no idea how to spell “Frappuccino” when I kept referencing them. While Bing didn’t clue me in to my error, Google did. It’s an easy feature that should have been included, especially since so many of us need copy editors in our daily lives.

Given the marketing budget behind Bing, here’s what I think will happen: They will continue to grab up more and more market share in search, just as they did with Live, just as Ask did two years ago. But eventually people will stay with Google, because they’ve been using it so long. They definitely have a better product then they had before, but the majority of users still don’t search things – they “Google” them. (Google’s own hand in redefining the market shows itself in this.)

So who will benefit the most from this? For now, my Dad – he got a Hotmail account sometime during the Hoover administration, and as a dedicated Luddite has no intention of switching to anything else. This means every search he does is on a Microsoft product. He is typical of his age group, so boomers will continue to be the base for MSN/Live/Bing, while the rest of us use Google, our Moms use Yahoo!, and Twitter Search will be the choice for the truly smart ass among us.

Microsoft’s one shot at getting a leg up will be to promote themselves as the search engine for pre-teens and teens. In ten years they will be in that target demo that Google has now, and those of us who are the current target… won’t. Microsoft definitely has the money to keep their advertising juggernaut running forever if need be. If they can manage no to re-brand themselves yet again, and do real work appealing to their future adult customers, then I think it will have a shot.

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Posted in Search

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Getting the right followers

Posted on June 17, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

I just read a great phrase on Seth Godin’s Blog: “Scalejacking.” Dave Balter used this to describe going to a site that has a great number of users, trying to divert them to your promotion (whether they’re quality visitors or not,) getting your 1% conversion rate and calling it a day well spent. A good example would be the marketer who puts together a Twitter following of 30,000 users from anywhere, interested in anything, without any common values – just so when you post a link to your event on Upcoming or new white paper you can show how you got a huge number of page visits.

Being able to show large numbers is always important in proving the success of any campaign, particularly on line where it’s easier to prove large numbers. I take exception, though, to people who look to a follow count as a measure of success just because they can’t prove anything else. Marketers may try to tell you they’ve won a great battle for you by gaining a large follow count because they know the referral traffic from that Facebook Page – to say nothing of the conversion rate – in no way justifies the work that went into it. So instead they point to the huge jump in followers – and that just isn’t meaningful success.

Imagine this: You run a business in Phoenix doing custom hang glider detailing – let’s call the company, “Pimp my Glide,” because I’m just a whore for puns. You then go to Facebook and amass a huge following by giving away a lunch with Paris Hilton. (She’s a friend of your family’s, so the cost to you is only a meal for two.) In a few hours you have thousands of people on your page. A minority of them are in Phoenix, even fewer hang glide… but lookit all them followers!

Just getting followers is actually very easy work. Turning them into customers requires more finesse. This is the kind of thing PPC marketers have known for years. You can get people to your landing page easily enough, with the right keywords and budget; but getting them to continue through the chain to actually filling out a contact form and then buying something is the real goal.

Smart social media marketing requires this same dedication to getting visitors to cross that finish line, not simply getting them to a profile page, possible clicking on a link, and then calling it a day.

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Posted in Marketing, Social Networking

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I like E-mail Marketing

Posted on June 16, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

Not exactly a topic relating to SEO or social, but this is free, so you get what you pay for – E-mail marketing is a great example of something that works, but didn’t used to. The Direct Marketing Association found that the ROI on e-mail marketing is $57 for every $1 spent – and that’s not peanuts, but you have to do it in a way that doesn’t offend or push away. Namely, you can’t spam them.

Just a couple of years ago the common man on the street would tell you any e-mail you get from a business promoting something is called spam. That’s it, that’s all, no discussion, it’s all garbage. The industry had gotten so many get-rich-quick types, that e-mail exploded in a very bad way. When people started getting e-mail addresses in the mid 1990s, getting any e-mail was kind of neat, at first. For a short while no one seemed to mind getting unsolicited mail, and would even on occaision click through to see what they were selling, since they were so forward thinking and ahead of the curve as to send an e-mail about it.

It didn’t take long for those e-mails to become a nuisance, though. Blocking all this junk became a big problem as most people know. Personally, I’d jump to a new address ever 5 years or so just to start fresh. The overly enthusiastic spammers ruined the industry for everyone else, and it looked like it would stay that way.

It’s one of the other hallmarks of new technology: People using it in a selfish manner that is ruinous. Think of telemarketing, which has died off a great deal, but is still a pain for many who haven’t gotten off the right call lists. And does anyone remember, “fax blasting?” Anytime a new way to be made available for communication opens up, there’s someone who wants to use it advertise to you, whether you want to see it or not, because to them your sole function in life is to buy something from them.

