From ignoring the mobile medium entirely to failing to fully grasp how it can be used effectively, both agencies and clients have played a part in preventing mobile marketing from reaching its full potential.
If mobile marketing is to ever take off in Australia, we need to understand that smartphones are not a form of mass media, but rather a personal form of media. A mobile is an extension of who you are; no two people use their phone the same way, much like how no two brands are the same.
As a brand or a product, you should approach your mobile offering the same way a person would – as an extension or enhancement of your brand offering.
A great example of a mobile being an extension or enhancement of a brand is the Domino’s pizza application. A pizza shop in your pocket that allows you to customise, purchase and track your order – while saving you time. Because the offering is unique and users must download the app to use it, the propensity for users to keep and continue using that app is a win for Domino’s.
As a result of this strategy, Domino’s garnered 200,000 downloads of the app and more than $2 million dollars in sales in the first 12 weeks of release.
Build a Spaceship/Launch
When devising a mobile strategy, the functionality of the offer will be one of two things – it will either ‘kill time’ or ‘save time’. In most cases the idea is to provide a utility that will give productivity to the user, thus making the user’s life easier and ultimately giving them a reason to continue using it in their everyday lives or more frequently than they normally would.
To correctly implement a proper mobile strategy we need to start by asking the following:
1) Does it make sense for the brand?
- In almost every case it does make sense for the brand, you just need to determine how; mobile is an extension or enhancement of your brand.
2) What are you goals for mobile marketing?
- Is there any research and insights that may suggest opportunities in executing a mobile strategy?
3) How do we incorporate ourselves in mobile?
- We want to create a mobile site, but why? What useful offering can we offer our consumers?
- Can we include something else? An application? An integrated strategy using other mediums? Can we break the barrier between the physical and digital world?
- Are there other assets we can use? Social media?
4) Does it provide value to the consumer?
- What value does it offer? Does it kill time or save time?
Tesco in the UK, Homeplus in South Korea and Woolworths locally have demonstrated how we can harness the power of mobiles with a simple idea – all of them used interactive billboards carrying images of basic grocery items, which consumers can scan while waiting at a bus stop, or on their way to catch a train or a plane, and then have the groceries delivered at home.
Woolworths took it a step further and optimised its application to allow its customers to shop on their phone while on the train home, and have the groceries delivered directly to their home. Give the consumers a reason to use your product and they will come.
Perhaps we are failing to realise how personal the mobile device is and that it bridges the gap between the digital and the real world. The idea is not to reinvent the wheel on the phone because mobile technology still has a long way to go. The idea is to use the powerful technology in our phones with the physical landscapes of the real world, to reach consumers in the final moments of the ever-changing purchase decision.
If over half of Aussies own the most personal form of media we’ve known to date, with more than enough power to put a man on the moon, and we’re not harnessing that power as marketers, then it seems we have a problem, Houston.
Joshua Campanella
Digital Planning Manager
MEC
THE ADNEWS NGEN BLOG: A failure to launch... for mobile (Part II)
23 April 2013