Mobile + The New Direct White paper

Nov 10

JonathanDirect, Mobile , , , , No Comments

At Digital Cement, we’re focused on digital direct marketing. As part of articulating our POV on how specific digital channels can be used in effect customer acquisition efforts, I wrote a white paper on mobile as a direct marketing channel.

Here’s the intro to give you a flavour for the paper’s scope and focus:

Your customers are moving targets. You work hard to get their attention – at home, at work, shopping, going to the movies and out at other public place and events.  The challenge is that it’s hard to know where they are at any given time and whether they’re receptive to what you have to offer.

So imagine if these elusive customers would not only share their locations with you, but also grant you permission to deliver what they need or want when it’s most useful and relevant to them.

Solving customer problems and inspiring customer action anywhere and anytime, but especially at times when your customers need it most, is the promise of mobile marketing. It is also the power of mobile as a direct marketing channel.

Outlined below is a foundation for successfully using mobile in your direct marketing mix. It begins by appreciating three mobile attributes that have shaped customer expectations. Then, it outlines how you can use what you know about your customers to give them a reason and a way to take your brand with them.

This is not a paper for marketers waiting to be convinced that mobile has arrived.

This is a paper for marketers who know that customers would rather lose their wallet than their phone.

I go on to cover:

  1. Mobile’s Triple Play – Connectivity, Context and Relevance
  2. Understanding Customer Habits and Preferences
  3. Building Mobile Destinations
  4. Giving Customers a Reason to Visit
  5. Driving Customers to your Destinations
  6. Understanding Customer Activity

The paper is a survey of these subjects rather than an exhaustive treatise.  It’s meant to provide thought starters for deploying mobile marketing programs in a way that sets the foundation for sustainable growth and verifiable success framed by a customer-centric approach.

You can find the paper here.

Hope you find it interesting and useful. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

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Managing Your Mobile Marketing Strategy: Introducing the Mobile Maturity Diagnostic.

Nov 04

JonathanMobile, Mobile Marketing , , , No Comments

NOTE: Cross-posted from the Digital Cement Round Table Blog

What’s your mobile marketing strategy? Don’t have one? You’re not alone.

Recent research by Forrester found that 57% from a survey pool of 200 global companies either didn’t have one or only in the early stages of developing their mobile strategy.

If you do have a mobile strategy, that’s excellent. The question then is how you are going to continue to evolve your mobile programming and adapt to emerging technology opportunities and changes in customer habits, preferences, expectations, device use and build on insights from all the data you’ve generated.

Defining and maturing your mobile strategy requires a thoughtful and diligent approach if you want to deliver genuine and recurring value to your customers and maximize ROI.  It’s more than just porting your web strategy. There are new customer behaviours to understand.  Different dynamics for acquisition, engagement, conversion and retention activities are in play.  Benefits and costs for each mobile tactical channels – advertising, web, apps, SMS, etc… – need to be weighed. A new measurement and analytics process has to be established.

Digital Cement wants to help you through that process.

We’ve developed the Mobile Maturity Diagnostic so marketers can self-assess the progress of their mobile marketing efforts and gather insight into sustainable and sensible program evolution.

We’re deliberately channel-agnostic. You won’t find out whether you should use SMS or build an app, for example. Those decisions are unique to every company, brand or targeted customer segment. What you will find out are the steps you can take to make sure you have the right framework for making those decisions.

We’ve broken out mobile strategy into 6 categories:

  • Audience Management
  • Marketing Planning
  • Marketing Implementation
  • Media Management
  • Data + Measurement
  • Integration

Each category asks you to align yourself to the descriptive statement closest to your activity level. Have fun with it. Check out each of the statements as they’ll give you insight into the road ahead.

As you progress through each section, we’ll tally up your score and at the end you’ll receive a snapshot of your mobile maturity status and some prescriptive guidance for next steps.

The Diagnostic has a web and touch screen mobile optimized versions. You can try the mobile version by directing your iPhone, Android or other webkit browsers to the same URL as the website: http://www.digitalcement.com/mobile_ready.

MMD_Web

MMD_mobile1 MMD_mobile2

We’re looking at this tool as something that evolves as brand mobile marketing sophistication evolves so your feedback on the content is definitely welcome.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Digital Cement can assist you in developing your mobile marketing roadmap, there’s a form on the site or contact me directly at jdunn@digitalcement.com

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Have Brain. Will Travel – Mobile As Essential Artifact

Mar 18

JonathanUncategorized , , , , No Comments

NewDirect_SensesMobile is, in a very real way, an extension of the owner into the world. It’s a conduit to their social graph and a way to process, document and engage their environment.