But e-mail had a sharp turn around. For one, e-mail providers got serious about cutting off spam. Google will even flush e-mail directly to your spam folder if it comes from a server that gets too many reports of abuse. In turn, servers have taken to kicking out e-mail marketers for abuse to protect themselves. The 2003 CAN-SPAM act tried to halt spam through legal means, but was a bit of a joke – though enforcement of the statutes relating to porn mercifully kept that kind of spam at bay.

What ultimately has made e-mail marketing work again is the understanding among those marketing professionals who understand that pissing in the well is bad for everyone. It didn’t require threats or fines or even imprisonment to get the best of the e-mail marketing community to shape up. It only took an understanding that if people stayed opposed to e-mails with offers, no one would ever open them, no one would buy anything from those companies, and clients would stop buying that kind of promotion.

So what did they do to get people to trust e-mail again?

  • Creating an opt-in list instead of sending to blind addresses
  • Immediately process opt-out requests
  • Content relevant to what customers want
  • Coupons and offers

It’s the kind of attention to what is beneficial to customers that comes back to us when considering how to execute a social media marketing campaign as well. You want to know who these people you’re messaging to are and how best to make them happy. It’s the main reason simply gaining 30,000 followers on Twitter shouldn’t be your end game. I would much rather have 300 followers I know are completely interested in what I have to offer them.

Also, when you share relevant, newsworthy information through your e-mail, you can gain important inbound links from sites rebroadcasting it. This will help you in search, which as you should know by now is all about one-way, quality, inbound links.

Well hey! I managed to turn that one back around to search and social!

The point here is that e-mail marketing works, and there are good people out there who can help you get your name out to potential customers. It is definitely worth a piece of your marketing budget.

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Posted in Marketing

Beware the Social Networking Hobbyist

Posted on June 15, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

This is a short but quick piece of advice: Don’t ever trust the person who tells you to go into social because it’s “neat.” You wouldn’t think there are a lot of people like that, but I’ve run into my share, and they’re a dangerous bunch. They’re the self-titled, “social media experts” – even though the people who really know what’s going on by now know better than to call themselves that. As titles go, “Social Media Expert” carries less water than “Real Estate Expert” does – the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

One of the big problems is trying to get people who don’t use social to start doing so anyway so they can see the advertising you’re doing. Getting people to use the social media site your company is listed on really only helps that site. It may help the “cause” of social media usage overall, but doesn’t help your company. Therefore, when you hire an evangelist to do your social media, you don’t have a level headed, pragmatic strategist guiding you. You have a fanatic. These people will be able to tell you why some such site or another has a great tool for your company, but cannot or will not defend it in terms of the site’s traffic – the very reason you should be there in the first place.

One example was a client (not mine, thank you) that was listed on Utterli – a fantastic site for recording quick podcast-like posts from one’s phone, which then appear on their site, or can be fed via RSS to anywhere the user wishes. The problem was that there was no indication that the traffic on this site was in any way complimentary to the client’s product. A great deal of manhours were devoted to this project, only to be abandoned because there had been no great swell in traffic or leads as a result. Research on Utterli’s traffic could have shown that the people there weren’t and would not be interested. Unfortunately, this campaign was developed by one of these evangels of Social Media – and if there’s one thing they do not have time for, it’s rational thought.

So remember – while some of these sites have great tools, (photo galleries, audio recording, video hosting, etc.) what you really need to know is how much traffic these sites have, how much work will it take to get a large number of them to see you, and how much more work will it take to make them customers.

Anything else is fluff spoken by the uneducated.

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Posted in Social Networking

Are Blogs Social?

Posted on June 12, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 5 Comments

For a while now I’ve been trying to resolve for myself the question of whether blogs are really “social media” or not.

Whenever some brainless social media “expert” does their tap dance on the subject, they’re always sure to mention blogs along with Twitter and Facebook and all of the other outlets people already know about. To be honest, so have I – not so much for the socialization or communication, but because they’re a good anchor for all of the other social media stuff a client does. If you write a blog post that day, you’ve got something to talk about on Twitter and Facebook, and those discussions can lead them back to the post, which is on the site, which is where you want the traffic…

But that really just makes blogs content page generators, not calls to individuals to discuss the topics.

You’ve read other people’s articles and posts about, “how to entice others to leave comments on your blog,” right? They beg the question, “Why don’t people leave comments naturally?” I don’t have to strategize how to write Tweets to get people to write back. That’s because Twitter really is what we all mean by social: You talk, people listen, then talk back. It doesn’t require posting agita that gets people angry and makes them write back. (That works too, of course – everyone likes venting, especially if you have a talent for being violently disagreeable in public.)

