With The Mobile Money Flowing, It’s Time To Correct Some Mistakes

We can debate the exact definition of meaningful dollars, but we all have to agree that the projected $100 billion in mobile ad spend in 2016 would fit into that category.

For perspective, an expenditure that large would account for more than 50 percent of all digital ads for the first time, according to eMarketer, which is offering up the figures. And it would pencil out to a 400 percent increase from 2013. Those dollars don’t even include money devoted to mobile marketing for activities after the click or install.

I’ll call the $100 billion figure both a milestone and a reason to pause. Certainly much is going well in mobile’s progression into the mainstream. But I can point to five mistakes that are keeping us from reaching greater heights.

First, we spend too much time seeking out the so-called “mobile user” when we know, in the United States, at least, the great majority of our customers and prospects bounce from device to laptop to tablet and back, many times a day. Our programs need to account for that customer journey. As Google’s Jason Spero told me for my upcoming book, The Art of Mobile Persuasion, a meaningful (there’s that word again) group of our customers and prospects expect brands to take this interest into account and enable the resumption of a task like searching when one leaves one piece of hardware and heads to another.

Second, we mostly fail when it comes to including a mobile call to action in traditional media, especially television and big-time events like the Super Bowl. Regular readers may remember that I’ve repeatedly incorrectly forecast a mobile call to action in the multi-million dollar TV spots on the NFL’s big day. Again this year, we were left with ads that came right out of the 1970s. But I actually have renewed hope for next year after seeing Coca-Cola spend television time during the Final Four to pour Coke Zero and give mobile users an offer via Shazam.

Third, we are still seeing marketers make ill-advised mobile decisions because the fail to start with consumer insights. Studies from Pew, comScore, Nielsen and the rest are fine, but it’s all about what your customers and prospects and their wants and behaviors. In my Mobilized Marketing book, Steve Mura from MillerCoors told us of his early disinterest in marketing via iPhones. Why? Mura’s customers are young males who demand choice and they didn’t take to the first wave of iPhones that were only available through one mobile carrier and with limited options on price and features. What do your customers want? Are you giving it to them?

Fourth, many marketers continue to be fascinated by shiny objects. Live video streams through Meerkat or Periscope may eventually enable brands to drive awareness, consideration, and sales, but at this point, the streaming experience is full of shaky, uninteresting user-generated views that leave us thinking that there are better places to spend our time. Instead, prudent marketers are spending on proven products and tactics like mobile loyalty clubs that are only going to become more valuable as we bring to market smarter, efficient ways to personalize.

Finally, for the most part, we remain in marketing silos. The mobile discipline is increasingly part of many organizations, but only a few, including Google and Lowe’s, are doing away with the channel distinctions in favor of a more holistic business unit.  As Sean Bartlett, ‎Director of Digital Experience, Product, & Omni-channel Integration at Lowe's, told me for The Art of Mobile Persuasion, “the folks at the forefront are going to collapse those mobile teams back into the base business so that you just have a digital organization, or a customer experience organization, and mobile is just how you do business and it's no longer becomes this specific talking point. It's just the assumption of how business operates.”  

In case you are thinking that I got out on the wrong side of the bed, I can easily point to five things that we’re doing well with mobile. Those will serve us well as we seek to prove that our $100 billion annual spend is justified and even lower than it should be.

-

Article first appeared on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/20186.html

Unlike SXSW, the Mobile Marketing Forum Was About Business Results

I proposed a game at the start of this week’s Mobile Marketing Association’s Forum in New York where we would take a drink each time that we heard the word Meerkat.

My tweet stream the previous several days had been nothing short of overrun by Meerkats, which are live video streams sent from phones to all of one’s Twitter followers at once.

I figured that by noon on St. Patrick’s Day, Day 1 of the MMA event, we would all be as inebriated as some of those partying on Fifth Avenue.

I was wrong. There was nary a mention. And I believe that I now know why.

The introduction of something like Meerkat is made for the SXSW crowd, which includes those who crave shiny objects, first looks at innovation, and business models that could lead to great change.

That is actually in sharp contrast to what many came to hear at the MMA show – evidence of business results and proof that some of the products and services launched way before SXSW were moving boxes of tissues and bottles of ketchup while engaging mobile users in meaningful ways.

The most significant conversation in New York was around the latest SMoX (Smart Mobile Cross Marketing Effectiveness) research that was conducted by the MMA and some of its largest and most influential members. Aiming to scientifically assess the interaction of mobile channels and platforms in relation to the broader marketing mix (TV, radio, magazines, Internet, etc.), the exercise was intended to help marketers understand the impact of consumers’ shifting media habits, as well as how to optimize their marketing mix by rebalancing investments.

Here’s what we discovered:

In Coca Cola's Gold Peak Tea campaign, mobile drove 25% of top of mind awareness and 6% of sales despite only 5% of budget.

Mobile in Walmart's Back to School initiative produced a 14% change in shopping intent despite only 7% of the marketing spend.

In a travel card campaign, MasterCard saw mobile display and mobile video work twice as hard in terms of the number of people it converted on image per dollar spent.

The overall takeaway from the new U.S.-focused SMoX research was that the optimal spend for mobile is in the double digits - far more than is being allocated.

Adam Broitman, VP of Global Digital Marketing, MasterCard, called SMoX “a real breakthrough in the mobile marketing industry and the first thorough and comprehensive industry study that proves the true value of mobile.”

Said Tom Daly, Coca-Cola’s mobile lead, “It gives all the teams, particularly in the United States, something to think about.”

Here’s some of what else caught my eyes and ears in New York:

The hype would lead some to believe that paper and coin currency will be gone by the weekend given the advancements in Apple Pay and other mobile wallet products. But, according to MasterCard’s Michael Donnelly, 85% of the world's transactions are still made in cash.

We knew that long-form content has an uphill battle on mobile. And that was before we heard this -- the focused attention span for a consumer is eight seconds, down from 12 in 2000, according to Gfk. For perspective, GfK told us, a goldfish has a nine-second attention span.

Brandon Rhoten, vice president of digital and social media with Wendy’s, gave marketers like me who are a bit long in the tooth a pass on knowing everything about everything.

“There is no reason we should know how to use Tumblr,” he said. “It’s not where we grew up. So the biggest piece of advice I give is, ‘Be humble and back up and say ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’ Go to your partners and talk to them. How can you fit the context of that platform at the same time you stand out?”

Rhoten’s take on Meerkat? Even if a “solution” is perceived by some as cool, if it hasn’t scaled or shown that it can move cheeseburgers, it doesn’t make it into a marketing plan dead set on generating business success.

(article first appeared on Mobile Marketer - http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/opinion/columns/20025.html)