Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Mobile Marketing Advice


I continue to struggle with ideas on how to incorporate mobile marketing into my direct marketing tool-box. Specifically, I’m having a hard time getting my arms around practical applications, and thinking of real-life ideas that will benefit my clients. Yet, this is an industry that is huge and growing. Mobile marketing is a channel to be reckoned with and maximized for the right opportunity.

This article from DM News provides some interesting insight. The article presents four different viewpoints and tips on how to make mobile marketing work—how to incorporate this channel into your marketing mix.

The first tip is from David Spear, EVP of sales and marketing, mobile technologies, LSN Inc.

Takeaway: With mobile Web campaigns, it's best to keep the design elements simple
“Whether a campaign is designed to drive brand awareness, deliver knowledge or influence direct response, it must be easy for the subscriber to understand, engage and extract value from it. Make sure you consider all elements when reviewing a campaign for simplicity. If the campaign is designed to be simple and straightforward, then traction will follow and viral will grow organically and successfully. If the campaign is overly complicated, it will disappoint in almost every aspect.”

The next tip, recommending Short Message Service (SMS), also known as text messaging comes from Steve Siegel, VP of brand solutions, HipCricket. His reasons for SMS are pretty compelling:
  • The reach of SMS—everyone uses text messaging.
  • The ability to measure results (you know I love this benefit!)
  • SMS allows for remarketing opportunities
  • SMS can be used to gather important data points from consumers (another benefit I love!).
Next, Bryan Morrison, President, Ipsh, brings us great information about mobile marketing’s ability to exploit proximity strategies. He says: “Proximity is the concept that makes mobile special.”
“While the Internet forced marketers to learn interactivity, mobile layers context on top, making your location the most important benefit the medium can offer. Understanding proximity allows brands to provide consumers genuine utility in their day-to-day lives.”
Just consider the possibilities—retailers can offer you coupons or special offers, at the point in time that you’re entering the mall! Timely, and valuable to consumers.

Finally, Michael Chang, CEO and co-founder of Greystripe, offers insight into the benefits of in-game mobile marketing—essentially embedding your advertising within a game people play on their mobile device (phone). More info on this concept, from the article:
“In-game ads are primarily priced on a CPM basis, reflecting the strong branding opportunities available from full-screen ads and rich data-gathering features. Pricing is also impacted by targeting. As with WAP banners, regional targeting is almost always available, and some providers offer more refined targeting such as by carriers, types of handset, or based on user demographics.”

“Advertising in mobile games provides bigger and richer ads than SMS or WAP banners, as well as a positive brand association for the advertiser. In-game advertising offers unique features, a great user experience and allows advertisers to benefit from a positive association with fun mobile content.”

Hopefully, these four unique perspectives have shed some light on practical applications of mobile marketing. I know that they’ve given me some great food for thought!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One reason you may be struggling with this is that most clients have yet to take full advantage of other, more established channels. All they need is yet another opportunity when so many others remain untapped.

I do agree with your point about the potential. I know the screens are small and you don't want people reading a text message while they are driving and so forth. But the presence of a cell phone permeates the populations of the world! And the phone software and hardware capabilities continue to soar.

Look at what Apple has done with their iPhone. Who would have ever thought such a small screen could display websites so capably?

I see the phone primarily as a support medium to increase campaigns using online marketing, direct mail and just about any other medium. But I certainly would not limit my testing to that.

Suzanne Ortiz said...

Ted, great points, all. I think it's all about finding the right opportunity. Retailers could totally benefit as could marketers who focus on teens and young adults, IMO.

Thanks for the comment!
Suzanne

Unknown said...

I also agree about mobile marketing being an area with huge potential, and it is up to the businesses to take advantage.

I think Bryan Morisson's comment about proximity is absolutely spot-on.

I don't think we're quite at the point where we can identify true context, (i.e. environment + human factors + timeliness, etc) but still there are some context elements that can be identified and used in providing a more personalised and unique experience for the consumer.

Regarding Ted's comment though, I would say that I see mobile not as a support channel, but as a completely independent one. I am not saying people should use mobile and disregard everything else, just that businesses now have another ace up their sleeves.

And as with playing cards, they must know when and how to play them right.