I just read this great article by Thom Kennon and thought it would be worthwhile to re-publish it on my blog to spread the word. This is an absolute must read for every marketer. It is a wake-up call for all those who still think that mobile marketing can be “the fifth wheel” of a marketing strategy or, worse still, that mobile marketing does not need to feature at all.

Making mobile the heart of multichannel marketing in next planning cycle

Thom Kennon is vice president of strategy at Wunderman

I bet you have become as weary as me when, each year, usually during the post-Thanksgiving prediction season, we start reading those pieces about “This year [coming year] is definitely the Year of Mobile.”

In the spirit of this tradition, we offer up a short pop quiz to help you calculate exactly when your own personal year of mobile was:

Diageo launches searchable night life, entertainment database and mobile on-demand service – NiteFly. Available to subscribers in select British cities, NiteFly lets opt-in punters stumble from clubs at closing hours, ping the service from their mobile phones and quickly find what’s next on the drinking and dining dance card for an after-hours lark.

OK – guess the year. 2009? 2007? Maybe back in the dark ages of 2003? Nope. It was pre-digital apocalypse – 2000. Although I do not know why they trusted me and us, I lead the digital marketing team that concocted it.

Case and point being, whether you are a brand or a marketer, at this point in the game it is highly recommended that you sort out your own personal year of mobile – and get on with it.

Chances are you have a similar story, perhaps even of similar vintage.

Even for those of us still awaiting some great, communal customer-led surge into the mobile channel (hint: stop that), there are, of course, things left to do, frontiers to brave, case studies to create, business to be won and customers to be captured.   Many, I would boldly suggest, through mobile.

We’re gonna need a new map
So, what is your plan?

Unless you are a dedicated mobile agency, provider or channel specialist, when you sit down to plan your – or your client’s – marketing campaign calendar, how often do you start with mobile?

I am suggesting we not simply move “mobile” to the front of the planning queue from its current position as the last box ticked. Perhaps you start each new planning cycle with a simple, must-answer question: “What’s mobile’s role in my all-channel plans and how will it be integrated?”

Here is an example. You are a credit card issuer who traditionally focused mostly on direct mail, digital display and search engine marketing when it came to hitting your acquisition numbers.

After a duck-and-cover year (for many of us), you are now ready to venture from the bunker and resume with the important work of getting new customers. What if you modified your planning process by asking yourself this, instead of where does mobile – maybe – fit within my digital strategy:
 
What’s the role of mobile within my overall marketing strategy? Heck, let us be specific. What’s the role of mobile within my above-the-line and advertising strategy?  What’s the role of mobile in my integrated search strategy? My out-of-home and print strategies? How about my retail, merchandising and customer/partner marketing programs and campaigns?

Pretty soon your card customer acquisition campaigns will all start including mobile as a primary call to action for your out-of-home ads. As a critical push/pull from Web with SMS links to register or buy. Even incentivized “txt to a friend” offers tapping mobile’s viral reach, ease and affect. Oh, of course, optimizing for mobile search visibility to capture mobile searchers for bank branches.    

See where I am heading? You need a new map to get you there. A map that lets you see where, how, and when mobile fits everywhere into the plan. A map which, perhaps, presumes that mobile’s role is not at the end or even at the beginning of your all-up campaign channel and media planning process. It is at the heart.

New model planning
As we all emerge from the same bunker as our credit card brand colleague above, whether we are marketing soda, mobile phones, insurance, hamburgers, or luxury autos it is not too far of a stretch to suggest that “digital” – in all its components and expressions – can, should, must now live at the heart of our fully integrated marketeering strategy.

And, at the heart of our digital channel and media strategy, we boldly place mobile.  Call it an exercise, call it a lark. 

Call it a new way of thinking inside-out, about how we plan, implement and optimize our all-channel/all-media marketing. Call it a new planning model that better fits with the brave new world we inhabit as we improvise, invent and innovate our way towards wringing the maximum efficiency from all our marketing spend.

As presumptuous and vain as it might seem, things might start to look something like this …

What do we do now
OK, OK, I know this is a lot to suggest in one sitting. Toss a little water in your face, walk around a little, take a break. OK, we ready? Let us continue.

As we shift our above-the-line budgets from channels and media focused on impressions and clicks to more organic and responsive messaging to ignite discovery and sharing, I am suggesting that digital has every right to sit at the center of our planning process and models. And there is mobile, in the center of the plan model.

If you need a really persuasive reason for the board or your boss or you client, try this: When it comes to all-channel marketing nothing has changed the digital marketer’s playbook more than the emergence, adoption and increasing affordability of the mobile Web since search changed everything the last time.

To put this in an historic frame, before that, arguably, it was the birth of data-driven direct mail. Before that, and I know you beat me there – television.

The mobile Web. It is that big. What this means for marketers – especially for those amongst us who have yet to experience their own personal year of mobile – is this: you have no excuse for staying on the side lines.

