Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are Review

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(More customer reviews)As a marketer for over twenty years, keeping up with all of the technological marketing medium opportunities that have emerged and continue to evolve isn't as easy as it once was. Well-focused, detailed and informative books on a specific growing opportunity, written by an expert, definitely help. This one delivers well on this front. Here's the more specific upsides and potential downsides I see, depending on your expertise and needs.
KEY UPSIDES:
- It's a thorough and well-organized in-depth look across the spectrum of mobile marketing.
There isn't anything I can think of this book should have included that it didn't. It starts with a history and overview of the strengths and complexities of Mobile Marketing and a detailed look at how to target and track your MM audience.
Throughout the book there are great case studies. After looking into each of the different approaches that one might take with their mobile marketing efforts. It goes on to explore the international MM landscape and privacy/spam issues. There's also an appendix of supplier resources, text symbols and a glossary of frequently used terms.
- It's a practical, tactical "how to guide" too.
For each type of potential mobile marketing campaign - including advertising, promotions, application creation, e-commerce, search engine optimization and integrating it with mass media- you'll get a break down of the various mobile marketing tactics available, considerations to help you decide if that kind of effort is right for your business needs, and the best practices, instructions and resources to help you make it happen.
- You recieve free access to the on-line version of the book, w/ purchase of the hard copy.
It's a good reference that's only a click away.
POTENTIAL DOWNSIDES:
- It's not going to be current for long.
One of the great things about this book is that it includes recent research and has added things like a chapter specifically dedicated to iPhone marketing - not included in many other books. But, w/ the recent launch of the iPad - there's already a new chapter waiting to be made. Some of the more specific info is just going to get outdated extremely quickly.
- It'll be easier to understand and more useful to marketers who are already fairly savvy on Internet Marketing and have worked with larger scale campaigns.
Mobile marketing opportunities, to a great extent, parallel Internet marketing ones. So, in many cases the book is highlighting the differences between the two, and it can and does get very technical. MM is also very resource intensive. This makes it more difficult currently for smaller organizations to use as efficiently - and the book really focuses on larger scale initiatives.
BOTTOM LINE: A well-written, thorough and practical guide, as well as reference book. For as long as it remains current, I highly recommend it to marketers that want a greater understanding of the potential Mobile Marketing opportunities available to their brands.


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Mobile MarketingFinding Your Customers No Matter Where They AreUse Mobile Marketing to Supercharge Brands, Sales, and Profits!Using brand-new mobile marketing techniques, you can craft campaigns that are more personal, targeted, immediate, measurable, actionable–and fun! Now, one of the field's leading pioneers shows exactly how to make mobile marketing work for your business. Cindy Krum cuts through the hype, revealing what's working–and what isn't. She guides you through identifying the right strategies and tactics for your products, services, brands, and customers…avoiding overly intrusive, counterproductive techniques…and how to successfully integrate mobile into your existing marketing mix. Above all, Krum shows you how to effectively execute on your mobile marketing opportunities–driving greater brand awareness, stronger customer loyalty, more sales, and higher profits.Topics include• Getting started fast with mobile marketing• Understanding the international mobile marketing landscape• Targeting and tracking the fast-changing mobile demographic• Taking full advantage of the iPhone platform• Leveraging mobile advertising, promotion, and location-based marketing• Building micro-sites and mobile applications• Performing search engine optimization for mobile sites and applications• Building effective mobile affiliate marketing programs• Integrating online and offline mobile marketing• Avoiding mobile marketing spam, viruses, and privacy violations• Previewing the future of mobile marketing

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A Quick Start Guide to Mobile Marketing: Create a Dynamic Campaign and Improve Your Competitive Advantage (New Tools for Business) Review

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(More customer reviews)I really didn't like this book, because I was looking for a book on mobile marketing. I already have a background in marketing in general, so this book really didn't do anything for me. The ONLY reason I didn't give it a 1 star was because it's a pretty good marketing primer, but I wouldn't recommend it for that, as there are better ones out there...but I won't get into that.
Anyways, save your money or get one of the other books on the subject, this one is a pass.


