Is your business strategy set for mobile or mobility? The difference might not sound huge at first glance but the approach and mind-set of how incorporating your mobile strategy into your busienss only thinking in terms of mobile versus mobility truly shows if you understand mobile marketing and whether you push boundaries or adjust to them?
Essentially it’s all about understanding the behaviour of the mobile usage, when to interact , through what means and in what context it’s not about mobile adaption it’s about market expansion through the possibility of exploiting mobility, where, how and when your customers are on their go where mobile and tablets have key role to play. The key lays in customer centricity where you need to understand the mobile ecosystem but also the concept of mobility as a behaviour and lifestyle.
Real-time bidding (RTB) is on the radar and there are several reason for marketers to get involved as the marketing method offers great cost control and profile targeting which can make wonders for your ROMI. eBay reported a triple increase in ROI once they engaged in Real time bidding in the US market. With this in mind it’s time to shed some light on RTB marketing, how does it work and what are the success factors?
Real-time bidding allows marketers to bid for ad impressions of individual online users that is, the brand can set the price they are willing to pay for visibility towards a certain group in a particular context. Hence wastage of buying impressions in bulk disappears and you should be able to get influx of qualitative traffic as you can make use of website- and profiling data targeting your desired audience.
As an advertiser you prepare the ad and message you want to convey to your audience based on profiling, context (on what site and how the advert is displayed) or whatever metrics you have and then bid for any traffic/impression that fulfil that marketing rule. If you win the bidding the ad is displayed to your desired target group/individual and you have only paid for relevant impressions of your brand. The selection criteria and what you are ready to pay are setup in advance in an RTB platform so the bidding will occur automatically once there is a profile/visitor accessing any site of the ad-network that suits the conditions and profiling.
The benefits lays in less wastage of spending money on the wrong traffic and instead increase the likelihood of acquiring new customers as the ad displayed will be of greater relevance to them. Since the system is running automatically one can spend more time on the content and profiling what a marketer actually should be doing. The cost of marketing becomes more transparent since you have determined in a more granular way what you actually are buying in terms of individual impressions, customer metrics and where/how/when it should take place (what you pay for is what you get).
RTB is not only used through conventional banners but is also incorporated and widely used in online video advertising so there’s also rules to be established in what format and online media you want to advertise in. As the difference between traditional television and online video start to blur and broadcasters offer revolutionised ways of video marketing similar methods can be utilised through TV/video commercials/adverts as well.
Regardless of media you use the success is determined by the preparatory work, creating the right content relevant to the customers you’re targeting and generate the rules for ad display that live up to the profiling criteria. Finally, don’t overspend and benchmark your desired traffic with ARPU (average revenue per user) per visitor you manage to convert.
Conclusively It’s not really a new marketing channel we’re talking about just the fact that the time has come where we can market more effectively as we have the tools to track, monitor and adjust the marketing efforts only spending on what’s relevant for the brand relative customers which essentially is the key in marketing.
Today’s online marketplace offers a smorgasbord of marketing channels and vast spectra of innovative options, brand building touch points and means of approaching your customer segment(s) so the question is where to start?
Start with the essentials
Commence with the basics and focus on building your base of customers through the channels that makes it easy to assess and control the margins for instance via affiliate partnerships of CPA deals. Thereafter continue with more risky marketing vehicles to expand further.
Monitor trends before fully engage
Weigh the pros and cons of for instance social engagement vs. more quantifiable marketing efforts and what one another can deliver in terms of acquisition, retention and branding. Cater for proof of concepts and scale up when you’ve figured out the dynamics given the marketing strategy and objectives of the upcoming campaigns. Think broad and define you’re multi-channel strategy, what should be accessible via mobile and desktop also do you need to bridge between offline and online activities? What do you want to convey, what’s your quantifiable goal and through what channel or combination of channels will you achieve it?
Tune in to the feedback of your target audience
Make sure you have tools and manpower in place to monitor and interact with customers to engage, review, adjust – learn and adapt to customer needs and the feedback of your campaigns through all customer touch points. Is the conveyed message absorbed and understood as intended, is the message driving the brand positively and is it coherent through the various channels? You need to know.
Assess and deliver
Trust your customers, they will stay loyal with the brand fulfilling their needs hence show your willingness to cater for the market needs and act upon customer feedback. As mentioned before customers sticks to simplicity, hence optimise the user experience (no loose ends) and the quality of your product and added services. Walking the extra mile for you customers will generate sustainable business value and the brand ambassadors will start popping up.
Social media tend to be the focal point nowadays when companies want to engage with their customers with the aim of impacting purchase decision and brand loyalty. Obviously it’s only one means of many and only 25-30% of brand followers in the heart of social media are doing so to be a part of a brand community instead the primary reasons to follow a brand via social media are to receive discounts and incentives. Hence the best route of affecting brand loyalty and purchase decision might not be through brand communities in social media context (which also is quite resource heavy) but rather aim for simplicity.
An additional problem occurs when marketers are trying to hard and disclose to many options giving consumers difficulties to follow the one purchase route as engaging with consumers via social media tend to bring more confusion than a lean way to purchase caused by the overload of information. Therefore marketers should strive to simplify the decision-making process with the aim to facilitate and clarify the purchase process in a subtle yet straight forward way.
A three way steps to follow are to ensure that:
1. Information is clear and trustworthy, i.e disclose ratings/recommendations by other customers, consumer advisors and objective organisations.
