Ad Infuse's director of marketing suggests six questions to ask your agency when planning a mobile marketing campaign.
There has been a lot of buzz in the ad industry about what's next in mobile marketing. While everyone seems to agree that mobile is the "next big thing" in advertising, most agencies are unable to take the conversation much further. With mobile media consumption on the rise and nearly 35 percent of the U.S. subscriber base viewing rich content beyond email and SMS, brands need to make sure that their agency partners understand both the medium and the opportunities it presents.
Put your agency to the test. Below are six questions you can ask to determine their level of savvy.
1. What are the different ways in which we can implement a mobile component to our media strategy?
Beware if the only thing your agency suggests is a text-based SMS campaign. Don't get me wrong, SMS is a great way to go, but be aware that you can do almost anything on mobile that you can do on any other medium. You can do video, banners, in-game, search, localized advertising, viral campaigns, and so much more. So SMS isn't a bad thing, just know that it's one dimension of many and if your agency is relying on this alone, you're in trouble. Also, if your agency says to you, "any kind of mobile campaign takes a minimum of six to eight weeks to put together, and is really difficult to implement," be aware that in truth your existing creative assets (be that a 15-second spot from TV or a flash interactive ad unit) can be repurposed, and if done right, can be done in a matter of days-- not weeks.
2. What do you think our "off deck" or "off portal" strategy should be?
In case these terms are new to you, here's the "off deck/portal" vs. "on deck/portal" story in a nutshell. Remember when AOL users thought they were browsing the internet when in fact they were just browsing inside the AOL "walled garden" of pre-selected content? Well this is, in essence, the difference between "on deck" and "off deck." In the case of mobile internet, the big mobile carriers will not only make it very difficult to physically navigate, but they will also charge a variety of surcharges for breeching their walls of control, so to speak. Carriers have traditionally wanted to completely own and control the end-to-end mobile browsing experience. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that, but for our purposes, that's the off-deck issue at 50,000 feet. Consumers are angry at the surcharges and are demanding a free flow of content, which is, in turn, spawning new content relationships and distribution strategies left and right.
Now, when your agency answers this question by telling you that you can create a WAP site, (which is the mobile world version of a website and stands for Wireless Application Protocol) and that you can have many of the same components of your current website, you're off to a good start. WAP is a pretty good answer, but an incomplete one if standing alone. Similar to your website, a WAP site is paramount to maintaining consistent presence with your customers as their media consumption habits shift. The reality is that much like the internet, the mobile web is nothing without driving traffic or interaction with your site. Traffic can and should come from a host of advertising solutions: video, SMS, TV ads, radio, print, viral components-- really anywhere. The point is that if your target audience is consuming mobile (and believe me, they are or will be very soon), shouldn't you be creating a consistent experience with your brand across all media touch points?
At worst, when you ask your agency this question, you might get nervous fidgeting or the claim that mobile is just a passing trend. If so, you're in big trouble.
3. Who is consuming mobile content and what are they consuming? Is our target audience there?
The standard response you'll likely get is that the only people consuming mobile content are either the teenaged crowd or those tech-crazed early adopters-- single digit adoption at best. While of course it is true that these two groups ARE consuming mobile media, there is more to it than that. If we parse down the details of a 2006 Jupiter U.S. Wireless Consumer Survey into two groups, "Just Talkers" and "Data Users," I'll bet that most people don't realize that even in an older demo of 35- to 44-year-olds, 61 percent of the users actually fall into the "Data Users" category! Maybe not the heavy texting, pop culture and gaming consumption of those youngsters, but rather news feeds, email access and podcast consumption. For the 45 to 54 demo the percentage is not nearly that high, but is still a respectable 47 percent.
Remember, people said the same skeptical things about the adoption of the internet. The reality is that mobile is penetrating all audiences as mobile phones continue to improve, and the consumer phone replacement cycle in the United States continues to be every 12 to18 months. With this short of a life span for any singular-function phones left out there, we can safely assume that 18 months from now the streets will be filled with completely rich media enabled, mobile consumers. It is up to you as the marketers and to those out there providing media content (TV studios, editorial content providers and so on) to educate and lead your consumers into this new realm by creating that cross-media experience.