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Last week I had the opportunity to speak about mobile marketing at the Tucson American Marketing Association’s April networking event. I thought it best to focus on two key components, the why and the how. More specifically, why these marketers should care about mobile and how they can integrate it into their current marketing plan. The presentation and some thoughts on it are below.

Mobile Marketing: 5 Reasons to Care & 7 Steps to Integrate
View more presentations from Michael Barber

5 Reasons Why You Should Care About Mobile

1. Massive opportunity now, as in this very second.

If you’re an agency (or brand alike), take note. Forrester Research estimated 2010 mobile spending to be $534 million back in 2009. Not a bad estimate considering there was no way they could have expected the meteoric growth of tablets (even Apple didn’t). However, it turns out brands actually invested just north of a billion dollars in mobile initiatives last year. Surprised?

If you’re an agency, you should be looking at those numbers like a kid in a candy store. They represent multiple additional revenue opportunities (given the right talent) including acting as a strategic adviser amid the highly fragmented mobile environment (more on that later) or helping your clients develop mobile apps, sites or campaigns.

If you’re a brand and you haven’t thought about or invested in mobile initiatives, you might want to think about kicking yourself first, then reading the rest of this post. ;)

2. Consumption patterns are changing, dramatically.

Digital consumption patterns are dramatically shifting given the rise of smartphone platforms and tablet devices.  Some food for thought:

  • By 2013, 50% of web traffic will come through mobile  devices.
  • Year over year, daily email consumption via a mobile browser increased a full 40%. You think consumers will continue to read your lame email campaigns. Wrong. Timely, targeted and relevant becomes even more important within a mobile environment.
  • 91% of mobile users report they consume social media on their device; 71% use their desktop.
  • Almost the same amount of US households access the internet via a smartphone as do those via their home internet connection.

3. Smartphone domination

Bye, bye feature phones. The most recent published stats on mobile phone sales tell the whole story. 45% of phones purchased in December 2010 were smartphones and by that time 63.2 million Americans owned a smartphone; a 60% increase when compared to the previous December.

What do these numbers mean? More and more US consumers are ditching the flip phones for an iPhone, Android or Blackberry device. The more smartphone users, the more likely they will leverage the fancy smartphone features to interact with their favorite brands.

4. Mobile now affects all channels

Pre iPhone, mobile barely affected other digital channels such as search, web and email. Sure, we had a miniscule amount of early adopters ferociously using their Blackberry’s, but marketers didn’t have a reason to care. There simply wasn’t enough consumer usage in the marketplace.

That has changed.

Mobile now affects every digital channel. From paid to organic search, to mobile banners and email consumption on mobile phones, the effects of mobile are far reaching.

5. Mobile is changing in-store behavior

If you think that just because your business operates within four walls that you are safe, think again. Smartphones give consumers easy ways to research products (including your competitor’s) and find better prices elsewhere.

On the bright side of things, mobile gives retail an opportunity to be sexy again. QR codes, apps with in-store integrations and augmented reality could all give consumers a reason to open the door.

7 Steps to Integrate Mobile into Your Current Marketing Plan

1. Determine your goals.

Mobile marketing can help brands do a lot of things. Taking the time to set your goals and objectives for your mobile initiative(s) and integrate those into your current marketing, or better yet your organization’s goals. It will not only help you sell your mobile plan to internal stakeholders, but it will provide a method to gauge the performance of that plan.

2. Understand where your customers (not your CEO) are & what they want.

Just because your CEO wants an app doesn’t mean your customers do. Chances are you already know who your customers are. Your job as a mobile marketer is to determine where you can start conversations with those customers within a mobile environment. Figure out where they are and then integrate appropriate mobile tactics.

3. Audit your content

Yeah, I know we all hate the word “audit”, but it may help you do less work in this case. You’ll want to audit your current digital content and figure out if it’s mobile friendly, what needs changing and how it can be optimized for mobile.

4. Perform a competitive analysis

This is marketing 101, but it’s worth a mention. Take a look at the competitive landscape and answer three important questions:

  1. What are my competitors doing?
  2. What aren’t my competitors doing?
  3. What opportunities exist to differentiate ourselves?

You may just find an insight or competitive advantage that could drive your mobile decision-making process.

5. Determine budget

Mobile can be expensive. You not only have to develop your mobile initiatives, but you must also support them over the long-haul. So, think about what you have, not what it will cost to build or do something, and work within those constraints.

Also, front load your budget. Costs associated with mobile tend to decrease once you’ve made the initial effort.

6. Decide on engagement channels

The mobile environment is highly fragmented. Unless you have deep pockets, you will not be able leverage every mobile opportunity. Figure out what you can afford and where you can play that will impact your consumers most.