Assuming you have been busy over the past decade getting really good at digital content strategy, search optimization, online CRM, ecommerce and response analytics you will be fine. Your mobile strategy and your digital strategy just became one and the same thing.
 
Pockets are everywhere and so are purses, briefcases and those weird holster things – and most of them have mobile devices in them. The simple fact is that there will soon be more than 1 billion Web-enabled mobile devices in global circulation and every one of them is attached to a potential customer of yours or mine.

So, as you plan for next year and beyond and chart the media, channel and touch point mix that will deliver your most efficient return on reaching specific business and marketing targets such as sales, downloads, visits, usage, referrals, repeats, renewals, average basket size, in-store traffic and bottom-line results, ask yourself: how many of those could use mobile as an essential touch point or consumption point in the mix?

Chances are, there’s not a campaign you could think of in 2010 and beyond – above the line, below the line and through the line – that could not be boosted, anchored, amplified or even saved by asking mobile to do its job. Mobile is at the heart of your new marketing model. 

Happy personal year of mobile – to repeat and first-time callers alike.

Thom Kennon is vice president of strategy at relationship marketing agency Wunderman New York. Reach him at thom.kennon@wunderman.com

Today the overwhelming majority of people with mobile phones use it to communicate with each other. Interactive communication is the most predominant, most consistent, and most active use of the mobile today.

The mobile phone is a communication and social tool. The mobile has given a freedom to the consumer to be contactable, organise, gather knowledge, to fill downtime. For brands to be successful in mobile they need to identify and tap into these ideals.  

Many today do not utilise the moments of interactive communication to inform consumers of products, services and opportunities. The most common approach is to create another mode of opted-in, one way communication.

Is no one in our mobile ecosystem reading the statistics about how people are actually using their phones?  As an industry, why are we not tapping into the primary use of the phone today – interactive communication – for marketing purposes?

Certainly, mobile ad networks have been successful, and will continue to be successful, for the right clients with the right campaign. Most support the traditional method of marketing – audience reach.

The question we really need to begin to ask is how can we create advertising that people want to receive and act upon as part of their daily interactive communication activity?  How can we position messages that influence but not in an assumptive and intrusive way?

While they are talking, while they are texting, while they are gathering and sharing information and knowledge, how can we leverage the personalised and contextualised process of interactive communication to help inform people of products, services and opportunities that appeal specifically to them at that particular moment in time?

For mobile advertising to reach its potential we need to be less conscious of what we want to tell people and more conscious of what they are doing, saying, their environment and what they may find useful. It is in the specific moment of interaction that a message will resonate the loudest and have the greatest impact.

Directory Publishers Can Beat Google & Co. To Lead In Local Mobile Search & Services If They Provide Actionable Answers

In-Brief: Directory publishers are better positioned to deliver compelling location-based information and services than rival portal providers and search engines.

At first glance it may appear that the nimble newcomer Web 2.0 companies bursting on the scene are best-positioned to benefit from the buzz around location-based services. However, a closer look reveals that it is the directory publishers – namely, the established location information providers we know from print and the Internet – who have the corporate DNA and the track record to deliver compelling location-based services and – more importantly – monetise them through mobile advertising.

Granted, it may be early days but, in my view, that is all the more reason why directory publishers must prepare to seize the mobile opportunity. Indeed, with revenue streams for paper directory and published products in near-term decline, and an increasingly fragmented market for online services, mobile is the only channel that offers real and sustainable growth. Without a doubt, mobile is going to play an important and valuable role in reinforcing the presence of directory publishers and their product offering, and deliver a significant supplementary source of new revenue.

So how do directory publishers get there from here? To capitalise on this emerging opportunity, publishers must first create a consumer relevant mobile offering that can be delivered to a mass audience.

Put simply, directory publishers must “think” mobile. It is not just another screen, as some in the industry suggest. I contend the mobile environment is different for two main reasons.

First, neither the devices – nor the offers – can be classified as “one-size-fits-all.” The diverse range of mobile devices are all extremely varied in their capabilities, user interfaces, core features, computing power, memory capacity, and operating systems. To complicate matters, new devices are continually being introduced to the market that must be supported and factored into the service equation. As a result, directory publishers must develop offers that are accessible to a large potential user base across a broad range of devices, without incurring overbearing maintenance and support costs.

Second, mobile is about finding information on the fly. Consumers may browse on their PCs, but they expect a vastly different experience on their mobile phones. On mobile, requests and search queries are more likely related to the consumer’s individual circumstances or situation – in, short, their context. What’s more, they expect immediate answers and demand actionable results, all of which require customisation.

It’s easy to assume that only made-for-mobile companies – such as portal providers and search engine companies – have what it takes to cash in on the mobile opportunity. However, these players share a fatal shortcoming that plays in the favour of directory publishers. They lack a highly developed and effective sales force. Fortunately for directory publishers, this is a key strength in their competitive arsenal and one that I suggest represents the highest barrier to entry to competitors.

