Hello listener! Welcome to Traffic Jam and indeed welcome back to Traffic Jam if you are a regular listener to the show, I am James Reynolds and you are listening in to episode#27 of Traffic Jam which is of course the traffic show that teaches you how to get more traffic, leads and sales from your website and ultimately build a profitable audience online.

If you have not gotten your mobile marketing strategy in order yet today, this episode is one that you want to play close attention to. Now, I’ll not on this stage reel off a bunch of stats about mobile marketing; I’ll save that for my guest later on the show, but what I will mention, real, real quick at the top of the episode is a couple of experiences that really cemented the absolute importance of mobile in my mind recently. The first of which was an event I attended at Google here in Dubai where the regional director of Google shared with us some stats about usage on Google and he told us that of all searches happening within Google within the GCC region, more searches now happen from a mobile or tablet device than a desktop device. For me as a search marketer, that was certainly interesting hearing and certainly reinforced just how important it is to make sure that you’ve got a mobile ready website. The second experience was the building of the veravo.com mobile website late in 2013 and since showing a special mobile site to mobile visitors as opposed to our general desktop site, we’ve experienced a 107% increase in conversion for our website analysis report which is just quite phenomenal, certainly exceeded my expectations of the results of going mobile and again it just reinforces the fact that everyone is online on their mobile now and if you’re not making that experience friendly for them you really are doing yourself disservice and are probably shunning people away that otherwise enjoy visiting your site, enjoy your content, just because you’re not making it easy for them to access your site from the devices they’re using.

Mobile marketing is well and truly on my radar and I posted about it extensively both in relation to SEO and to Adwords so if you want some deeper learning on this topic you want might to head on over to veravo.com to check out those videos, just enter mobile in to the search bar on veravo.com and you’ll find all of those posts.

So let’s introduce today’s guest. His name is Greg Hickman and I first heard him interviewed on a couple of our past guests; podcasts; Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income and Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy podcast, which on the side note you should absolutely check out because are great shows.

Greg’s a dude that’s out there literally leading this whole mobile marketing revolution. He’s got a lot of experience to back himself up too; he’s been a marketer since college, he’s worked for a bunch of agencies representing brands such as Pepsi and Unilever and he’s executed mobile programs for brands like the New York Jets, the Florida Marlins and AT&T and currently he works with Cabellas helping them with their mobile marketing strategy. As I know you’d like to get to know our guest up close and personal, you might be interested to know that Greg likes mountain biking, road biking, gymnastics, and cross fit, and apparently he does a very mean handstand too. So a gymnastic mobile marketing Greg Hickman from MobileMixed.com is coming right up now followed by all of the regular bits that you know and love, the one minute traffic tip, this week’s news in traffic, and then of course the reason this podcast is called Traffic Jam, we have the musical jam to end the show.

So let’s get started, here’s Greg Hickman for a chat about all things mobile marketing.

James: This is episode#27 of Traffic Jam and joining me today is Greg Hickman from Mobile Mixed. Greg, welcome to Traffic Jam.

Greg: Thank you for having me I appreciate it!

James: Sweet! Well, we’re recording this on January 2^nd 2014 so I guess I should first of all wish you a Happy New Year.

Greg: You too, Happy New Year!

James: Happy New Year! You’ve carved out a pretty strong reputation in the area of mobile marketing, in fact, when I was really considering who to invite to the show to talk about the very important topic of mobile, there was only one name that kept popping up and that was of course yours but for those who are unfamiliar with Greg Hickman, give us the quick cliff notes version of kind of who you are and what your business is.

Greg: Sure. I got started in mobile in 2005 and I worked for an agency that represented some brands and professional sports here in the United States. This was before the iPhone and everything which text message marketing is heavily based in that and since I have worked with small businesses and big brands most recently, a large retailer called Cabelas, which focuses on the hunting, fishing and camping space, I was leading their mobile strategy, and as of recent, I left there and taking my business which is primarily powered through the blog and podcast of Mobile Mixed, which is at mobilemixed.com like you mentioned. It is really focused on training businesses and even agencies on how to implement mobile marketing in their business or the client’s business. It covers everything from mobile websites, to apps to text messaging, all the different aspects of mobile so it is very much a training platform that businesses can rely on to help them implement campaigns that will work using mobile.