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Written for marketing practitioners who need to bring themselves up to speed on mobile marketing, this book explains the benefits of mobile marketing and its links with other forms of digital marketing. It tackles myths relating to mobile commerce, looks at using mobile communication in conjunction with other marketing activities, and explains how mobile commerce can add value for customers. It gives examples of B2C and B2B Twitter mobile campaigns, shows how mobile communications can be used for research, and examines sustainability and ethical behavior in mobile commerce.

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How to Make Money with Social Media: An Insider's Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business Review

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(More customer reviews)If you're a an entrepreneur that regularly follows Guy Kawasaki or Perry Marshall's missives on Google search and email marketing, you'll want to read this book ASAP. Turner and Shah place social media strategies and platforms in context so that you avoid those "spinach caught in your teeth" kinds of mistakes non-net-natives (like me) tend to make. They also offer plenty of practical tips for fine-tuning efforts on the major platforms, tracking online conversations and dissecting what the competition is doing. It's one of those books you'll refer to over and over again. Especially Chapter 11, How to Use Promoting Platforms to Help you Grow Your Sales and Revenues".
That said, the book is peppered with valuable case studies featuring many impressive Fortune 500 companies. I would have liked more case studies featuring start-ups and smaller companies like ours -- those that have to keep a remorseless eye on the time and effort involved with all social media efforts...


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How to Make Money with Social Media provides a clear, practical roadmap for businesspeople who are ready to get past the hype and start using social media to grow their sales and revenues.This new book answers many of the most important questions people are asking about social media:· Can I make money with social media?· How do the Fortune 500 use social media?· What are the classic mistakes to avoid when launching a social media campaign? · How should I set-up, launch and run my social media campaign?· What are the top 50 social media platforms and how can they be used to get new customers? · Why did my first social media campaign fail?· How do I integrate my social media campaign into my traditional marketing campaign?· What are the Seven Deadly Sins of social media measurement?· What should I know about mobile media, augmented reality and widgets?· What should I do to ensure I get a positive ROI from my efforts? · What tools should I use once I get past YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter?· What are the 59 specific steps I should take to ensure my social media campaign is a success?How to Make Money with Social Media gives you all the information you need to set-up, launch and run a successful social media campaign.

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Marketing in the Moment: The Practical Guide to Using Web 3.0 Marketing to Reach Your Customers First Review

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(More customer reviews)I found reading this book like sipping a frothy latte, enjoyable but light and when it's gone, it's gone. I picked up some tips, but I found this book much more oriented towards speculative strategic thinking than practical tactics.
The book's core argument, that we're moving away from "open" web platforms that don't have much privacy or filtering, towards "closed" ones, was a useful insight for me. I don't disagree with his core premise about user behavior. But I roll my eyes when social media marketing is presented as other than labor-intensive and thus costly. The argument that just because you can use Facebook to market your business for free does not make marketing on Facebook free. The author, like many social media writers, kind of ignores the time-intensity of using guerilla tactics in social media.
Some web users barely use a search engine at all, which is the "open" web. They may spend all their time on closed platforms such as virtual reality games, Facebook, and especially platforms that work well with little mobile devices. It's a shift in user habits that is very real and it means that your future customers are going to find you inside those closed platforms, not by using the search engines. I was really impressed by the thinking on this and I think he's right about it.
That said, in the chapters of the book that cover specific types of platforms the author enthuses too much about what's great about the platform but doesn't adequately (in my opinion) address the costs of entering these new advertising and engagement media. Like many social media enthusiasts he seems to feel we should just jump into all of it with both feet. The problem is the labor-intensity of learning to adapt and the grunt work of building presences within these new platforms. Obviously we're going to have to choose a few and ignore the rest, but the author's enthusiasm for all the new platforms means that if you follow his advice you'll be buried up to your neck in new websites to join and explore.
The author addresses our concerns at the start: that social media marketing can be a big time and resource waster. He promises that he'll show us ways to always come out ahead and get maximum bang for our buck. I didn't feel he made good on the promise though.
While the book offers a lot of practical tips, the author is most interested in internet trends towards what he calls Web 3.0. He's speculating as to which media channels may get big and important. In his enthusiasm for all the new toys, I found his arguments for using these new tools became ungrounded. While the book does contain some practical advice for using things like Twitter and texting, it also ventures into areas of marketing in the new media, such as virtual reality worlds, where you would have to have staff investing tremendous amounts of time learning the platforms and networking within them.
The author's inspirations are billion-dollar companies like Zappos. These businesses have the resources to put full-time staff on projects like building a presence in "Second Life" and the 20-odd other virtual reality sites he reals off as worth investigating. I'm happy for the author that he gets to mastermind massive campaigns in these new media and direct his scores of virtual employees, but as a practical matter I found many of the tactics suggested in the book pretty impractical for a business without deep pockets.
I found a few tips I could use. The book is nicely designed and the author has a breezy prose voice. While reading I was excited about some of the methods described so I signed-up for a SecondLife account to check it out. I encountered an environment that clearly has a massive learning curve. If you had an employee or two on staff who already enjoyed virtual reality worlds, they'd learn faster I suppose - but as a solo-preneur and marketing consultant, I'm just too busy with everything I'm already doing to invest my time learning platforms that basically amount to playing with virtual paper dolls

