IM Republic

Hear Google Roar! $100 Million Per Day

IMRSocial — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 17:47:02 +0000

Google continues to assert itself as the King of Advertising. Google has dominated the search world for almost 15 years now. Many competitors have come and gone over the years, but Google has remained the most popular and most profitable search engine. Just how popular and profitable are they? Check out the amazing stats below.

Through both of Google’s advertising platforms (Search and Display) good is recording over $100 million a day in revenue. Even more staggering is the amount of traffic (impressions) that they are serving daily. Total impression on search exceed 5 billion and the display networks boasts a staggering 24.2 billion impression per day.

These numbers are set for another large bump as we see the popularity of mobile devices explode. Google has made concentrated efforts of acquiring and building out their own mobile advertising efforts. Expect to see dramatically higher numbers in the coming year.

(image source)

9 Tips To Engage Your Mobile Consumer

IMRSocial — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 20:33:48 +0000

A mobile strategy is no longer a nice-to-have part of a company’s marketing plan. In fact, it has become a necessary requirement of doing business, staying competitive and keeping your consumers engaged. According to a recent report by Cisco, by 2016 mobile traffic will grow to 50 times the size it is today. If your company has not started to develop a mobile strategy, you are going to be missing out on a lot of potential consumers, sales and consumer engagement opportunities. At this point a company without a mobile strategy is a company with no strategy for success.
While there are many examples of companies that have well executed mobile strategies, the vast majority of companies have struggled with their mobile strategy efforts. Many companies struggle due to a lack of effort and resources, while others struggle with not having enough knowledge of the mobile consumer experience.
IM Republic has assisted many companies with defining and developing their mobile marketing strategy. Through our experiences, we have identified nine important steps to ensuring that your mobile strategy provides a mobile consumer experience that is educational, entertaining and engaging….Read More>>>

5 Steps to Creating Mobile Experiences that Engage

IMRSocial — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 21:31:48 +0000

There is one major thing to keep in mind when creating mobile marketing assets: Mobile users are tech savvy, impatient and can have brutal opinions. Your mobile user experience must meet their standards in order for them to adopt your mobile asset and become social ambassadors of your product or service.

1. Your Goal, Your Consumers Goal

One of thing to check and recheck as you develop your mobile assets is whose goal(s) am I serving. Your mobile user experience is nearly worthless if it does not solve the user’s problem, information request or provide a seamless mobile user interface. The mobile experience should “connect” with your users and gets them engaged. Once you have them engaged, then you can think about driving the users by utilizing integrated marketing: connecting your mobile assets, web and emails.

2. Create a Unique Experience

As mobile marketing increases in popularity, we are seeing more and more self-serve mobile site template programs.
These may function okay for a small business, but as we mentioned above mobile users are tech savvy. They know what a good mobile site looks like, how it should function and they certainly can spot a template. With over 20% of website traffic coming from mobile users, it is worth spending a little extra time and money to create something that is unique and compelling. Your mobile user experience should be engaging, memorable and shareable.

3. Content, Content, Concise Content

As a marketer you have heard for years that content is king. The same applies to mobile. But there is a major challenge with mobile experiences: lack of space for content. Your mobile user is very impatient and is not going to scroll or navigate through pages of content. They want their answers fast and concise. Use strong headlines that convey action and emotion to make sure the user stays engaged. Take the time to write and rewrite you content for the mobile. The rule is this: use the fewest words necessary to get your point across.

4. Provide a Branded Experience

Users remember and comment on bad experiences far more than on a good experience. If a user visits a mobile asset that appears templatized and unprofessional, they are not only very likely to bounce. More importantly they are also likely to have formed a negative impression of your brand or business. Provide the user with a sharable experience that is unique to your brand/company/business.

5. “Useable” versus “Useful”

There is a significant difference between mobile assets that are “usable” versus those that are “useful”. Usable sites might be easily navigable and look graphically appealing, but useful mobile assets take advantage of mobile development technologies (geo-services, camera integration, etc.). Useful mobile assets also provide immediate actionable information that lead to engaged and repeat users.

Don’t misjudge the importance of mobile in your marketing strategies. On a weekly basis, you can read about how mobile consumption is increasing at speeds faster than anyone could have projected. As more and more users switch to mobile being their primary digital information source it is important that your brand or business is there and ready to serve them an optimized mobile experience. If you would like to learn more about creating engaging mobile experiences, please contact the team at IM Republic.