James: Cool! So you got started in this really way back in the day right? When there was just SMS and the clunky old Nokia phones, how have things changed from then and now? I am sure that development of mobile is probably – well it is massive right?

Greg: Oh yeah! It was probably back then it was very much based in text messaging, ringtones, wallpapers, people want to have cool backgrounds on their phone, very kind of basic and it has come a long way with smart phone applications and augmented reality and all that stuff but I think a lot of the basics are actually still being missed by most businesses and the foundation elements like text messaging, email and mobile websites and things like that sometime go overlooked because of the new shiny objects of applications and mobile video and all these other things so it is interesting because it started off as a marketing tool like email but now mobile really is just a part of every aspect of marketing whether it is search, banner advertising, email, SEO – all that stuff, there is a mobile component in to all of it so it really is just this constant thing now through anything that we do as marketers.

James: Yeah, well I see 2013 was a big year for mobile right? I think of those years that really bought mobile to the top of attention and I guess this coming year 2014 is probably going even bigger again so I guess to kind of set the whole scene with what we are to talk about, for those of our listeners who are setting their new year’s resolution and deciding their priorities next sort of 12 months ahead, how important is it that they put mobile marketing at the top of their priority list?

Greg: It is very important, I just think that no matter what type of business you have, your audience, your potential customers, your existing customers. They are all using their smart phone or mobile phone. In some way, shape or form, that is going to give you an opportunity to connect with them and you don’t really have a say anymore as to how, when, where and what device your customer uses to connect with you or read your email or to look at your website or anything so it’s more of just your audience is already there so as a business owner you need to catch up and be a part of it.

James: Yeah, well I liked the recent comment of Eric Shmidt in the 2014 predictions and he was talking about the year that had passed and of course the forthcoming year as well all about mobile was winning, 2014 is all about mobile has won so he kind of set the scene for what this has become. What I’d like you to do is expand on that and share with me some of the statistics that would be most surprising about mobile as it is now because I have seen your website and there’s some pretty unfathomable numbers in terms of mobile usage. What are some of the most impressive ones?

Greg: Yeah, I’m actually presenting in a media expo in 2 days and I have been kind of diving in to some more statistics around mobile content because my topic is how to create a mobile content strategy so I was looking primarily at how people are consuming content through social channels so there’s some staggering numbers like 88% of all photos uploaded to Facebook are coming from a mobile phone. I am actually going to pull up my slides here for you because there are some really, really good stats like almost 70% of all Facebook usage is happening from a mobile phone so if you are using social media in any way, shape or form, or Facebook rather, the odds of your customer actually seeing that message on Facebook are extremely high that it is going to be on a mobile device so that’s a no brainer then that you need to think about your customer. To rattle off a few more, by 2015 more people will be accessing the internet through their mobile phone compared to a personal computer; 48% of all email is opened on a mobile phone. This is an interesting one – 61% of all people that followed a group or liked a page that was created on Facebook like by a brand came from a mobile device so that engagement of someone initially saying I like this happening on mobile. 65% of all watched video clips on Facebook are from mobile. 90% of all shared links to blogs on Twitter came from a mobile phone so if you are looking for Twitter as a distribution channel, almost a hundred percent of people actually sharing your tweet are from the mobile phones so that’s super important. Some other things that I thought were interesting were that 86% of smart phone owners use their mobile phones while watching TV so kind of debunking the myth of mobile users are on the go; they’re very much not on the go and of that 86%, 41% do it every day and then there is a growing population now, at least in the United States, of people that their only access to the internet is through their mobile phones. 31% of Americans that access the web do it from only their mobile device so that’s a growing number of people that any sort of business, it’s a number that you can’t really ignore.