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"With the rapid change for marketers and businesses, knowing the right thing to do is a must. It's do or die. Marketing in the Moment gives the reader the right tools to win and now!"--Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak, author of The Mirror Test"The online marketing world is changing fast, and nobody knows for sure what's coming next. This book can help you be better prepared for the changes that are already afoot."--Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, author of Delivering Happiness"Why go to an expensive Internet marketing course when everything you need for Web 3.0 is right here? With Internet marketing growing by leaps and bounds, it might seem difficult to keep up. But after reading Tasner's book, learning his many easy-to-learn practical strategies, I'm ready to conquer the Internet. I strongly recommend this book."--Joseph Sugarman, Chairman of BluBlocker Corporation, author of Advertising Secrets of the Written Word"This powerful book is loaded with great ideas to help you attract more customers and make more sales--immediately!"--Brian Tracy, author of The Art of Closing the Sale"If you cannot generate money online after implementing the realistic insights and strategies revealed in Tasner's book, Marketing in the Moment, then throw in the towel--game over!"--Joel Bauer, author, speaker, and mentorWith the explosion in Web, mobile, and social media marketing channels, you have an extraordinary array of new marketing options to choose from. Which ones work? How do you make them work--without wasting a fortune on trial and error? Get this book, that's how! Top Web marketing consultant Michael Tasner has written the definitive practical guide to driving maximum value from next-generation Web, online, mobile, and social marketing. Drawing from his innovative marketing techniques, Tasner has written the first book on Web 3.0 marketing. Tasner helps marketers, entrepreneurs, and managers move beyond hype and high-level strategy to proven tactics and successful ground-level execution. You'll discover which new marketing technologies deliver the best results and which hardly ever pay for themselves...how to use virtual collaboration to accomplish marketing projects faster and at lower cost...how to build realistic, practical action plans for the next three months, six months, and twelve months. Whatever you sell, wherever you compete, no matter how large or small your company is, this book will help you build leads, traffic, sales, market share--and profits! Capitalizing on the new "content marketing"The megashift from blogging to microblogging--and what it means to you

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Location Based Marketing For Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback)) Review

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(More customer reviews)These days, there's a lot of talk about location-based services and marketing via those channels. Some of that information is good and some not so good. I was very happy to hear two people who are very knowledgeable in the web marketing arena, namely Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider, were going to tackle this very important topic in book form.
Location-Based Marketing for Dummies is packed full of useful information broken up into five sections:
Putting a Little "Location" in Your Marketing Campaign - which goes over the different location-based services and how they are used by consumers
Location-Based Marketing in Action - which covers the tactical parts of putting together a location-based campaign of your own
Integrating Location into Other Channels - covering the more strategic aspects of incorporating location-based activities into a larger marketing plan
Measuring Your Return on Investment - there's no point in implementing an online marketing plan of any kind if you don't attempt to measure its success; very important information is in this section
The Part of Tens - which is a collection of lists with a lot of interesting and useful information including some possibly up-and-coming location services
All in all this book is easy to understand and breaks down the information in such a way that it's more of a step-by-step guide rather than just a "for Dummies" book. I very much liked how it was organized to take someone from "zero to sixty" in a short time, getting them going on using location-based services as part of their marketing strategy. It's full of useful ideas and tips to help anyone plan and run an excellent program, complete with coupons and loyalty rewards, if those are desired components.
I especially appreciate the measurement section. All too often we're told that online marketing efforts really can't be measured. This is not true, and I'm happy to see this book includes an entire section devoted to this very important aspect of a successful online location-based program.
I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about location-based technologies and how to use them for business purposes. I think it would be especially useful to the small- or medium-sized business owner or marketing person who is looking to get an edge over the competition. That being said, those with larger companies, especially those with multiple locations, can also learn a lot from this work.
Disclaimer: I requested an advanced copy of the book and received one free of charge to me. This is, still, my honest opinion of the work.