I started blogging in 2002, before people were bandying about this term, “social media.” Back then, a web log was just the next evolution of the forums I’d been hanging around in for the last couple of years – which were really social. You post a quick topic, and the culture of the forum made people want to post back. Blogs were a way to own the discussion, for everyone to be a moderator. All of the friends I’d known on the forums had done the same thing I did and created a LiveJournal blog. We all friended each other, and then any time one of us had something to say, all of us would comment back. So in that regard, blogging was a social event.

Now everyone in the world has a blog, but not necessarily a network of friends. This is what is missing from blogs – that other catchphrase of the day, social networking. As anyone into this stuff who is a sufficient smart ass will tell you, there is a difference:

Social media is the content people create to reach out to other people.
Social networking is making friends who will be interested in all this content you’re creating.

Creating the content is a no-brainer for most. If you can string a few words together, buy a Flip Video, or crawl enough sites to make a healthy collection of bookmarks, you can get into the social media business. But if you don’t do the added work of reaching out to people who might want to see what you’re doing, you’re skipping that second, equally important step of making a network.

That’s why Twitter works. That’s why Facebook works. The major sites like this have networking inexorably connected to what they do. I don’t get comments on these posts here very often – I get them as tweets or direct messages or replies on Facebook. I don’t mind, I’m not trying to defend my use of time in writing my little blog. Besides, that is how people respond now. It isn’t that readers need to be drawn out to leave a blog response, it’s that they just don’t want to do it on the blog. It’s a lot easier to just post:

@ciaoenrico You’re an idiot – I leave blog comments all the time! And btw iPhone rulez! n00b!

So maybe blogs aren’t social themselves – maybe they’re just fodder for all the other sites that are.

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Posted in Blogging, Social Networking

McDonald’s and their Brilliant Coffee Marketing

Posted on June 10, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

I’m just like everyone else when it comes to McDonald’s: I look down my nose at it, I ask people who go there, “What the hell’s the matter with you?” and Big Macs and fries are intensely yummy. I’m just as hypocritical as the average American. Yee hah!

I’ve been a fan of McDonald’s iced coffee drinks for a year or so now – “Large Sugar Free Vanilla Iced Coffee” just rolls off my tongue whenever I hit their drive through. It’s only recently, though, that I’ve caught McDonald’s advertising. They’ve probably only started the campaign now that the entire coffee line is out of beta testing.

Check this out:

McDonald’s knows that while just about everyone has gotten on board with our national coffee fetish in the last twenty years, it still has that “mystique” that turns people off. The people who enjoy that mystique are just the ones who would say, “McDonald’s iced coffee!?! Eww!” These aren’t the people McDonald’s would easily reach, so trying to convince them their coffees are just as good or better than what you’d find at Starbuck’s would be an incredibly uphill battle.

Then again, Starbuck’s makes too much money to come from just the turtleneck and poetry crowd. Average slobs like iced coffees too, and the majority of us don’t appreciate having to shell out four dollars for it.

Essentially, McDonald’s took that lemon and made lemonade – rather than try to win over the coffee elite, they turned against them, trying to attract the common coffee drinker.

And I think that is incredibly cool. They looked at the market, and determined that the most vocal portion of it is still the minority, and shouldn’t be catered to in their marketing plan. In my opinion, the lesson here is that the people you want to attract aren’t always the potential brand champions, but the ones who collectively represent the most cash.

Sometimes, you just need to be the choice of the lowest common denominator.

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Posted in Marketing

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The Importance (and Limitations) of Social Media

Posted on June 8, 2009 by ciaoenrico| Leave a comment

Social media can keep you in touch with customers, clients, industry professionals who can share a lot to help your marketing campaign… but is it really indespensable?

I’ve been doing social media marketing for years now, and I can tell you it is very important, for all of the reasons listed above, and it will only get more prominent. But there are a lot of SMM (social media marketing) evangelists out there, almost all of whom overstate its importance. Having a sound marketing plan is far more important, but you don’t hear a lot of people speaking to that. (And I’ll admit, it might be because that’s so obvious.)

Why are there so many “Social Media Experts” on Twitter? I think because they actually sell SMM services. Twitter will always be a place where we marketers meet to voice our own expertise so we can get jobs. I think the reason there’s such a sizable bubble in social media is that the news media recognizes that there is something new brewing on line, and they want to be on top of it – not just network news or the even more illustrious E! Network – but Wall Street Journal and Business Week.

I think this gives managers a false impression of how important social media is – though it is important. You can do a lot with social media. But it still isn’t so huge you can divert money from your media budget to your SMM budget. The reason is that while you can get a lot of people to hear you, the sites aren’t philosophically geared towards getting people to convert once they see your posts. It makes more sense to think of it as an element of public relations, and to have your PR people bone up on what they need to do to communicate with local media and other people of importance that way, since it is such a great way to create messaging.

