The Interview Continues - Mobile Marketing

Part two - An interview with Deepak Kanakaraju and published on DigitalDeepak.com.  Due to the length, I will post the interview over a series of blog articles.

What are the top 3 things to look out for when it comes to mobile marketing?

Bonus time!  Here are five points to consider when marketing through mobile devices.

Mobile marketing will be the most important marketing trend over the next three to five years for a variety of reasons.  The biggest reason is that consumers are in control of the process.  Below is a graph that tells you how important mobile marketing is today.  PC sales peaked in 2011 at 350 million units worldwide after 29 years of sales (since 1983).  Seven years after launch, smartphones and tablets have sold more than 1.2 billion.

If you are not focused on mobile, you need to start now.  Next to the fact that everyone has a mobile device today, the biggest factors in mobile marketing are:

• You must have a mobile website.  Websites designed for a width of 1920 pixels will not display on a smartphone, which on average has 320 pixels.  Or it will and be so small that the web site is useless.  Recently I did an analysis of 22 websites comparing the bounce rates of responsive versus non-responsive websites in the YMCA.  On average, the bounce rates for responsive (mobile friendly) websites were 14% lower than non-responsive web sites.
• Develop specific mobile landing pages for your offer.  Mobile marketing is no different than traditional website marketing.  You must deliver the sales prospect to the information/product/service they are looking for in as few clicks as possible.  “Looking for X?  Click here.  Hello X!”
• You must profile and target the right consumer.  Mobile targeting is rapidly becoming as efficient as desktop targeting, even without the use of cookies, using contextual targeting (based on matching the consumer’s interest with the website’s content) and geo-targeting (based on the physical proximity of the consumer to the business).
• It costs more, but Location Based Mobile Advertising is worth it.  Also known as geo-fencing or geo-targeting, it gives the advertiser the ability to use the GPS functionality of today’s smart phones to target consumers.  Smartphones track where you go.  Own a restaurant?  You can erect an invisible, digital fence around your restaurant and advertise within a one mile radius of your location.  “Save $1 on any sandwich today!”  Or erect a fence around your competition.  Or target the football stadium for the after the game crowd.  Smartphones even keep a list of where you have been over the previous 60 days.  I have worked with new car dealers who target consumers who have visited two or more dealerships in the previous 60 days.  They know these individuals are in the market for a new car.
• Finally - It’s a phone.  Smartphone. Take advantage of Click to Call.  Show an ad.  Take the prospect to a mobile landing page and tell them - press this button to talk now.  One of the smartest campaigns I have worked on was for a university, targeting high school students.  The landing page said “My name is Jeff.  I am your enrollment counselor.  Press here to talk to me.  Click here to send me an email.”  Three weeks into the campaign they had to add more counselors to handle the call volume.

When reporting on the increase in the consumer’s time spent with digital media, eMarketer reported, “The most significant growth area is on mobile. Adults will spend an average of 2 hours and 21 minutes per day on non voice mobile activities, including mobile internet usage on phones and tablets - longer than they will spend online on desktop and laptop computers, and nearly an hour more than they spent on mobile last year.”

“It doesn’t do any good to sit up and take notice, if all you do is keep on sitting.”

“The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.” 

eMarketer released a report today – “USMobile Ad Dollars Shift to Search Apps” – that shows that several marketers are certainly taking this to heart – at Google’s expense. 

It is no secret that Google has owned the Search category on desktops “forever” with a share of voice in the mid-60’s.  And as the consumer moved over to mobile devices, Google was at the forefront of mobile search.  In 2012 it was estimated that Google had a +82% share of the mobile search market.  eMarketer is reporting that Google’s mobile share has dropped to 68% in 2013 and much of this decline has occurred because of a shift in the behavior of mobile consumers. 

Part of this shift is occurring because of the increased use of mobile apps for search.  They are projecting that apps like Yelp are taking a bite out of Google’s dominance.

“App-based searching is a new phenomenon that pales in comparison with the longstanding practice of querying a search engine, and the degree to which mobile users rely on both methods for finding information is unclear,” Boyle added. “Still, in light of the growing popularity and time spent with apps, search marketers that recognize this behavior and focus on increasing visibility within apps aligned to their industry and business objectives will be best positioned to connect with the largest number of mobile users.”

The desktop versus mobile web site debate is dead.  While it is not time to abandon the desktop web site, as mobile traffic grows, it is time for businesses to quick “thinking” and “start doing” something about web sites that are not mobile friendly.  Personally, I can’t imagine designing a web site that fails to support the soon to be largest segment of web traffic (mobile) and segment that is growing (mobile).  It is the equivalent of building a web site that doesn’t support English.

“But I have all this money sunk into my legacy web site and it will cost a large/medium/small fortune to convert it to mobile responsive.”  And I have a closet full of double breasted suits and wide/skinny ties.  It doesn’t matter… 

Last month I analyzed the web sites of 20 clients/prospects.  17 of them do not have a mobile enabled web site. 