James: No, certainly not. I mean this numbers stagger me, I was meeting up with the UAE Google team 2-3 weeks back and they also shared some interesting facts around search traffic on mobile devices and I know the reported number I think is kind of worldwide that 2015 mobile search traffic would exceed desktop however where I am here in the UAE that has already happened; I think 52 or 53% of all searches happening on Google are happening on a mobile device which is just astonishing numbers.

Greg: Yeah, totally. Even when it comes to like the local aspect, I think one in three searches maybe even more than that now, has mobile searches has a local intent so they are looking for something in and around their current location so if you are a business that has brick and mortar physical location and people are using search to find you, the mobile is one of the ways now that is going to be kind of the way to help people find you.

James: Yeah, and then I believe for those types of searches conversion percentages are typically much, much higher right? Because people have often already made the decision that they want that thing only to visit that place they just need to access that fast.

Greg: Exactly!

James: Cool! I guess we have set the scene now Greg that mobile is pretty important, what are some of the biggest considerations that our listeners should be making, before they get started if indeed they have not already got started with mobile?

Greg: You want to first make sure that your audience, your customers are using their mobile phone to potentially connect with you and let’s say probably 9 times out of 10 the odds are that they are. Look at your traffic; look at where your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from Facebook’s mobile site? What percentage of it is coming from a mobile phone? I have seen on average 25% for most people all of their incoming traffic is coming from a mobile phone. How much of your email is opened from a mobile phone. Depending on which email provider you use, you should be able to get some of that information and so just kind of assess your current situation; how many of the people that are currently connecting with you are on a mobile phone because those are people that you might be potentially neglecting and a lot of people are always trying to grow their audience, grow the number of customers but if you have, just for the sake of easy numbers, a thousand people on your email list and 50% of them are opening on their mobile phone and your email is not mobile optimized and you are focused on getting that 1000 to 2000, well what’s the point if you are neglecting 500 already. You’re probably going to be neglecting a thousand of them once you get to 2000 so like start taking care of people who have already shown interest in you by mobilizing the aspects of your business that people already connect with. I would say do that first, and then, no brainer is to make sure that your website is mobile optimized just because of all the different ways that people can get to your site from a mobile phone but then I would say after that before you go on some of the tactics like SMS and email and things like that I will really focus on how does mobile play a part in to your strategy like your goals? Are you trying to sell more products? Are you selling information? Are you a content marketer that is really just making money off of advertising and things like that? Where does mobile fall in to your own business and from there align yourself with the other tactics that might make the most sense because text message marketing might not make sense for you whereas maybe a smart phone application might make sense for you so depending on where you spend your money and time outside of having your site being mobile friendly, it’s something that only you will be able to know by looking at your own business and what your existing customers are currently trying to accomplish.

James: Yeah, cool! Well I guess let’s start with the broad brush stroke concept of being mobile friendly because I guess regardless of what business you’re in, making sure that your site, assuming you have one, should of course be mobile friendly. Where do they start with that? What does mobile friendly actually mean?

Greg: The way I guess I would define it is that anything that your potential customer can do with your business, they should be able to do from a mobile phone easily, not like painstakingly having to pinch and zoom like if you are a commerce site and people can add products to a shopping cart and check out, they should be able to do that from a mobile phone in a very mobile optimized, mobile friendly way. If you are a blogger or a news source, I should be able to read any single article that you write from your mobile website, and again not in a way where someone has to pinch zoom to even find or click accurately on the links, they should be presented in a way that is friendly for a mobile device so someone can navigate around and accomplish the tasks that they would have been able to accomplish if they were on your full desktop site. So I would essentially say that that’s what it means to be mobile friendly.

James: And I guess, as basic as it might sound, I am sure that there are people out there that have possible not done this. I guess just go and try to access your own site from your own mobile devices and see what the experience is like. I mean it is often overlooked; you and I have surely visited sites where you try to expand the screen out and we can’t click on a link it just gets so frustrating that we give up in the end right and then if we do that we’ve lost a customer for sure. So there’s always this big debate Greg about a mobile friendly site versus a standalone mobile site. What’s your recommendation? Do we go for responsive design or do we go for 2 sites – one for desktop, one for mobile?

