by JCDunn
8. July 2010 23:07
If we accept that consumers, ultimately, choose when and where they interact with your brand, then the goal of marketing is to be there and doing your best to nudge or entice them towards that interaction.
Marketing strategy and media planning are focused on understanding your target consumer:
• Where they live, work and play;
• Why do (or would) they care about your product or service;
• What triggers buying decisions;
• What media will be most effective reaching that consumer
• When they interact with that media
• How to communicate a message or create an experience that leverages that channel’s attributes and resonates with the consumer.
My proposal is that mobile marketing, properly targeted and balanced with genuine customer value, is a hugely underdeveloped and underutilized channel by the majority of brand marketers.
General trends see brand marketing dollars slowly shifting away from traditional media channels like TV and print but they still command the lion’s share of total media spend. I want to give you three good reasons for accelerating your own brand’s digital shift and embracing mobile as a vital direct to customer channel.
THE HOOK:
Mobile penetration and activity levels are reaching an effective saturation point. According the CTIA, there are over 285 million wireless subscribers representing over 90% of the total U.S. population. This is a massive audience. According to just released data from the Pew Internet & American Life project mobile use continues to grow dramatically year over year. For example, the % of cell phone owners that had sent or received a text message grew from 65% to 72% between April 2009 and May 2010 and mobile internet access grew from 25% to 38%.
Though mobile feature use varies from channel to channel and demographic to demographic, the bottom line remains the same. Mobile is increasingly and deeply integrated into the lives of very attractive consumer demographics.
Your customers are on these devices. Is your brand?
THE LINE:
The line with mobile isn’t a single mode of connectivity like television or print but a honeycomb of channels that can operate independently or as bridges between each other. I count at least nine customer engagement and leverage points within the mobile platform:
1. Voice
2. Text and Picture Messaging
3. Email
4. Media (video, audio, still photos)
5. The Internet
6. Applications
7. Advertising
8. Image Recognition
9. Location
What is most powerful about this connectivity is what mobile offers not just as siloed experiences within these channels but also how they can bridge between each other and enable sharing among peer groups creating powerful trusted referrals.
THE SINKER:
The sinker for mobile, that thing that will add weight to marketing efforts and create the conditions for success (remember you caught fish floating on the surface) is data. Mobile offers a treasure chest of measurement and analytics opportunities. While, admittedly, unified measurement standards are still emerging, marketers who are interested in data-driven decisions and campaign success will find plenty to get excited about.
Each channel (SMS, mobile advertising, mobile internet, etc...) offers its own unique measurement dimensions. Along with familiar measures such as media response rates, digital property engagement rates and conversion or acquisition rates, you get the added layers of that only mobile can offer such as location, device and granular time-based interaction data.
A good mobile campaign will tell you exactly when, where, and how a customer interacted with your brand experience and in many cases offer the ability to optimize campaigns in-flight to leverage that information.
So if you want to reach, engage and convert target consumers into customers start taking a closer look at mobile. It’s everywhere your customer is.
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