·       Overall 30% of web traffic now comes from a mobile device.  For many businesses the amount of mobile traffic is already more than 50% (ask someone in the news media).

·       56% of American adults are now smartphone owners.  

·       By 2015, 81% of U.S. cell users will have smartphones

·       Smartphones outsell desktop computers and have since the 4^th quarter of 2011.

·       By the end of 2013, there will be more mobile devices on Earth than people.

·       48% use or would like to use a smartphone to shop while in-store or on the go.

·       Time spent with mobile apps starting to challenge television: consumers are spending 127 minutes per day in mobile apps–up 35 percent from 94 minutes a day in the same time last year–and spend 168 minutes watching television per day.

·       Mobile searches related to restaurants have a conversion rate of 90% with 64% converting within the hour

 

Need +100 more reasons to stop thinking and start acting, click here - Mobile Industry Statistics

 “It doesn’t do any good to sit up and take notice, if all you do is keep on sitting.”

Yes Virginia, We Are Tracking Your Mobile Phone

So what are some ideas for geofencing?  I ran a campaign in Ohio for a community college.  We geofenced seven universities/colleges with a one mile radius and distributed ads to students in the spring.  The message?  “Take classes this summer at the community college at half the rate of the university.  And all class credits are 100% transferable towards your university degree!” 

If you owned a restaurant and wanted to increase your lunch business, geo-target your competitors and serve up a strong call to action – “Save $Xxx on lunch today!”  The beauty of mobile geo-targeting is that it identifies the mobile device’s location below the zip code level and you can customize the size of the targeting area.  Here is an example of targeting the competition.  Your ads only run in the blue geo-fenced areas of your competitor. 

 

Target an event at the AT&T Center, Sea World, Six Flags, North Star Mall, UTSA, USAA, Valero Texas Open, NBA Finals, Texas vs. Baylor.  Thousands of people gathered at a single event makes a great opportunity to reach an unique audience all at one time.  “Leaving Sea World and looking for a great meal?” 

I have a client with an interesting opportunity.  While they are a market leader, they are in an industry plagued by a constant need to hire new employees to handle the increase in business.  Since they need employees with a particular skill, geofence the competition with a “Now Hiring” campaign. 

Targeting Based on Location History.  Smart phones today track where you use them and stores the data for 60 days.  Don’t believe me?  On your iPhone, view Settings, Privacy, Location Services and scroll to the bottom to System Services and select Frequent Locations.  At the bottom of this screen it will show you where you have been using your phone – talk, text or data – for the previous 60 days.   

If you sold automobiles, would you like to target people who have visited three or more competitors in the previous 60 days?  The only people who visit auto dealers this frequently are probably in the market for a new car.  We can target these individuals using their location history. 

For an auto repair company, we are targeting high mileage drivers by identifying individuals who filled up at gas stations 5 times or more in the previous 60 days within their 3 mile trade area.  

A pizza company used the weather activated feature by outlining their delivery area in advance.  When it started raining, they advertised “Stay inside.  We will bring dinner to you.”

How about a campaign that takes advantage of our ability to dynamically change the ad based on your current location?  For a food manufacturer we suggested an ad that changes the closer the individual is to the store selling the product.  “Only one mile to Bob’s market!”  As the prospect gets closer to the store the ad dynamically changes to “Only ½ mile to Bob’s Market!”  “Only 500 yards to Bob’s Market!”  Add in a mobile landing page with two buttons.  Button one outlines the step by step directions to Bob’s Market.  The second button offers a 50 Cents Off Coupon.  Simply press the button and the coupon image is saved to your photos folder on your phone.  Then you just show your coupon photo to the cashier! 

And lest we forget, this mobile device is also a phone, so for many clients, a “click to call” button is perfect. 

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending."

    Carl Bard

 

Surrounding Your Prospects With Mobile Love

Digital Marketers

“The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.”

In August of 2013, eMarketer.com confirmed what we already suspected.  “The average adult will spend over 5 hours per day online, on nonvoice mobile activities or with other digital media this year, eMarketer estimates, compared to 4 hours and 31 minutes watching television.”  “Time spent with mobile has come to represent a little more than half of TV’s share of total media time, as well as nearly half of digital media time as a whole. The bulk of mobile time is spent on smartphones, at 1 hour and 7 minutes per day, but tablets are not far behind.”

So how do we surround our prospects with love?  Mobile Geofencing.  Also known as Location Based Mobile Advertising, the use of a prospect’s physical location to serve relevant ads is exploding.  Geofencing is when you use location to define a distribution area for targeted advertising and believe me, accuracy matters.

There are two ways to target a prospect on their mobile device.  One method uses zip codes as the targeting center.  When they geofence a location, they use the geographic center of the zip code as the assumed location for center of the fence and measure and distribute ads out from this center point.   So if you are a restaurant wanting to attract customers with a lunch time campaign, your target radius may be one mile.  If your targeting provider uses zip/code tower method, you could be spraying a significant portion of your messages to mobile users literally miles from your location.