Put simply, if publishers can generate usage to mobile then their sales force will be able to monetise it. I therefore strongly advise publishers to sharpen their focus on mobile and do all they can to increase usage of this channel. Developing features for the mobile platform that will ultimately allow their sales force to demonstrate proven value is more than a winning strategy; it lays the groundwork for a slew of services that deliver consumers a genuinely relevant and useful end-user experience – a deliverable competitors are still struggling with. After all, the quality of answers a service delivers can only be as good as the information the service provider has collected and categorised – and I’ve shown directory publishers have a head start on both counts.

But this isn’t the only ace in publishers’ hands. They can also draw competitive advantage from:

• An established market position and existing brand recognition amongst consumers.
• Content that is focused towards a buyer and therefore ideal for a mobile user.
• A well developed classification structure and taxonomy, which is well understood by consumers.
• A depth of location knowledge and understanding of location hierarchy, which enables highly relevant local based results to be presented.

These combined strengths empower publishers to define the ideal service offering for mobile. But they must be careful not to lose sight of the consumer. I have only too often seen publishers overlook the end-user of their services, with severe consequences! It is essential that directory services focus on efficiently delivering information and results that empower consumers, provide them choice, and support an actionable outcome. These actions vary but can be divided into the following categories: call, share (with friends/family), save, book or buy.

With the ground rules for a successful mobile service offering established, what’s the next best step for directory providers determined to harness mobile? This depends to a large degree on the service the publisher wants to deliver and – more importantly – on the publisher’s own in-house capabilities.

Creating and customising mobile services is no easy task, and directory publishers should be careful not to overestimate their capabilities or underestimate the amount of planning and effort involved. They may have deep understanding of print and Internet, but this knowledge is hardly transferable to mobile. Put simply, the specialist nature of the mobile environment and technical challenges associated with developing, implementing and supporting services, are competencies that most publishers simply do not have.

On paper, directory providers possess the capabilities that put them in pole position when it comes to monetizing mobile. In practice, directory publishers nonetheless lack experience in the conceptualization and creation of compelling mobile services that satisfy the criteria I have identified.

If directory publishers are to deliver a market-ready mobile offering, then it makes business sense for them to outsource services development to companies that have mobile in their DNA.

Today, we are seeing a trend to outsourcing as more of the world’s leading directory publishers partner with specialist companies for core technology and development skills. These directory publishers realise that outsourcing key capabilities does not result in them losing control. To the contrary, outsourcing frees valuable resources, allowing publishers to develop a more flexible approach to market and deliver products and services with far shorter lead times.

In line with this trend, a number of companies have sharpened their focus on helping directory publishers extend their offer to mobile. Granted, each has its area of expertise, but directory publishers should choose partners that are specialised in three key areas simultaneously:

A winning strategy is one where the directory publisher and specialised partner have a clear division of talents and responsibilities. In this scenario the directory publisher outsources application development, implementation, and operation. Search and presentation rules, business listings, and advertising content are managed internally by the publisher.

This approach enables publishers to focus their resources on what they do best: Wielding their highly-developed sales force to wring more value out of mobile. This allows them to deliver benefits for themselves, in the form of monetiseable services and advertising, and for their customers, in the form of useful and relevant results and answers. Leveraging the expertise of a specialised partner ensures the delivery of a robust commercial channel.

With this check-list in mind, I have reviewed the players and value propositions on the marketplace. A company high on my radar is Mobile People, a local mobile search and advertising solutions provider whose capabilities mix includes significant strengths in the three key areas I outlined above. Notably, Mobile People’s client list includes directory publishers including Yell, Sensis, and World Directories – publishers widely considered to be among the most active – and successful – in the mobile space.

Mobile People is keenly focused on developing and operating mass market orientated services. To accomplish this, they port and operate services for large numbers of devices. The company, which has established its own User Lab to engage end users throughout the design process to evaluate the desirability of new ideas and possible solutions, views usability and performance as a top priority. This emphasis on the end-user experience pays off in rich features that delight the customer, drive additional usage, and move the mobile Internet a huge step closer toward becoming an indispensable part of our daily routine.

Location-based information and services are indisputably a potent way to generate value. Like all industry sectors, mobile will pay the biggest dividends for the companies who harness it first. Directory publishers currently have an important head start on portal providers and search engine providers, but these competitors are stepping up efforts to close this gap. For this reason, directory publishers are well advised to move fast and recognise their limitations. Chief among these is their inability to deliver an end-to-end mobile solution on their own.

Once directory publishers are clear about their true capabilities – and developing mobile services that deliver actionable results is not one of them – then they should choose a specialised company to partner with and get down to the business of monetizing mobile. As I said, reduced barriers to entry and shortened times to market mean the mobile space is not only crowded; it has become fiercely competitive.

Trial and error is a risky business strategy that costs time, resources, and shareholders’ patience. High performance directory publishers such as Eniro, Sensis, World Directories, and Yell demonstrate that collaborating with specialist companies is not only a smart move; it delivers sustainable results.

Published on mSearchGroove: www.msearchgroove.com