The Bloom Report

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.

As marketers, we are inundated with a virtually unlimited number of opportunities to allocate our budgets, but how do we measure those expenditures in areas such as television, print, outdoor, and events? Are your cinema ads and coffee-cup sleeves really driving sales?

The answer isn’t easy, but one tool that is beginning to make inroads is mobile marketing, not only as an activation mechanism in the aforementioned media placements, but also as a tool to measure non-mobile media. Are you still with me?

Basic Use Case: You sell widgets (not the marketing kind) and want to run a print campaign in five magazines to drive sales and brand awareness. Great, but at the end of the campaign how do you truly measure the effectiveness of all of your hard work? Guess? Look for website traffic spikes that could be attributed to a variety of things (PR, events, etc.) not associated with your print campaign? Run expensive market research studies? The answer is much easier. Add a text call-to-action.

Each magazine (or any creative execution) can be tagged with a unique keyword that is easily measured. From there, the opportunities for tracking are only limited by your imagination. Please follow along.

• Prospect sees the text call-to-action in your print ad in magazine #1 and sends a text for more information.

• We now know what magazine drove the action and the area code of their mobile phone.

• The reply text message could then ask them if they would like additional information sent to them via email. If they respond, we now have the keyword associated with the specific media placement, their area code, and email. You can continue this process offering premiums, contest entries, coupons, or even direct the prospect to your local widget dealer.

Now you have a real measurement tool for your marketing activities. From here, it’s time to go back and compare the various keyword/media placements and decide if tweaking is in order. Maybe magazine #5 just isn’t getting the same response as the other four and it’s time to adjust accordingly. Perhaps you find that a majority of respondents are coming from a specific geography and you should run more local activity.

The tools for measuring media are available, it’s just a matter of integrating the latest tools into your campaigns.

The sheer number of promotional mobile marketing campaigns is mind blowing and the number grows on a daily basis. However, there is a disconnect between these promotional efforts and what should be the ultimate goal, driving sales for the clients business. Traditional promotional campaigns are often justified as a brand awareness effort, as it can be difficult to measure the effectiveness of sports marketing, television commercials, guerilla stunts, contests, and the like. As marketers, we need to realize that the mobile phone now offers a response mechanism that enables compelling engagement opportunities and detailed metrics for efforts that were formerly static experiences with little, if any, opportunity for measurement.

Whatever the end goal of your campaign (sales, email newsletter sign-ups, product sampling, etc.), the mobile phone provides the only truly immediate means to engage with a brand in response to a marketing message. Whether it’s in-stadium events, television, print, etc., including a text call-to-action makes sense.

Imagine watching a car commercial on television and you are impressed with the vehicle and would like to learn more, but you aren’t going to jump off the couch immediately to do research online. Wouldn’t it be great if you could text CARNAME to SHORTCODE and receive a response asking for your email address or a link to a WAP (mobile Internet) site? Great, you’ve caught my attention, I’ve responded, and now the information is waiting in my email for when I’m ready to take a look. From the marketers’ perspective, there is a goldmine of information to be had as well. This can be done in a number of ways, including tracking by unique keywords, mobile phone area code, and comparing spikes in requests to specific marketing events or media placements.

In the not-too-distant future, it will be difficult to believe that we once spent millions of dollars on marketing campaigns that were one-sided affairs with no way for the prospect to respond to the message we spent so much trying to communicate.