Ken Wisnefski Was Profiled in Tech News – NJ Tech Councils Bi-Monthly Publication

NJ Tech CouncilKen Wisnefski is the Founder and CEO of NJ-based digital marketing agency WebiMax and has written blog posts for TheStreet, WIRED, C-Level and CMO.com to name a few. He has also been featured on MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, Fox News, and Fox Business to discuss marketing, technology, social media and e-commerce.

You were awarded most admired CEO by the Philadelphia Business Journal. What qualities helped you achieve this award?

Persistence is the key to achieving real sustained success when starting a business. Every entrepreneur faces adversity in the beginning, but the definition of persistence is looking at that adversity as an opportunity to strengthen your resolve and move forward with your own vision of success.

What do you want people to know about WebiMax?

WebiMax is a digital marketing agency that stresses transparency over trade secrets to achieve the highest levels of success. We consider the businesses we work with to be our partners rather than just our clients. As a digital marketing agency, we were in on the ground floor before “digital-marketing” was the new buzzword. As technology and the way people consume media has quickly advanced, we have evolved – always improving our strategies to become an efficient power-house for our partners.

You recently moved to Camden. Discuss why and how is it going?

Mount Laurel was a great location, but we did not feel that same sense of community we now feel in Camden. Just by being here, we have an opportunity to make a difference for the city. Not only have our employees embraced the move, but many have gotten involved in initiatives that teach local youths about careers in website design and online marketing. We have also done some good work with the Food Bank of South Jersey to feed families in Camden. We are also assisting Mayor Redd in the development of a website geared towards showing Camden’s progress and attracting new business to the city. We have also been doing a lot of digital marketing workshops for students over at Rutgers’ College of Business; the students are extremely bright and we have been keen to offer them internships. Camden city is at the beginning of a renaissance and we are excited to be a part of it, and to see where it takes us as a company

How do we keep/attract businesses to NJ?

I think there is a strong case for tax incentives like the Grow NJ tax credit which helped companies like ours, Holtec, Lockheed and even the Philadelphia 76’ers come to Camden. NJ is consistently ranked as having among the worst tax systems for business. I think it is important to note that the state reached out to us with these incentives. It was good marketing on their part, and it showed us a willingness to work together. I think everyone involved is looking at a great result. More consolidation and more efficient services could also go a long way to stem the tide of businesses fleeing the state. In Camden, they use a county police force which has proven to be more cost efficient and effective in providing safety, security and trust for community residents as well as businesses. I really have to praise Mayor Dana Redd for her perseverance on this issue which faced a lot of scrutiny in the beginning. It has been so successful in fact, that last week President Obama touched down in a helicopter just across the street from our building to pay a visit to the County police force and residents and to talk about how it could be a model for the country.

What do you feel are the keys to a successful online marketing campaign?

The keys to a successful online marketing campaign are visibility, recognition and authority. Consumers are looking for brands they can trust. The mobile web provides consumers with everything they need to research a company, product or service from virtually anywhere. Having a robust web presence and incorporating search engine optimization is what creates visibility for companies on search engines. Creating valuable content like blogs, and engaging with consumers over social media will add to that visibility but also help build more recognition within a vertical market. A public relations campaign can also be a tool to help a company be recognized as a valuable source of information for industry publications and various news media, which will subsequently help a company to be viewed as an authority to the public. Another aspect of a successful online marketing campaign is reputation management. Up to 90% of people researching products online say they have been influenced by online reviews, so keep a close eye on what people are saying about your company on review sites and do what you can to address complaints and ultimately satisfy those customers.

How do you continue to innovate?

We have one hundred of the most talented and tech oriented employees you will find anywhere who rely heavily on the most up-to-date data analysis on all our campaigns. Looking at the analytics daily has helped us to see shifting trends in consumer behavior. We also constantly monitor the top players in the tech industry for new trends, new ad products and other advancements that we can utilize to do better for our clients.

How do you make your clients feel at ease in the fast paced online marketing vertical?

We provide regular communication with our clients regarding their campaigns and also share access to the same accurate up-to-date reports that we look at ourselves to determine our strategies and best courses of action. Our clients generally deal with one project manager and I will regularly step in to offer any guidance or assurances that clients needs to feel satisfied.

Talk about marketing in NJ. What’s hot? What should NJ businesses be doing to stay ahead?

My number one piece of advice to New Jersey businesses right now would be to get mobile and local. The data is in, and more people are accessing the internet through a mobile device than on traditional desktops or laptops, so it is very important that businesses make sure they have a mobile-friendly website that mobile users can easily utilize. Also search engines and social media are making it easier than ever for consumers to connect with the businesses that are in their vicinity.

How has WebiMax changed in the last five years?

