Turf War For Online Mobile Purchasing Heating Up

In past few days it has been announced that search engine market leader Google is partnering with Softcard who are a mobile phone payment business, in an obvious attempt to strengthen its position and power in the growing market space against the clearly established dominance of Apple with their widely used Apple Pay app.

This week Google revealed that their app Google Wallet will become a pre installed 'tap to pay' app on Android smartphones that are sold in the US market through: Verizon, ATT and T-Mobile  as a condition of the agreement Softcard.
The aim is 'to help more Android users get the benefits of tap and pay', said Google Payments vice president Ariel Bardin, vice president of Google Payments speaking on the issue said, "The aim is 'to help more Android users get the benefits of tap and pay" and went on to add: "We're also acquiring some exciting technology and intellectual property from Softcard to make Google Wallet better".

This strategic alliance provides Google and it's associated Android smartphones users a solid foundation to more evenly compete with Apple's the mobile payments system Apple Pay which was recently added to the iPhone 6 model in 2014.
Softcard Management speaking on the alliance said: "Today's announcement is a positive step forward for the mobile payments industry and wireless consumers".

Also worth noting is that in recent days Samsung's has also revealed to the market that it will also be buying buying digital payment business LoopPay further highlighting both the dynamic nature and growing competitiveness of this specific market space.

Samsung added that LoopPay technologys will allow around 90 per cent of retail terminals so that customers are able to simply tap their phones for payment with standard credit cards to facilitate purchases.
Beyond smart phones, LoopPay is also built into dongles and can send credit card data to point-of-sale terminals to facilitate electronic purchases.

Blogging And Why It Should Be A Key Component Of Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Overview

In our last podcast we looked at a dozen of the most popular and sought after content types on the internet and described each in some detail.

Following on from that discussion we will today as promised give special attention to the uniquely powerful area of blogging.

Blogging of course has been around for over twenty years and is essentially an electronic journal that we write (post) to on a periodic basis about what ever topic we are interested in.

Advantages to blogging

1. For a start there are an estimated two billion blogs on the net on every conceivable topic. this means that they are incredibly popular and sought after by all different target markets globally.

2. Importantly people see blogging strategically as their number one source of information and not Facebook or other individual sites, which are more widely seen as discussion forums where people then go to share what they know and discuss with others within their networks.

3. Blogs are easy to set up and essentially free to run.  Widely used platforms such as Blogger, WordPress and Tumblr are just three examples of the excellent brands available to anyone that is looking to add blogging to their digital repertoire.

4. Most times you will only need to post your blogs weekly, where the average blog post is somewhere around five to seven hundred words long making it a relatively easy matter to put together on a consistent basis.

5. With the advent of user friendly scheduling tools such as Hootsuite have made it simple to plan, produce and schedule future blog posts today providing total control of what gets published and when.

Some general guidelines to live by for all bloggers

The same tenants of sound SEO can be equally applied to drive organic ranking for blogs as for conventional websites and include:

1. Effective use of Key words

2. Introduction of inbound links

3. Mechanisms for reader engagement

4. Quality content

Ten Great ideas for posting blogs

There are literally hundreds of viable ideas from which you are able to generate great blog content but ten tried and tested ideas include:

1. Write about an upcoming event for your business:  A new store opening, a new manufacturing plant, a new consulting suite, etc.

2. Write about a standout employee of the business: someone with a special talent, winner of an award or skill.

3. Write about a new product launch: Something that is new, innovative and different.

4. Write about a meaningful anniversary that you are celebrating. Ten years in business, etc.

5. Write about a new upcoming book, CD or DVD series you are about to launch.  Dan and Matt Marketing series will be on sale from: July 2015 at DanandMatt.com

6. Write about a new social media platform your business is now using for the first time such as You Tube, Yammer, Twitter or LinkedIn.

7. Write about a well-known client (with their approval of course) and what you were able to do and how this helped them.

8. Write about the latest trends, market changes and legislative changes that are most directly effecting your market and the customers within it.  E.g. Changes to Family Law Act.

9. Write about reader feedback and great questions that come up each week through the blog.  Comment on the comments.

10. Write about your business and products and why the target market should take note of them.  This is OK given that it happens occasionally say once every five or six weeks.

