According to new research from Pew Internet, people are turning to their mobile phones to help them shop than ever before.

If you are still pondering whether it’s time to make changes your website, landing pages, and emails in order to reach the mobile audience, you may want to review some of the statistics in their report. Here are a few that stood out to me:

• More than 1/2 of adult cell phone owners used their phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions.
• 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store
• 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else

As the number of smartphone owners continues to rise, and people more acquainted and comfortable with the features in those devices, we can certainly expect to see there already impressive numbers rise further.

Smartphones and other mobile devices certainly are causing some folks to pause before buying an item. If that happens to them, is your company doing everything it can to reach the mobile shopper, to help them make the decision to purchase at that point?

If you need any advice or help in regards to how you can reach the mobile audience, we’d love to help! Here are a couple of solutions that may want to check out:

iFlyMobi — Mobile Website Builder

QReate & Track — QR Code Management

Photo Credit

Thus, it will be an on-going effort to find ways to ensure that traditional channels such as print still have an effective role in the marketing mix.

Below is a presentation that was delivered by our CEO John Foley, Jr. that discusses the topic “Integrating Print in a Multi-Channel World”. We hope that you find it helpful!

Can mobile marketing help you to grow your business? I’m happy to share the news that we’ll be answering that question during a free webinar. The theme will be “Making Money with Mobile”.

This webinar will take place on January 25th, 2012, from 2-3 PM Eastern Time.

We’ll be sharing information about mobile websites, QR Codes, and strategies for selling mobile solutions. Please join us! Simply fill out the form below to register:

From January 23rd-25th, I will be in Las Vegas for the 2012 PODi AppForum. If you will be attending too, let me know! I’d love to meet up with you.

I sat down in front of the camera to discuss what I’m looking forward to in regards to this year’s show. Enjoy!

While I’m there, I’ll have the chance to deliver a presentation on January 24th the topic of “How to Transform Your Business into a Marketing Services Provider“.

I promise that this session won’t contain any fluff — from the beginning to the end, I will share inspiration that you can take home to help your print business grow! I’ll be sharing case studies, strategies, plans, campaigns, and other ideas to help you succeed.

Click here to learn more about the PODi AppForum >>

I am quite happy to announce that interlinkONE and Grow Socially will be exhibiting at the Online Marketing Summit this year!

There are a number of reasons for the exclamation point at that end of that first sentence. Here are a few of them.

4 Reasons That We Are Excited About the Online Marketing Summit

• The Online Marketing Summit is being held in San Diego, CA. Here in Boston, we are expecting snow tomorrow.
• The theme of the Expo is “Integrated Marketing and Technology”. It’s being described as a place where attendees can “Experience first-hand emerging integrated marketing technologies that are changing the marketing landscape – discover social, search, email, demand gen, CRM, e-commerce, mobile, analytics solutions and more.” Yes, visit the interlinkONE and Grow Socially booth, and we promise that you will find that experience.
• We have a ton of enhancements for our products and services that we are excited to show off at the booth.
• We love talking to and learning from folks in the marketing industry… and there will be a lot of them there.

Are you planning on (or thinking of) attending the Online Marketing Summit? If so, let us know in the Comments! We’d love to make plans to meet up with you.

Additional Details

What: Online Marketing Summit 2012

When: February 7-8, 2012 (These are the Exhibit Hall dates. The conference runs from the 6th-9th.)

Where: Hilton San Diego Bayfront

Register: Just click here >>

Over the past couple of years, Google has made changes to its search engine to personalize the results that it presents. For instance, Google rolled out changes in 2009 to start integrating a user’s social media data on the Results page.

Today, they have announced that they are making more changes to integrate search and social.

What Do The Changes Entail

A huge part of today’s announcement (which Google is labeling “Search, plus Your World”) involves utilizing capabilities of Google+. A person’s search results may now be affected by the Google+ data that they are connected with. This could include:

• People: Users may now see people that they may want to follow based on what they are searching for
• Pages: Search results may now display pages (or profiles) that are related to a specific topic or area of interest that someone may have searched on
• Photos and Posts:  Google may now display photos and information from Google+ posts that you have access to within search results

How Can You Prepare for these Changes?