As the way that people have consumed media and accessed the internet has evolved over the last 5 years, we have had to increase our offerings and emphasize new strategies to adapt to those changes. For example as I stated previously, more people now access the internet through mobile devices than laptop or desktop computers. With that shift has come an increased demand for web design that is responsive to the different screen sizes found on mobile devices as well as an increased focus on social media marketing platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

What’s next for WebiMax?

Over the years, WebiMax has increased the number of locations in which we operate including Australia, the U.K., and back in March we opened an office in San Francisco. We want to be more available to our current California-based clients while also increasing our presence in an area where there is a great need for our digital services. Our San Francisco office will be mutually beneficial for both WebiMax and the West Coast business community in a way that I hope fosters our further growth to other areas both inside and outside of the U.S.

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Ken Wisnefski Discusses At&t TV expansion with Mobile Marketer’s Michael Barris

mobile marketer
AT&T’s update of its U-verse mobile application to add more channels and to work with the Apple Watch focuses attention on the telecommunications company’s heated rivalry with Verizon for mobile-first TV everywhere programs.

“Wherever the content goes, so do the customers, and it appears AT&T is taking the competition very seriously,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.

“Moves like what we are seeing from AT&T are key for companies wanting to play a larger role in our media future, especially as it relates to video,” Mr. Wisnefski said.

“An app that provides the ability to use a smartwatch as a remote control wouldn’t seem to make or break a video app on another device,” Mr. Wisnefski said. “However, there is a lot of room for growth in the market for smartwatch apps, and companies that are experimenting with ways to incorporate the tech could gain a foothold in deciding how the tech is largely used or at very least will have less catching up to do later.”

“The next big thing seems to come out every other day, but those advances have a responsibility, I think, to prove their value to the market,” Mr. Wisnefski said.

“We know the prediction that TV is going extinct and digital will overtake it. But exactly what players will end up dominating the field in say, five years, leads to a lot of conjecture, as does marketers trying to imagine what their jobs might look like,” he said.

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Ken Wisnefski in Mobile Marketer on Twitter’s next CEO

“As the ability to target the right consumer with the right ad improves on nearly every platform, providing data on consumers will be a key factor for advertisers deciding which platform to invest in,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.

“For advertisers, the ability to change strategies based on a measure of what works against what doesn’t hinges on knowing more of that data.”
“There are two types of people, those that get Twitter and think it’s amazing and those that don’t,” Mr. Wisnefski said. “The reason there are people that don’t get Twitter is that they can spend a lot of time on the platform before seeing the most targeted and relevant content and realizing the benefits.
 “I think an approach that expedites the process of leading people to the content they want could create the most opportunity for Twitter.”
“The recent purchase of the live video streaming app Periscope, that is both integrated into Twitter and can act standalone, is one outside-in example of how Twitter can bring people to that amazing content faster.”

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Ken Wisnefski Discusses the Chinese Mobile Shopping Market with Mobile Marketer’s Michael Barris

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Unilever is borrowing a page from Amazon’s playbook with its plan to launch an ecommerce store on China’s JD.com to sell its Ponds, Dove and Vaseline brands and capitalize on the mobile shopping boom in the Asian country.

“The rate of mobile adoption, increase in mobile payment options and more manufacturers and designers bringing more products to the Chinese markets are all inextricably intertwined,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.

“This should provide Unilever with a lot of valuable marketing insight into the preferences of the Chinese buying public, particularly on mobile where most of this buying will be taking place.”

As of last June, 527 million of China’s 632 million Internet users were mobile users, up 26.99 million over just the end of 2013.

Last year, 205 million of China’s 332 million shoppers were mobile, but the semi-annual growth rate of just those mobile shoppers was 42 percent – 4.3 times the growth rate of the total online shopping market in China.

“With that growth, companies like Unilever are seeing more demand for their products and more opportunities to bring different product lines to market in China,” Mr. Wisnefski said.

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Ken talks the Internet of Things and Google’s Brillo OS with Mobile Marketer’s Michael Barris

Other analysts doubted that Brillo would eventually replace Android.

“Putting the Internet into phones has led the march to mobile’s dominance in the way people connect to the internet at least in the U.S.,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax. “Android is the dominant OS in smartphones, and it would be a mistake to talk about replacing it with anything.

“So from a simple marketing and branding perspective, I couldn’t see anything replacing Android in the short term, but when we talk about the Internet of things we are talking long-term and could be talking about a future where the Internet is in everything you can imagine and also some things you can’t,” he said.

 
The question that Google is asking with Brillo and Weave, the common language Google is developing between devices, is: How can the objects that people interact with be improved by being connected to and have an understanding of every other object?

“The full potential of mobile connectivity on Android enabled devices hasn’t been realized and people just barely understand the possibilities of Android devices when paired with IOT-enabled items,” Mr. Wisnefski said. “The learning curve puts any displacement of Android way off into the future.”