This is why their mobile is the first thing many people check in the morning, the last thing they check at night and the one thing they keep with them at all times.

Device features and functionality serve as both a tool and accessory and this is a key mark of  social artifact.

There are only a couple of other things that are ‘fetishized’ like this: cars, certain other consumer electronics, fashion. The form is for many just as important as the function.

This is why providing genuinely valuable and useful (whether entertaining, informing or rewarding) experiences that are wrapped in some degree of personal relevance are the only way brands can expect to earn a significant ’share of mobile’.

Use this lens when thinking about how to acquire and engage your mobile customer and you will be on the right track.

You will still need to test, learn and revise.

You will still need to start by understanding your customer’s mobile profile and habits.

But now you will have a framework for talking to customers when and where they want to talk to you and be able to do it over and over again.

Note: This is the first in a series of short posts – fragments really – generated from slides I use in various professional presentations.  They are pieces of my approach to mobile marketing.

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Avoiding A Mobile House of Cards

Nov 05

JonathanMobile, Mobile Marketing, Opinion , , 3 Comments

Google became a multi-billion dollar behemoth one nickel at a time through its AdWords program.  Look how that turned out.  You take one billion nickels and all of a sudden you have a lot of money.

What’s the lesson here?

Building anything successful requires patience. You need to learn what works, execute it well and that will lead to a solid foundation with an attractive upside.

So what does this have to do with mobile marketing?

Well, building a successful mobile marketing channel for your brand requires careful thought and patience.   Too often there’s a failure to appreciate the opportunity to nurture extended or ongoing participation or an expectation that mobile is some sort of silver bullet.

Two of the worst examples of this thinking are ‘single scoop’ promotional campaigns and iPhone applications with limited utility or where the core customers don’t map well onto the device’s user base.

A lot of mobile marketing efforts are focussed purely on short term promotional programming.  The prime example is layering SMS contest entry over an existing promotion.  There is most certainly a place for this type of execution. SMS has reach and familiarity among consumers and it allows you to entice desired behaviour with an incentive. The problem starts when brands either don’t use the opportunity to ask the consumer to opt-in for future communications or don’t bridge to another mobile experience that prompts action or deeper brand involvement.

The second mistake was getting swept up in the iPhone hysteria. I won’t call anyone out, but I can think of several brands that launched apps that were either so gimmicky that they were likely deleted or forgotten after a single use or the customer base was clearly not well represented among the iPhone user base.  Flurry, a mobile analytics firm, has some very revealing stats about application loyalty. Unless you have a strong core user base on the device and an application that genuinely adds value, save your money.  While launching an app can open up a new audience for your brand, it also creates tremendous pressure to offer something compelling and useful.

In both of these cases, the biggest danger (apart from wasting money) is that you’ll start to view mobile as an ineffective channel. You’ll be underwhelmed with the results or not realize the power and opportunity that earning a share of the consumer’s mobile device can offer you.

Here’s my lens for viewing effective mobile programming:

Merge campaign tactics into relationship programming

Short-term campaigns do have an important role to play in mobile marketing. They are great demand generation and customer acquisition vehicles. They can help move units with ‘clicks to bricks’ offers. They can support brand building efforts among key demographics.  But make sure you’re looking at these campaigns as part of a broader strategy that uses the personal and connected attributes of the channel to deepen customer engagement, loyalty, advocacy and propensity to purchase.

Bake value into your programming

Consumers aren’t going to give you a share of mobile without getting something in return. There has to be a value exchange that’s weighted in their favour. Contest prizing certainly fits the bill, as do coupons and other discounts or exclusive opportunities. But the value can also take the form of something that offers genuine and repeatable utility. A simple, common example would be an allergy medication company sending out SMS pollen count alerts to opted-in customers.  Consider both one-time and long-term involvement with each and every consumer interaction.

These approaches take time and patience. You will need to test and learn, continuously. Some efforts will work better than others. It may take time for your audience to fully embrace your mobile efforts and for you to gain the necessary insight into their mobile habits and preferences. But thoughtful and measured mobile programs will create a solid foundation in a channel that is increasingly central to your brand’s digital footprint.

Note: This post can also be found on Profectio.com

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