Mobile Marketing is a $1 billion business. Are you in?

Posted on April 25, 2008 by marc meyer

Did you know that a billion text messages are sent per day? Did you know that 2 years ago that nearly 11% of all voting done on American Idol was via text messaging? What kind of a hard number was that? Try about 65 million. Mobile marketing is projected to grow from $708 million in overall revenue in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2012 according to Jupiter Research. In 4 years it’s going to grow almost 300%.

The mobile web is exploding, and if you don’t understand that by now, then you’ve been living under a rock. Thanks to the iphone in particular, and Safari more specifically, intenet enabled phones are becoming more user friendly and more robust in their offerings and overall customer satisfaction. With that being said, the mobile web is now becoming a more desirable place for marketers to try and pitch their products.

Interestingly enough, the mobile web is a more collaborative environment for marketers and their products in that It requires and has a lot of moving parts. You cannot run a mobile campaign without buyin from multiple channel partners, multiple departments, and multiple vendors and technological entities. But truly what marketers need to know best is their consumer, their user, the person they are trying to reach through their mobile device. Yes it’s product centric, but trying to appeal to a demographic of 54+ with a NIke mobile text to win ad, might be tougher than going after the 18-24 male demo- so the point is mobile is best at going after the meat and potatoes consumer who is no more than a foot away from their mobile phone at all times. The person who’s cell phone is an extension of their personal brand. Find that person. That is the key, then tie that person into THAT specific offer. A 1:1 offer that makes sense to that person.

With more than 70% penetration of mobile use in urban areas. The last great frontier of marketing to consumers is mobile. It’s only going to get better and the potential will be endless. Opportunities exist for marketers in the form of text to win campaigns- the most pervasive and common currently, as well as consumers using their mobile phones for everything from purchasing tickets, mobile video, searching for pricing, searching for coupons, downloading music through wifi, and or interacting with billboards.

What marketers needs to know is that, yes it’s not too late to get in the game and yes it’s a game that everyone is eventually going to be participating in to a certain extent. Bear in mind that not only are theur savvy marketers and companies out there, but the consumer is becoming more hip and more comfortoable with the technology, and thus the bar will keep getting raised in regards to consumer expectations. Always keep in mind that the phone is merely an extension of or a conduit for entertainment. Whether its music or video or chat or sufring the net. Consumers like to be entertained and with the continous advances in pushing the content out, the opportunities to piggback enetertainment are just as viable as a text to win campaign.

Along with text campaigns that keep spiffing up the offers, another aspect to keep in mind is that search will become more of a viable optiion with mobile as well. So you the marketer need to be aware of and prepared for your mobile web offerings to be compliant and search engine friendly to mobile search. Yes there is a lot here, but if you start doing your homework now and start small, you will be well ahead of the game and more comfortable with what is thrown at you and what you can bring to clients.

How far does mobile marketing extend? Here’s your last example. Virgin mobile has a mobile campaign that allows users to interact with ads in exchange for free services. How old is the target market? 13-34 year olds. 13. How many registered users are there up to this point? Almost 700,000. Your goal, figure out what the consumer wants and deliver a mobile solution.

Mobile Marketers can fail and still succeed.

Posted on February 19, 2008 by marc meyer

Mobile advertising is projected to generate revenue somewhere between $1 billion and $24 billion within four years. However, at the moment they(analysts) still do not know which business model or marketing approach will be successful in tapping into that money.

So you’re saying,”Well how can they come up with those projections then?” They can come up with those lofty projections the same way analysts said that one day the internet would be really really big. The upside and the potential are so great, that even those numbers are skewed on the side of conservatism.

To put it in perspective you have to understand that nearly everyone including your average 10 year old and up is now carrying a cell phone. If you want a hard number, think north of 2 billion users worldwide. With that device is the real estate to market and advertise to a captive audience. With that device and it’s associated burgeoning high speed browser comes the ability to search, use the internet or access email. Currently in the US, there are almost 35 million users of the mobile “net”. So what comes with search? contextual advertising. What comes with surfing the net? Advertising. Or using email? Get the idea?

But see that’s the easy side to marketing on a mobile device. The challenge for marketers and advertisers will be how to create stickiness not only for search results for instance but also to geotargeted results via a mobile device. In other words, how are you/they going to create the mobile call to action?

Some of the other questions will also be; How intrusive can you as a marketer be on a mobile device? Do the devices need to also have micro-java apps for pop-ups for instance? Can a marketer hone in on perhaps using SMS alternatives or opportunities until a more solid marketing platform is developed? When you think about it, it really is wide open.

The answer is yes to all of those questions, and the best part about it is the result can be a complete and utter failure and thats ok. So now you’re saying, “what do you mean it’s ok to fail?” Well it’s ok to fail because the user has no preconceived notion or expectation as to how it’s supposed to be. And because they don’t know what to expect, they will be willing to accept, for now, whatever comes down the pipe.

