Your mobile site. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If your site isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re missing a huge group of potential customers. Mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop browsing by 2014, so your site should be just as user friendly on a mobile device as it is on a computer (if not more so). This doesn’t mean simply making sure your regular site can appear on a mobile device. Want to learn what it takes to design a great mobile site? Check out this Get There post.

A mobile app. Not every brand needs a mobile app. However, if your customers spend a lot of time away from their desks, and you can package a common task related to your product or service as an app, the rewards can be great

A mobile ad. Mobile advertising has come a long way. Simple display units used to be the only real option in the mobile ad space, but thanks to advancements in our mobile devices, we now have the opportunity to run rich media ads, SMS message ads and everything in between. As “pay with your phone” services like Google Wallet take off, mobile advertising is likely to become even more exciting.

Where are you placing your bets in mobile?

Image via Mobile+Local

Marketing Mantra #3: Social media is a two-way conversation. 

We could elaborate on this ourselves, but with his enthusiastic speaking style and penchant for dropping the occasional swear word into his presentations, we thought Gary might be more exciting to watch.

Check out this video for Gary’s suggestions on maximizing the potential of social media through conversation and a simple thank you.

Image via Clker.

Some people might be surprised, but we’re simply wondering what took so long. Social advertising offers several key benefits that make it an especially smart choice for advertisers who want to maximize the ROI of their media buys. It’s about time marketers took notice! Here are just a few of the reasons we love social advertising:

• Narrow targeting – When we sign up to use a social network, we typically provide a good deal of information about ourselves to the site. For example, we might tell Facebook how old we are, where we went to school and what we like to do in our free time (by filling out the hobbies section). Social networks can then turn this data into filters through which advertisers can target their ads. Want to reach only self-proclaimed fly fishing aficionados in the Pacific Northwest or newly engaged 22–30 year olds in Illinois? Facebook makes it possible. Other social networks are also targeting their ads in similar ways based on intelligence about their users.
• Relevance – The amount of personal information we share with the social networks we use also allows the sites to serve us highly relevant ads. For example, after changing my status from “Student at The University of Wisconsin,” to “Alumni of The University of Wisconsin,” Facebook began serving me ads for a variety of companies that were hiring in Wisconsin and the Midwest.
• Shareability – Social ads are viral by nature. Let’s take Twitter’s promoted tweets as an example. When a company sends a promoted tweet, it shows up within a user’s stream as if it was sent from one of their friends or connections. The user then has the ability to retweet the promoted tweet to their followers, and greatly increase the reach of the message. Well-crafted promoted tweets from major companies have reportedly been retweeted upwards of 18,000 times.

As social media sites grow, their advertising platforms are likely to become even more advanced. We can’t wait to see what’s next. Have you made social media a key component of your media plan for 2012?

Marketing Mantra #2: Metrics Matter (and we might not be measuring the right ones)

Metrics have always been an important part of our business. However, as the media environment has changed, so has the process of measuring results. We’re now swimming in more data than ever before, and unless we can figure out how to make sense of it, we can easily drown.

Art of Marketing speaker and Google employee Avinash Kaushik thinks we’re approaching digital marketing metrics from the wrong angle. We’re trying to adapt traditional metrics to fit new media, and it simply isn’t working. To compensate, many marketers pull more numbers than they know what to do with and simply become overwhelmed. Instead of measuring impressions, page views, followers and friends, Avinash recommends we look at conversation rate, amplification rate, applause rate and economic value per visitor. He even directed us to a handy tool called True Social Metrics that makes generating these numbers fairly simple and straightforward.

Though his presentation wasn’t as heavy on metrics-related content, Gary Vaynerchuk echoed Avinash Kaushik’s idea that we need to reassess our priorities when it comes to metrics. Instead of counting fans and followers, he recommends we get to know our online communities so that we are capable of assessing and growing their value. We’ve been moving toward this approach for a while now, but Avinash and Gary gave us the extra push we needed to re-evaluate how we measure success in social media.

Each of the speakers brought a unique perspective to the table, but there were some common threads between their presentations that we think all marketers need to pay attention to. Call them marketing mantras, if you will. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing a few of the top ideas that we took away from the conference and plan to incorporate into our work.

Marketing Mantra #1: Relationships Rule

We all know that the Internet has profoundly changed our field, but we sometimes fail to realize how much it has affected the expectations of our customers. Until recently, marketing was primarily a one-way activity. Advertisers were the senders and consumers were the receivers. Thanks to the Internet and social media, that’s no longer the case. Consumers now have the opportunity to interact directly with brands, and they expect companies to engage them in real, meaningful ways.

