Guest Commentary: Jump on the Mobile Delivery Bandwagon
January 16, 2006
By Izzy Abbass

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Mobile devices are the most personalized and direct marketing tools to which content owners and brands have access today.

Mobiles are with people wherever they go. People rarely lend their mobile phones, even to family members, and though a household may have only one or two TVs, it is likely to have four mobile phones. There are almost 200 million mobile phones in the U.S. and close to 2 billion worldwide. The question is, how do we take advantage of this widespread marketing tool?

The most common and easiest method of exploiting mobile devices is via short message service-also known as text messaging. However, once the SMS is exchanged, how do you continue the dialogue and keep the brand ever-present with the user?

With just a stand-alone SMS campaign, you have to continue to send messages to keep the user engaged. This tactic will eventually lead to SMS fatigue and the messages may become what operators and the public both fear: spam over Internet telephony, or SPIT.

SMS will remain a powerful tool for marketers, but it must be used in conjunction with something else that allows interaction with the consumer.

There are three application types that allow you, the content owner, to create and maintain a relationship with your audience members via their mobile devices:

·  Wireless application protocol

Web pages formatted specifically for mobile are common today. This trend will probably continue to grow for the immediate future, but in the long term it will more than likely become the low-cost entry point for smaller operations. Content owners and brands will not be happy with the difficulty of streaming video from a single WAP site to all types of mobile phones, and there is a loss of flexibility with regard to overall functionality. This is exacerbated by another trend we are seeing, which is "WAP fatigue"-in which users tire of using a numeric keypad to enter a URL and downloading each page of a menu.

·  Add content to an umbrella brand

Most of us are now familiar with portals featuring streams of broadcast feeds under either a carrier-controlled portal

(V Cast, Sprint TV) or a third party (MobiTV, SmartVideo). This method allows you to have your channel available on mobile phones and generate some revenue.

However, your ability to fully exploit the mobile phone as a marketing tool and brand extension is somewhat limited. Viewers are still restricted to time schedules, defeating mobile's "anytime, anyplace" convenience. Who wants to wait until 18 minutes past the hour to watch local weather when there's only five minutes before his or her 2 p.m. meeting? Plus, the strength of the brand is watered down when it becomes just one channel on a text channel lineup.

It remains to be seen what opportunities will develop to generate ad revenue from mobile campaigns and ad tie-ins.

·  Create your own branded portal.

This strategy not only offers you the best opportunity to expand your brand it's also the best way to increase your revenues. With a stand-alone portal you control your users' complete experience and you can decide how often and in which way content and special offers are updated.

Further, provided you have the right partner, you own the database and the ability to promote as you want. The trick is to find a partner who can offer you the ability to reach the largest audience possible.

In each of these applications, the fundamentals for creating an effective strategy remain the same. Integration with other marketing efforts and media is key, as is the ability to measure your results and provide true accountability.

Also, it's important to give users a chance to interact with the content and provide feedback. You'll never know if you're reaching people with the right messages and in the right way without it. And if you send them SPIT, you definitely won't get the response you'd like!

So if you're thinking about taking the leap to mobile, start now. It's not too early, and you risk losing ground to competitors already in this space if you hold off too long. If you're not sure which way to go, take advantage of several channels and explore what works best for you and your brand.

With an increasingly "on-the-go" population, we may find that consumers adopt the idea of video content on their mobile devices faster than any other new entertainment platform to date.

The race is on.

Izzy Abbass is president of U-Turn Media Group.