 

Brillo will definitely change the way Android is developed, but people are still going to want a device with an operating system such as Android capable of breaking down high-level data in a way they can understand.

 
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Ken Wisnefski comments in Mobile Marketer on new study that analyzed 1Billion native ads

Ken Wisnefski commented on the findings on a study by the firm Velvet Integrated PR that analyzed 1 billion native ads.
“Getting people to click on something that appears to be an ad is a very tall order when surrounded by compelling, interesting articles and stories with facts and figures,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.

 

Valuable content
“We are living in a world where data is becoming an increasingly more valuable part of our everyday lives,” Mr. Wisnefski said. “There is so much content coming at us all the time over the Web, but people have a preference to see things that are to some degree quantifiable.

 

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Ken Wisnefski on Phillies GM Ruben Amaro’s PR problem


 
 
 

Reputation expert weighs in: Social media and reputation management expert Ken Wisnefski, who is founder and chief executive officer of internet marketer WebiMax, located on the Camden waterfront just across from Philadelphia, finds Amaro’s remarks hard to fathom.

 
“You have to ask yourself, in this day and age where everything public figures say is under so much scrutiny, how is it that someone with so much authority can exhibit such poor judgment?” Wisnefski said. “How can that person then be expected to make good decisions?”

You have to wonder if this could end up being the final straw that leads to Amaro’s overdue dismissal. Wisnefski believes it might.

 
“The reality is that if Ruben loses the faith of the fans, then he loses credibility and authority, making it that much harder to get anything done,” Wisnefski said. “By insulting the fans he’s really only putting his own job at risk.”

If Amaro does indeed lose his job, this latest dustup might end up being the best news that Phillies’ fans have received since that day in 2008 when he was named GM.

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Ken in Mobile Marketer says Responsive Web design essential in Asia-Pacific’s content cocktail

“A Web site that is mobile responsive and content are key for a lot of reasons, even if we’re talking about markets where social media apps are preferred,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax.

“We have markets where people are going right to the source, so blog content is a huge factor, and that content needs to live somewhere that is easily read on mobile devices, if that content has any hope of being shared over social media channels.
“We have markets where people primarily turn toward social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and KakaoTalk, but we have influencers on social media who have to have a source of information to have something to either share or say, so that comes back again to the content,” he said.

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Ken Wisnefski in the CIO on Facebook’s instant articles

“News sites … have always been at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithms, and Facebook has no obligation to let us in on those,” says Ken Wisnefski, CEO of the digital marketing agency WebiMax. Facebook could provide more value to media publishers if it offers a guarantee that articles will reach desired demographics or certain amounts of users, he says.

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Ken Wisnefski wrote an article in TheStreet.com on how Google’s Buy Button is no threat to Amazon

 

Here’s an excerpt from Ken’s article in TheStreet.com:

What Google is doing here is nothing new for digital businesses. We’ve seen it time and again: Once an internet platform has enough users, it attempts to aggregate different functionalities and content to keep those users from spending time on other platforms for other purposes. Most recently, see Facebook (FB – Get Reportinstant articles. The challenge in aggregating is maintaining that core identity that brought them users in the first place. Google is a master at this. While continually offering more valuable services over the years (like Gmail, Gchat, Google Maps and more), Google has maintained a home screen consisting of a logo, a search bar and two buttons.

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Ken in TheStreet.com: How AOL Became So Dominant in Online Video and Why Verizon Cares

Verizon’s power-play for AOL is not for its properties as much as its online video capabilities. AOL is a video juggernaut ranked 3rd just behind Google and Facebook at serving up desktop content videos to unique viewers per month, and 4th behind some lesser known competitors at serving ads that reached 41.9% of the U.S. Population in March, all via ComScore.

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Is Facebook a Helping Hand for News Media or has it become a Crutch? from TheStreet.com

Ken Wisnefski penned an article in Jim Cramer’s TheStreet.com on Facebook’s new Instant Articles.  Below is an excerpt:

…Social media sites are also vying to keep eyeballs on their own sites so they can serve up ads. As such, they really have no incentive to send people away to other sites like the New York Times, and also no legal obligation to explain their algorithm changes to anyone.  According to a Pew Research Center report, people visiting news sites via a link on Facebook spent an average of 1 minute and 41 seconds; it’s about the same when that site is reached via a search engine.  Facebook looks at that as 1:41 seconds that they miss out on serving ads to those folks. The solution for Facebook? – Host the content on their site and cut down on time people spend browsing around those other news sites.  It’s a total win for Facebook, even if they have to share some of the ad revenue with the news outlet.

Is it a solution for the news sites though?  While a significantly higher percentage of younger folks (under 34) came to news sites through a Facebook link than directly through a bookmark or url, they don’t stay very long nor do they return all that often.  So news sites seem to be willing to trade some site traffic for assurances that their stories are seen by a younger demographic.