7 Tips for Creating Effective Digital Ads

IMRSocial — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:40:21 +0000

Online and digital advertising has changed over the last few years as digital consumers have become more knowledgeable and have increased their expectations. Flashy, jarring and poorly designed ads are no longer converting at the rates they did 5 years ago. The way you combine the words, graphics, colors and subtle animation are critical to your success. BUT…understanding your consumer needs and ad relevancy have become even larger factors of success.

At IM Republic, we begin every campaign with a basic set of client questions that need to be defined. Who are the consumers and where can they be found? What do this campaign seek to accomplish? What action do I want online users to take? Once you have these questions answered it is now time to start to develop your campaign strategy and design. Below you will find the 7 Tips we have assembled to help in the creation of effective digital advertising.

7 TIPS FOR DIGITAL ADVERTISING

Keep it Simple- Do not over complicate your ads. Use solid colors, large fonts and clear concise messaging (If it takes longer than 2-3 seconds to read…then there is too much). Don’t overcrowd you ad space drive 100% focus to you call to action.

Define your Audience and Reach- The more targeted the audience is, the more likely you will reach success on your campaign. Search for highly targeted niche websites to place ads for your products and services. Niche targeting might limit your potential consumer base, so once you have a batch of effective digital creatives start testing to broader audiences.

Do Your Research- Spend some time browsing the internet and take note of the ads that catch your attention and how many times you have seen them. With today’s ad optimization engines, they ads you see the most are most likely converting at higher rates than others. Learn from other successful ads by replicate their main elements. in your ads.

Be Relevant- Your content should answer the questions of “Why should I click on this ad?” What will they learn, win, get. You are asking people to trust you…provide them with answers to their needs or wants.

Seamless Post-Click Experience- The digital ad should take a user to a website or landing page that is relevant to what you stated in the advertisement. High click-through rates are great, but if the users have no engagement beyond the ad click they are worthless.

Test, Optimize, Retest- Don’t put all your hope in finding success with one or two ads. Digital media is very unique in that you can measure results almost immediately. Your initial test should contain many ads with wide variations in look and feel and messaging. Choose your top 2-3 ads and implement their winning elements to new ads and retest.

Be Creative- Don’t forget to be creative. Users love different. Try to think of creative ways to engage users beyond the ad click.

“Tell Me and I will Forget; Show Me and I May Remember; INVOLVE ME and I will Understand”

-Chinese Proverb

The above tips are basic guidelines to follow. To learn more about digital advertising please contact the team at IM Republic, click here.

Why you need to ask “Why”?

IMRSocial — Fri, 11 May 2012 17:28:37 +0000

Asking “Why?” might seem like obvious question to ask when developing a new product, service or advertising campaign. BUT, how many of us ask it enough? It is truly unfortunate as innovation often times comes from asking “why?”. Asking proactive and inquiring questions allows us to push boundaries, clear assumptions and step over borders.

Asking “why?” leads you to:

clearly define the product or service
a developed lists of benchmarks and goals
solve your consumers problems or needs
become more efficient, streamline and effective
create motivation for you, your team and your consumers

Asking “why?” also leads to expanded or new ideas, innovative thought and you might even find a whole new product or service that solves a consumer need. On a daily basis and in our everyday business decisions we should be asking “Why?”. The marketing and advertising guru, Seth Godin, posted recently on his Blog this same notion. Please see the below insert and visit his blog to learn more:

Why ask why?

“Why?” is the most important question, not asked nearly enough.

Hint: “Because I said so,” is not a valid answer.

Why does it work this way?
Why is that our goal?
Why did you say no?
Why are we treating people differently?
Why is this our policy?
Why don’t we enter this market?
Why did you change your mind?
Why are we having this meeting?
Why not?

