Can Mercedes Drive Traffic Through Mobile Advertising?

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In my Mobilized Marketing book, I wrote that the coolest thing in mobile was, of all things, a Ford campaign that employed an unsexy text message call to action in traditional media to produce a 15.4 percent lead conversion.

To me, cool equals business success, not necessarily innovative technology.

Many auto manufacturers employ mobile in the hopes of moving product.

In a story running today, I told Mobile Marketer that Mercedes is wise to partner with CBS News.

“The automotive industry has had great early success with mobile, mostly from the manufacturers and dealers who are delivering personalization options – as in build your own car on your device – and current inventory for those who are inclined to visit a dealer for a test drive,” I said in the story.

“Apps are just part of the mobile solution. Car manufacturers and other brands should give consumers choice on how to interact via mobile.”

The full piece is here: http://www.luxurydaily.com/mercedes-boasts-new-e-class-in-mobile-ads/

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Apps Make Us Lazy Edition

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Are smartphone apps making us "the ultimate consumer but also kind of lazy"?  Only if we let them.

There are 10 million active users of Starbucks mobile apps - and that's before bigger push into grocery stores.

You know what holds back mobile? Dumb stuff like this headline - Mobile Will Complement TV, Not Replace It. No kidding.

A BBC survey said that viewers expect more advertising than currently on multiple platforms. They said expect, not want.

I read a piece claiming that the use of mobile apps is behind the decline of American Idol and Survivor. It’s a combination of things including viewer fatigue on these shows.

Meanwhile, a study says that 80 percent of TV viewers 18-24 use a phone or tablet. The good news is that they include television in their lives.

Will Google Glasses sell on the benefit of taking photos in a second or two versus a slightly longer time with smartphones?

For all of its supposed troubles, Apple has to love a new Yankee Group survey – 91 percent of iPhone users plan to buy an iPhone for their next smartphone.

Every day, more photos are taken with an iPhone than with any other camera. And that spans age groups.

The Washington Attorney General slammed T-Mobile over deceptive ‘no-contract’ ads. An agreement is a contract – simple.

I saw a story that made the claim that the call-to-action is ruining ads. I couldn't disagree more. Ford drove a 15.4 percent lead conversion that way. Failure?

Malware and viruses in #QR codes?  That’s more ammunition for the doubters.

Sprint CEO: Wireless operators need to focus on profitability. You think?

In four years, there will be 10 million shipments of Google Glass and similar devices, according to an analyst. That’s large but not when compared to six billion phones.

The Question Remains – Does Your Business Need A Mobile App?

When it comes to mobile apps, the year is ending the way it began – with some marketers saying they need one, but without even a half-decent reason why.

Several weeks ago in Las Vegas, I was approached following a Mobilized Marketing book presentation by a small business marketer. Much to the chagrin of a “more sophisticated” marketing colleague, the gentlemen pushed for approval from me for moving forward on creating an app.

But when I gently asked whether he knew what type of mobile devices his customers carry, and whether he was prepared to build for more than one operating system (iOS for Apple devices, Android for Google, etc.), he realized that he hadn’t done enough homework on the subject of apps.

That scenario happened to me several times this year – and actually every year since 2007.

In a recent PC World article called Does your small business need a mobile app to stay competitive? http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=A0025B28-C30F-D9C1-1529706063D17C87 author Christopher Null wrote that many small and medium size business owners believe that everyone has an app but them.

“As a small-business owner, choosing whether to join the app-development club can be a difficult decision,” Null wrote. “You may feel like you have to build an app and go mobile to stay competitive, but you’ve probably heard that apps are expensive and time-consuming to develop. More and more users are dumping desktops and laptops for tablets and cell phones, so it makes sense to optimize the online experience for them. But is it really worth the effort? Cant they just use their smartphones to access the website you already have?

“Its a tricky problem with no single cut-and-dried solution.”

Null correctly pointed out that while mobile websites work on all smartphones, “an app gives you much more presence on the phone than a bookmark on that phones browser does. Rather than forcing the user to launch the browser and find your URL, an app is always there, front and center on the mobile desktop. Your business is constantly in mind, whether the person is using the app or not.”

I’m in the camp that says build a mobile website before an app (if you need an app at all) because it is more inclusive.

There were some who believed that the “duel” between the mobile web and apps would be won by the end of 2012 and that only one would be left standing. That won’t happen. Both have a place. It behooves small and medium size business owners and marketers to understand their customers and provide the best solution for them.

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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.