Posts Tagged "Smartphone"

That’s the phrase which popped into my mind upon seeing this January 14, 2010 post on MobileMarketingWatch, titled “Tracking Mobile Ad Click Rates: Symbian Rules.”

Mobile advertising, just like traditional web ads, is an exciting area because of the reach and audience segmentation possibilities.  In parallel with significant investment moves by Google and Apple to get involved via acquisition, the hype around mobile ads is at a fever pitch right now.  I’m afraid customers and investors who fixate here are in for some disappointment down the line, however.

Click through rate, or CTR, is the measure by which mobile and traditional online ads alike are gauged, and the article highlights global research showing that the unlikely Symbian platform is the leader in offering high CTRs, even in the U.S. where it’s not as dominant in terms of market share.

Clearly, a lot of advertisers are thinking “I have to be on Symbian” yet the hype and press would never point an ad buyer at this platform as opposed to the iPhone or a Google Android device.

Advertisers need to remember as well, where are those who click through going to?  A mobile optimized landing page or website?  A smartphone application download?  A coupon or bar code for redemption at the point of sale?  If the answer to any of these is “none of the above” and instead “we’re just happy to have lots of eyeballs seeing our message,” a huge opportunity to drive sales, engender loyalty, or cultivate brand affinity is wasted.

Viewing mobile as an engagement channel that allows businesses to create highly personal interactions that induce action on the part of customers is the real opportunity represented by mobile advertising.  It needs to be viewed as just one part of the value equation, which is why marketers are increasingly coming to Interactive Mediums to leverage our mobile customer engagement platform and expertise around creating effective mobile dialogues with customers across SMS text messaging, mobile web, apps and social media.

Key to a successful mobile strategy is understanding how your customers can be best served in the mobile channel.  Yesterday we blogged about UPS and its research which showed that a native Blackberry application provided its targeted customers a better experience than prior efforts or those offered by competitors.

Homefinder.com drew a similar conclusion when analysis of mobile website traffic showed most browsers used iPhones (that’s a photo of Reuters’ ticker in Times Square displaying the news).  Leading with a focus on the mobile customer experience is no longer emerging as a best practice – it just is.

That’s what marketers should take away from this news today about Target, a retailer ahead of the curve when it comes to mobile channel marketing.  As we have discussed here before, mapping your strategy to the mobile channel identifies the most logical first steps into mobile marketing.  Target has done that across all elements of the mobile customer experience; SMS text messaging, mobile smartphone applications and the mobile web.

It is equally important to ensure ongoing analysis of these efforts.  This can take the form of metrics around specific programs, such as response rates and transactions, but forward thinking marketers like Target take it a step further.  Target integrates a feedback step into many elements of its mobile marketing programs to see what works, what doesn’t – and uses this qualitative and quantitative data to drive better mobile marketing decisions:

“ To overcome these challenges (of getting into the mobile space), we are focused on understanding our guests’ needs by creating mechanisms that allow them to provide us with feedback.

Then, we use this feedback to inform our decision-making and to optimize and improve our mobile tools.”

In practice, marketers need to consider partners that offer this capability in a manner that closely relates to the mobile interactions being evaluated, and offers the greatest reach possible.  Interactive Mediums’ Engagement Platform offers SMS text message based survey capabilities that allow multiple questions to be posed to consumers and answered in real time – using common feature phones carried by virtually every consumer.