Greg: I really think it depends on your business. At this point I would say that using something like responsive design is the direction you want to be going for the future but that does not necessarily mean that you can do it today based on your circumstances. Everyone has different circumstances, I mean if you just rebuilt your website and you did not build it responsive, the odds of you trying to rebuild a responsive site right now are probably low which might then make you want to create some sort of separate mobile optimized experience that you can drive people to on their phone. If you can, responsive is the right direction right now and I guess my caveat to that is that it also depends on that type of business that you have so I see opportunities for businesses that have a local presence like a brick and mortar establishment; I see opportunities for them to have a separate mobile site for a lot of reasons, especially like in retail space – knowing that as you mentioned earlier people are searching from their mobile phone, they’ve sort of already made up their mind, like if I am doing a search for pizza, the odds of me wanting to get pizza are pretty high like the intent of the searcher is a lot different than someone who’s just browsing so when you create a separate site you can actually create a separate site that really caters to what that searcher is looking for, again when you are thinking of a local brick and mortar establishment, people are looking for the phone number, they’re looking for the hours, address, maps and direction so you can guide people through that experience, I think much easier right now by having a separate site than you can using responsive so if you are brick and mortar I think you don’t have to go responsive you do have opportunities to create a separate site. Also cost is a big thing and resources. Not everyone that I know is capable of developing responsive sites, you can purchase responsive WordPress themes if you’re a blogger or something like that but if you’re an established business, you’re probably not going to be buying a theme online or anything like that. You’re going to want something customized to use so if you don’t know a developer that can do it, that’s going to be an obstacle for you. Responsive usually takes a little bit more time from the development perspective because of testing. You’ve got to test on all these different devices as well so it’s really your situation, your budget, your current circumstances. Have you just invested in a site redesign so if I can sum that up in to what types of businesses should be looking at what solution, I think if you are a content based business – a news site like New York Times, Boston Globe, blog or a podcast or social media marketer type of person, responsive is probably the route you want to go, if you’re a retailer or someone that has a local aspect, I think a separate mobile site can still benefit you right now in the short term. But again, like I said, I do think the future solution lies in and around responsive.

James: Yeah, there has been a lot of talk about this, the scale seem to tip from one side to the other. Even as far as Google go, they’ve always spoken about having the benefit of having a separate mobile site, they even seem to be saying now that the sort of future ongoing that responsive is probably open but I guess the argument is still open. I think even from a search perspective, there is an advantage for a mobile only site because you could potentially optimize for those more locally inclined searches that might be things like get pizza or where can I find pizza etc. which has its benefits. I guess it is evaluate your own situation, decide what’s the right fit for you. Any particular design considerations that we should be thinking about other than whether we go down the responsive or mobile only route?

Greg: Yeah, I would say that your main call to action should leverage probably buttons versus text links and sort of the minimum size for those buttons is usually 44×44 pixels is kind of the best practice for a touchable area so when you’re designing your site for mobile, I think it is important to understand that you’re really designing for touch. We’re not using a very small mouse pointer anymore, we are using our fingers and peoples fingers are different sizes; people typically use their pointer finger or their thumb so you want to make sure the sizes of those clickable and tapable areas are easily able to be found and also tapped without misclicking or touching something else that will take them off in to another experience so designing for touch is important. If you are again a local aspect, make sure that your click to call phone number is very accessible, maps and directions is easily accessible and your hours are very easily accessible, ideally all above the fold, which obviously is a lot smaller, you have obviously a much smaller real estate in mobile; so those are the things that sort of jump out.

James: Got it, there are some definite action steps that our listeners can certainly be going and checking on their own site to make sure that they’re mobile compliant and mobile ready. Let’s move the conversation on a little bit from there and perhaps talk about some of the tactical marketing stuff. The first thing I want to talk to you about is email marketing and I think you mentioned at the top of the show that something like 47% of emails are accessed now from mobile devices. How do we need to think differently about email marketing for someone viewing your email on a mobile device?