The technology licensed by PNS Digital is much more accurate.  Our program has mapped the U.S. into 100 meter by 100 meter grids using true lat/long locations.  We know we can target individuals inside of 100 meters from their exact location.  And targeting does not have to be a radius.  We can target based on a variety of geographic factors.  We can also target consumers based on a variety of demographic factors (like Households with income +$75,000, ethnic diversity, average amount spent of healthcare) and travel history (like Average number of visits to Fast Food restaurants). 

The other consideration in mobile targeting is the distribution network that your ad will be seen across.  PNS Digital has access to more than 8,000 mobile sites and mobile apps, including ESPN, MovieTickets.com, NPR News, Accuweather and Angry Birds, reaching 70 million monthly users.  

True geofencing allows you to customize the area to be geofenced.  Most common is the radius, but you can define almost any unit of geography – like a neighborhood.  Here are the three most common forms of geofencing:

Real time proximity to an advertiser – is the prospect across town or across the street?

Real time proximity to an event or location – AT&T Center, Fiesta, Sea World, North Star Mall, UTSA, USAA,

Targeting based on location history – We are back tracking like the NSA, but your smartphone tracks where you have used it for the previous 60 days.

One of the steps in running a geofencing campaign is to determine how many weekly impressions are available.  Once you determine the targeting parameters – like a one mile radius, 500 meter radius or a neighborhood, we will run an “Available Impressions” report to show you how many weekly impressions are available within the fence.  This will help with budgeting and estimating the Share of Voice costs.   

Next week I will share with you some ideas on how to use the technology of mobile geofencing.  As always, let me know if you have any questions! 

Five Ideas to Launch a Mobile Campaign With Little or No Money Down

Now that the excitement of the holiday season and the Super Bowl are behind us, it’s time to get back to looking at some research and best practices. 

33%Of Paid-Search Clicks Coming From Mobile Devices

“Mobile devices drove consumers to spend more time online while on the go. Paid-search marketers worldwide allocated 34.4% to mobile devices in 2013, with phones capturing 17.7% and tablets receiving 16.7% -- up from 20.5% in 2012.”

Retailers Are Driving Huge Increases In Mobile Shopping And Buying — This Is How

“On Black Friday this past year, sales on mobile devices accounted for more than 20% of U.S. e-commerce spending. Traffic from mobile was even bigger, accounting for almost 40% of total online shopping visits that day.” 

Six Trends for 2014 in Mobile Marketing and Advertising

“With over 75% growth in mobile advertising in 2013 (AdAgeMobile Fact Pack) mobile is no longer an emerging channel.”

“The very best marketing comes from observing consumer behavior and inserting your message into their behavior.”

Knowing that consumers are stampeding to mobile devices doesn’t mean that you are ready to engage them on mobile devices. 

Recently I worked on a display campaign for a client with a mobile component.  So I visited the “mobile” landing url and saw that the client did not have a mobile friendly web site.  What I found myself staring at was a large web site smashed into a little 4 inch screen.  It could have been the best offer in the history of retailing, but I would never know.  I simply could not see what the company was offering, much less be able to navigate to find it. 

Five Ideas to Launch a Mobile Campaign for Little to No Money

·       First have a mobile enabled web site.  Ideally you have a responsive web site (or plans to launch a responsive web site). 

·       But if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you can still have a mobile campaign. 

o   Build a mobile site.  There are tools that allow you to build mobile web sites for a very small investment.  $Hundreds, not $Thousands.  If you don’t have these tools, contact me.  If the only thing that is stopping you from mobile advertising is a mobile site, I am going to fix that problem. 

o   Keep in mind that most of our clients do not need a fully function ecommerce mobile web site.  They need a way for the sales prospect to contact them in the manner most convenient to them – email, phone, walk in the front door. 

o   Make sure you have the basics in place. 

o   Import a logo and few graphics/photos.

o   Add your contact information – Name, address and phone number. 

o   Add a “Click here for directions”. 

o   Post your hours of operation.

o   It is a mobile site.  Use Click to Call.  Questions?  “Click here to talk to a real human!”  (When was the last time a business encouraged you to call them?)

o   Add a mobile offer.  “Bring your phone in, show this coupon for a free dessert, save $5, Save 10%, etc. 

·       Eliminate clicks.  Make sure the ad takes you to the page where the customer can say “Yes, I’ll take it.” 

·       Want to know if the mobile site is working?  Use an offer or tracking code that the consumer would not see anywhere else.  Save $5.55!  Make this offer unique to this mobile campaign.

·       Track the results.  If you don’t have a computer system to track the sales, use a shoe box.  Print a stack of coupons with the mobile offer on it.  Every time a consumer uses the “mobile coupon”, write the total sale amount onto a coupon and throw it in a box.  At the end of the day/week/promotion, add up the amounts and see how successful the promotion was… 

Mobile advertising is exciting and frightening at the same time.  But there are ways to engage customers without initially spending a lot of money…

Seven Facts Marketers Need to Know About Mobile Users