The Bloom Report

People have been surfing the web on computers for two decades and have come to expect that every company will have a website; it will be easy to navigate, provide necessary information, and work on the computer (PC or Mac) from which they choose to access the site. For those who access websites via a mobile device, accessing many websites can prove to be a frustrating exercise as most companies have yet to grasp the importance of a compelling mobile presence, if any at all.

A few stats about mobile web usage:

• The United States ranks first in mobile Internet penetration with 40.4 million of us using the mobile Internet in May 2008. This is up from 29.7 million last year and 22.4 million in July 2006.
• The NFL page on ESPN Mobile had more traffic than the NFL page on the PC version of the ESPN website.
• Bank of America has signed up more than 1 million mobile banking users since the launch one year ago. There were 4 million mobile sessions in May 2008 and on peak days more than 100,000 customer use mobile banking.

The stats clearly show that a mobile presence is of growing importance and not just for large international brands. On a recent trip to New York City, I was craving a smoothie and decided to check the store locator of a smoothie store chain from the browser on my BlackBerry. Much to my disappointment, the company did not (and still doesn’t) have a mobile optimized version of their site, making it impossible to find a local store. Not only was this a bad experience that day, but I have now mentally checked that company off my list of mobile sites to check and am unlikely to do so when traveling in the future.

A mobile site is extremely easy to develop and can be done so in a relatively short amount of time, especially when compared to traditional web development. Coming soon, best practices for developing your mobile website.

Marketing

We are fortunate to work with a number of tier-1 brands and agencies on their mobile initiatives but we often meet with prospective clients and agencies that have yet to grasp the true power of mobile. An important component of moving the mobile marketing conversation along involves separating the notion of a campaign and a strategy.

We often hear that mobile funds are still coming out of the “test” fund and thus long-term commitments (let alone a comprehensive strategy) just aren’t going to happen in the near term. This is analogous to running a single print ad, or online banners, for just one day. Is that really a true measure of the worth of the medium?

The most obvious benefit of adding a mobile call-to-action to a piece of creative is that it allows consumers to engage with the brand immediately. You’ve caught their attention and they responded. Excellent. The unfortunate part of this scenario is that the relationship often ends there. Maybe there are a few mobile alerts related to the product or service, but that rarely extends to other products that the consumer might be interested in learning more about.

Basic Example
Let’s say I’m watching television and a trailer for a movie is shown that I am interested in seeing, but it won’t be out for two months. The agency has done their work and a text call-to-action is included at the end of the trailer asking me to text to be notified when the movie hits theaters. I send in my text and expect to receive a reminder in a couple of months. Fairly standard stuff here.

Taking it a bit further, they could send me a thank you text and include a link to a WAP (mobile Internet) site with additional information about the movie, mobile wallpapers, ringtones, contests, etc. Now they are starting to learn about me (my location based on mobile number and genre of movies that interest me) and can begin to build a profile.

That profile can then be used to begin cross-promoting upcoming movies that I haven’t explicitly expressed interest in, but may like based on my interests. Through a number of efforts, this profile can become as detailed as the marketer wishes. (Note: We’ve built opt-in profiles that include extensive information about location, name, interests, and permission to be contacted by the client.)

In the example above, the movie marketers have taken a simple text “campaign” and have begun to incorporate it into a much wider mobile strategy that bridges different product groups and provides long-term value (information) to the consumer. This is just one simple example of the power of mobile and it can be applied to just about any industry.

General, Marketing