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Is the Definition of Social Media Changing?

Ken Wisnefski composed an article regarding Facebook’s initiative to host news stories from reputable news organizations the New York Times and National Geographic on its platform.  Here is an excerpt:

It does seem to raise the question; does a partnership between a well-known news organization and Facebook put Facebook, by any measure, in charge of the content created by that news organization? As an interesting parallel, my company specializes in Search Engine Optimization or SEO and I can say for sure that considerations of how keywords rank in a Google search has absolutely changed the way people write. And if that is true, then certainly considerations of who might read what story over which platform could influence the way a story is written. And if this were to catch on, say if more and more news outlets started to provide content strictly over social media platforms, then are those platforms still truly social media platforms or something else entirely?

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Is Facebook Failing to Serve Digital Marketers and Leaving Millions on the Table?

Ken Wisnefski penned an article for Jim Cramer’s theStreet.com,  here’s an excerpt:

With more digital ad budgets shifting away from Google and into Facebook’s ad platform, is it possible that Facebook simply can’t meet the demand placed on it by its advertisers? It certainly appears that way, at least to us in this agency. Companies like ours control a large portion of Facebook’s revenue, so it’s easy to imagine that the company could be leaving millions of dollars on the table.

The demand for placement on Facebook’s ad serving platform has skyrocketed largely in part because of its complete dominance in the mobile ad serving sector. Mobile advertising accounted for 73% of all of Facebook’s ad revenue in the first quarter, compared to 59% in the first quarter of 2014. All of this increased demand for ad space has pushed Facebook to hire more employees to meet the needs of advertisers and in turn, leverage more revenue growth. Facebook’s employee headcount has risen almost 50% higher in the last year, but even with that increase, can the company meet growing demand from some of its most important customers, who are thirsty to place more ad budget onto its platform? If our example is an indication, perhaps not.

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Ken Wisnefski talks email marketing with Linda Prophal from Strategic Communications

 

 

 

 

Some advice from the pros: Spend Time on the Subject Line

The trick to getting people to read your email is to first get them to open it, says Ken Wisnefski, CEO of WebiMax, an Internet marketing firm headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.

Think of your own email habits. Do you, as Wisnefski suggests, prioritize your email inbox based on these categories: family, then friends, then coworkers, then everyone else (a category that includes marketers)?

If you’re in that “everyone else” category, says Wisnefski, you have “about four to six words to
impress people enough to click on your email.”

“Sometimes a brief glance at a subject line is all you will get,” he says. It’s important to make that brief glance impactful. Two great elements to include in your subject line are humor and urgency, says Wisnefski. That can be tough for some, he admits. “Barring those elements, you have to suppose that your recipients have been looking for what you are marketing at one time or another, and it’s up to you to remind them. This requires you to have faith in the quality of your
lead gathering operation.”

That’s a good point and stresses an important factor for most email marketers. You’re communicating with people who you, in many cases, already have a connection with, and that can work to your advantage.

Ken in Mobile Marketer discusses Twitter’s direct response strategy

“Marketers are efficient on Google’s ad platforms and are looking to shift spending to other options,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder-CEO of WebiMax.
“First up is obviously Facebook, but marketers are also looking at search engines Yahoo and Bing now.  Pinterest, Instagram, and Snap Chat are all vying for those ad dollars as well,” he said.

Ken in NFIB on the Hyper-Local Movement

“People used to predict the end of brick and mortar because shopping online was so much more convenient with more choices—no searching through a huge store looking for a small item, no carrying items around a store, no traffic and no checkout lines,” he says. “But that prediction supposes that people really hate leaving the house, which is a fallacy. People love getting out and doing things—even shopping. So people are looking for the businesses that are streamlining that process.”

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Ken Wisnefski in Mobile Marketer on the Apple Watch

The wearable tech market has been difficult to read with consumer sentiment being somewhat nebulous, yet Apple’s watch managed to dominate the company’s news in the quarter.
“So far there doesn’t seem to be a definitive product in the wearable tech space,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder-CEO of Webimax. “If Apple can bridge the gap between the different reasons consumers have for purchasing a wearable, they can surely dominate the space.”

Ken Wisnefski in Mobile Marketer on Google’s new wireless service – Fi

At a $20 price point, it could be hard for many consumers to justify subscribing to anything else.
“It is a remarkable offering with access to two major networks, availability in 120 plus countries, and the ability to control what you spend on data,” said Ken Wisnefski, founder/CEO of Webimax.
“It seems to compete with budget services like AT&T’s Cricket, but with the kind of connectivity Google is touting, the challenge could also be on T-Mobile and Sprint to make sure they aren’t cannibalizing their existing services.”