Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facebook Drives Mobile Video Growth

Robots and virtual reality advances aside, my SXSW experience was heavy on results and opportunities around mobile video.

On the live streaming side, we now know that last year’s SXSW darling Meerkat was forced to change its business model with the appearance of Facebook Live and the adoption of Periscope.

It was Facebook’s moves and associated metrics that especially caught my attention over the last few days:

As shared by a company executive, 100 million hours of video are viewed every day on Facebook. Mobile is a large driver.

Ninety percent of the views on Facebook for the Straight Outta Compton trailer were on mobile.

The trailer for Furious 7 had 100 million views on Facebook, with an undisclosed but high number on mobile devices.

Approximately 2.2 million people watched the Facebook Live stream of Peyton Manning’s retirement announcement. This came despite the fact that the event was shown on a variety of television and online outlets.

Facebook has long viewed mobile as its biggest growth opportunity. Clearly video is key to the company’s aspirations.

Elsewhere:

Of the gazillion people at SXSW, no one brought a better in-flight Wi-Fi solution. Damn.

In a panel on beacons, Clorox's Sarah Ortman said that a brand’s mobile outreach in store should solve a problem or delight a consumer.  Or both.

Despite the hype, I didn’t see many robots at SXSW unless you count those who stayed out until 4 a.m. and were forced to attend early morning panels.

The majority of McDonald’s U.S. business is via the drive thru, making mobile solutions more important. The company had a large presence in Austin.

In the UK this year, mobile ad spending will surpass TV spending as well as desktop spending, according to eMarketer

Half of all debit card holders don't believe it's safe to use their card for online purchases, Kantar reported. I wonder what these people would say about using a smartphone to make a purchase. Likely, no, thanks.

In 2015, Apple sold 441 iPhones per minute.

Lessons From One Who Has Waded Into the Mobile Waters

By now, you likely have seen the statistic from the Chief Marketing Officer Council http://mrmstrategies.org/about/press-releases/3 that only 16 percent of companies have a strategy for using mobile as a meaningful means of customer engagement.

This post could be about the slow-to-adapt, but that wouldn’t provide much learning.

Instead, let me point to one in the 16 percent, namely Sarah Ortman, Senior Group Manager, Consumer & Shopper Promotions, The Clorox Co. In a recent stunningly smart presentation at the Shopper Marketing Expo, Sarah articulated the case for mobile, first defining mobile shopping as activities that a consumer does on a mobile device to enhance or facilitate their shopping experience all along the path to purchase.

She says that users perform eight main tasks that comprise mobile shopping – search, list making, store locating, rating and review, coupons and incentives, buying and m-commerce, social shopping/sharing, as well as product and price comparison.

As with every marketing initiative, Sarah starts with objectives that will lead to sales and brand loyalty.

As objectives, she pointed to:

-       audience insights, asking, What is your target audience’s mobile usage/aperture insights? To get that information, Sarah suggested agency audience profiles, internal research, Web and/or mobile site data, and third party research and trending.

-       Infrastructure, asking, What level of digital infrastructure or assets do you have OR are you willing to invest? For that, Sarah points to CRM, Web and/or mobile site, mobile app, shortcode, and video assets

Further, she asks whether the exclusivity of mobile brings what she calls unique value.

Sarah points to immediacy, utility, relevance, location, and convenience as the value only mobile can bring. Concentrating on these four benefits will optimize the shopper experience, she said.

When it comes to immediacy, mobile provides the opportunity for consumers to act now.

Utility enable an audience to be a “hunter”, not a “surfer”. An example is a shopper using an app to map out the weekly grocery list according to deals and coupons.

Relevance needs to be highly contextual, personal, and reflect lifestyle. Examples here are grocery apps leveraging loyalty card data to provide customized deals and recommendations.

Precise location data allows for highly effective targeting and the ability to receive specialized promotions and product education while in-store.

As far as convenience, she views mobile as an “always accessible channel” that enables shoppers to access information “from anywhere at anytime throughout the purchase journey”.

Clorox employs this thinking on behalf of many of its brands, including Burt's Bees, Pine-Sol and Glad, among others.

Speaking of glad, many who heard Sarah uttered that word in describing some solid thinking that shed light on mobile’s role and promise.

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(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2012/10/24/lessons-from-one-who-has-wa...