Building relationships is more important than ever before. Keith Ferrazzi recommended that we all stay on top of our game by developing what he calls a “people plan.” He suggested identifying the 25 most important people to the future of your company or brand for the year, and then focusing to build strong relationships with them. Seth Godin developed this concept on the idea of tribes that he has written about in several of his books, and recommended that we all focus on that small, niche group of people who will come together around the unique value our brands offer. Gary Vaynerchuk recommended that we start listening to our consumers in social media, learning about their lives and then interacting with each of them on a one-on-one basis. These are slightly different ways to look at the task of relationship building, but they all emphasize the fact that strong relationships are the mark of a strong brand.

Read the white paper to learn:

• More about each of the five new laws of content
• The #1 requirement for developing content that drives business
• How to align your content with industry issues, your organizational capabilities and your brand

After you read the white paper, come back here and tell us: do you think our five laws accurately describe how content works in the real world? Are there other laws that can be added to the list.

What are marketers asking today of their advertising agencies? via BtoB Magazine

We all know that client/agency relationships are changing as marketing evolves, but this article provides some interesting insight on exactly what that change looks like. We might be partial, but we agree that clients are looking for more integration.

So you want an infographic? via B2B Bliss

Infographics seem to be everywhere lately, and for many B2B marketers, they make a lot of sense. However, we’re big supporters of the idea that you should only consider an infographic if there’s a story in your data.

B2B Marketing Automation: Is it really worth the effort? via B2B Marketing Smarts

Marketing automation and lead nurturing have been key priorities for many of our clients lately, so this article caught our attention right away. The post points out that, according to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing are able to generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost per lead, which is a big push toward lead nurturing for companies that have been hesitant to adopt it into their marketing plans.

If you’ve taken note of any great posts this month, let us know.

The CSS (Communication Style Survey) classifies respondents into four primary styles: thinkers, feelers, sensors and intuitors. While the test is meant to help us understand our personal styles, it also gives us a great deal of information about how to best communicate with people who are in other categories than our own. For example, in taking the test, we learned that most thinkers can never get enough facts and details, while sensors prefer to receive just topline information that gets straight to the point.

While the CSS says that only those who take the test themselves can truly identify their communication style, it’s often pretty easy to categorize people  we know into one of the four groups based on the descriptions. It’s also common to find people with certain communication styles working in particular professions. For example, CEOs of major companies are likely to be intuitors, while small business owners are likely to be sensors and nurses are likely to be feelers.  This could be incredibly useful from a B2B marketing perspective. It means that, as long as we truly understand our target customer, we should be able to make a pretty good guess about the communication style they prefer, and then tailor our communications accordingly. If we’re dealing with a group of thinkers, we may choose to present information in detailed charts and graphs, while we might choose to use creative visualizations of information for intuitors. What do you think? Could making an educated guess about the communication styles of our target customers have a positive impact on marketing?

Image via First Capital Internet Marketing Consultants.

The Law of Exchange can be summarized as follows:

As the value of content increases, the value of what it is exchanged for increases.

Think about it: what is the difference between a report from Frost & Sullivan, which costs $6,000, and a report on the same topic that is available in exchange for an email address? Clearly, the anticipated value of the content. People are simply willing to give more in exchange for high quality, valuable content.

This law has significant implications for the kind of content that is created by content producers. “Thought leadership” has been defined by Gartner as “the giving — for free or at a nominal charge— of information or advice that a client will value so as to create awareness of the outcome that a company’s product or service can deliver, in order to position and differentiate that offering and stimulate demand for it.” Central to this definition is the expectation of exchange — in a best-case scenario, a prospect may become a customer after being impressed with some intellectual capital; in a worst-case scenario, a prospect grants the content producer permission to contact them in the future with the implicit understanding that they may be interested in receiving additional content.

Consulting firms have been using this model for years. In fact, Gartner estimates 20% of the marketing spend of these types of firms has gone to support it. Thanks to the growth of content marketing, thought leadership (as a quasiorganized sub-discipline of the practice) is now coming to a marketing program near you.

There’s no denying that the growth of thought leadership and content marketing presents tremendous opportunity for brands and brand building. But how can you take full advantage of the opportunity and make sure you get your content marketing program right? On Friday, we’ll release our Five New Laws of Content White Paper for download, where the answer to these questions will be revealed.

Image via eBuzzing.