Sarah Buckner - Bayshore Solutions Account Associate

By: Sarah Buckner – Bayshore Solutions Emarketing Team

If you’re asking yourself “Do I really need a mobile website?”, the answer is YES!

25% of searches are coming from mobile devices; if you don’t have a mobile website, you’re missing the boat – big time. Your beautifully-designed desktop site just isn’t going to cut it. Desktop sites don’t always translate well onto the mobile screen – content becomes hard to read and links become too small to navigate through the site easily. Mobile websites need to be simple, straight-forward, and easy to navigate with a finger.

To give you an idea of the importance of a mobile site, here are some facts that might surprise you:

• eMarketer estimates that there will be 115.8 million smartphone users in the US by the end of 2012, with that number growing to 176.3 million by 2015
• 47% of smartphone owners rely on mobile websites to find out more information about a product and 36% use their phones to read product reviews on retail websites
• 57% of customers would not recommend a business with a bad mobile site
• 40% of customers would even go to a competitor with a better mobile experience

When developing a mobile website strategy, it’s important to keep in mind the intent of your mobile visitor. It is likely that your mobile visitor is looking for different information than your desktop visitor. Mobile searchers tend to use shorter keywords, and are looking for location-based, and/or time-sensitive information.

For example, let’s say you own a restaurant and have a great desktop site with tons of information on how you started, locations, menus, nutrition information, gift cards, specials, events, catering, etc. This is all excellent information to have on your website to share with your customers, but might be too much for a mobile visitor to sort through. Most likely a mobile visitor wants to find a location near them, make a reservation, view the menu, or place an online order.  If that is the case, make sure this information is front-and-center on your mobile site, making it as easy as possible for your customer to get what they need.

Instead of trying to condense your whole desktop site into a mobile site, figure out what is most important and relevant to the mobile visitor and make that the primary focus of your mobile site. In doing so, you’ll probably find that your website will convert better because you have made it so much easier for them to find what they were looking for.

Sarah Buckner is an Account Associate at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.

Michael Weyand - Bayshore Solutions Sr. Developer

By: Michael Weyand – Bayshore Solutions Programming Team

It’s been around in the odd article here and there, but on April 4^th, Google finally posted a page dedicated to Project Glass, an augmented reality hardware/software solution designed to be worn like a pair of glasses. What does this mean? Well imagine waking up, slipping on your glasses, and then looking outside and being able to see the weather forecast among other things such as having easy access to GPS, social media, etc. How about sending messages, chatting, or making phone / video calls?

As connected as everyone is these days, having an even less intrusive way to stay connected might make checking your messages in the middle of lunch more casual and less of a bad habit. However, it also might make getting distracted too simple. As it is right now I can put down my phone, leave it in my desk or pocket and only check it from time to time. A piece of eyewear I would be less inclined to remove. Think of it as a less awkward Bluetooth earpiece. From what I’ve seen in the video on their page the glasses seem to be connected to a device that actually does the processing.

Is this a good thing? Is this another step toward being way too reliant on technology? I look forward to seeing where Google takes this technology. Personally, I think the GPS heads up display would make the life of this directionally challenged developer slightly easier.

So, what do you think? Would you order a pair if they live up to the expectations?

Michael Weyand is a Senior Developer at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.

Jonathan Casella - Bayshore Solutions Account Associate

By: Jonathan Casella – Bayshore Solutions Emarketing Team

As you may have known, or perhaps were first made aware on Friday, all brand pages on Facebook have converted to Timeline mode, a profile format that has been available for personal profiles for a while. There have been some conflicting thoughts on the idea of making this format required, seeing as many companies have spent a lot of time customizing Facebook landing pages, as well as other components to their brand page. Though it is irritating when any component of an online marketing campaign is modified, it is important for companies to understand the opportunities that exist with this Facebook change.

For example, companies now have the ability to tell their brand story, chronologically. With Timeline, users are able to add milestones or status updates and set them with dates from the past (i.e. the date the brand was founded, rebranding, awards won, etc.).

The biggest change people will notice in Timeline mode is the large cover photo at the top of the profile. Visitors will form their first impression of your brand based on this cover photo. Be creative and clearly illustrate who you are and what you do. If you question your technical abilities in creating this social media presence, it may be in your best interest to seek an agency’s help in developing your social media strategy.

