Text Marketing Blog | MoboMix

What's the Best Smartphone?

 

A lot has happened on the smartphone market this past year. Times are good for all the major firms, as developing economies increasingly turn to mobile devices as their primary point of web access, and high end smartphones continue to innovate in Asia, Europe and North America.

Mobile technology has raised the bar so high that, in 2015, it’s actually hard to go wrong when buying a smartphone. But in a field of excellence, some mobile devices are more excellent than others. Divided into categories Here is the 2015 Smartphone Gospel According to MoboMix:

 

Best Large Screen - Samsung Galaxy Note 4

Tablet sales have peaked, and designers were not slow to spot a gap in the market for consumers who want a big screen that still fits in their pocket. Most of them look beautiful, but the one that makes the most of the large display is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4. Split-screen multitasking and a brilliantly intuitive active stylus take the 5.7 inch display beyond the superficial pleasures of many large phones, and other features like battery life and camera, whilst far from the best on the market, are well above average.

 

Best Unlocked Smartphone - OnePlus One

As demand grows for greater freedom to switch carriers, unlocked phones are getting more affordable. If unrestricted network-hopping is important to you, the OnePlus One is your device. It’s 5.5 inch, 1080p display delivers superb results from an Android OS, and the 13MP camera puts the device’s photographic capabilities right up there with the best. Battery life will vary according to which provider you use (and what you use the phone for), but at $299 for 64GB of memory, it won’t take you long to test this device to its limit.

 

Best for Movies - Nexus 6

Big, beautiful and brilliant in almost every way, the Nexus 6 is the connoisseur’s smartphone. It’s Snapdragon 805 processor and stellar battery life, combined with a 6 inch screen, make this phone the very best on the market for consuming rich content like YouTube videos and movies.

 

Best for Longevity - Sony Xperia Z3

If a long battery life is more important to you than all the bells and whistles, this hardy number is the phone for you. You can play with it all day, forget to charge it, and still be looking at a decent charge by the following evening. Oh, and the Z3 is also waterproof, with a special shutter allowing you to take pictures underwater.

 

Best in Show - Galaxy S6

Our overall winner is - shock horror - not the latest iPhone, but the almost perfect Galaxy S6. It looks as good as it performs. It has a decent battery life and one of the best cameras of any mobile device. It’s 5.1 inch frame supports a fast processor, and the screen just begs you to play with it. For the best smartphone in 2015, accept no substitutes.

Gif: The Unlikeliest Comeback Kid

If you’ve noticed more GIFs floating around the internet, that’s because in the last few months social media apps like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter have tweaked their platforms to make room for more short-form video.

In particular, brands are looking to these looping clips as a way to communicate with consumers using only visuals—like the popular use of emojis and memes. Some video clip enthusiasts even believe GIFs offer a new kind of communication, which merges content with culture to generate new ideas.    

Adam Leibsohn, Giphy’s chief operating officer said, “They’re [consumers] not using words anymore…there’s an opportunity for that culture to come from a brand.” 

Companies like Giphy and Tumbler are taking advantage of this idea—providing today’s holy grail of content to marketers, while larger agencies are expanding production studios and in-house talent.  

Paramount Picture, for example, brought Giphy’s team in to work exclusively on branded content leading up to the summer release of the latest Terminator movie. But not all GIF content works singularly across the board says Megan Wahtera, a marketer from Paramount Pictures 

"In terms of the animated GIF, we pay close attention to what content works on which platforms,” said Wahtera. “It's not as simple as throwing a 30 or 15 second spot up or even a quick video edit.” 

Some companies like Paramount Pictures have enlisted help; while others have built internal structures to more easily jump on opportunities that work best for the budding content category. In fact, owning the GIF-making process is ideal for companies that can afford it, said Brian Chen, digital associate and creative director and Innocean. 

"It's a potentially fleeting moment," said Chen. "The quicker you can get with the quality and output of these GIFs, the better." 

Just six months ago, Resource/Ammirati had little GIF work to do. Today, animated loops make up 10 to 15 percent of the agency’s social work for brands like DiGiorno Pizza and Tidy Cats. DiGiorno Pizza has seen considerable increases in engagement across their social media platforms. 

"We typically get a few hundred retweets and favorites,” said Luke Oppliger, director of social content at Resource/Ammirati, “but we are seeing GIFs in the thousands."

One of the only challenges posed by GIF content is the investment of time and resources it takes to produce the short videos. Some studios are recommending paid media content behind branded GIFs to ensure companies get a better return on the investment.   

Although GIFs have been around for years, current trends foreshadow and even larger comeback—with growing potential across nearly ever platform. 

 

4 Key Questions for Lead Generation Success

 

Email. Phone. SMS messaging. Internet marketing. Print media. There are so many ways to generate leads, knowing where to start isn’t always obvious.

The truth is, choosing which lead generation channels you use isn’t as important as using them in the right way. To help you get your head around B2C lead generation, ask yourself the following questions:

 

Who is My Ideal Customer?

Lead generation campaigns that focus on a specific type of person - the ‘ideal customer’ - tend to have more success. Luckily for businesses with an existing database of customers, all the data necessary to build such a profile probably lies therein. Analyze your database as minutely as possible to determine who the most and least profitable customers are. Compare information between your best customers to build a picture of their defining characteristics. You may be surprised to find your ideal customer lives in one geographic area, or is of a particular age range. 

The more information you mine, the better. The commonalities between profitable customers may have nothing to do with them - it could be down to one employee being highly successful at converting leads. In that case, give them a payrise! 

 

Is My Content Intelligent?

The internet is a morass of white noise, making it hard to be heard above the din. It’s important to attract attention early in the buy-cycle because it’s too easy for an audience to move on to a competitor if they don’t find relevant information quickly. 

That’s why good content is so important. Have your smartest employees and partners create compelling, useful content. This could manifest as an industry analysis op ed, a white paper, or a blog. A variety of approaches will yield the best results. You need to offer something of value, rather than writing content as a direct promotional tool. Creating a sense of authority around your brand will take time, but pays off in the long run when your business is established as a ‘thought leader’ in your field.

 

What’s the Consensus?

Before you begin furiously chasing leads, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page. To avoid confusion and commercial cul-de-sacs, have a clear definition of a ‘sales ready lead’ so that the expectations of a prospective customer matches the expectations of the sales agent. 

Leads deemed ‘not ready’ should be passed back to the marketing team, with the understanding that individual agents will have leads they were nurturing passed back to them once ready to close. Fostering a sense of harmony between marketing and sales is one of the key challenges facing growing companies. Think of your leads like droplets of water, and your business as an energy-efficient boiler: not all droplets are contributing to the running of the boiler at any one moment, but they remain in the system to be converted at a later date. 

 

Should I Automate?

Automation software is incredibly useful, so use it wherever applicable. Call tracking, cloud call center and voice broadcasting tools can dramatically improve efficiency whilst simultaneously collecting invaluable data that will ultimately help you provide a better service. The time saved could easily be worth thousands of dollars, and you’ll liberate employees from mundanity, allowing them to flourish by nurturing leads or creating a compelling marketing campaign.

Used in tactical combination, these lead gen strategies will improve your business. You can closely track the success of each approach, eventually refining your strategy to include only the most effective tactics.