But that just isn’t as sexy as saying, “the greatest communications development since the semaphore flag.” No one wants to insert that unforgiving “but” when talking about what social media marketing can do. So I will: Social media marketing is a great way to get your message to people who are willing to hear what you have to say, BUT, don’t expect to have scads of sales to close immediately after you post a link on Linkedin.

Stay tuned, read about how others are succeeding there, and yes, get yourself on Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin so you’re in the game. At the end of the day, social media is something you need to be doing yourself – because it is only a tactic. And a truism of advertising agencies is that no one knows a client’s business better than they do.

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Posted in Social Networking

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iPhone Apps in a Bad Economy

Posted on June 2, 2009 by ciaoenrico| 1 Comment

When the first iPhone came out, I stayed away from it – partly because AT&T was the carrier, but mostly because of the price. While the handset was about as much as you’d expect a boutique electronic toy to be, the monthly cost was, to my way of thinking, a lot for a phone.

At the time someone I worked with told me, “IPhones aren’t really that much – it’s only about $90 per month.”

Only $90 per month. Only. For a phone?

[sarcasm] Well hey, that’s nothing! I’ve always got about $90 jangling around in my pockets, why not burn it on a handheld woobie? What the hell else am I going to spend $90 on? [/sarcasm] (Sorry – HTML joke.)

Needless to say, in my humble opinion, $90 a month is a lot of money for a phone, unless you have need for it. And smart phones definitely have their uses. On the road it is great to be able to send and receive work e-mail, view documents or read trade news without having to haul out a laptop each time.

But the apps? The kinds of apps people generally talk about aren’t productivity apps – they’re fun. Look at this list from Brighthub of Top 10 apps. Music players, sports scores, Twitter, news and content readers. They’re great, but hardly necessary to the average American. Bear in mind, I am not hating on the iPhone. But when people talk about $90 as if it were nothing, I have to call it out.

So the iPhone is expensive to have. Therefore, the people who have one can afford one. The people who can’t don’t, and won’t see the cool iPhone game or application you created for your business. If you are actively seeking out the people who can already afford an iPhone, great – it’s certainly one way of addressing a specific segment while avoiding the one you don’t care about. But iPhones are definitely the domain of the Haves, while the Have Nots just have phones.

Think about the standard cell phone. 10 years ago, that was just becoming affordable, so everyone started having them. The same thing happened with computers 15 years ago, or cable television 20 years ago: Expensive and exclusive, then eventually there was a price drop and it was rolled out to everyone else.

With iPhone service costing what it does now, it is not yet the time to start developing applications so you can draw attention to your business. (Again, unless you’re only trying to get the tech-oriented upper middle class to see you.) Particularly while the economy is what it is, people are not rushing out to buy costly electronic devices that stay costly on a monthly basis just because everyone on CNET is talking about how neat it is. It may be some years before we’re back in the kind of shape where people will gladly spend that kind of money on one. Certainly it will be years until they come down in price, the way all other electronics have in the past.

(By the way, I find it perplexing that my G1 can do roughly anything for a flat $25 a month, while making calls costs another $40 and texting an additional $10. The damn thing’s SUPPOSED to make calls! Can’t a way be found to make THAT cheaper before giving me mobile YouTube access!?!)

So don’t stress putting together an iPhone app for now. In all likelihood, by the time it’s a good time to make one, the landscape will have changed again and your app will either be useless or far easier to build. I can remember being asked to look into Second Life to see if that might be valuable for creating brand presence. In 2007 all sorts of business magazines were talking about Second Life, because the non-tech oriented business mind can easily grasp it: You play a game, you meet people, you look at virtual billboards for Coca-Cola and IBM. Money in the bank!

Of course it wasn’t, because no one was buying anything there. More importantly, there were only about 8 million active users – not enough to justify the expense of the work required.

IPhones are used by more people, but not a lot more. To date they have sold 21.4 million phones – including the original ones. Many fanboys classed up to the 3G when it was launched, so the number of users is actually less than that. So while I won’t say smart phones are a fad, they still haven’t penetrated enough to be called “mainstream.”

In short, you iPhone app would reach far fewer eyes than your banners, Facebook ads or radio spots. If your product is for everyone, stick with these for the time being. Prices on many advertising platforms are cheaper than usual right now, giving you both a wide swath of potential customers and the opportunity to position yourself for when the economy has its inevitable upswing.

Until that time, or until all smart phones are affordable in anyone’s budget, a heavy investment in creating apps for them just isn’t… well, smart.

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Posted in Mobile Marketing

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