The Beginning

In the US, the beginning of the mobile marketing before the iphone, android and the whole host of newer smart phones, companies were attempting mobile marketing through SMS campaigns. You’d often see “text ‘XYZ’ to 12345 for …”. This was alright and is usable by a larger audience because it can be used by every cell phone with SMS capabilities. The problem is that there is the potential for a carrier cost for the consumers wishing to participate and that the interaction is singular. It’s not that companies are necessarily trying to charge consumers, but it’s that the consumer’s carrier charges for SMS service at a “message-at-a-time” rate.

QR Codes

With the introduction of smart phones, more companies are able to integrate campaigns with a more sophisticated interaction level. Outside of the US, they’ve embraced this kind of user connection to brands much more rapidly. Audi Japan created a campaign using QR codes, while others like Pepsi have used them in print ads, outdoor boards, banners, and other clever media. The potential with this kind of interactions are very high. Take Japan’s Tada Gets’ use of QR codes throughout their magazine.

Location Based

Consumer brands teaming up with other forward thinking companies can benefit consumers and the brands symbiotically. Take Gowalla for example. The idea of allowing consumers to publicly “check in” and broadcast through other social media used by the consumer that they’re interacting with a brand is monumental and when paired with incentives such as custom “stickers”, discounts and other offerings by brands rewarding consumers from interacting with those brands. Also by utilizing the opportunity with services such as these, companies can easily drive business to a specific destination during specific periods at a fairly low cost with a higher adoption rate with consumers.

Barcodes

Also along those same lines as Gowalla, a newer company (at the time of this writing) called Sticky Bits has emerged and allows consumers and brands to attach and assign content to barcodes – any barcode. To take this idea into practice, a company could include a special offer and/or special product related infotainment, offers and bonus “content” to the packages of their products with encouragement for consumers to “scan” their products for these. Besides the obvious integration opportunity for games, like those “under the cap” games you often see with beverages, you can easily create other similar experiences with any brand.

Future Opportunities

Certainly there are far more opportunities and inspiring ideas that can be had about integrating mobile marketing into brand campaigns to provide engaging, relevant experiences to consumers that haven’t been documented and/or have yet to be discovered.

Challenges
The challenges for this project were actually no challenge for us. We were able to tie this microsite into the client’s current CMS that we built them and tie in the shopping cart that was already part of their site.

Results
We produced a fun tour micro-site that the client was able to drive traffic to to get more details about his tour stop, buy tickets online and allow them to tell their friends about the event. The client’s online ticket sales and management made ticket sales a breeze and helped when it came time to see how they did at a glance and provided them with a list for their on-site drawing the day of the event. Having this site tie into their existing CMS allows him to be able to update it for each stop on the tour.

Challenges
The challenges of this project were a little different that we’re used to for a client. We had to help them take their site design and make it web-ready and flexible enough for the web. We also had to help them integrate a blog, portfolio section which could hold all kinds of media from print pieces to video, audio, and animations and help them connect with like minded individuals.

Results
We took the clients design, adjusted them where needed to better flow with the web, integrated a great web-based CMS and portfolio environment to help the client self-manage their portfolio, helped guide them in the design of their blog, and got the client connected to twitter to help them reach out to other like-minded individuals. The client is able to easily edit all content on their site, add and remove portfolio pieces, executive team biographies and publish blog posts at their own pace. The client went through a short training at the end of the project and has been easily managing their site ever since.

Challenges
The Challenges of this project were clear. To create a relaxing, yet engaging site that highlighted his knowledge on developing a Life Practice, while keeping it simple and non-intimidating for visitors. Also, allowing the client to post updates about upcoming events, past events, and blog about category topics.

Results
We developed exactly what the client was hoping for…down to the imagery. By putting his site on a CMS, we allowed him to be able to administer his site from the road while he’s away speaking and energizing.

Challenges
Some of the challenges of the site were in creating a site that encompassed all the needs of the each individual department chair of the committee, meet the needs of the members, and provide organic SEO to a site that had otherwise become stagnant. We also had the task of organizing all the new content in a clear and meaningful way.

Results

We created a site that is very simple to keep up-to-date for the client, incorporated a role-management system which allows different department chairs to log in to administer their own areas and helped to get their site in search engines again with the fresh content. We helped to create an open point of communication for the organization to communicate performance information and provided a point for them to send media to to learn more about their roots, seasons, and other newsworthy information.

