Teens + Mobile + Retail = $

 

Most brands and retailers have not figured out how mobile can really deliver on its promise of sending the right message, to the right customer, at the right time and place -- the ultimate dream of digital marketing. It is not their fault, as many come to mobile marketing with a lens limited by the existing paradigms of TV, Internet and direct marketing.

As many of us know, teens spend an inordinate amount of their waking hours connecting via text messaging (most people can't fathom how the average teen can write 100+ text messages/day), but this doesn't mean that teens want to be marketed too via text. Receiving a retailer's jargon-filled, stiff text message while conversing with a friend can be jarring. So how do we get their attention, while still making it personal and relevant?

My wife likes the idea of taking their phone away to get their attention. But for the average marketer, we have some more constructive techniques -- the one with the most reach being text messaging.

STEP 1: Ask the teen for permission to speak with them via their phone. Teens need to feel in control. 

STEP 2: In the first month, ensure you share with them the best promotion you have to offer, so you maximize your chances of building a positive exchange through the mobile channel. 

STEP 3: Be conscious of the "voice" you are using in the mobile channel.  If your brand comes stomping in with a third-person corporate voice, it will stick out like a sore thumb. 

STEP 4: Determine the mobile promotion for your business that makes teens say yes. The messages must convey maximum value and relevance. 

STEP 5: Develop an in-store experience that engages. 

In the end, the best way for a typical retailer or brand to engage teens on mobile is to start by building a segmented text messaging program which allows you to communicate to teens with a separate voice and set of relevant offers just for them.

By giving them value and deals they can share with friends and alerts to significant in-store and brand events, you will maximize their long-term engagement with the brand and ultimately in-store sales. In-store is a huge opportunity. One which teens are primed to take advantage of because of their comfort with their phone, but that is a discussion for next time ...

(This post is based on an article I wrote for MediaPost. For the full article, click through to MediaPost here.)

Steen

What's in it for Teens?

 

Have you ever run into a teen without a phone or, better yet, one who isn't asking, "What's in it for me?" Rarely, right? So, when looking at marketing strategies targeting teens, you can't ignore mobile. You should even consider it as a primary media channel.

We've all heard the phrase "the medium is the message." In the case of teens, this is even more relevant. Teens will judge your brand in an instant. But by communicating in a first-person voice in channels in which they "live," you put your brand on a level playing field. You can grab their attention more easily than with a TV ad or other traditional medium and effectively drive them to take action.

SMS is just one of the many dimensions of the mobile channel that creates results. To harness its power, you have to grab young consumers' attention with a simple, yet strong call-to-action. An SMS program's rate of participation -- regardless of its targeted demographic -- is the result of media exposure coupled with a compelling call-to-action and offer. The equation looks something like this:

SMS Call-to-Action Response = Media Exposure x Call-to-Action Strength x The Offer Value

If you follow the five rules below while keeping this in mind, you'll be on the way to creating a powerful SMS call-to-action and offer.

1. Your shortcode is your new URL. 
2. Don't forget about the value proposition! 
3. Out with vanity codes. 
4. When in-venue, remember the rule of three. 
5. If online, stay online. 

Remember, mobile is a teen's remote control for their world. It holds the key to their friends, family, social networks, and it goes with them everywhere. So respect the unique perspective and needs of teens, and you'll get them engaged in your mobile program.

(This post is based on an article I wrote for MediaPost. For the full article, click through to MediaPost here.)

Steen

Haiti meets the intersection of Mobile Marketing and Social networking

Firstly, if you haven't already, consider texting HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 following the devastating Earthquake on Jan 12. Whilst I'm saddened by the tragedy of Haiti, the 90999 shortcode has already raised $10m. At $10 per donation, that's 1 million Americans who have donated to this cause using text messaging. But how did 1M people hear about this incredibly simple channel to donate? It went viral on every social network possible, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The 90999 shortcode is being run by mGive. I met with the CEO,  Tony Aiello, of mGive a mobile marketing company focused on not-for-profit companies and co-founded by Alicia Keys. All of their donation efforts to donate are dwarfed by the scale of this Haiti campaign. Mobile marketing has turned a corner.