Google has announced that they will start rolling out these changes in the next few days.

Thus, there are things that you can do now to take advantage of them. Here are a few:

• If you don’t already have one, create a Google Profile.
• Once you have a profile, make sure that you log-in to Google before you run your next Search.
• Get on Google+!
• Google+ allows you to have a personal profile, of course. But you can also create Pages for your Business, Products & Services, Events, and more.
• Start creating and publishing content on your Google+ profiles and pages
• Build your Google+ community: Take the time to add people and Pages to your Circles and invite others to do the same for your accounts.

It certainly will be interesting to see how users adapt and benefit from these changes. If you have a free moment, check out the video that Google has released regarding the “Search, plus Your World” functionality:

In a few days, I will be speaking at the 2012 Digital Imaging Marketing Association Conference (DIMA) in Las Vegas, NV. This event is associated with the big PMA@CES festivities as well. I recorded the brief video below to discuss what I’ll be talking about while I’m there.

If you’ll be attending too, please let me know! I’d love to meet up with you.

Click here for more information on the conference >>

But I just want to take a moment to highlight one that stood out to me.

The Holiday eCard from Fabcom

FabCom is an interactive marketing agency. I love their company and their staff for many reasons. They are energetic, creative, and extremely hard-working. And, they use  interlinkONE’s multi-channel marketing software to help them build, manage, execute, and measure marketing campaigns for their clients, which also gives them extra points in my book.

They sent an eCard to a number of employees here that combined a number of things that I like: personalization, humanizing a brand, and gift-giving.

Here is a screenshot of the email that they sent:

Within the email, they did a great job of including a human touch. As an agency, their people are among their most important assets. Thus, by exposing employees faces, they are helping to “open” themselves up to customers, prospects, and vendors. And of course, they did a great job of incorporating a humorous and seasonal touch.

The Landing Page

After clicking the link within the email, people were directed to a landing page. It incorporated video, personalized text, and information about the donation that they were making on the behalf of the individual the email was sent to.

Here is a screenshot of the landing page:

The Inspiration

When it comes to sending holiday cards, companies often have multiple goals. For one, they want to say Thank You to customers, prospects, vendors, industry leaders, friends, and others. But also, they want to do something that will help make an impression about their company on someone’s mind.

I think that Fabcom did a great job of this. They utilized multiple channels and medias to make the recipients feel special in a number of ways.

Below are some of the pieces that caught our attention over the past month. We hope that you enjoy them.

Salvation Army Donation

Victoria’s Secret

1-800-Flowers

YakTrax 

PCC Natural Markets

Harry Potter

Disney

We certainly hope so. But we also know that many companies may be wishing they could have experienced more success through that channel.

Of course, simply writing “succeed more” on our 2012 marketing plan will only take us so far. We need to establish more specific goals. What could those goals be? You may find some inspiration in the chart below from eMarketer:

If the items in that survey are ones that you’d like to accomplish in the near future, then your business will no doubt benefit if you do!

Here are a few tips on how you can do some of those successfully:

Development of a Clear Strategy

If you have ever seen John Foley, Jr. (my boss) speak about social media, I’m sure you would agree that he loves talking about the importance of strategy!

Some of the key items that John lists that need to be part of your social media strategy are:

• Define Your Business and Its Goals
• Clearly understand your target audience
• Identify “the one thing” that truly makes you unique
• And more…

If you’d like to learn more about how to successfully develop a clear strategy, check out this presentation from John Foley, Jr.

Executive Buy-In

If you happen to work at a company where folks from the management actively use social media, then this may not be a big problem for you.

However, this may not be the case. Not only will you need to show how social media is helping you accomplish the company’s business goals, but you may also need to spend time educating your management team about how key social media tools actually work!

By putting in the effort to clearly identify the what, why, and how, you may find that people’s buy-in may come a lot easier when you present them the results.

P.S. If you’d like a bit more help crossing social media goals off of your to-do list, I know some great folks at our sister company, Grow Socially, that can help.