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Learn to create a two-way dialog with customers with location-based services and smartphones
Location-based services (LBS) have started to gain popularity in the marketplace with more and more businesses starting to incorporate LBS into their marketing mix. This book is a necessary resource for anyone eager to create a two-way dialog with their customers in order to establish customer loyalty programs, drive promotions, or encourage new visitors. You'll learn how to successfully build, launch, and measure a location-based marketing program and figure out which location-based services are right for your business.
Packed with resources that share additional information, this helpful guide walks you through the tools and techniques needed to measure all the data that results from a successful location-based marketing program.
Serves as an ideal introduction to location-based marketing and gets you started building a location-based marketing program
Helps you figure out which location-based service (LBS) is right for your business and then integrate LBS with your social graph
Details ways to create compelling offers, using location-based marketing as a customer loyalty program, and set performance goals and benchmarks
Explains how to use tools to measure your campaign, analyze results, and determine your business's success
Includes examples of companies that are successfully using location-based marketing to demonstrate techniques and concepts featured in the book

No matter your location, location-based services can benefit your business and this For Dummies book shows you how!

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Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing: The Small Business Survival Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)When I bought Stephen Wilson's "Mobile Search and Local Search Marketing", I skipped over one little fact in the product details section on. That was the length, 26 pages. Subtract the title page, the author bio and the "Final Comments" section, which has pithy advice like "learn from your competitors," and what you have is 23 pages of introductory material dealing with local search. This book didn't need the 6 stock photographic images of smiling seniors riding bikes, young women raising their arms in victory while gazing down at their laptops or shocked shoppers staring into empty purses. Especially so since each photograph added nothing to the content but took up a third of a page. Likewise the three-quarter to two-thirds page-sized screen shots could have been trimmed and still been adequate examples of points made in the text.
After ten pages of making the case for doing something with local search Mr. Wilson gets down to it. Kind of. He spends a further three and a half pages talking about what kind of content you might want to include in your local listings. The final seven and a half pages are composed of brief descriptions of his pick for the top six local search sites, Google Maps, Yahoo Local, City Search, Yelp, At&T Yellow Pages and Magic Yellow.
This book looks like Mr. Wilson has taken the advice of one of the current "Self-Publishing" gurus and published a book using Amazons in-house self-publishing arm, Create Space. He can then order these books in quantity at a couple of bucks apiece and hand them out as promotional items, with his business card stapled to the front cover.
I would have preferred an honest explanation, in detail, of how to simply maximize one or two of the local search sites he mentioned, with screen shots of the steps involved. A book that spends almost half of itself trying to sell me on the importance of local search, when I have already purchased the book can't help but appear as a puff piece promoting Mr. Wilson's consulting business. He could have done better.
In the interests of helping to prevent the worst of this kind of thing from expanding across the net, a couple of tips for self-publishing consultants.
1. Avoid stock photographs that have nothing to do with your content
2. Don't have the book description on the back of the book written in all caps
3. When quoting text from other sources (presumably web sites) have them inset, not simply pasted in a different font, three type sizes larger or smaller. In fact use a consistent style - don't alternate between two or three
4. Trim your screenshots to half a page. Covering seven-eights just looks like you are trying to take up space
5. If the title of your book uses the word "guide" then have over half of your book be content that provides "how-to" information, as opposed to filler material or context setting. Presumably, if I bought a guide, I want to know how to do something, not simply be convinced that it is good to want to do it.
Actually, after reading back over my review, I am forced to change my original two star ranking to a one star. Sorry Mr. Wilson, but that is all it deserves. Anyone could do better than this by searching Google videos for "local search marketing" or picking up a different Amazon listing, and reading the reviews.