At the end of the day you can literally write about anything as long as it has some value to the audience you are trying to attract, interest and ultimately engage.

So get to it. Set up your own blog and starting putting out quality posts that will position you as a thought leader in your market place.

And for the entire Dan and Matt marketing package just go now to:

https://www.danandmatt.com/product/the-package

to order online for a free 30 day unconditional trial period.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.

Announcing new Product Ads on Facebook

Facebook this week announced the release of their new Product Ads.

Look out for a full review and discussion in upcoming issues of the road scholars marketing blog.

Until then as always, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Content Is King But What Are The Best Types

It has become a cliché today in the digital space to say that Content is King, but what are the best types of content?

Simply put the answer to this will always rely on your market, your target audience and operating promotional budget that can be leveraged to drive the key promotional objectives underpinning both your offline and digital media strategy.
However despite the specifics of your situation, we believe that the following list represents an extensive selection of strong, proven and cost effective choices that can help position your business and brands for long term success.

•    Articles
Perhaps the most ubiquitous of all content types on the net is the humble written word and there is a reason why despite the evolution of multimedia and rich media options, this is the one perennial you will always find on every website and platform. Namely that well articles on areas of interest are still the preferred way to update your knowledge on any given topic.

•    Podcasts
Typically a one on one discussion between two people where key areas are spoken about with a view to analysing new data, trends, processes or approaches to achieving a specific objective or outcome.

•    Case Studies
To actually be able to take a real life situation and by analysing the dynamics of that situation and from this examination then being able to draw key insights, principles and rules, is the basis for why case studies are such an invaluable teaching tool in any situation.

•    Slide presentations
People’s love affair with Power Point presentations has been going on for thirty years now the reality is that you can use a slide deck to discuss any topic in a logical sequence, whilst utilising any number of media types on each slide. These include, text, images, videos, hyperlinks and animations.


•    Instructional videos
As is well know from the copious amount of research on learning styles, around one third of all people prefer learning where someone is demonstrating what is being taught or discussed to them. For this group in particular, instructional videos can be used to teach, motivate, update, entertain, debrief or even test an individual.

•    Emails
Still as useful, quick and universally available today as ever, the humble email is experiencing a resurgence in business popularity as data starts to clarify exactly how powerful a business tool it is when compared to other promotional tools such as social media. As always the key consideration is always to gain formal opt in permission to ensure your compliance with anti-spamming legislation.

•    Press releases
Publicity as we know is free and therefore very cost effective, but unlike many other forms of promotion cannot be overtly controlled and therefore is perceived by the audience as being more credible that other traditional forms of promotion such as advertising. When properly applied, PR can be a valuable adjunct to other media options.

•    E-books
With the ongoing proliferation of mobile devices and e-readers such as Kindle, E-Books are becoming a very popular and viable option for most SME’s as the end user is largely already well versed in the various platforms and functionality and can therefore consume your content quickly and effectively.

•    White Papers
For any research or evidence based materials with a scientific slant, white papers are perfectly placed as a well thought of option that carries a certain level of prestige and higher credibility than other promotional devices. Obviously for this to be maintained the research need to be well formulated and conducted to ensure that the results being presented are credible and present a true picture of what is being investigated.

•    RSS feeds
One of the most obvious up sides for any marketer in getting followers is to be able to utilise RSS (or Really Short Syndication) feeds which allow you to automatically update your audience automatically each time you update any of your platforms such as blogs and playlists.  The followers are updated via an email that alerts them to the new available content.

•    Pictures
Images are arguably the most popular and engaging of the many content types available to us today. This popularity is perfectly captured by the rise of both Pinterest and Instagram in recent years, which are both amongst the fastest growing platforms globally.


Ultimately regardless of which market you work in, experience teaches us clearly that there is no one perfect content type that will always appeal to all.

In the absence of this we need to understand the need for blended content that will ensure that our audience continues to enjoy and engage with our content to gain the key take always from each and to go away with a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction that is the key indicator for them to return in the future.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.

