How-To Guide For Going Off-Portal
By Alfredo Narez, VP Marketing of Air2Web
October 11, 2006
Written for the Mobile Marketing Association

The mobile marketing industry is exploding as brands, agencies, marketers and carriers invest more in multi-modal advertising and marketing strategies. Marketers crave new revenue opportunities, ways to replace lost advertising revenues and new methods for extending brands into the mobile channel via participatory experiences with consumers. But increased fragmentation in our industry continues to cause confusion among companies aiming to launch new mobile marketing campaigns.

With the MMA’s clearly defined policies for marketing and advertising on the carrier and WAP portals, we are well on our way to solidifying standards for banner advertising on carrier WAP decks. And as marketers look to reach consumers off-portal via a variety of channels, SMS campaigns, interactive outdoor advertising, downloadable java applications and voice all have a role to play. We must explore the vast off-deck experience and review best practices for planning and launching a successful off-deck mobile marketing campaign.

There are several elements you need to consider before executing a campaign and ensuring its long-term success.

Five Steps To Launching An Off-Deck Campaign

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1.       Outline the Objective

2.       Define Call To Action

3.       Orchestrate Mobile Execution

4.       Define Different Channels For Use

5.       Measure Results

The Objective
Brands should consider the ultimate objective of the mobile marketing campaign. Does it reinforce the brand? Can it build a community around the brand or related topics? Will it aim to increase sales or address losses at the point of sale? A successful campaign can encourage consumers to call or text into a call center with questions they have, while standing in the aisle. Other campaigns might contain a mix of strategies, combining a once-a-week participation TV element (for weekly magazines or TV shows) with an ongoing mobile trivia campaign to maintain frequent touch with consumers.

Call to Action
An easy and compelling call to action is critical to ensuring the mobile marketing campaign draws and maintains participation. Creating a highly intuitive interaction on the mobile phone, without requiring individuals to shift to the PC, ensures successful follow-through for a mobile-only campaign. But you can also design a more robust, full-service interactive mobile marketing experience to draw in audiences with the option of going to a Website, dialing a toll-free or toll number for Interactive Voice Response participation and/or mobile texting or multi-media campaign.

Bringing the Campaign Mobile
Once a call to action takes place there are certain mobile-specific issues that must be addressed. A lot of people are frustrated by the lack of baseline data in this industry. There is some broad usage information available but there is nothing that will lay out the quantifiable impact of an interactive mobile text campaign, for example. Addressing baseline data means ensuring a well-organized mobile marketing campaign: creating clear objectives upfront before addressing creative ideas and effectively measuring campaign results to determine success. This gives us baseline data to help educate the marketplace about what consumers want, how they want it and why they are participating in these campaigns.

Multi-Channel Marketing
Today's mobile market means there is little value in using only one delivery mechanism. Use voice, WAP, SMS and other methodologies so you do not exclude any part of your consumer base. In fact, according to an August 2006 study conducted by M:Metrics, 38% of American wireless subscribers send text messages every month, thus illustrating the important potential for reach this medium has.

Measurement
And then, as with any marketing project, you need to do follow-up measurements and make any necessary adjustments to your campaign before repeating it all over again. Air2Web has taken first-run mobile marketing programs from opt-out rates as high as 33% to cross-channel programs with opt-out rates as low as one percent. This reaffirms two points. 1. That measurement is absolutely critical to understanding what constitutes success in mobile marketing, and 2. Recalibrating programs to ensure more targeted and audience-relevant content and promotions is essential.

It's easy to be so enamored with the mobile experience that we forget that even early adopters are multi-modal in their normal life. They use mobile data alongside voice calls, fixed Internet access and in-person interaction. So it should be easy for someone to move from calling customer service representative to texting the call center instead.

In these ways an off-deck mobile marketing campaign can make mobile an invaluable part of your overall marketing efforts.  It is essential for extending interactive and traditional branding into the mobile medium, pushing qualified promotions, garnering participation and providing timely information to consumers, utilizing their most relied upon and personally-branded device, their mobile phone.

Alfredo Narez, VP of Marketing 
Mr. Narez joined Air2Web in 2005 and brings with him over 15 years of experience in strategic planning, marketing, product management, advertising and brand development. He currently leads the Air2Web corporate strategy and brand as well as product marketing initiatives. Prior to Air2Web, Mr. Narez served as director of marketing for Interland, a web hosting and online services company, where he led marketing, product, and sales to drive the dedicated hosting LOB to profitability. He has also held leadership positions at Telscape Communications, Epoch Internet, Bell Atlantic Global Networks and Ameritech. Mr. Narez serves on the NTObjective’s Professional Advisory Board. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University and earned his Master's of Business Administration from the University of Southern California.