7. Determine success metrics

Determine the metrics or KPIs that you are trying to move. Ensure by moving the needle within those metrics your efforts will help achieve the organization’s marketing or business goals.

8. Promote, promote, promote

The isn’t a Field of Dreams scenario. The single largest downfall of any mobile initiative is lack of awareness. Make sure you build a promotional plan as a part of your mobile initiatives.

What other reasons should give marketers pause & make them think again about integrating mobile? What other steps would you recommended for integrating mobile into the mix?

Meet My Followers with Michael BarberThis post is long, long overdue, so massive apologies to Kade for not taking the time to get it up earlier.

A few weeks ago I had the awesome opportunity to join Kade Dworkin on his meetmyfollowers podcast site. The concept for the podcast series is simple. Each day Kade posts a new interview with one of his social network followers. If you don’t know Kade, take some time to introduce yourself. He is a knowledgeable, down to earth type of guy who is sincerely interested in the happenings of your life. He has channeled this interest into meetmyfollowers and I love the concept.

Thanks again for having me, Kade. Check out my interview here, and introduce yourself to Kade if you don’t know him already.

aliveAt least I’m breathing
At least I’m alive
As long as I’m dreaming
Everything’s going to be all right

In my short 25 years on earth, I have been reminded how precious life is more this year than any other. Between losing one friend to a drug overdose, two friends to suicide and almost losing another to cancer, the fragility of life is ever present in my mind.

In the past, I often found myself thinking about the future. Thoughts about when will this happen or where will I be in 6 months, a year or 5 years down the road. I think it’s a marketer’s curse in life to be more forward thinking. While I doubt it’s not the only cursed profession, we are constantly being asked to build campaigns for the future, set strategy for next month, next quarter, next year or understand our consumer’s future opinions of our brands.

If there is anything the past 11 or so months have taught me, it is that future goals and plans are great to ponder and put to paper, but you never know what’s on the horizon. Life is fleeting .

So, in honor of Tweetsgiving, I’m thankful for today, for the ability to simply breathe in and out, be right here at this moment, writing this post and listening to Lady Gaga tell me about a Bad Romance.

I hope you all have a safe and restful Thanksgiving, and if have a couple of extra bucks to spare please donate to Epic Change’s Tweetsgiving by clicking on the button below.

tweetsgiving_blog_badge

Verse above by Eve 6.
Photo by BruceTurner.

balloonsAbout a year ago, I came across the story of Stephanie and Christian Nielson through a mutual friend and former colleague, Andrew Bagley. Stephanie, the popular “mommy” blogger behind the NieNie Dialogues, and her husband, Christian, were traveling back from a family trip when they were involved in a private airplane crash (Today Show story here). Their flight instructor was killed and both suffered serious burns; Stephanie’s being more extensive.

I’m not quite sure why, but I felt an immediate connection to Stephanie. It could have been because my first recollections of pain were from serious burns that I experienced as child or the passionate love for her children she illustrates through her posts that reminds me of my Mum’s love for my sister and I. Alas, it could have also been related to my general nature as a complete softy.

Regardless of why, I followed Stephanie and Christian’s recovery through Twitter conversations, her family members’ blogs and then Stephanie’s when she returned to writing a few months ago. Though I have never met Stephanie or Christian, I have often cheered their successes and shed a few tears during their set backs. It’s odd to have such deep feelings for people who you have never shared more than casual interactions through their writing, and one that can only be somewhat explained through one of my favorite blogger’s, Leisa Reichelt, theory of Ambient Intimacy. Leisa describes Ambient Intimacy as, “being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.

Social networks and the tools built around them are giving everyone participating levels of ambient intimacy with people we have never seen before. As Leisa mentions, Twitter gives us the chance to find out what people are doing at any given moment of the day, Flickr lets us see the world through other people’s eyes, event-based networks such as Upcoming show us where people might be going and Yelp gives us the likes and dislikes of everyone leaving reviews. We suddenly know more about individuals we follow than their own personal friends or family might now, and this creates significant levels of intimacy. Sometimes this intimacy can leave one feeling sad as David Armano wrote about when he heard about the passing of Megan Porter, and other times we feel uplifted as I felt when I read about Stephanie climbing a nearby mountain to celebrate one-year of life after the accident.

Ambient intimacy is an interesting theory and definitely needs more exploration. As social networks evolve, it will become more important not only to how humans interact on them, but also how brands apply the theory to humanize themselves.

What are you thoughts on ambient intimacy? Is it a bunch of hodgepodge or does it explain the emotions we feel for those who we only have a digital relationship with? How could brands apply this theory to humanize themselves across the social web?

