SAN DEIGO – Adding mobility to marketing campaigns is becoming a no-brainer. Case studies from brands that use a mobile component as part of their overall marketing campaigns show that mobility enhances the overall campaign and brings value to the other media channels. In other words, asking someone watching a TV commercial to send a text to receive $5 off their next purchase works.
The challenge today, according to speakers at last week’s Mobile Marketing Forum here, is building the wireless marketing component into the campaign from the ground up. This year’s forum was significant in that it appeared many of the 300-plus attendees were people outside of the wireless industry – people from advertising agencies and brands who attended to try to learn how to implement wireless as part of their overall marketing campaigns.
Lots of work, big reward
The message they heard: It’s not an easy process; there are a lot of places where the campaign can head into trouble; there are too many companies involved in the process of getting a campaign up and running and sometimes it can take too long. But the rewards can be worth it – a way to connect one on one with your customers, something that no other medium offers.
“Mobile is valuable, but you almost never do it by itself,” said Tom Daly, group manager, strategy and planning at The Coca-Cola Co. America, and North American chairman of the Mobile Marketing Association.
Indeed, if mobility is part of a bigger marketing campaign strategy, it will make the campaign “stickier,” said Michael Becker of iLoop Mobile Inc. And mobility encompasses a variety of paths: SMS, MMS, e-mail, integrated voice recognition and Bluetooth technologies are just some of the ways to reach customers, but a mobile marketing campaign cannot be an afterthought in the campaign.
“Mobile is the glue” that connects the other media channels, said Derek Handley, CEO of The Hyperfactory, an Australian-based advertising agency that has had some significant success implementing mobile marketing campaigns. “It’s not the third screen, it’s the first screen.”
Said another way: The symbiotic relationship between mobile and Web and the Web and mobile makes them both better channels, said Richard Ting, executive creative director at interactive agency R/GA.
More measurements
The case studies back up these points. Wiley, which publishes the “. for Dummies” books offered people $5 off coupons via online and text campaigns. The mobile campaign outperformed the Web campaign fourfold, said Jeff Hasen, CMO for HipCricket. HipCricket was responsible for the Wiley case study.
Panelists spent a lot of time talking about measuring metrics too. The one-to-one connectivity of mobile campaigns means they can be tracked, and tracked better than any traditional media campaigns, whether they are online, TV, radio, or print. However, even those measurements are process measurements, Daley asserted. They tell how many people saw the campaign, opened the SMS, answered the call to action. But Daley wondered if the industry would get to a point where the metrics could show if, say, five more cases of Coke were sold because of the campaign. While operators conceded that may not be possible today, they were optimistic about the possibility.
“If we can measure how TV contributes to a sale, I’m sure we can include mobile and track it,” said Melis Turkman, mobile marketing manager at Turkish carrier Turkcell.
Carriers: work with aggregators
Wireless operators must be considered allies when brands are launching mobile marketing components to larger campaigns, several carrier representatives said, despite the fact that sometimes it appears they are a roadblock.
Rick Carlson, senior manager of off-portal mobile marketing at AT&T Mobility, and Dana Willis, product development manager at Verizon Wireless, encouraged marketers to work with an aggregator to avoid long delays in getting their campaigns started. The message was clear: work through someone who knows what they’re doing, because the process is complicated.
