Digital marketing strategy… success in a mobile world

Digital Marketing Strategy…  7 Steps to Surviving the Mobile Revolution

Next Tuesday I’ll be heading off to the annual marketing congress of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in Bonn where I’ll be doing two presentations on “Digital Marketing Strategy in Higher Education: Surviving the Mobile Revolution. Just finished the presentation yesterday and today I’ll share some of the main points covered.
Some of the DAAD online presence can serve as a model for other international student recruitment efforts, particularly the use of different Facebook sites for different regions and countries. 
Fast Top Task Completion from Smart Phones
Here are the 7 major strategy points in my summary:
  • Learn the top tasks most important to your visitors. Plan your content presentation and navigation to let people complete top tasks as quickly as possible. That’s more important for smart phone use than laptops or desktops because you can only show a few top links.
  • Smart phone mobile access to web content continues to grow at a rapid pace just about everywhere. Smart phones started the true mobile revolution in 2007. Although feature phones will remain important for some time, smart phone penetration is increasing everywhere. The highest adoption growth rate now is in Africa. Strategy must focus on smart phones first.
  • Speed of access is critical. But home page download time is increasing. A successful move to mobile requires more than responsive design technology. It requires serious content reduction so there is less to redesign. Check your mobile speed on Mobitest, from home page to main pages after that. Aim for pages that open in less than 5 seconds.
  • Primary websites are more important than social media for students starting a search for exchange opportunities. Social media, especially Facebook, is important for ongoing contact and conversion. And email, as always, isn’t dead. Visit the DAAD Facebook site for India and the site for North America,
  • Video will continue to grow in importance. Short videos, “Real” video content that doesn’t seem to come from your PR machine. Focus first on YouTube, the second most important social media site after Facebook. Check the DAAD YouTube site for North America.
  • Monitor what people are doing and be prepared to make continuous changes in content presentation and navigation. If you find pages with high than desired bounce rates, try to figure out why that happens and fix it.
Conferences in November
  • November 5-7, Aarhus, Denmark: J.Bloye Web & Intranet Conference, “Writing Right for the Web” tutorial and “A Need for Speed: Responsive Design in a Mobile World.” Check the entire program here.
  • November 10-13, Boston: AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education. Pre-conference tutorial on “Digital Marketing Strategy: Building Brand Strength and Enrollment.” Visit the Symposium website.

That’s all for now.

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