(photo by Serge K. Feller)

UPDATE: Some 36 hours after I initially posted this letter, I received a voicemail from Cynthia, a member of US Airways’ Customer Relations team. Being on vacation didn’t provide any opportunities to call her back until a few minutes ago. During our call, she mentioned a couple policies and outside forces that contribute to their 45-minute baggage check in policy. Long story short, it is related to TSA’s and US Airways’ need to make sure all baggage can get through their systems before a flight departs.

Cynthia also apologized for my experience with the gate agent. She said that individual should have taken the chance to check the flight’s actual departure time (note: it left some 51 minutes late). She also issued us some vouchers to cover a small part of our expenses and asked that we give them a second chance. I appreciate her taking the time to reach out to me, explain what could have helped us make the flight and be sincerely apologetic for the inconvenience that we were caused. Even more impressive, it’s good to see their customer service team listening and responding to consumer complaints from blogs. I haven’t fully decided if I will give them another shot at my business, but this goes a long way to showing me they care about consumer’s  concerns and experiences on their airline.

Dear Doug,

My name is Michael Barber, and I am Dividend Miles member with over 30,000+ miles logged last year. I am writing you from approximately 33,000 feet on US Airways flight #16. This will be my last flight on your airline.

You see I shouldn’t be on this flight right now, but should be heading over the Atlantic for a family vacation in Italy. But alas, my girlfriend and I will be spending the night in New York City (not all that bad, I know) before continuing our journey tomorrow afternoon, providing us one less day for adventures in Italy and over $2,000 in additional expenses from rebooking our tickets, hotel, cab and food related costs. Here’s how we got here.

DSC_0038

We were originally booked on flight #12, PHX to JFK arriving at 5pm EST. We arrived at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport one hour and five minutes before our scheduled departure time of 8:52am and got up to the kiosk 42 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave. Apparently that is 3 minutes too late to check bags. I politely asked one of your customer service agents to ensure the flight was leaving on time and see if we could still make it. She quickly remarked “No”, pointed her finger at another line, said “Go over there to rebook”, and moved on to the next customer. I can’t say I am surprised at the exhilarating customer service she provided because this isn’t the first time your employees have treated me or passengers within earshot with a complete lack of simple respect.

It took us another 30 minutes before we reached the front of the second line only to be told that our original flight was over an hour delayed, that we probably could have got on the original flight had the first associate checked their computer, and we would be rebooked on flight #16 which left some six hours later. This effectively closed the door on any chance of making our connecting flight in New York. What’s worse, we were told that we couldn’t rebook to the following morning without paying for an entire new ticket.

You are going to need to explain to me some things. Why can’t you allow passengers the freedom to change their travel plans within reason? Southwest does. If we could have re-booked to the following day, it would have saved us a couple thousand dollars. Why is that your airline can’t get bags on a plane that leaves in 42 minutes? It is a union requirement, logistical issue? I can understand that if we walked up 15, 20, hell even 35 minutes before our flight that checking bags wouldn’t be available. But, come on 42 minutes. That’s only 3 minutes too late, some 180 seconds. Southwest (the other major PHX airline) would have gladly checked us in, reminded us of the time requirements, and made sure our bags made the flight, all the while making us feel valued as customers. Why can’t your airline do the same? Had this been the only incident with your airline over the past few years, then I could cut you some slack. It simply was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.

Look I get that your industry is under siege at the moment. Between the floundering global economy, decreased demand and oil prices last year, the airline industry is hurting. It’s widely known that if oil prices were to hit say north of $200/barrel (and this is entirely possible), the industry would be decimated. I also get that airfares haven’t increased with inflation over the past 20 or so years, so there will be complaining from me about increased prices and fees. However, these issues provide ZERO excuses for your company’s lack of focus on your customer. You NEED to give travelers a reason to choose your airline over another. Whether that be friendly communication from your customer-facing employees or checking the bags of a traveler who is a few minutes late, find a way to make your customers smile because we don’t forget these experiences.

Between the incidents with your employees and your airline, the ridiculous online/offline fee structure for baggage and your complete lack of providing any value to your customers, I simply won’t spend my or my employer’s hard earned money for travel on your airline until I hear or read about some significant customer service improvements. I will do my best to fly with Southwest, JetBlue and Delta/Northwest. Between those three airlines, I can get anywhere in the world from Phoenix.

Should you take the time to read this letter and have questions or comments, I live around the corner from your office and would be happy to grab a cup of coffee, lunch or would even be satisfied with a few comments below. Thanks for your time, and I look forward to the day when I can update this post about a better experience with US Airways.

Sincerely,
Michael Barber

(photo by me)