Free Digital Training and Coaching

Naturally if you'd like to learn more about Twitter, any of the other Social Media Marketing platforms of digital media in general, simply attend any of the free Digital Enterprise Workshops listed here on: www.vecci.org.au/dep/workshops  and sign up for any of the seven free two hour workshops which will also automatically qualify you for a free four hour coaching session specifically focused on your business needs.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele. - See more at: http://roadscholarsmarketing.blogspot.com.au/#sthash.DJ5WW1rr.dpuf

Free Digital Training and Coaching

Naturally if you'd like to learn more about Twitter, any of the other Social Media Marketing platforms of digital media in general, simply attend any of the free Digital Enterprise Workshops listed here on: www.vecci.org.au/dep/workshops  and sign up for any of the seven free two hour workshops which will also automatically qualify you for a free four hour coaching session specifically focused on your business needs.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele. - See more at: http://roadscholarsmarketing.blogspot.com.au/#sthash.DJ5WW1rr.dpuf

Pinterest Promoted Pins Continue To Drive Results

Initial Pilot Stage

As you will remember it has been around six months since Pinterest first announced that it was increasing the number of businesses that were added to its original Promoted Pins platform for businesses. Originally Pinterest was selectively testing the platform with hand picked large businesses which included such well known brands as: Banana Republic, Kraft, Nestle, Target and Walt Disney Parks, with this initial trial of Promoted Pins being done on a CPM basis, based on the number of generated impressions.  These brands had been signed to initial three to six month contracts ranging in value of between one to two million dollars highlighting the significant outlay for their participation in the platform testing stage.

This is in contrast to the classic SME Pinterest  self serve advertising which is the traditional Google Adwords type Cost Per Click(CPC) where the business only pays if the viewer clicks on the pin.
Preference to Early Subscribers To Waiting List

From that original period, Pinterest set up a wait list and has been preferentially been offering the service to those on the list and those with a proven history of utilising Pinterest. 

Self Serve Advertising Platform

It should be noted that although this latter option is proving to be yet another highly effective promotional tool to serious market brands, the more affordable self-serve platform advertising is available and sustainable in a promotional mix to a to wider group of customers with the Google adwords approach to bidding on results from Search results. 

Continued Growth Of Pinterest

It is sometimes difficult to believe that Pinterest is only around four years old and although it's size in absolute terms at around seventy million users is modest by comparison to the likes of Facebook with around 1.3 billion and Google plus with over five hundred million, its true power of Pinterest lies not in its' absolute size but rather on the fact that it is second only to Facebook as a driver of inbound  links. 

Expanding Demographic

Furthermore its original demographic of female users with mobile devices with a clear purchasing intent has certainly been expanded with now around 30% of its users being male, further reinforcing the tremendous potential the platform has for an ever growing list of consumer and business brands.

Businesses will of course continue to receive invitations to join the promoted pins platform and inevitably it will be opened up to all brands I suspect.

Key Features and Benefits

 If and when you do join you too will be able to avail yourself of its key features and benefits which include the ability to:

• Target your Promoted Pins to potential customers
• Promote with no minimum spend and no fixed timelines
• Promote your best pins so they come up in search results
• Adopt a pay per click approach to promoting on Pinterest
• Utilise Pinterst metrics to effectively determine what works and what doesn't
  So for now if you are interested put your name on a waiting list and watch this space.

naturally if you'd like to learn more about Twitter, any of the other Social Media Marketing platforms of digital media in general, simply attend any of the free Digital Enterprise Workshops listed here on: www.vecci.org.au/dep/workshops
and sign up for any of the seven free two hour workshops which will also automatically qualify you for a free four hour coaching session specifically focused on your business needs.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele - See more at: http://roadscholarsmarketing.blogspot.com.au/#sthash.KCqZzHBi.dpuf

Free Digital Training and Coaching

Naturally if you'd like to learn more about Twitter, any of the other Social Media Marketing platforms of digital media in general, simply attend any of the free Digital Enterprise Workshops listed here on: www.vecci.org.au/dep/workshops  and sign up for any of the seven free two hour workshops which will also automatically qualify you for a free four hour coaching session specifically focused on your business needs.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.
Regards,
Daniele.