MOBILE MARKETING with a catch...

Although I hate to push Nick's "Thank You" blog down the page, I wanted to share some thoughts on Mobile Marketing and how it translated to one of our most direct response clients. As a sidebar, Nick is right. Media Two gives all the avenues for personal and professional growth. But Nick, don't sell yourself short, you already possess the skill set foundation of a media strategist, but you just may not know it yet or give yourself enough credit.

Ok, back to Mobile Marketing. It seems like everyday I peruse the industry news and there's always an article on Mobile Marketing and how to best utilize it to reach your audience. So, after multiple exposures, I decided to take notice of this article in iMedia Connection called Top 5 things to know about SMS advertising. Obviously, Mobile offers several formats to advertising, but this article focuses on SMS (Short Message Service) or text messaging. As I'll always preface an article I reference by saying that most of these industry articles are written by an expert in the particular channel being discussed, as it should be; however, most of these articles, like this one, are written from the publisher side. So, take this agenda into consideration and I'll show you what I mean later on.

The first three points of the article of excellent and very true. The channel does offer mass reach, easy implementation and enough targeting to be "in the ballpark" with your target. From a direct marketing standpoint, this is all we need for a test (get an aggressive out clause first). And this is exactly what we did for one of our clients, and the results were mixed, hence the reason for the blog.

In the article, Zaw Thet's first point was "big reach, and audiences are already opted-in". Both are true, but... The reach is dictated by the cost model you negotiate with your mobile partner. In our case, we negotiated a Cost Per Call program, which offered a massive amount of reach, and to be honest, a little bit of spam too. However, the benefits of a performance cost model on our ROI outweighed this negative. The other part of the statement, "audiences are already opted-in" is loosely accurate, with the key word being loosely. Very loose, almost deceptively loose. This is what I mean. Let's say I'm watching an NFL draft special on TV and see something asking me to text a shortcode to a number to receive draft updates to my phone. I'm not going to be able to watch it live, so this is perfect for getting my fix. Well, some conditions apply in small print on the TV screen that I may or may not have seen. In our experience, the user does not see this and just focuses on the shortcode and number to text it to. So, what they don't know is they've "opted-in" to receive sports alerts AND ADVERTISING. Also, within this fine print is their OPT-OUT language, which I'm guessing, most of the time, the user isn't paying attention to that either. So to continue my example, I get my draft updates to my phone, but I also keep getting sports updates well past this event and pretty much whatever else the mobile partner wants to send to me, including ads. And unfortunately, I can't remember how to make them stop (opt-out). Listen, I understand and am fine with the process described, but that's because I'm in the industry. Think of the general public. Two months from now, they have forgotten that they signed up for draft updates, they are getting addition text messages which they think are random, advertising is included, and on top of all that, it is costing them money if they do not have unlimited texting. So, this is exactly what happened in our case when we thought that "audiences are already opted-in". Within our ads, we included our 800 number to call to schedule an appointment, and we had a number of these types of complaints where users didn't have any idea where or when they "opted in" to receive these messages, and unfortunately, the CSRs were not able to help them because of their lack of recollection. So, you, the advertiser, are left cleaning up the mess of a flawed sign-up process and a consumer that doesn't pay attention. Fortunately, we were able to put a process in place to combat these occurrances and still show strong results, so we would do the program again.

We all know that targeting is a key component of any media strategy, and mobile is no exception. Zaw offers two great ways to achieve this, content and messaging. In our case, we used a performance cost model, which made the content targeting less important, although we were able to choose some verticals to test. The copy or message targeting is an excellent point with him saying "one size fits all ad copy is one of the most common reasons for poor campaign performance." Now, I don't know if this is the "most" common reason, but it behooves any advertiser to heed his advice.

Lastly, I'm not disagreeing in the last two points, because I do think that the channel can be an excellent CRM tool to build a relationship with your consumer, but the idea of "participation media" goes against at least 2 of his first three points. These custom games and surveys to engage the audience does require legwork, lacks reach, and what Mr. Thet fails to mention, is expensive, meaning more commissions for him, which is part of the reason why it conveniently made it's way into the article.

Web 2.0... really?

I first heard of the internets when I was in college, around 1995. At first I ignored all the hype as I was just too cool to find anything “cool”. All the students I had seen in the school library were looking at professional wrestling pages, This is the south after all and it was important to know what the Nature Boy Rick Flair was planning. Thank goodness the 4 horsemen had long since retired.

Fast forward a few short years later and the dot com boom is in full effect. I started working with computers creating short animations, recording lectures and working with Real Player. I remember the hype of this new medium and the mantra was “everyone can create a web page”. While this was true for a select few, the only “people” who could really take advantage of this new format were corporations who could afford to employ the army of people to code HTML (keep in mind HTML was cutting edge technology in 1998). Dreamweaver and other HTML editors were not user friendly and you had to know how to code javascript by hand to accomplish anything “cool” like an animated .gif. Money was thrown around and given to anyone who could code a hyper link and those people spent the money on launch parties for sites that had yet to be completed. Of course, most of these sites never got completed and the industry went bust. Web 1.0 was built on a promise that was more a sales pitch then a reality of the medium. Slowly though, the web evolved and an industry matured eventually delivering on that promise.

Now, when I turn on the news or surf the net, I hear a new buzz word.. Web 2.0. This time, it’s all about social networking. But really… isn’t this just what the initial Web 1.0 promised us? Finally now, everyone CAN make a webpage and they do on MySpace and Facebook. You don’t really need to know much code and you can “pimp” your page, with a little effort, express your personal style and actually fulfill the promises of Web 1.0. Today MySpace has even beaten the original web pioneer Yahoo! in popularity, blogs have truly taken hold and everyone can easily customize a personal corner on the web to share their life experiences with friends, family and the random web surfers who might have a pregnant wife or chocolate lab mix who obsessively chases his tail. It took a little more then 10 years, but web 1.0 has arrived… finally.

So what is Web 2.0? According to Wikipedia, web 2.0 is “web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, and blogs”. Isn’t that already here? Isn’t this just what we were promised the first time around? Is Web 2.0 nothing more then an industry invented term to create a new buzz? What does the future bring for the real web 2.0 or 3.0?

The main difference I see between the realities of web 1.0 and the promises of web 2.0 is streaming video. Video is, at its core, a series of 30 images per second, just like an animated .gif. The first animated .gif, sent over the web in January 1995, sounded the opening bell of the first dot com boom and I hear those sirens singing again with video as their tune. Just like the .gif fueled web 1.0, video might drive this next online economic boom, but it’s not in the hands of the public… yet. If you look closely, most of this new content is powered by corporate America, driven by the industry and consumed by the public. This mirrors most industries in America and throughout the world, so it’s not surprising. But as the public becomes more empowered by technology and connected to one another, change is bound to happen and quicker then ever. As future generations age while being connected with each other and highly mobile (along with the popularity of the consumer camcorder, cell phone cameras and websites and blogging) little brother is watching Big Brother and that’s something no one expected, not even George Orwell. Maybe web 3.0 will usher in greater freedoms for everyone through government and corporate transparency. No longer can China squash peaceful protests with violence or American police beat suspects without us seeing. No longer can a radical preachers preach hate or a news anchor melt down without us seeing. Perhaps this is the real web 2.0… the world looking at itself truly creating a global community. Perhaps the revolution is here.

According to Wiki, Guerrilla warfare is “unconventional warfare … with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics… to combat a larger, less mobile formal army.”

The internet is dead… long live the internet!