Greg: Before you even get to things like responsive email, I think it is important to know that when it comes to email your subject line are even more important because depending on the phone screen, your email subject line will be anywhere from 5 to 7 words, typically 60 characters before it gets truncated so if you’re the type that writes super long subject lines make sure that those first 5 to 7 words are enticing enough to get someone to even open it because like we said earlier, almost 50% of all emails are now opened from a mobile phone. So the only thing that you can kind of work with there is copyrighting, understanding your customer, do they like sort of a mysterious headline, is there something intriguing or some actionable call to actions like save $10 now is that something that’s going to get them to open it more quickly? Subject line is important, another one is time of day, that’s really relevant whether it’s on mobile or not but I think it is even more relevant now. Monitor your open rates and see are more emails being opened at different times in the afternoon? Because if you are always sending in the morning – I’m not sure if you’re like this but I know a lot of people are – the first thing we do in the morning is pick up our phone and look at our emails so I think it is interesting that our mobile device has actually become like a filter for which emails we are actually going to read and I can tell you that I delete many emails before I even get out of bed just to lighten the load when I actually sit down at my desk to start working so if that’s one of your emails, maybe that’s just why people are not opening it, maybe because they’re just deleting it in that sort of morning ritual of lowering their stress by decluttering their inbox so I would say test the time of delivery and the last thing before you go on responsive is really the name of the sender so you’ll notice on most mobile devices, the name of the sender of the email is in larger font, it’s usually in bold especially on the iPhone like the eye is drawn in to that before the subject lines so if you send emails from and it gets displayed in people’s inboxes like news@yourdomain.com that might not be as enticing as maybe the name of your site, or maybe your own personal name like my emails, even my newsletter, it comes from Greg Hickman it’s not from news@mobilemixed.com. So depending on what that send address is, make sure that it is displaying the way you want it to within the inbox because that’s what people are going to see even before the subject line.

James: Yeah, got it. Or worse something like noreply@ or something devilish like that – you really just want to give them the pass not to open your email.

Greg: Exactly! So I mean that’s just to get people to open it and then once it’s open, kind of the same things apply as to your website. If you have a call to action, you want them to be buttons and large, nice fonts that should adjust based on your device so responsive email templates are something that are really great when it comes to email that most people can get for free if not buy for very inexpensively if their email service provider doesn’t offer that so I think that if you like to send long emails using bullets and lists and subheaders that will help make your email a little bit more scannable, will make it more easier for people to read it versus just kind of one big massive block of text and then I would test it on your own device and also see like if you’re using multiple text links because it’s more like a secondary call to action. When it’s on the mobile phone like are any of those text links crowded? Are they like next to each other? that maybe trying to tap one will be sort of difficult because there’s two links next to each other so I would look in to that as well.

James: Got it! Cool! I guess I want to move a little forward a little bit from there now and talk about text messaging because that’s one of the other great communication devices I guess would be extremely relevant for a mobile. I want to ask you about some of the things that I have seen, I have recently witnessed some great integrations of text and SMS in marketing sequence such as SMS used in conjunction with email to remind me about a webinar. What would you say the best applications of text messaging that perhaps our listener could go and check out for themselves?

Greg: Again, it depends on your business. For local businesses it is a really good remarketing tool to bring people back to your establishment with offers and things like that. But from a service perspective it is also really good as a reminder tool, like what you said, like in the webinars or for an appointment. You have to understand the immediacy of text messaging, so if you are using text message marketing, your recipient, the people on your list, will receive your message almost instantaneously but once it hits their phone, 90% of people will read that message within 4 minutes so you can’t be promoting something that happens a week from the day that you sent the text message so the content and the call to action should be very timely, time sensitive so you’re promoting a webinar and you have a few extra seats so you have a database and you can say hey we have 20 spots left in this webinar, click this link and be sure to sign up. That link should take them to a mobile optimized landing page than hey I have this webinar next week on Thursday at 2o’clock, click here to sign up because that is not leveraging really the immediacy of it or you could flip the context and say hey I am sending out this announcement to my SMS database first, I have not even promoted this anywhere else, as a mobile subscriber you get first dibs on the first 10 seats or whatever in this webinar so you can use it as like an exclusivity thing as well so I would think about, if you are using that focus on time services messaging, sort of service oriented messaging as something that will remind someone to do something or be somewhere or use an offer or coupon, SMS works really, really well. and then also think about ways to make that message exclusive because if you are just repurposing the content that is in your email, you’re not really giving anyone value because they could have gotten that through email so you want to make sure that the messaging and the things that you are discussing through that channel are different than what you are talking about in email.

