Forgetting the “Marketing” in Mobile? How Advertisers Can Gain Advantage in the Wireless World<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Written on August 14th 2006, published on www.adotas.com
By Brian Hecht 
Used with permission from ADOTAS, Copyright 2006. All rights reserved
Submitted to the MMA by Kikucall

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After years of “coming soon,” the age of Mobile Marketing finally seems to be upon us. You only need to take a casual stroll through the mall, or a leisurely flip through the television channels to see the telltale signs of a tipping point: On a recent trip to the mall, I spotted a major retailer sporting window displays urging passers-by to enter a “text-to-win” contest by sending a text message from a mobile phone.

The consumer gains a bit of amusement, and the retailer gains a valuable name in its database. Most major film releases now advertise an opportunity for potential fans to download ringtones, wallpapers, and even movie clips to their mobile phones. And it’s hard to watch a reality television show without being urged to weigh in on the various contestants with American Idol-style text voting.

But is all this really mobile marketing? Is it living up to its potential? And is it really achieving any measurable results?

It’s still early days, of course. As marketers, we are notoriously reluctant to release confidential results of individual campaigns, so reliable data is hard to come by. Press releases only tend to advertise selected statistics from winning campaigns, ignoring the dozens of tests that may have preceded them.

Still, based on four years of working with marketers to develop mobile programs, I’ve developed a pretty clear idea of the main challenge that confronts mobile marketing. It’s a pretty simple theory, really. Too many mobile marketers are focusing on the “mobile” and are neglecting the “marketing.” It’s understandable. It’s easy to become enamored with the neat capabilities of a new technology.

But time and again, I see marketers spending 90% of their time, energy, and creativity on the relatively mundane mechanics of the mobile channel, and only 10% on developing a really great underlying marketing strategy. Shockingly, some skip the marketing strategy altogether. Marketers who adhere to the time-tested principles of good marketing are likely to yield useful tests and successful campaigns. Marketers who ignore those principles are, sadly, wasting their time and money. Inevitably, they fail.

I learned this lesson very early on. More than two years ago, my mobile marketing agency executed a test program intended get retailers interested in simple mobile coupons intended to drive incremental foot traffic at holiday time. The idea was simple: Consumers in a selected area (downtown Manhattan) would opt in to receive valuable “mobile coupons” by text message for the days leading up to the December holidays.  They would get a 10-day series of exclusive discounts for top brands and retailers. We successfully sold the mobile coupon slots to various retailers, each promising to provide a valuable offer to our enrolled consumers. We determined we’d need at least 5,000 participating consumers to make the program a success. The only problem was: how do we get consumers to enroll?

So we hired a lively (and expensive) street team to stand on crowded pedestrian corners with handbills touting free coupons for top retailers. The retailers were all named, complete with their glistening recognizable logos. We made it super-easy for consumers to enroll, allowing them to dial a 1-800 number, since this was before most people were comfortable sending a text message. Upon dialing the number, the consumer heard a brief recording with the terms of the program and, presto, they would be opted in. After a few days of street-corner marketing, we reviewed the results: they were truly dismal. The program was on the verge of failure.

Our team brainstormed ways to promote the program better. We sifted through dozens of ideas before we decided that the best strategy would be to borrow one of the oldest tricks in the marketing book: We decided to incentivize participation. We decided to paste one-dollar bills on the backs of the fliers we’d been using.

That’s how market researchers get consumers to answer surveys in the mail, and it seems to work for them. Instead of shouting out “Free coupons,” the street team would shout out: “We’re giving away free money.” Curious consumers would approach and hear about the program. They would be given their dollar-bill once they dialed in right then and there. The results were astounding. Participants started streaming in. We exceeded our enrollment quote in the next few days and delivered a valuable and sizable audience to our roster of mobile advertisers.

The difference between abject failure and astonishing success wasn’t brain surgery: it was a simple change in tactics that aligned us with a best-practice proven by decades of direct marketers. We were asking consumers to take an unfamiliar and, frankly, peculiar, action, and we needed to ground that in a tangible immediate benefit. The cost of the incentives was minimal compared to the profitability of the program. And we’d stumbled on the most important principle of mobile marketing: it’s all about the marketing.

Inevitably, many of the early mobile marketing tests that we’re now seeing in the marketplace yield disappointing results. It’s a pity that some marketers use this limited experience to conclude that mobile marketing won’t work for them. But the problem is usually not with the mobile. The common theme I detect in nearly all of them is a neglect of basic marketing principles.

Here are five of the top principles that we’ve learned can guide your mobile marketing program to success. They are all borrowed from the world of traditional marketing.

Define your metrics and goals. Too many mobile marketing campaigns operate on the lazy premise of “let’s just try it and see what happens.” But if you are using resources to test a new channel, you need to have some expectation of what you want to learn. Otherwise, how will you know if you’ve succeeded or failed? You wouldn’t launch a direct mail campaign without some projection of the response rate. Taking the time to lay out a few key benchmarks before the campaign launches is indispensable to evaluating your results.

Use a reasonable sample size. If you’ve decided to measure participation or redemption rates, it is essential that your sample size is adequate to provide statistically relevant results. Sending out 10 messages and getting three responses does not mean you are getting a 30% response rate. I’ve witnessed many declarations of success or failure based on vanishingly small sample sizes; sadly, they’re almost always misleading. The danger runs both ways: you can be tricked into rolling out an expensive campaign based on inaccurately high projections, or be fooled into shelving an otherwise promising program based on an inaccurate diagnosis of failure.

Support your program with adequate media. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve seen marketers invest heavily in advanced mobile functionality and then neglect to think about how they are going to drive usership. You wouldn’t launch a Website without having a plan to drive traffic to it. There are many possible tactics available, including TV, radio, posters, in-store, live events, email, and Web-to-phone. But a mobile program without an accompanying media plan is like the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one to witness it.

Provide a clear benefit. As mobile advertising begins to proliferate, sophisticated consumers are rightly wary of giving marketers license to communicate with them via their mobile phone. As a marketer, you need to overcome this resistance by offering a clear benefit and reason for them to participate. Studies and experience indicate that consumers are, indeed, willing to participate in mobile programs with a select group of trusted brands, but only if they derive a clear benefit that can only be delivered by mobile phone.

Provide a clear call to action. Traditional marketing has already done the heavy lifting for you here. Mobile programs that have complicated instructions, or require confusing specialized technology requirements simply do not compel the consumer to act. We find that we get the best results when we borrow copy and promotional tactics from the experts who live or die by response rates in fields such as direct-mail solicitations and infomercial television. Your message to the consumer should focus on the one clear thing you want consumers to do, and then make it incredibly and easy compelling for them to do it now.

It goes without saying that attention must always be paid to the mobile technology components, as well. There are unique challenges that come with operating a program using new technology, and the consumer has little tolerance for glitchy interaction with your brand. But you’ll never have the opportunity to demonstrate your new mobile benefits to consumers if you don’t successfully reach and engage them. And for that, investing time and energy in the underlying marketing strategy will deliver ample rewards.