Social media is a crucial component to every brand’s online presence. Google announced that social media will be a new factor in the search algorithm. If you’re not taking advantage of these social media platforms, in addition to your search engine optimization, do not expect to be at the top of any search engine result pages anytime soon.

Jonathan Casella is an Account Associate at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.

Doug Pace - Bayshore Solutions COO

By: Doug Pace – Bayshore Solutions Executive Team

Welcome back to one of the most beautiful places on the face of the earth – Deer Valley, UT.  Unfortunately the last 24 hours have not been kind to me.  The hotel is at an elevation of 8500ft and because of that I have become far too familiar with altitude sickness.  The second day of the conference looked to be exciting so I pushed through and got some exposure to some great information.

The Inside View: Why The LEGO Group Has Its Own Agency

This session interviewed the vice president for LEGOs internal marketing agency.    The agency has approximately 250 people and was created to eliminate the individual visions that LEGO was experiencing across their various advertising channels.  They wanted to ensure a unified vision and have spent a lot of time to ensure collaboration and the achievement of a single goal. It was interesting to find out that just because they have an internal agency does not mean that they shun external firms.   They look for firms that are excited about their brand and that bring them fun ideas.  They traditionally don’t select a firm based on fees or best creative – they look for people that have a connection to the brand.

The agency has a unique perspective in that it focuses on creating stories and making them come alive across LEGOs line of products.  An example of this is the recent success of Ninjago in which the marketers leveraged TV, Digital, and existing Intellectual Property – making a line of Characters rather than a product.  This storytelling mentality increases a consumers connection with the product and creates an experience rather than just a product purchase.  The Ninjago project proved that kids don’t think about online/offline/TV, they just want to interact with the brand on their own terms – this is very important as marketing channels continue to intersect and the consumers expectations continue to increase.

eXelate Dialog: Identify, Target, Measure: Closing the Loop on Data-Driven Ad Strategies

eXelate is an online data aggregator that provides information for marketers to better understand audience interactions and buying patterns.  They demonstrated a relatively straight forward methodology so that marketers could better use data in their client strategies.  The methodology had 3 components – Identify, Target, and Measure.

• Identify – Use a collection of customer data, market data, and 3^rd party data to find audiences with similar attributes to your core market.
• Target – Leverage the data to perform audience mapping and model the attributes of your top customers.  As you receive real time data from a campaign, use it in an adaptive fashion and enhance the campaign.  After the campaign is complete re-score the models and find new audiences.
• Measurement – The most difficult part of measurement is that online has a huge scale making attribution very hard to determine.  One needs to accept that there will be waste on a campaign, but based on today’s targeting tools one can ensure that 30-50% of a target audience will receive your message.  In the end the message must resonate with the audience in order for them to make a response.  If the content does not resonate the campaign should be reworked.

Fixing the Agency Business Model

I was very excited about this session, but disappointed by its execution.  The individual leading the session was not an “agency” guy, but a publisher of content.  He spent more time talking about what was wrong about agency pricing from a “seller of ad space” point of view and not about how to make the agency better.    I did find out that average agency commissions for selling advertising are fairly low (1-2 % for TV ad buy, 2% for Magazine, 4% for newspaper, digital is 7% and going down) and that the average agencies gross profit margins are approx. 12%.

Tech Showcase 2015

The tech showcase looked to enlighten the audience on technologies and concepts that are not currently refined, but poised to make a significant impact on the marketing landscape.  The individual leading the session was attempting to use a movement based PowerPoint presentation (think Nintendo), but had numerous issues with it.  The presenter focused on 6 areas – Quantified Self, POI, Visual/Motion, QR Codes, Digital to Physical, and Crowd-funding.

