Bears, Bulls and Mobile Marketing
Despite widespread uncertainty in the economy in general, it seems to be a bullish time for the mobile sector. Several announcements in recent weeks indicate ongoing optimism about continued growth and increased opportunities for marketers using the mobile channel.
• Leading mobile advertising network AdMob has secured $15.7 million in funding from Sequoia Capital. This is the same Sequoia whose CEO recently gave a presentation on the downturn in the digital space entitled R.I.P Good Times.
• RIM has announced an application store for 3rd party developers to build apps for the Blackberry a la the iPhone app store (which itself has seen over 200 million app downloads so far).
• Mobile web results are showing returns that are outperforming the internet. And there's lots of traffic there too: AdMob serves 5 billion mobile ad impressions, while Yahoo has 20 million unique consumers every month in the U.S.
• 8.9 billion SMS messages were sent by Canadians in the first half of 2008 compared to a total of over 10 billion for all of 2007.
Okay, so there’s your optimism for continued growth. What does all this mean for marketers who are likely to be asked to trim budgets and be placed under increased scrutiny to deliver positive campaign ROI?
The Self-Selected Consumer
As mobile marketing is permission-based pull marketing, all of your interactions are with a self-selected consumer. They’ve taken the first and most important step of actively volunteering to participate with your brand.
Responding to an SMS call to action, downloading a widget, mobile coupon or ticket, clicking through on a mobile display ad or visiting a mobile internet site all require the consumer to ‘opt-in’ to your brand message and experience. What that means is higher brand recall and the opportunity for easier conversion of purchase intent or marketing message acceptance.
Responsiveness & Relevance
One of the great strengths of mobile is the ability to deliver situationally relevant information to consumers at the point of interaction with your media executions. You have to capitalize on the consumer’s self-selection.
Instant gratification via SMS contests is the low-hanging fruit but you can also use SMS tips & trivia or voting interactions, IVR calls or MMS content to create an extended brand experience.
Smartphone platforms such as the Blackberry or iPhone take this one step further with location-based services, Google Maps mash-ups, streamed content and the easy delivery of mobile coupon solutions. And with higher than normal click through rates, mobile advertising conversions to specially designed mobile internet sites offer great content delivery solutions.
Measurement
The ability for marketers to track campaign effectiveness in the mobile channel is robust enough to warrant a lengthy post of its own, but consider the following scenario:
A retailer has a SMS call to action integrated into their media. Different media executions (whether by media type or place) have their own keywords. Consumers entering the keyword are delivered a SMS with a link to a mobile internet site where they can download a mobile coupon. The mobile site also contains brand content, sign up for future brand/product info and a store locator with mapping features which could tell Smartphone users the closest retail location to them. That downloadable coupon is tagged with a unique identifier which will be validated at the point of redemption.
You now know when the consumer interacted with the media and conversion rates to site visits/downloads, which media generated more interactions & interactions by time of day, mobile site page views, types of handsets consumers are using to visit your site, the # of coupon downloads, conversions to purchase and purchase value per consumer.
Best of all, you’ve delivered highly relevant information to a qualified consumer and converted that to a verifiable sales lift.
That’s why I’m bullish on mobile.