Challenges
There were numerous challenges associated with this project that were both unique to the business model and fun to think through. We were fortunate enough to have a limited, narrowed product list that the client wanted to manage, though we did not have a ready-to-go database of product information to pull from, so we were instructed to pull from the main manufacturer’s site for details, names, photos and other product attributes. The other challenge was that the client wanted to manage their entire list and still be able to link directly to the manufacturer to fulfill the order, maintain the product pricing, and provide the technical information so that the client could focus on having his site easy to maintain. Another challenge was to stand above the rest in the competitive category, but still connect with the same technical-minded people that tend to purchase the performance products.

Results
After a survey of the client’s competitors, we realized that where we could stand out above the rest was to use the client’s years of experience, knowledge, and insight to help make the site a resource of trade information while still organizing the technical details of the product and helping to better communicate each products unique features. We did a lot of information design throughout the site to help make communication to the consumer much easier to read, follow and digest no matter what technical level they were at. We incorporated social avenues and knowledge sharing features to help the client’s experience come through and help guide customers down the right, insightful path. We implemented a blog to allow the client to share their experience and give basic how-to articles about common vehicular maintenance, and included a car maintenance tips section to share the client’s broad knowledge. We were able to utilize twitter as an avenue for customers to follow to get updates on the newest how-to articles, new products offered, and general tips as the client published more and more.

Useful if you plan on having multiple users on the blog. You can customize access by user role.

http://www.im-web-gefunden.de/wordpress-plugins/role-manager/

TinyMCE Advanced

This adds Microsoft Word type of editing tools to write your posts. You can customize what buttons you have on there this plugin is golden.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/

Register Plus
This one is strictly for customizing the login page. Nothing more than aesthetics.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus/

Page Links To

This allows you to create pages that link directly to another site or page directly. Very useful.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-links-to/

Avatars

Makes it easy to manage custom avatars on your site. If you plan on using avatars on your site for comments or in other areas, definately check this out.

http://www.sterling-adventures.co.uk/blog/2008/03/01/avatars-plugin/

Contact Form (cforms)

This plugin is very useful. Makes it really easy and simple to manage all form needs for your site whether you have one or twenty.

http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin

Flash Video Player
If you plan on having video on your site or posts, check this plugin out. You can download free skins to customize the look and alter what shows on the flash player.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flash-video-player/

Twitter Tools

Helps you integrate twitter into your site to display your tweets if you wish, or you can choose only to have it post to your twitter account when you post new posts. You can tell it on a post-by-post basis whether you want it to publish a tweet for it. Super handy.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Gallery Plus or Nextgen Gallery

Image gallery plugins each have their own usefulness. You might like Nextgen Gallery more if you want to display different sets or “galleries”.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gallery-plus/
or
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

WP e-Commerce

If you’re looking for e-commerce to sell things, this plugin is pretty great. It allows for easy management of products, easy shipping calculations, and hooks up natively with paypal or google cart. With a “gold” plugin license (for a small fee), you can connect to other payment gateways, and you can purchase other add-ons.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-e-commerce/

In a time when credit card machines are available to mom-and-pop shops, and services like Paypal and eBay have made everyone an entrepreneur with access to customers world wide through the web and through personal websites with the means to collect, it’s no wonder that we’re at that point where our clients and their customers are becoming more and more savvy in this digital jungle.

One of the things our interactive team prides themselves on is having the ability to have foresight to see and suggest trends that are upcoming and can have a positive impact for our clients while offering value and meaningfulness to the end user. We look at trends in things like social media, entertainment, start-up companies and everything in between. We spot opportunities to enhance our client’s brands and the ways in which they reach out to consumers everywhere we look.

One tactic that many of us use to determine which services work well for our client’s needs and the needs of their customers is to try new services, technologies and integrations on our own. It’s not until you’ve done for yourself before you can suggest to others. Even if at first you don’t see how integrating something as non-related as Twitter into your business, give it a try and see how, if any, you could utilize it to your advantage.

Another thing to consider is that not everything works for everyone in the same way, or at all. In some cases, you may be used to integrating a certain service on client sites because they add value, and at some point find an instance where it doesn’t necessarily work out for a project. Some things cannot successfully be integrated, and therefore shouldn’t be forced.

We’ve seen changes made to projects because of personal preferences and not what was right for the project or audience. Seeing beyond the outward appearance of a project and starting at the core is the first step to giving good feedback. Often times you’ll see feedback revolve around personal taste and opinions of one individual rather than a target audience. Just because you might not like a particular look doesn’t mean that your consumers, users, or clients agree. Refer back to market research when deciding whether or not to keep something or whether it should change. Training yourself to objectively critique a project takes time, but in the end is extremely beneficial for your project’s audience, and for self development.