• Quantified Self – This is the process of monitoring everything about ourselves and our daily movements/interactions.  There are multiple apps/devices in use today that collect amazing amounts of data – in fact the largest sleep movement database has been recently developed via a new iPhone application.  As you can imagine the healthcare potential associated with these types of application are endless.
• POI – POI stands for Personalized Objects of Interest or the ability to map, discover, and associate with anything – people, places, or things.  This technology was featured heavily in the recent south by southwest conference.  Two examples were shown – Sonar.me and Highlight.  In both cases the applications help you locate and learn more about people in your close proximity.  The current challenge with the technology is that both rapidly drain battery life on mobile devices.  It seems that the applications combine multiple  services (GPS, Internet Access, etc) and running all quickly drain the battery life.
• Visual and Motion – The visual and motion segmented focused on virtual reality.  There has been quite a few applications built in this space, but none have commanded any attention.  The audience agreed that the potential is there, but it is still considered overcomplicated for the end user.
• QR Codes – Although full of potential, QR Codes have not had the impact that one would have thought.  There are a few reasons for this, but two really stand out – 1.users have still not adopted them for lack of understanding and 2. they are ugly.  Toshiba is currently perfecting image recognition software that would make QR codes something of that past – you will just point your phone at an ad or object and be returned everything associated.
• Digital to Physical – This segment was quite amusing as it focused on making technology as core to a brand rather than just an extension.  Coke’s” I’d really like to buy the world a Coke” campaign was heavily showcased.  The campaign allowed individuals to go online and purchase Cokes for individuals through a network of vending machines around the globe.  Coke has also experimented with creating Branded WiFi hotspot appliances and placing them in public spaces. – Further mixing technology within the core of their brand.
• Crowd-funding – We are seeing Crowd-funding of projects and events more and more.  With recent legislation and acceptance of the concept this will potentially launch the next Apple or Microsoft.  More than half the audience had tried to launch a project leveraging!

The presentation was summarized by denoting that although the above concepts look promising, who knows what is on the horizon.  The next generation of business people will drive much of the upcoming innovation and have incredible tools to start with.  Areas like San Francisco, Austin, Boulder, Boston, and Israel look to be the technology hubs for the next few years.

Pecha Kucha Presentations

The Pecha Kucha presentations are unique in that each presenter only has 6 minutes to explain a concept and their position on it.  This results in a very limited amount of information, but challenges individuals to get straight to the point.  The agenda for today included 2 Pecha Kucha presentations – Clickable and Verve.

• Clickable – The presentation started with a question of “How do marketers leverage goals and measurement to delight their social media following? “  The challenge with measurement of Social Media is that most are very complex strategies that are not necessarily direct response.  This fact results in making ROI associated with the channel very difficult.  The goal for measuring Social Media should be changed to focus on its impact within the other channels – How do they work together and influence each other.
• Verve – Verve is a location centric mobile ad platform.  They work with clients to denote an area and serve both location specific and individual specific advertising through their distribution partners.  They spent their time discussion the mobile ad space – 327 Active Mobile Users in the US, ½ US population owns a Smartphone, ½ US adults own tablet devices, and the mobile ad spend will more than double over the next 2 years.

Hypebusters: The Golden Age of Marketing

There is currently a mentality shift happening in both digital and traditional advertising.  The “I want it now” experience is becoming expected and individuals are becoming more interested in participating in marketing associated with a brand.  Social and Mobile technologies are becoming more reliant on each other and threaten to merge completely.  In fact many of the new technologies being developed are mobile only.  This is a global phenomenon with no single culture opting out.  This level of participation is making the traditional tools used to measure advertising obsolete.  Just to demonstrate – 58% of Facebook Users log on at least once per day, 42% of Facebook users have had a conversation with a brand.

Doug Pace is an Executive Vice President and COO at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.

Doug Pace - Bayshore Solutions COO

By: Doug Pace – Bayshore Solutions Executive Team

Welcome from the Digiday Agency Summit in beautiful Deer Valley, Utah!  I am excited about this conference because it focuses on the development of the modern digital agency and the challenges that are associated.  With Bayshore Solutions growing at over 20% per year and in the mist of geographic expansion planning I look forward to the lessons that will be learned over the next 2 days.

1.     Pulsepoint Workshop

This workshop explored the movement of campaign managers from channel specialists to consumer specialists.  The concept is that consumers are channel agnostic and will interact with brands how they want and when they want.  The individual planning the campaign must take a cross channel view.  The brand must be viewed as a publisher and should start with content development.  Time must be taken to perform audience mapping to ensure the content is being consumed by the correct audience.  In summary – identify the consumer, create the content, map the channel path, and innovate.

