Making Mobile Marketing Work

Mobile is quickly becoming a must-have component of marketing campaigns.  The panel on Capturing Direct Response in Mobile Media: Entertainment and Publishing shared strong insights into mobile marketing and provided examples highlighting how to create a successful campaign.

Moderator:
Mark Donovan Senior VP of Mobile, Comscore

Panel:

Chip Canter VP Wireless Platform Development, NBC Universal Digital Distribution
Cheryl Lucanegro, Senior VP Advertising and Sales, Pandora
Niles Lichtenstein Director, Mobile Strategy and Integration, Ansible Mobile

What Are the Issues Facing Mobile?

Sharing some stats, of the companies with mobile currently in their media mix, all plan to continue. Of the companies which have never done mobile, 60 percent plan to include it. There is a barrier to entry in mobile marketing, however once a brand tries it they want to do it again.

Inventory is no longer the issue in mobile the two key barriers are the immaturity of the infrastructure and training.

The immaturity of the infrastructure creates a number of issues for marketers. There needs to standardized metrics and creative success stories to share with the faint-hearted. In many ways, mobile is sold, trafficked and tracked the same way as online media. If marketers wants this to scale, a large investment is needed. When this happens, “We can go out and sell and measure and traffic like we do the web”, said one of the panelists.

Training is another key issue facing mobile.  Marketers don’t yet understand how to develop the right creative for the mobile space and once the creative is developed, they are not always sending the traffic to a relevant landing page.  Agencies and marketers need more training to better understand how to optimize their ad campaigns for mobile - both in driving clicks and in driving action post-click.  The challenge is to “Make sure that you know what is happening on the back-end – what happens after the click and how are you measuring it?” said Niles Lichtenstein Director, Mobile Strategy and Integration, Ansible Mobile.

Mobile Success Stories

Cheryl Lucanegro, Senior VP Advertising and Sales, Pandora said that response rates are 3 – 4 times higher on the mobile phone than they are on the web.  Similar statistics have been reported by a number of advertisers.  Cynical marketers may attribute this to the newness of the medium (online response rates have steadily declined over time as consumers became able to identify and mentally block out ads) as mobile users click on ads simply to see what will happen.

While some of the success may be attributed to the newness of the medium, mobile success can be attributed to far better targetting.  Mark Donovan Senior VP of Mobile at Comscore reported that he was listening to Pandora upon arriving in San Francisco and heard an offer for a Dockers sale in San Francisco (he lives in Seattle). The contextual nature of the ad provided by the GPS in the mobile device has the potential to make advertising extremely powerful.

Mobile adds geotargeting, time of day, device profiles, etc to make the advertising more meaningful.  Layering on these contextual features gives marketers the opportunity to send the right ad to the right person at the right time.

How do you use mobile to build audience and experience?

They key to a successful mobile strategy is to build products specifically for mobile audiences upfront, not as an afterthought.  Build your main site for mobile users - don’t require them to go to a different .mobi site to access your content.  Browsers can identify the device that the internet is being accessed from and automatically redirect to an optimized page for that device - use a single URL strategy.  Create a great browsing experience for mobile web users.

As video sharing is shifting online, video producers can actually film videos to enhance the experience when viewing from a mobile device.  The music video“All the single ladies” by Beyonce was specifically filmed for mobile.  The key is “rethinking not re-purposing the content for mobile”said Niles Lichtenstein.

Ask yourself “What is going to be the best experience?”  Don’t create the content and then try to weave the advertiser in afterwards.  Build the advertisers in upfront to create the best possible user experience.

Mobile is Additive
Some factiods shared by the panel include:

  *Lite internet users are more likely to be heavy mobile users
  *Marketers have seen a 6% lift in audience from mobile by reaching users who were not online
  *Pandora says that over 30% of new users are coming through mobile and that 5% - 7% only use the site on their phone – they NEVER visit the website.
  *On your phone you are often on your “personal” time and not at a PC/employer time
  *People will watch live TV in their house from their phone
  *NBC has done studies (they use hulu and put full episodes on mobile) that supports that live viewership is up and the mobile viewers tend to be additive.

The Key to a Successful Mobile Campaign is Content
Like most media, content is king.  “When you put something out there that is fun and engaging, people will consume it” said the panel. Since mobile is permission based marketing (you need permission to send text messages, users choose to download your app or consume your media) creating content and programs that users want is the key to success.

Examples of Successful Integrated Mobile Campaigns
In the entertainment industry there are “Superfans.” They love everything and will consume it on as many platforms as possible. NBC did a test where they put a pineapple randomly in a show and viewers could text in every time they saw a pineapple in the show. The response was completely overwhelming (no numbers were shared). Viewers are eager to engage in content that is fun and interesting.

Project runway ran a campaign and over 90% of the people who received the first message participated in other components of the campaign.  The key is to know your audience and provide them with content they love. If the content is compelling enough, the audience will stick with that campaign and you can continue to build a relationship.

Before you Jump In…

Prior to engaging in mobile marketers should ask themselves “What is our goal and can we meet it or beat it through mobile?” Sometimes you have to walk away if the medium isn’t right for your marketing objectives.

“A brand should develop an app if they plan to use it in an interesting way; and also if you’re going to feed that app (ie. continue to develop it)”, said the panel. Pandora is an app that you will use every day or almost every day – how do you create an app that people will use regularly?  An app needs to be something that adds value and that people want to bring with them.

The key question is “Who are you trying to reach and what phone are they likely to be on? Will an iphone app help you reach your target audience? A mobile site? SMS?  Choose the right medium for your audience to maximize reach and your marketing objectives.

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