2. Supply streamlined brand specific information of the product targeted to each decision step.
3. Provide transparent buying guides and easily accessible help. Customer experience is key.
In terms of marketing above strategy of “Decision Simplicity” is four times more likely to impact positively on purchase than a marketing strategy of engagement. In the end optimising the simplicity to purchase has a huge positive spill over effect on brand loyalty as time and clarity are at the heart of purchasing and consumers sticks to simplicity and the brands that are providing it.
iMedia Connection have posted a short and concise marketing case examining segmentation into niche groups based on the theory that narrow interest targeting might be worthwhile as these segments are more inclined to interact with the brand and product since they already have proven to make the extra effort of engaging with their area of interest. The outcome of a series of proof of concept campaigns shows that in social media advertising there are great potential in niche targeting that although it requires more work for the advertiser, it is a beneficial asset of social media that should be assessed and tested whether it can expand your business.
Nowadays technology is playing a key role in influencing marketers when it comes to enabling creative way of looking at and pursue means of marketing in a multi channels environment.
Embracing technology into the commercial operations and marketing departments are relevant both to the brand and consumers and will enable us to develop the existing product portfolio as well as utilising it in marketing building the brand. Development teams and technology are becoming a natural part of marketing teams and can be viewed as the natural progress of what earlier been brought up as agile marketing (http://www.brandme.se/?p=124).
The topic was widely discussed at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and here are the main takeaways where technology influences creativity and marketing:
Bringing experiential and digital together
The challenge sits within bringing meaning to the brand identity utilising technology for customers to engage with the brand in a way that matters for instance by providing gamification, value added services and content on top of core offerings, conveying purpose and telling the story of the brand promise.
Get closer to tech start-ups
Companies may probe the market for tech savvy companies and start-ups that can give meaning to your brand and business. If showing interest at an early stage the likelihood of start-ups tailoring the service to you needs (or you as a company influence the direction of the start-up) is relatively big and might cater for a competitive edge.
Don’t obsess over measurement
When embracing new technology and concepts of marketing one must allow trial and errors and learning by doing. Too many companies are looking more to the initial vague measurements that makes it difficult to justify further progress as the technology is yet to be proved commercially viable thus embrace rather than defy.
Data isn’t killing creativity
Customer data and business intelligence are flooding so you need to find a way of harnessing the intel and integrate with your customer activates, looking at it as an enabler rather than as a time consuming restraint of creativity. We’re never been so close to really get to the core of customer centricity which is enabled by real time data that exploited correctly can enhance the customer experience.
We know about disruptive innovation and the aim of generating game shifting business ideas. This article expands on that In terms of brand management and relating case study explains how disruptive consistency is thought of to put you as the market leader within your product category: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/..
In short start to challenge the rules of your industry (don’t adapt to them) and/or product/service category and assess whether it can be capitalised on and strengthen the brand putting things in a different way.
Make sure your disruptive marketing endeavours constantly deliver upon the brand. You may be as creative as possible and step out of the comfort zone as long as the brand association and attributes your conveying and seek to establish strongly correlatives positively in increasing the brand and add value to the customer experience. Benchmark with net promoter score (NPS) and test groups.
Differentiation is the key and making it count for the brand will dictate the success!
Further to prior post please find the presentation held by the highly recognised business/internet analyst, Mary Meeker who’s putting words to the statistics of the internet trends of 2012. The analysis is focused around mobile monetisation in relation to other internet trends, overall internet tendencies in media, ecommerce and social. It’s quite a rapid session but definitely some juicy stats to be considered: http://allthingsd.com/..
Marketers and businesses are well aware of the mobile first approach, upsurge in mobile demand and need of integrating means of mobile marketing into you marketing mix and adapt a mobile advertising strategy.
The benefits speaks for themselves where mobile marketing:
1. Provide higher conversion rates and ROMI of your marketing efforts.
2. Is easily quantifiable in terms of outcome and market data of consumer behaviour to act upon.
3. Enable you to bridge your offline and online activates.
4. Offer engaging means of interaction with the consumer.
5. Supports location based marketing and relevancy.
6. Deliver a personalised experience and engagement.
7. Is immediate and enable real time interaction.
Sound really awesome and it is, if used in the right manner.. The truth is however that mobile marketing is still very much about learning and adapting best practices given the objectives and target audience as mobile marketing largely is still in its infancy. Also the handsets do have limitations, foremost in regards to screen size, visualisation of content, data access, connectivity and lack of standards (multiple platforms to support). On the other hand mobile is many times proven not to cannibalise on your other businesses but rather increase frequency of purchase so it’s worthwhile the effort to include in your business model and a necessity for any business if they want to stay competitive.
Nevertheless there is another dimension to it in terms of marketing – In absolute numbers other marketing channels are driving more revenues and this is true for the lion share of companies. Something which also was brought to the agenda before the Facebook IPO and Facebook’s difficulties in delivering encouraging numbers of revenues from the influx of mobile adverts. With this in mind The Guardian published a worth considering article about the mirage of mobile marketing and the need of adapting to a leaner income stream from mobile: http://www.guardian.co.uk/..
Main takeaways – don’t seek what mobile business and marketing can replace or what should be altered to mobile but look at it from another angle as something new: Be aware of the different behaviours of mobile usage vs desktop thus the need of different business models (or advertising strategies) and also consider what mobile truly can add in terms of value? Everything shouldn’t be adjusted but rather look at what it can deliver in terms of expansion not just as a necessity due to market demands but rather as in blue ocean thinking. Clearly you still need to consider the hygiene factors of mobile and how the mobile can interact with your other marketing channels and revenue streams but do take advantage of the innovative opportunities it holds.
Are you mastering a major marketing account? Running dry on ideas for the next big marketing splash? Find inspiration in two massive product launches released 2011 – The Nokia Lumia 800 launch campaign in London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBsO3_XpH0Q&feature=fvwrel and Melo’s Jumpman shoe launch in New York with remarkable projections of his game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzlpUrU6feU