2.     The View from the Top: Q&A with Clark Kokich, chairman, Razorfish

I had a chance to meet Clark at dinner the night before this discussion and felt that he was a very authentic individual.  He proved my assumption correct as he discussed the changes in the agency world over the last 5 years.  His message focused around the concept that agencies have moved away from just putting a message in front of a consumer to creating a brand experience for the consumer.

It’s no longer a channel up strategy, but it’s big idea planning. He used Vail Resorts “Epic Mix” campaign to prove his point.  The campaign integrated RFID with other channels in order to create a digital scrapbook of an individual’s visit to Vail.  The concept created a customized experience for each individual and positioned the brand within the consumers mind.

He established that digital agencies are in flux and currently struggle to define if they are going to be an idea shop v. a production shop and  “More money is flowing if it’s part of a big idea.”  This struggle comes from the inherent issue that digital is mired with one off campaigns resulting in less big ideas.  It is important to note that measurement is just as important in channel strategies as in a big idea – CMOs still need to see a definitive ROI.

3.     The Talent Wars

This segment included 2 panelists that discussed the current talent issues across the digital advertising spectrum.  The talent issues stems from the fact that most agencies are growing by more than 20% and individuals coming into the industry are limited.  The growth in companies and the static workforce results in the fact that we are all fishing in smaller ponds.  Both panelists represented international companies and said the crisis is largest in Australia where it is commonly known you only have 48 hours to make a hire or the individual will be recruited by another company.

The discussion continued to dissect what employees are looking for and why they choose certain companies.  The consensus was that people wanted to work on something that was meaningful and that made a difference.  They also wanted their work to be recognized by the companies, their peers, and the industry as a whole.  The conversation drifted to the freedom that Google provides in working on individual projects – both panelists agreed that this is almost impossible in the agency world because of the billable hour and client deliverable expectations.

4.     The Innovation Challenge

Every agency seems to have a challenge in balancing client deliverables, financial expectations, and staying innovative.  The discussion started down the path of product innovation, but was quickly quelled by some of the panelists that explained that an agency is not set up properly for the development of products that are not directly related to a client deliverable.  An agency is a service company and innovation is more of a “way of thinking” rather than the development of IP not associated with a client.  Many of the larger agencies have addresses this by spinning off product companies within their parent holding companies.  If you must play in the product innovation area, make sure it’s to develop prototypes for existing client accounts.

5.     Digiday Dialog with Clickable: What Keeps Agencies Up At Night

The main goal for most agencies should be to demonstrate transparency and ROI associated with campaigns so that their client has clout in front of the CFO.  In order to accomplish this goal the agencies must connect metrics from disparate channels and become a real time analytics expert.  The session referenced the earlier discussions in the fact that agencies must become less channel specific and most focused on the integrated campaign – just because the final conversion came from a certain source does not necessarily mean that that source was solely responsible.  The discussion continues to dissect some specific channels, but it was very high level and highly opinionated – someone mention that social was 99% Facebook, Twitter was miniscule, and Google + was not a social channel; this started a heated exchange.

6.     Media Buying 2.0

The objective of media buying has shifted over the last few years and now is focused on creating an immersive brand experience.  The media is just the end channel and it should be part of a larger story combining content and creative. The absence of standards to combine analytic data and latency of reporting continue to be issues.  The latency is being addressed by most platforms, but standards are nowhere in the near future.

7.     Pecha Kucha Presentations

Attribution, Attribution, Attribution.  A Pecha Kucha presentation is intended to be very quick and allow an individual to explain their position on a topic.  In this case the individual focused on the topic of attribution and defining where a lead really came from.  In short the last event that is tracked to a lead is not necessarily where it came from.  Agencies need to work to consolidate analytics from different sources and decrease reporting latency to give an accurate picture.

Email is not dead.  This Pecha Kucha investigated the popularity of email and its presence across multiple channels.  168 million emails are sent per minute, 25 minutes of every mobile hour is spent on email, and it takes an average person 28 seconds to interact with each email.  Because of the interaction time display advertising in email proves to be very effective.  When branded skins are applied to standard industry content the effectiveness is multiple times better.

Doug Pace is an Executive Vice President and COO at Bayshore Solutions—a Tampa Web Design, Web Development, and Internet Marketing Company.