The mobile revolution is well underway, but how should digital marketers respond? On April 5, 2017, Perficient Digital sponsored Next10x: Mastering Mobile Digital Marketing, a one-day conference focused entirely on all the major disciplines of digital marketing and how they must adapt for the mobile-first world.
In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some in-depth insights from many of our Next10x speakers, but first here’s a roundup of some highlights, some of the best tips, from a selection of our speakers.
Eric Enge | The Mobile Revolution Has Only Just Started
Meet Eric: Meet Eric Enge of Perficient Digital. Eric was named the 2016 US Search Awards Search Personality of the Year, and Landy Awards Search Marketer of the Year.
Key Point: Though in many ways the mobile revolution has already begun, the biggest changes are still to come.
Takeaway Tip: Be an early adopter of mobile-friendly technologies and innovations such as AMP, featured snippets, Google Actions for Google Assistant, voice search, and others.
[Tweet “Though in many ways the mobile revolution has already begun, the biggest changes are still to come.”]
Cindy Krum | The Changing World of Mobile & How It Impacts Digital Marketing Strategies
Meet Cindy: Cindy Krum is the CEO and Founder of MobileMoxie, LLC, a mobile marketing consultancy and host of the most cutting-edge online mobile marketing toolset available today. Cindy is the author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are, published by Que Publishing.
Key Point: A mobile-first world could mean much bigger changes than most marketers anticipate, including a move away from URLs and browsers as the primary means of indexing information on the Internet.
Takeaway Tip: Prepare for Mobile First by making sure your site is mobile friendly, using schema markup, implementing crawlable JS and JSON-LD, getting into Google hosted content, taking advantage of APIs, developing XML feeds and sitemaps, and implementing HTTPS and general security.
[Tweet “Mobile first may mean the decline of browsers and URLs as staples of web indexing – Cindy Krum. More:”]
Larry Kim | How to Be a Mobile Marketing Unicorn in 2017 and Beyond
Meet Larry: Larry Kim is the founder of WordStream, a leading search marketing software and services provider based in Boston, managing approximately a half-billion in annual ad spend across thousands of customers. Larry has begun a new mobile marketing bots startup called MobileMonkey.
Key Point: Traditional search has already peaked and is falling behind, but there are still unicorn-style marketing hacks that can keep mobile search marketing a profitable stream.
Takeaway Tip: You can revive sagging paid mobile advertising by combining paid social ads with remarketing campaigns to build brand affinity that increases CTR and therefore lowers your cost-per-click and cost-per-lead. Use paid social to promote your best evergreen content to increase your brand affinity with a larger audience. Tag the most qualified engagers with your promoted posts, and remarket to them to bring them to your desktop site for conversion.
[Tweet “Unicorn mobile marketing hacks bring most ROI for least effort – Larry Kim at #Next10x. More at”]
Neal Schaffer | The Fast and the Furious: Social Media in a Mobile First World
Meet Neal: Neal Schaffer is a leader in helping empower business and professionals to maximize social media ROI. A Forbes top social media and social selling influencer, Neal is a global speaker and the author of three books, including the definitive book on social media strategy, Maximize Your Social, and instructor of social media at both Rutgers University and the Irish Management Institute.
Key Point: Social media will only gain in importance, as it is the #1 mobile activity across all devices.
Takeaway Tip: Concentrate on the visual and video side of social media, as they have the most engagement and therefore get favored by the algorithms of most social networks.
[Tweet “Social media will gain importance, as it is the #1 mobile activity across all devices – Neal Schaffer”]
Shari Thurow: Mobile UX Guidelines and Best Practices
Meet Shari: Shari Thurow is the Founder of Omni Marketing Interactive, a full-service website usability, information architecture (IA), and search engine optimization (SEO) firm. She has optimized, architected, and designed websites since 1995. She currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the ASLIB Journal of Information Management (AJIM). She also served on the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute (IAI) and User Experience Professionals Organization (UXPA).
Key Point: All the mobile-friendliness and SEO in the world will bring little benefit if the user experience on your mobile site turns people away and keeps them from converting.
Takeaway Tip: Mobile navigation labels should be clear & consistent. Use an open card sort test to determine user mental models for labels.
[Tweet “Mobile friendliness & SEO are pointless if your UX turns users away from your site – Shari Thurow.”]
Watch for more great tips and insights from Next10x in the weeks to come, and find out about Next10x 2018!
Very much agree with Shari’s point. I feel like the user experience on mobile still has a long way to go for many websites.
Hello Perficient Digital. I’m sorry my comment is unrelated but I am curious what you are using to create the blue CLICK TO TWEET boxes, so users can click and share. I would like to do something like that myself on one of my own websites. Is it a WordPress plugin you are using or did you code it yourself please? Thanks in advance. Gail
Hi Gail, I’d be happy to share. That is a built in feature of the Social Warfare plugin that runs our social sharing buttons on this blog. In your WordPress plugins section under “Add New” search for “social warfare” and you’ll find it!
Hi Mark, thank you so much for that and so prompt too! I will definitely install that plugin – maybe the pro version. i run a website for British Breeders Network (a .org domain suffix if you’re interested – i didn’t want to hijack your thread with a hyperlink for that site) in the UK and we have Facebook sharing stuff pinned down but Twitter not so much so this will be a very useful add on as the equestrian institutions like the FEI, BEF, British Dressage, British Showjumping and British Eventing all use the Twitter platform a lot, as do a lot of professional riders and athletes. I’ll let you know how it works for us… thanks again and Happy Easter.
Hi Gail,
I’m very interested in hearing how you’ve gone with Social Warfare. I have heard some good things about it. Thanks.