James: Cool! And I have seen you, or should I say, heard you talk about using text messaging really nicely at a live event perhaps to capture data or as opt ins. Tell us about how we might do that and some of the applications for it.

Greg: Yeah so depending on – just like email providers, there are so many SMS providers out there so some of them actually offer the option for you to text your email address in to be opted in to an email newsletter which is awesome. I think MailChimp and Constant Content offer that so if you are speaking in an event or some sort of live atmosphere you can be like hey text join to 12345 and then reply with your email and you’ll be put in my email newsletter so it is a quick way in the moment for people who are interested to opt in to your list. You could also combine that with a link that drives to a landing to gt maybe like a free pdf of some sort or something so for example speaking in a media expo in 2 days and in the end of my presentation I will allow people to text in. You’ll be opted in to receiving a mobile marketing tip via a text message once a month and then they’ll also get a link that will take them to a landing page where they can enter their email address to receive the PDF of the slides that I just took them through in that presentation so at the end of the presentation I am going to say, hey if you’d like to receive one mobile marketing tip and get these slides to kind of look through some of the statistics and some of the things that we’ve talked about today, just text Live to 585858 to sign up and get that PDF delivered to your email inbox. That will put people in my list that will also get people in to my mobile list and will also be a way that they’re like I want this and they can do it right away then and there and then have the PDF slide sent to them via email and they don’t have to worry about forgetting, like there are so many times I write things down at conferences and I am like don’t forget to get this PDF or email this person after the show, you never do it so just someone right they if they really want to, they can text in and they can get it so those are a couple of ways that you can give away things. I have talked to authors and they have like a best-selling book, using text will be a great way to give away the first chapter like hey, do you want to see a sample of the book, if you’re on the fence about buying it, text in and you’ll receive the first chapter by email. It can even be a mobile optimized version of the chapter that they can look in to right then and there. So there are different ways, I think you have to be creative with how your particular business will use it or can use it but again focusing on that time sensitivity, the exclusivity, the immediacy, as long as you’re delivering content that is valuable or providing a solution that is making your audiences lives easier and some way, shape or form, you should be pretty well off.

James: Yeah, sweet. I have tested the 1.0 version of this when I have spoken at live events before and actually just gave them a mobile number for people to text to to receive something and the number of people who are texting, we are looking at 75% + of the audience were actually SMSing to receive the giveaway and I’m like killer numbers if you just give them the opportunity of subscribing by visiting this website, the chance of them actually doing it are far, far less. I can certainly vouch for that being effective but I don’t suggest if you can get away with it actually just sending it to just a normal number because you’d be wading through data all night as I was; not the most effective way.

Greg: Yeah and I think one last thing there is that it’s still fairly new to a lot of people even though SMS has been around for a while. Just the intrigue of being at a live event and being like hey text this to get whatever-  most people still probably has not seen it that it’s new that they’re just going to try it to experience it so you have that going for you as well.

James: Yeah, absolutely! Cool! Well I’d like to just flip the coin for a second before us wrapping up; how can us marketers and content creators use mobile devices available to us to better connect with our audience?

Greg: Oh man! Most of this is going to be through social just because of how, we talked about earlier, the number of people that are liking and sharing and all that stuff for mobile that it gives you the opportunity to connect with your audience through your social platform. Gary Vaynerchuk, if you’re familiar with him, is the great example of this, I mean every time he says he’s in a car or in a cab, he’ tweeting at people, direct messaging people that have reached out to him. It just allows you to I guess be productive in those moments between meetings and things like that where you can use your device to just interact with your audience, assuming that they are there, which for most of us, they are. And also, it is a way for us to create content – a quick video that you can share on Facebook or you just walk out on a meeting and something kind of hit you and you just want to share with your audience. You can record a quick video, you can take a picture and drive them to an article that you read on Twitter, just the same ways that we expect people to share our own content. We could be sharing content that we find interesting with our audience.

