Findings? How About Half-Truths?

Forrester Research got headlines with its new digital marketing report, but did it get everything right? Hardly.

It’s unknown if the $499 report was shared in its entirety with reporters and bloggers. I certainly haven’t received it.

What I have seen are a slew or posts that portray the report based on a survey of 58,000 online consumers as an indictment of text messages from brands.

“Text message communications were the least trusted, while online banner ads barely rated above spammy SMS in the trust stakes,” wrote Techcrunch.

What?

Brands don’t send “smammy” text messages, at least in any meaningful number. Rules established by the carriers and Mobile Marketing Association prohibit dissemination of texts by brands without a consumer requested one after a call to action or an opt-in to a permission-based database. If a brand does send such a message, it is often shut down by the mobile operators.

Do mobile users want to join such loyalty clubs? Hipcricket annual surveys consistently have shown about one third of those polled interested or very interested.

Once they are in, do mobile subscribers opt out? Not in large numbers – something well less than 5 percent in my experience.

Do SMS programs work? Readers of my Mobilized Marketing book know the answer is yes. Ford drove a 15.4 percent lead conversion by adding SMS calls to action to traditional media. A car dealer sold 34 automobiles in one day after not selling one for a month. A maid service had to hire more help after its sponsorship of a text to win ticket giveaway pushed demand beyond its capabilities. There are dozens of other examples in the book and thousands elsewhere.

What is a small or medium sized business to do?

Meet their customers and prospects on mobile. Mobile is not really a “nice to have” anymore. There are inexpensive ways to meet or beat expectations – something as simple as implementing a quick payment solution like Square, talking to their local radio station to sponsor a relatively inexpensive mobile-enabled promotion that could drive traffic, or even find an inexpensive way to create or enhance a mobile web presence. Google makes it easy at www.howtogomobile.com

Another way to is to listen in on many free webinars that talk about mobile marketing programs and share best practices. I’m conducting one April 10 for Market Motive and registration is free here - http://www.marketmotive.com/training/tutorials/conference-calls-and-workshops...>

I hope to see you there. Or at least on mobile.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program  http://Goo.gl/t3fgW, whichprovides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

 

 

Quicker Reactions Needed For Businesses In Mobile Age

Small and medium sized businesses will never be like Chase – many don’t yearn to be – but they certainly can learn from the banking giant.

Chase has had to adapt to the speed of communications given the fact that customers carry mobile devices and a forum to take good experiences and bad ones to social networks.

“Mobile gives us a rapid, immediate view if something is going wrong and we address it immediately," Russ Eisenman, head of mobile product marketing and partnerships at JP Morgan Chase, New York, said at this week’s Mobile Marketing Forum in San Francisco.

Customer expectations have never been greater, according to Eisenman, and activities that used to be niche have gone mainstream.

"Depositing a check is no longer a fun thing to do - it's part of the every day ritual,” he said. 

Next up for Chase is providing the ability for consumers to open checking and credit card accounts through mobile products.

“We want to be sure that we are building around the mobile-first mentality – it is a reality that the moment that you wake up, you have an alert that is sitting in your queue that says, ‘here’s your bank account’,” he said.

Checking account balance is the top activity for mobile users, with push notifications and messaging playing a major role in making a mobile device the first place that users go to access their financial information.

The takeaway for small and medium-sized business owners?

In their own ways, they need to respond to meet and exceed the hopes of customers and prospects who wake up every day knowing that, with mobile, it’s no longer business as usual.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business http://goo.gl/S6P7m program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

When It Comes To Free Mobile Websites, Do You Get What You Deserve?

Are free mobile websites good for small to medium sized businesses or is there a cost to going that route?

Like most things, that depends on many factors, including the complexity of the business offering as well as the expectations of the customer.

Remember, marketers I interviewed in Mobilized Marketing told me that they are seeing brands punished by consumers who are put through a poor or even non-existent mobile experience. 

What brings this to mind is the news that OpenTable, a leading provider of free, real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants, introduced a free service that makes it easy for its restaurant customers to optimize their websites for mobile devices. 

The service, powered by vendor DudaMobile, is being promoted as “quick and easy to use and the before and after results are dramatic without sacrificing the branding and elegance of the restaurant's desktop website.”

If only it were that easy. In a post last week, I wrote about the myths of so-called responsive design. The biggest point I made was that there is no magic method to building once and providing optimal experiences on the web, mobile device, and tablet.

The same is true for DIY mobile web tools.

There is great variation in the quality of small to medium sized business websites, as well as the amount of content created and freshened as needed.

Clearly some businesses have gone the “free” route for their online presences. We know from talking to business owners that results are mixed, with many realizing that you get what you pay for.

Taking a bad web experience to mobile only compounds the problem.

It behooves small to medium sized businesses businesses to look further than price to satisfy its needs.

For more thinking about small business and digital, I recommend last Sunday’s “It’s A Digital World” segment Your Business show on MSNBC. About a dozen were interviewed, including me. I spoke about the passive activity of shopping becoming interactive – and of the large implications.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business http://goo.gl/S6P7m program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

Mobile and Small Business - Stats Cut Both Ways

There was something for the naysayers and for the optimists in an important survey of small and medium size business and their use of mobile.

On the positive side, SMBs understand the value of building a database of prospects, according to a new survey by well-respected Borrell Associates. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/184139/smbs-increase-or-maintai...

SMBs prefer paying for signups as opposed to paying for mobile advertising clicks or impressions (27% versus to 19% for clicks and 6% for banners), according to the polling of over 1,300 SMBs. But 52% are unsure, which isn’t a big surprise in what are still the early days of wireless.

But proving that those of us in mobile marketing still have convincing to do to drive more mobile adoption, 45% of small business plan to maintain their level of spending, while 27% of medium-sized businesses plan to increase their level of spending on mobile media in the next year, compared to 4% who expect a decrease in mobile spend.

SMBs say that they are not satisfied with the ROI on mobile advertising, but 49% that have bought mobile ads say that they would spend more if a higher ROI could be garnered.

My take?

Big brands say that they will accelerate their mobile spends at higher rates than what businesses told Borrell.

In each case, there is plenty of proof that mobile can work if done smartly.

As an example that was detailed in my Mobilized Marketing book, Fox Chevrolet in Baltimore combined mobile and radio during the recession when it had not sod a car in more than a month pre-Cash For Clunkers.

The program worked like this: Fox Chevrolet bought two weeks of airtime on Hearst’s 98 Rock radio station to run 10- and 15-second promotions encouraging listeners to text in to enter to win the chance to purchase a car for $98.

In total, nearly 500 listeners texted the keyword Fox to the station’s short code. Each was entered to win and given details on how to attend the drawing at Fox.

On a Saturday morning, nearly 300 showed up on the lot and two were given the opportunity to purchase a car for $98.

Although the foot traffic was nice, it doesn’t begin to measure the success of the campaign. With prospective buyers enticed by shiny cars and competitive deals, Fox turned around its fortunes by selling 17 new cars and 17 used cars at full price on that one day.

Another example is the local maid service in Salt Lake City that had to hire more help to serve the demand produced through a text to win sponsorship that cost only hundreds of dollars. 

But as much as we want businesses to get mobile, the offering of proof will take more time.

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This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business http://goo.gl/S6P7m program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

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