10 Inspirational Quotes from Inspirational Business Leaders

IMRSocial — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:53:29 +0000

There have been thousands of business leaders who have come before us. Many of them have been successful and some of them have had failures. It is important to learn from their success and failures to drive our own future success.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” – Steve Jobs

“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”– Henry Ford

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches” – Napoleon Hill

“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles” – Steve Jobs

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” – Winston Churchhill

“There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills.” – Jeff Bezos

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” – Bill Gates

“It’s kinda fun to do the impossible” – Walt Disney

Facebook Timeline Changes Ahead

IMRSocial — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 20:49:54 +0000

Facebook is once again changing elements of the Timeline format. These are small changes, but could have significant impact on pages who have design integration between the cover photo and profile picture.
The new profile picture will increase in size from 125 x 125 to 160 x 160 pixels. Facebook is also shifting the image so that it will now sit 210 pixels down from the top and 23 pixels from the left of page.

Be prepared for the change on April 26th. If your company needs Facebook Timeline design assistance please contact the team at IM Republic.

Your site is mobile, but are your emails?

IMRSocial — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 15:25:47 +0000

We are all aware of the tremendous growth of mobile adoption and consumption. During the last year, and specifically in the last 3-4 months, we have noticed a sharp increase in the amount of companies releasing mobile versions on their websites and mobile apps. This is allowing companies to provide engaging digital experiences for their consumers. There is a key component of taking your company mobile that most companies are overlooking, marketing emails. Mobile has quickly become the primary data consumption device for users. That also means users are primarily reading their emails on their mobile device. So now is a time to look at your email marketing strategies and make sure that your emails are mobile compliant. Below is an infographic by Marketing TechBlog that illustrates the growth of mobile email. If you need any assistance developing mobile marketing emails, mobile landing pages and mobile advertising, please contact IM Republic team.

Is your email marketing mobile?

Advertising Success rooted in Psychology Techniques

IMRSocial — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 18:42:25 +0000

With over 16 years of personal experience in brand advertising, I have seen the industry evolve and adapt to the new digital advertising mediums. One thing I have noticed is that the core techniques and principles of advertising have stayed pretty constant. The infographic below provides an easy to follow guide to the techniques applied to everyday advertising. Below are a few insights from the infographic and some further thoughts from my experience.

A common mistake see in the advertising industry is to confuse Art and Creative Expression with Advertising. This infographic clearly tells the story that advertising is anchored in consumer psychology and less about art

One technique not clearly noted, but engrained into many of the thoughts is Perceived Value. Today’s consumer is more educated than ever and simple techniques from the past no longer work. Today value is your product, service or ads being in the right place, at the right time and provide the right information that the consumer seeks.

One marketing technique that has influenced advertising is the desire to drive conspicuous consumption; spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying social status and wealth. Peer Reality is a related advertising technique that displays a group of a peers from a desired target market consuming a product or service, causing desire, want, envy and a perceived notion of need.

Today we see an ever-increasing need to specifically target the “early adopters”. These individuals are the first to research products, purchase product and eventually become your brand ambassadors. Humans are naturally inclined to share their experiences. With the explosion of social mediums, the early adopters are able to share their thoughts and influence purchases by their peers.

Our team at IM Republic utilizes these techniques daily when crafting marketing strategies and advertising campaigns. Our marketing and design teams approach each new project with a foundation in statistics and previous campaign experience. With the foundation in place and clear goals defined, the design team integrates strategy with creativity. Learn More.

Creative without strategy is called ‘art‘. Creative with strategy is called ‘advertising‘ – Jef I. Richard

(infographic located here)

Mobile Consumption continues to Amaze

IMRSocial — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:03:10 +0000

Just how big has mobile become? Just look at your everyday life. Your phone has become your primary communication tool (email, voice, SMS), alarm clock, first source of breaking news, casual entertainment device, shopping tool, social sharing, photo taking and your personal assistant. Consumers have quickly adopted to the increasing ways we can use these mobile devices. Some might argue that the smartphone adoption rate is the quickest we have ever seen for a technology device.

Retailers and branders are quickly trying to play catch-up with their ever increasing mobile consumers. Being in the right place, at the right time and providing the right experience is crucial to connecting with the new consumer. Mobile Apps, Mobile Landing Pages and native apps (iOS & android) are being built at a record pace. QR codes, while not the prettiest, are an essential tool to driving offline customers to online consumer experiences. Connecting these mobile experience to social channels provides opportunities for sharing and greater brand awareness and loyalty.

Below is an excellent infographic that shows the increasing “might” of the mobile market.

(infographic found at Culturelabel.com)