James: Yeah, well Gary, he’s a perfect example; I remember seeing some of his videos he’ like looking half dead, rocked about 2 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours rumpled in the corner of a plane or something on a flight and you’re thinking, really he wants to share this sort of stuff? But it’s a huge amount of interactivity and genuine notes that I think is super effective right –when you’re just kind of sharing stuff as it happens. Alright, let’s wrap things up or get close to, I’d like to ask you one more question, if you are up to the challenge on this, you have a regular segment or show episode on mobile mixed that you call how can X use mobile or how can blank use mobile, and of course you give various example of different businesses can tap in to it. I, knowing that you were coming on the show, post this to the TJ audience and we had a few different businesses reply, I have picked one so if you are up for the challenge, how can our listener who has a shop online in retailing flight bags, how can they use mobile marketing?

Greg: Like luggage?

James: Yeah, they have this cool, little leather luggage bags and they have kind of designed the style that I guess is lined for short term travel but he retails these just online, he hasn’t got a physical store, he’s got a website promoting it, so there you go, the floor is yours.

Greg: Yeah, outside of just making sure that people can buy the products from the mobile site I think some interesting ways would be to – and this is where I think mobile is interesting is it has to be integrated on other things that you are doing right? So I mean, what if this person, with every bag that was sold a free sort of like luggage tag or what have you was provided for free that had some sort of interesting call to action so that provided a service to that person who just bought the luggage, I can put my name and my contact information on there so if it gets lost or stolen, whatever, that information is there but when someone is like, oh I really like that bag, where did you get it? Someone could really just look at their tag, maybe there is a QR Code on there, there is a call to action where it can take them right to a mobile optimized landing page of that particular product or something like that, so you know, if I am sitting on the airport and I am guilty of this which is why I kind of am coming up with this idea, I see someone who has a really cool bag and I am like where did you get that and they are like oh, I don’t know, I’ve had this for like a little while now, I got this as a gift, I am not sure, and it’s in my mind the bag that I want, like I have been looking for this bag, where did people buy this bag? If I were just to say, oh, look here’s the tag where I got it, scan it and boom I can buy it right then and there that would be interesting I think maybe some sort of mobile optimized tips for maybe how to pack your bag. It could be something that existing subscribers/ existing customers use that maybe can drive them back to the site for the new products that are coming out or even just as a service for potential people, maybe this person has a blog where they talk about travel in a more general sense maybe that you can receive text message tips on how to pack certain items in to that bag or maybe just any bag and maybe just travel tips and things like that where I think you could be using mobile as a distribution channel for a content that you are creating that will maybe help others and then really just kind of that awareness of taking the offline experiences, where will customers interact with this product offline, again while they’re traveling in the airport or whatever that you can attach to the product in some way that will help drive more people to the site. Does that make sense?

James: Absolutely! For putting you on the spot at such short notice, we did not discuss this right, before the show, I love that! That’s an absolutely great idea. It brings that real life element to where you are actually integrating interacting with the product and in to the mobile experience so I could see how that would be very, very effective so Greg well done for that, I put you on the spot there. Cool! We are at the start of 2014. Let’s just end with Greg Hickman’s predictions for 2014 in mobile – what’s next in mobile marketing?

Greg: I think this year you are going to see a lot of businesses actually going from just doing mobile from a tactical perspective to actually incorporating it in to their strategy so thinking about it just from a more strategic perspective so you are going to see it integrated with other aspects of marketing that are driving towards a specific goal. They are going to use mobile to try to sell more goods or to drive more foot traffic or things like that versus just like oh I am trying this text message marketing program so I think the way in which mobile is used is going to start making its way in to the ongoing strategies that the businesses use.

