How to Get Started Turning Your Business into a Mobile Business

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According to comScore, 176 million people in the U.S. owned a smartphone as of November 2014. That’s over 50% of the entire U.S. population that carries a supercomputer in their pocket. Sales, customer service, marketing, and every other part of your business is being revolutionized by mobile. 

LinkedIn reports that 70% of clicks to sponsored updates happen on mobile and Facebook had 1.12 billion mobile monthly active users as of September 2014. Considering that there will be 5 billion smartphones by 2017, 75 billion connected products by 2020 (largely used on mobile devices), and consumers have downloaded 140 billion mobile apps globally, the mobile imperative has never been greater.

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The Economies of the Freemium Business Model

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From The First Law Of Internet Physics by Fred Wilson:

many users * low arpu >>>> few users * high arpu

I’ve seen so many people try paid content on the Internet and the result is less users, a lot less. You can extract a higher average revenue per user (arpu) from a paid model, but you get so many less users that is it better to extract a lower arpu with a free model and get many more users. 

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Startups: Know When to Hold'em and When to Fold'em

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As a follow-up to my recent post on reasons to take and not to take venture capital money, I found Jason's advice on when not to sell a business extremely pertinent. 

From Jason Lemkin:

When not to sell. My learnings:

1. Do not sell if you are at scale and have a committed team. This is pretty much it for me. E.g., in SaaS, if you are at $10m+ ARR, and growing nicely, and the team is killing it — just don’t sell. Once you are at Scale in SaaS, you can’t be killed. Why sell? Really.

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75 Digital Marketing Stats from Salesforce Marketing Cloud Research

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Over the past year, Salesforce Marketing Cloud has conducted a number of original research studies, benchmark reports, and marketing leadership surveys. All of this new research has given us quite a library of data and mind-blowing statistics on how both brands and consumers use technology to interact with each other.

I've compiled many of these statistics into a single list of 75 digital marketing stats from 2014 research. 

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The Multi-App Ecosystem and Scaling a Business

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The mobile app world is maturing and starting to unbundle itself. We've seen this recently with the Foursquare's introduction of Swarm, Facebook's unbundling of Messenger, and many more. Major tech companies are starting to build their own ecosystem of apps. Just look at the apps companies like Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Twitter, and even Salesforce are building—these companies are building entire ecosystems of specialized apps.

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Ello, B-corps, and Startups

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I was waiting to see someone much smarter than me write their opinion on Ello's move to become a public benefit corporation and the implications that has for startups and VCs, but I have yet to see any good posts on the news. So I thought I would share my thoughts and reaction to hearing this. 

In case you haven't seen the news yet, a couple weeks ago Ello—the latest social media sensation to hit shelves—converted to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). 

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A Digital Marketer’s Recap of Google I/O 2014

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Last week’s Google I/O 2014 developer conference left many developers swooning. With typical tech keynote fashion, product announcements, feature enhancements, a new operating system, new developer programs, and much more were all packed into a two-and-a-half-hour keynote—the full recording can be found at the bottom of this post for any Google enthusiasts out there with a free three hours.

There have been many recaps and articles on the news from the conference, but I wanted to call out some of the big news specifically for marketers and the impact Google's announcements will have on your future marketing plans. Below, is my recap of the keynote and conference along with the major takeaways for marketers.

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Is Apple Still On The Leading Edge Of Innovation?

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Apple's release of the iPhone 5S, 5C, and the iPad Air really got me thinking about their position in the marketplace and their product innovation. Apple hasn't had had a significant technological advance that actually surprised consumers and the industry since Siri. Only a few years ago Apple was literally defining the mobile computing industry. Every move they made left the entire industry scrambling. But now, they give us 5 different sizes of the iPad and a fingerprint scanner. Apple is starting to look like Samsung who can't even decide on a good phone size.

Some of you will think I've really lost my marbles in saying this, but I would argue that Apple is no longer on the leading edge of innovation and could soon no longer be the market leader.

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