But marketers and their brethren will only be allowed to fail x amount of times before the user a) finds another solution that best meets and exceeds their intial expectation or b) becomes completely frustrated by the lack of performance. And trust us, they will find it. Either through another marketer letting them know that their is a better solution out there, or they will find it virally.

Until the bar is set, mobile marketers will have a grace period to get it right. The unknown is how long the grace period will be. The unknown is who will set the tone? Who will establish the way things are done in the mobile world? Because at the moment the canvass is blank and anything can be tried and ANYTHING can be successful. In the end the ultimate judge will be your average consumer, or your average 10 year old!

7 Social Media/Tech Trends to look for in 2008

Posted on January 9, 2008 by marc meyer

By now I’m sure everyone is accutely aware of the social networking/media phenomenon that has transformed everyone’s old school web experience into a transparent user generated virtual world. Look for that to evolve even more in the coming months and year(s) The more that social media works its way into the fabric of our everyday lives, look for more far reaching and useful applications that hopefully have more significant value and meaning then posting pics of the drunkfest you went to over the weekend

So having said that, the first term to wrap your arms around in the new year is:

User Generated Content– Look for this to be dumbed down(see simplified) even more, to the extent that eventually everyone will have a web bio/resume/personal page devoted to who they are, what they are about, and all the gritty little details of their life. Almost like a web based drivers license. Our lives will be even more transparent than they already are, thanks to the tools that social networks will be providing.

Quest for Cool-The demographic of 12-24 year olds will push itself into more social relevence than it has at any other time in the history of pop culture. Because of the ease in which content can be pushed out to the masses, this demo, which otherwise would normally go through these years unnoticed, now can grab the status, the fame, recognition, and justification for social relevence that now accompany social networks. The quest for Me branding has never been more prevalent.

Individualistic Saturation– One of the offshoots of this “20 megs of stardom” instead of 15 minutes of fame, will be that we as a digital society will grow weary of tired content, quickly. In other words, as quickly as someone can rocket to digital stardom, they can, equally as fast, fall back to earth and fade into “Bolivian”-to quote Mike Tyson. This can be attributed to our homgenization of all things related to media. We need our content quick and to the point; and the minute we think it’s bogging us down, has grown tiresome, or has ceased to be entertaining, we are off to find the next great big thing.–>See William Hung.

The Age of Reinvention and Redefinition-With so many ways in which one can create alt-personas, we will hurdle faster towards an age in which there is the digital persona, the off-line persona and the “real-you”. What social media has done has given us a completely new set of “friends” that one can hang with and thus, this is the pack that people will be running with when they are online. Because of the intense focus of all things media driven, this will lead to people who will extend and break the boundaries and barriers of social acceptance. This will ultimately cause us as a society to redefine the terms,”social acceptance, social values, social morals, and social ettiquite.

The EIAV Phenomenon– The Everyone is a Videographer phenomenon has changed the landscape of acceptable video content. What used to be taboo now has it’s own portal. What used to be objectionable is now made into a low budget high grossing movie released on 120 screens nationwide. Everyone is capable of filming anything and uploading it to social sites worldwide in a matter of minutes. This cottage industry will continue to boom as it is now easier for someone to film something and upload it versus writing about it. This has also led to the drive for fame through one doing something so mundane as filming oneself doing absolutely nothing.

MOSO- Mobile Social-Look for the boom of social networks tied to mobile networks. As it has slowly started to happen, watch for the big players to rapidly start to crank out more user friendly interfaces and applications on mobile devices that will converge with high speed networks, resulting in keeping social media freaks engaged with their social networks at all times. An advertisers dream, this will further solidify the mobile device as the most important devleopment since..well the internet!

Search Explodes– As Google continues to swallow up all aspects of what drives the user expereince online, look for search to become more integrated into how one conducts or initiates any type of online endeavor. What has happened and will continue to happen is that the re-emergance of the portal will become relevant again. As we get closer to the launch of the “G-phone”, be prepared for a massive push towards a mobile-social-search environment that will redefine portability and world wide exposure to all things global.

I said 7 but one more merits mentioning:

S-Commerce– As social networks continue to expand and grow at exponential rates, look for their to be more creative ways for users and advertisers to push products that are niche like in their importance and acceptance to the users. I have written about this before, so for reference, look to Lemonade.com

There is certainly more to discuss in the coming months but, for now lets work off of these 7 and see what else is under the hood. Is there a glaring omission here? Please feel free to contribute your thoughts. Certainly, we should not igonore how we as a digital culture need to address the oil shortage, creating a more eco-friendly environment, homelessness, world hunger, genocide, corrupt politicians and Britney Spears, but for now we will continue to focus on the biggest sea change in the online world since the advent of… well the internet.

Google Mobile- The Android Demo

Posted on December 14, 2007 by marc meyer

I’m back on the mobile kick as of late and thought everyone would like to see this video demo, for those who have not seen it. It is very very cool. Watch out iphone is all I can say! The maps feature is extraordinary.