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Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yelp, City Search and a host of other resources are offering small business new opportunities to market on the Web to local customers. A new trend in business sometimes called ROBO (research online and buy offline) is changing the nature of shopping and marketing in these competive times. The book explains how small business can utilize these services (often for free) to showcase their products and services and succeed in a tough marketplace. The author is a consultant who helps small business utilize online marketing in their communities to reach new customers and build their business. This guide highlights the most effective techniques and strategies.

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Mobile Advertising: Supercharge Your Brand in the Exploding Wireless Market Review

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(More customer reviews)It's today's freshest (March 2008) book on Mobile Marketing. I am half through the book and I want to share my immediate impressions.
I like how the book is organized. The way the presentation unfolds enhances my reading experience - I am interested to be reminded about all existing marketing channels. Even if you are a teacher of marketing or an experienced marketing professional, it is still good to review - even if one has to battle the temptation to exclaim "I know this!" - the history of marketing. And what this history is teaching us, or at least is making clearer for me, is this: it is hard (the change is usually revolutionary!) but possible (it is just growing a lot!) to predict the next turn in development of marketing.
March 1, 2008 article at http://www.alleyinsider.com/ by Henry Blodget cites a poll of 1,979 adults surveyed online by http://www.zogby.com/. In this, claimed representative, sample of the US population:
* 48% said their primary source of news is the Internet (up 20% from only a year ago)
* 29% of Americans say their primary news source is TV
* 11% say it's radio
* 10% say it's newspapers
Whatever the statistics, here is a general trend: people, on average, spend more time on the Internet than with any other single media. Obviously, the ad budgets follow eyeballs of people (in 2007, the online portion of the total ad spend was estimated at 30%).
The shift of marketing to the Internet is truly revolutionary. Growth of the channel and its effectiveness are amazing. The speed is "7 percentage points of market share in a single year". Effectiveness is truly redefined - to paraphrase the famous quote of John Wanamaker, we now know which half of the advertising dollars is wasted. It became possible with the invention of online search advertising model that was introduced by Google. Ads became relevant and contextual; campaign planning became easier; campaign results fairer. What is even more important, in my view, is that marketing campaigns become measurable. Also note that the Internet combines all the features of the old media, to wit: video, audio, pictures, text. At the same time, there is something very new about this channel. It's also interactive.
Now think about this: in 2008 the Internet will be more frequently accessed on mobile phones than on PCs. In Japan and Korea, browsing is used by 90 percent of all cell phone users. There are 3 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide, three times the number of PC users, who stare on their phones at least daily. There are two times more people using SMS (TXT) than email.
What does it mean? It means that the potential is huge and that it has been building up for the last ten years, now reaching its tipping point. So what is awaiting us soon and how to capitalize on the opportunity?
Read! (I also have to finish the book!)

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A practical guide to the emerging mobile advertising market, Mobile Advertising covers all the major topics in this emerging multibillion-dollar industry. This is a complete how-to guide for anyone who wants to understand and take advantage of this hot new advertising medium. Drawing on the experience of three industry veterans, insights from key influencers and decision makers, and detailed case studies, the book gives you practical guidance for getting the most out of mobile advertising.

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Introducing the QR Code: the Reality & the Magic: A QR Code primer. Review

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(More customer reviews)The introductory QR information contains all the standard information you can find online. The only redeeming vale would be the list of 100 possible uses of QR codes. The list is not a revelation and can also be found on piecemeal online. But it's nice that they compiled such list.
This publication comes off as more of an attempt to create a quick QR book to capitalize on the hype. Not highly recommended.

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A QR Code primerA ‘starter kit' of information and application ideas for your use as we enter the new dimension of QR Codes.The reality of QR Codes is that they are matrix type codes (much like the barcodes in universal use today) primarily designed to be scanned by a mobile device. They were developed to accomplish four primary goals: *To provide immediate connectivity*To enable fast, multi-directional scanning *To provide high capacity storage within a small area *To put unlimited portable information at your fingertips The magic comes in as we get our heads - and imaginations - around this new technological paradigm; it seems that the virtual magic of this immediate interactive connectivity - held in the palm of our hands - has no limits; once we enter, it goes on and on and on . . . Take a look at the staggering potential for use in applications ranging from Mobile Marketing to Education and Entertainment, as well as into the worlds of Culture and Fashion as mobile phones and other hand-held devices proliferate globally. Get in on the ground floor with this handbook of practical information, resources, and applications - for fast and easy entry into this new dimension.

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