James: Awesome! Well, Greg that’s great. I guess just to once again share with our listener how they can reach out to you, MobileMixed.com, is there any other websites or social media profiles you’d like to mention at this point?

Greg: Sure! Outside of Mobile Mixed, you can find me on Twitter @GJHickman and if you want to email me, I am Greg@mobilemixed.com

James: Great! Well, listener, if you’ve not got a mobile device to hand write and to tap that information in to those links will be in the show notes of episode 27 of Traffic Jam so you can head on over to the episode’s page to get those. Greg, thank you once again for coming on Traffic Jam!

Greg: James, thank you so much I really appreciate it.

This Week’s News in Traffic

Okay, so the stories this week extend a little beyond the last seven days as we’re kind of catching up a bit from the last Christmas and New Year period. The first story I’ve got relates to YouTube and they’re saying that everyone who has a verified account that’s in good standing will now be able to stream live video directly from their YouTube account. This is done using Google Hangouts on Air which can now be accessed directly under YouTube Live Events Manager within your YouTube account.

Twitter have launched promoted account options that help users discover businesses and people of interest and to help the advertisers build a highly engaged audience of Twitter followers; well that’s the statement. The way that it works is that as an advertiser, you have your handle shown in the home page feed and if someone is following a business or a person on a similar topic of interest to your own, beneath their tweets you handle will be shown as a promoted account, other accounts should then follow. This is topic based marketing and perhaps a way to build a targeted following of people that you know are already interested in your topic or field.

The last story in a very social media orientated this week’s news in traffic comes from Facebook and they have now rolled out across all iOS devices auto play videos which means when you scroll down on your timeline, an embedded video in Facebook itself, not YouTube, will now auto play for users. I think it is going to encourage more people to upload videos directly to Facebook and could give us a strong indication that video advertising on Facebook is probably coming very soon, keep your eyes peeled for that, more on Facebook, I am sure.

So it’s that short interlude in the show where I thank you the listener if you’ve left Traffic Jam a review on iTunes and I have one to read out this week and it is for Hoy, Jamie from Australia and he says in the content, thanks James for the tips. Love the podcast, and as a reminder really, leaving a review or on Stitcher radio is the best way that you can support the show. For iTunes just head on over to your iTunes player, search for Traffic Jam podcast, hit reviews and comments and then leave your review along with a star rating. For Stitcher radio, I am not quite sure of the process but if you search inside Stitcher, locate the podcast, there is a way to rate and review the podcast also and Stitcher radio is one of the new platforms that is up and coming and a greate way to consumer podcasts so if you’ve not given that a go, you might want to go and check out Stitcher radio, a really great application that’s available in your phone and also in browser and also in some car stereos as well so it’s really an insight in to how podcasting is developing so please leave a review, if you have not done so in the show I would really love to get your feedback and perhaps a chance for you to get read out on next week’s episode.

The One Minute Traffic Tip

This week’s tip is all about creating irresistible, share worthy content that will get shared to a wide, wide content just because it is so damn good. And one of the most damn good pieces that you can create is an infographic because everyone loves images and everyone loves information so if you can combine the two in an incredibly stunning traffic that’s relevant and on topic to the products, services and information that you share, that really is a great piece of information of content. Quite often it is difficult to get the ideas and number statistics for your infographics so I am going to recommend a resource called wolframalpha.com and that’s a computational knowledge engine that will overturn your information and stats on really any topic that you could ever imagine. So a couple of resources to check out for this week’s tip, the first wolframalpha.com as I just mentioned. The second is an example of an infographic and one that we just produced for our SEO business SEO Sherpa and it is all about organic SEO so if that kind of interests you I will make sure that is linked off to within the show notes so you can go and check that out as well.

So that brings episode #27 of Traffic Jam to a close. Keep your ears open for another episode coming to you real soon. For more traffic tips and training in the coming weeks, head on over to veravo.com. Of course to play out this week’s episode, we’ve got a track chosen by my guest today by my guest Greg Hickman and it is a classic piece of 2pac, it’s called Changes. See you soon!