For some reason mobile marketing with SMS has developed a stigma amongst certain consumer groups over recent years. This was even witnessed by wide spread fear-mongering over the 90999 code being a scam. This is not a scam. There are industry veterans like Jim Manis and many at the telecommunications carriers who have been working very hard for years to setup a workable model for mobile giving and which allows for mass-scale donations over private infrastructure, in a way that ensures that the majority of the dollars head toward the required charity.

I live in San Francisco, so I hope other aren't donating via 90999 to help me this year. Otherwise, 2010 will be a great year for mobile marketing

Congratulations to Jim Manis for all of his hard work on establishing Mobile Giving as a viable channel for donations and to Tony Aiello for persevering with mGive. Without the two of you, who knows how much of that $10m would have been donated through other channels.

Patrick.

are mobile search ads for every marketer?

"No" according to 5th Finger CEO, Patrick Collins. The gloves come off in a feature from DMNews.com about marketers and mobile search advertising.

"To ensure an optimum user experience, mobile search should only be used when a brand can support the activity through the mobile phone. Driving mobile users from search to a PC's Web experience, as opposed to a mobile optimized Web site, is a mistake that many brands make when first entering the mobile search arena."

For the full article AND DMNews' decision click here: Are mobile search ads for every marketer?

get ready for the mobile application development boom in 2010

Our CEO, Patrick Collins, was recently quoted in a great article by Amanda Kooser of the AOL Small Business website. In it she talks about the sudden boom in mobile application development startups. They need to quickly prove themselves in an already increasingly crowded space in order to survive.

"There are over 100,000 apps in the App Store, and the vast majority of those apps are being built by independent production companies....There's no low lying fruit anymore...You have to understand that your chances of success are reduced every day as new players come into the market."

Click here for the full article: Hot Startup Idea for 2010: Mobile Applications

mobile internet presence of the top 100 brands

The top 100 brands are out from Interbrand. How many of those brands have bothered to build a nice usable mobile internet experience? See the full list below.

indicates the brand has a mobile specific site.

indicates no mobile specific site.

indicates that the non mobile site redirects to the mobile site for mobile devices.

indicates no redirection from the non mobile for mobile devices.

2009 Rank	Brand	Google says:	Mobile Experience	Comments
1	coke	www.coca-cola.com		not great
2	ibm	www.ibm.com
3	microsoft	www.microsoft.com
4	ge	www.ge.com		not great
5	nokia	www.nokia.com		very poor
6	mcdonalds	www.mcdonalds.com
7	google	www.google.com
8	toyota	www.toyota.com
9	intel	www.intel.com		disaster!
10	disney	disney.go.com
11	hp	www.hp.com
12	mercedes benz	www.mbusa.com
13	gillete	www.gillette.com
14	cisco	www.cisco.com
15	bmw	www.bmw.com
16	LV	www.louisvuitton.com
17	marlboro	www.marlboro.com
18	honda	www.honda.com
19	samsung	www.samsung.com
20	apple	www.apple.com		disaster!
21	handm	www.hm.com
22	amex	home.americanexpress.com
23	pepsi	www.pepsi.com		iphone mobile site and redirect only. 1/2 points
24	oracle	www.oracle.com
25	nescafe	www.nescafe.com
26	nike	www.nike.com
27	sap	www.sap.com
28	ikea	www.ikea.com
29	sony	www.sony.com
30	budweiser	budweiser.com		no iphone. Flash
31	ups	www.ups.com
32	hsbc	www.hsbc.com
33	canon	www.canon.com
34	kellogs	www.kelloggs.com
35	dell	www.dell.com
36	citi	www.citi.com
37	jpmorgan	www.jpmorgan.com
38	goldman	www2.goldmansachs.com
39	nintendo	www.nintendo.com
40	thomsonreuters	thomsonreuters.com
41	gucci	www.gucci.com
42	philips	www.philips.com
43	amazon	www.amazon.com
44	loreal	www.loreal.com
45	accenture	www.accenture.com
46	ebay	www.ebay.com
47	siemens	w1.siemens.com
48	heinz	www.heinz.com
49	ford	www.ford.com
50	zara	www.zara.com
51	wrigley	www.wrigley.com
52	colgate	www.colgate.com
53	axa	www.axa.com
54	mtv	www.mtv.com
55	vw	www.vw.com
56	xerox	www.xerox.com
57	morgan stanley	www.morganstanley.com
58	nestle	www.nestle.com
59	chanel	www.chanel.com
60	danone	www.danone.com
61	kfc	www.kfc.com
62	adidas	www.adidas.com
63	blackberry	www.blackberry.com		disaster!
64	yahoo	www.yahoo.com
65	audi	www.audi.com		disaster! Flash!
66	caterpillar	www.cat.com
67	avon	www.avon.com
68	rolex	www.rolex.com
69	hyundai	www.hyundaiusa.com
70	hermes	www.hermes.com
71	kleenex	www.kleenex.com
72	ubs	www.ubs.com
73	harleydavidson	www.harley-davidson.com
74	porsche	www.porsche.com
75	panasonic	www.panasonic.com
76	tiffany	www.tiffany.com
77	cartier	www.cartier.com
78	gap	www.gap.com
79	pizzahut	www.pizzahut.com
80	jnj	www.jnj.com		disaster!
81	allianz	www.allianz.com
82	moet chandon	www.moet.com
83	bp	www.bp.com
84	smirnoff	www.smirnoff.com
85	duracell	www.duracell.com
86	nivea	www.nivea.comhome
87	prada	www.prada.com
88	ferrari	www.ferrari.com
89	armani	www.armaniexchange.com
90	starbucks	www.starbucks.com
91	lancome	www.lancome-usa.com
92	shell	www.shell.com
93	burger king	www.bk.com
94	visa	www.visa.com		disaster!
95	adobe	www.adobe.com		not good!
96	lexus	www.lexus.com
97	puma	www.puma.com
98	burberry	us.burberry.com
99	polo ralph lauren	www.ralphlauren.com
100	campbells	www.campbellsoup.com
101	fedex	www.fedex.com
na	merril lynch	www.ml.com
na	aig	www.aig.com
na	ing	www.ingdirect.com
na	motorola	www.motorola.com		disaster!
na	hennessy	www.hennessy.com
na	marriott	www.marriott.com

