Wireless consumers: Does the term ‘mobile advertising’ make you squirm? Do the recent articles on the topic leave you living in fear of being bombarded with ads on your phone everyday?
Relax, because in the mobile arena it’s actually the marketers who are the ones that should be afraid. Operators and media companies alike are well aware that a mobile campaign done the wrong way can easily mean that the brand identity and loyalty that they have worked so hard to build can evaporate in the blink of a mobile download. This means that, when it comes to mobile marketing, consumers are still in the driver’s seat.
So why is mobile marketing on downloadable applications so different from other media?
Because a mobile device has a very different form factor than PCs, televisions, and other mediums where consumers typically find advertising. Wireless devices have small screen sizes, intermittent network connections, and can only hold a limited number of applications. Mobile users can’t change applications with the same ease as Internet users can change page views or television viewers can change channels. Marketers eyeing the mobile space must understand the ramifications of these limitations.
To gain market share, they know an application has to get on – and stay on – the device. This means that the application must deliver value to consumers without forcing them to suffer through intrusive marketing and advertising messages.
A mobile marketing campaign must deliver relevant marketing in response to mobile users’ specific, context-driven usage patterns. If it doesn’t, users are going to kick the application off their mobile devices. Worse, consumers will fill their devices’ newly available memory with another – perhaps competing – application.
Now, mobile marketing isn’t all bad. It could be the answer to giving consumers lots of ‘free’ services to try without having to pay the ‘dreaded monthly subscription fee’.
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But what should companies do to make sure that consumers don’t revolt and run away from mobile marketing in droves? Here are a few suggested unwritten mobile marketing rules that will enable marketing firms to develop campaigns that not only won’t annoy consumers, they might even add value!
The Unwritten Mobile Marketing Rules
Rule #1 – Ability to personalize. Let the mobile consumer dictate the user experience. This means that companies should build suites of mobile applications and let the consumers choose which ones they want to add/remove from their device. Let consumers determine what content, including advertising content, is presented to them and always let them decide whether to opt into (or out of) marketing campaigns. Most importantly, companies must have a way to understand the consumer’s usage patterns and preferences so that they can improve and refine the experience after each use.
Rule #2 – Advertise relevant content. Mobile devices offer a ton of information on the actual user, therefore it seems obvious that marketing content should be relevant to the application content – thematically, temporally, and geographically. If a wireless consumer is searching for football scores on their phone and they are getting dozens of advertisements from Huggies, that mobile marketing campaign is irrelevant and marketers from Nike, Adidas, and other contextually relevant sources have lost a perfect opportunity to reach out to their target demographic.
Rule #3 - Banner manners. Consumers have invited branded applications onto their mobile devices. Marketers are guests, and they must act accordingly. Pop-ups, banners, and other advertising should be integrated into the presentation in an aesthetically pleasing way. Few people enjoy being bombarded by irrelevant ads or scrolling through multiple screens of sponsor ads to reach their mobile search results.
Rule #4 – Feedback possibilities. There’s nothing like a good dialog between the company and the consumer, especially if you want to build loyalty and trust. Even with the limitations of a mobile device, consumer feedback should always be included. Surveys and other two-way mechanisms give consumers a voice, letting them provide feedback on overall satisfaction – with the application, the advertisements, and the overall brand interaction. Feedback is a great check system to keep all commercial parties in line.
Clearly, mobile marketing is new territory for consumers and media companies. The old model of advertising-sponsored content isn’t completely transferable to the mobile environment, nor is a wholesale re-purposing of Internet or broadcast TV methods desirable. The new model lets consumers decide what, how, and when marketing information gets delivered. For the first time, mobile marketers are in consumers’ lives in a way that’s intimate, immediate, and hard to ignore.
Instead of breeding the next-generation, multi-media telemarketer whose unwelcome calls always come in the middle of dinner - consumers deserve mobile marketing that is useful, non-obtrusive and even welcome.
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