where does the mobile internet live?

please tweet and/or post this image!

In a meeting today we were joking around about mobile URL's that are cool and URL fails.

We recently registered m.ob.ly from libya to host all of our client's sites. We think that m.ob.ly is a cool mobile domain.

wap.site.com, on the other hand. Uncool. Very 1999.

I recently ran a co-ordinated, perl scripted and thorough investigation of the mobile capabilities of the top 100 most trafficked North American websites and the top 100 brands. Specifically, when they had any mobile presence at all, where did the company point the user? How many of them are cool? Well, a lot!

What's the most popular mobile site URL?

m.site.com was used by almost half (39%) of all mobile internet sites, for instance:

• m.yahoo.com
• m.youtube.com
• m.myspace.com
• m.bing.com
• m.toyota.com
• m.disney.go.com
• m.hp.com
• m.bing.com
• m.cnn.com
• m.flickr.com

mobile.site.com was next most popular with 14.4% of mobile site URLs:

• mobile.microsoft.com
• mobile.mcdonalds.com
• mobile.about.com
• mobile.nytimes.com

gibberish
the next most popular url format, coming in at 13.5% of all sites, was a bunch of gibberish in the mobile url, like:

• Amazon:  www.amazon.com/gp/aw
  
• MSN: sports.mobile.msn.com
• Lexus: www.lexus.com/lexus/jsp/pub/mobile
• Armani: apps.netbiscuits.com/57690/armaniExchange

This is really a problem because many mobile operators use nasty transcoders which rely on the format of the URL to determine whether the content is a mobile site or not. Without a specific mobile URL, the perfectly formatted mobile content could be mangled through a transcoder.

iphone.site.com
The iphone is so popular that many pubishers and brands are making custom sites especially for it. Typically if the publisher is building an iphone.site.com site, then they've also built another specific mobile site. For instnace, m.facebook.com and iphone.facebook.com

.mobi is used by less than 4% of brands and publishers
What was really surprising to me out of this study is that the .mobi domain is so unpopular. In fact, of the 200 brands and top sites I checked, very few of them had even bothered to register their .mobi domain. The .mobi top-level-domain seems overrun by domain squatters. Oh well... m.site.com works for me!

Having a mobile site and not using it? Priceless.

Having a mobile website and then not automatically redirecting to it from your primary site? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING!?

I'm talking about YOU yelp, and YOU linkedin, and YOU too nokia. Come on guys, get your act together and make sure your primary website redirects to the mobile site that you've spent hundreds of thousands of $ building. Here's a tip, they're here m.yelp.com, m.linkedin.com and mobile.nokia.mobi.

Net net?

m.site.com is most popular.

custom URLs for iphone.site.com, m.site.com and android.site.com very cool.

Not having a mobile website at all is understandable for some but not the top 100 brands and top 100 publishers.

Having a mobile site and not using it? Ummm.

For those interested in the gory details:
m.site.com 39.42%
mobile.site.com 14.42%
nothing sensible 13.46%
iphone.site.com 6.73%
nochange 6.73%
site.mobi 3.85%
site.com/mobile 1.92%
site.com/m 1.92%
site.com/iphone 1.92%
site.com/wap 0.96%
wireless.site.com 0.96%
wap.site.com 0.96%
wapp.site.com 0.96%
site.com/mobi 0.96%

Obama Administration taking a closer look at the wireless industry

The wireless industry has grown rapidly, essentially built on consumer demand, existing infrastructure and "guidelines". The FCC is now taking a closer look at the industry and the CTIA is in the hot seat.

MocoNews Reports

As the Obama administration becomes more determined to bring additional scrutiny to the wireless industry, the CTIA is getting ready to defend themselves against the criticism.

On Thursday, the FCC will host a meeting to consider three inquiries into the wireless practices, including billing methods, exclusive handset arrangements and other ways the industry can become more competitive. Christopher Guttman-McCabe, VP of regulatory affairs at the CTIA, told ComputerWorld that the CTIA expects the FCC to go forward with the inquiries, and that the association will likely be given an opportunity to testify against the criticism at a later date.

Read the full article here: http://moconews.net/article/419-wireless-industry-prepares-to-defend-itself/

Obama's Healthcare loss... failure to exploit his assets

 

Why isn't the Obama administration using mobile to shape the healthcare debate?

 

Obama’s challenge with mobile is the same as for many marketers. Generating interest in the initial campaign can generate huge follow on opportunities, but maintaining a dialogue with a consumer which they perceive is valuable can get tough pretty quickly. And yet, this is where brand loyalty is cemented and brand zealots are born. Consumers demand some form of value in a dialogue. During the Presidential Election the value was really worthwhile: “change”, now continued investment is required to continue to provide a valuable exchange with the consumer.

 

Obama has a significant database of voters which he can communicate with, but he needs to move from the existing political dialog and move to engaging us in supporting his policies, by doing things such as:

• Devise a true 1-to-1 dialogue with the people, which can help dilute the power of lobbyists and provide some tangible steps that help people know what action to take.
  

• Send a viral TXT message which loyalists can pass on to friends and relatives containing a link to a video which they can watch to hear Obama's side of the debate.  This could make it into the hands of tens of millions of people if the viral effect came into full force.  

• Send a blast-out SMS with a link to a really useful and informative wap site, sharing Obama's recommendation on the health debate.  The wap site could have a calculator allowing people to see how they or their family members would be affected by the proposed changes.

• Provide an iPhone app calculator which does the same and calculates the health care costs under the different plans being considered.

 

The goal is to create the crucial conversations not just between Obama and voters, but between loyalists and their friends, colleagues and families, where some real value and information is exchanged in both directions. After all one-to-one is the promised power of mobile right?

Dave the Shoe Guy goes Mobile

 

You know when a new media discipline is entering the mainstream when 'Dave the Shoe Guy' is evangelizing it!

Dave Sheehan is a ladies shoe salesman in Chicago, IL. He says: “My strategy was simply that I knew if I did what everyone else was doing, I would get what everyone else was getting," said Dave Sheehan, ladies designer shoe sales, Shirise, Chicago, IL. "If I did something different, I would stand out and get a better result.”

“No one was doing this in the shoe world that I knew of,” Mr. Sheehan said. “This was new, hot and fresh and it still is now.”

It reminds me of the early days of the internet, when innovative music artists like Charlie Chan would publish their music online and do live webcasts of their concerts. These individuals are at the lead of the technology curve, and in the world of shoe sales, Dave is similarly a leader. 

When you look at it from an industry point of view, when retail shoe salesman can run his own campaigns, you know that the medium is entering the mainstream. 

(See full article on MobileMarketer here). 

Steen