Why brands and agencies aren’t paying enough attention to mobile marketing, and why they should.
It’s almost impossible to avoid hearing about the power and potential of mobile these days. With Apple and Google currently battling over the mobile advertising space, it’s difficult to deny that mobile presents a great opportunity for brand marketers and advertising agencies alike.
Nowhere is this truer than Asia, of course. Asia has the most users, and the best device penetration of any other region in the world, and estimates hold that two-thirds of the world’s mobile device users are in Asia. Asia has scale, and thanks to numerous innovative techniques and campaigns, Asia is the current leader in terms of creativity and technology. In terms of reach, mobile is virtually shoulder to shoulder with television in Asia, and in at least one case (Singapore), mobile has exceeded TV’s reach – 97% versus 94%.
Mobile advertising also offers advantages not easily available in traditional advertising, including personalization. Mass media requires that advertising be tailored for as wide an audience as possible, whereas the technology that underlies mobile makes it easier to identify individual users, and modify or personalize the advertising experience for them. There are multiple modes of access available with a single mobile device, especially with today’s smartphones that offer several channels, including SMS, MMS, email, WAP/internet, voice, location-based ads, and more. This also means that mobile offers interactive advertising opportunities, with marketers able to offer the consumer almost instantaneous access to information, advocacy, and even purchasing.
With mobile offering such an attractive value proposition, why are brands and agencies not flocking to run mobile campaigns? Part of the problem is mindset: much of the hype surrounding mobile is still fixed on the technology, or sets out mobile marketing as the hero of the piece. It is necessary to realize that mobile marketing and advertising are best positioned as one part of an integrated marketing mix, leveraging on traditional media to drive attention to the more interactive, more personalized mobile ads – or vice versa, as the case may be.
Cost is another issue, together with measurement. In this brand new space, the lack of standardized measurement and easy costing makes it difficult to sell mobile as an option to clients, who are more familiar with the ROI offered by traditional channels. Without effective measurement, it can be difficult to ascertain the efficacy of any given mobile campaign, another reason not to run mobile in isolation. Pairing it with other channel drivers can make the intangible results of mobile advertising more visible, and once clients understand the value that mobile can offer, the sky’s the limit. Naturally, it is also important not to oversell the value of mobile marketing – simply running an ad on a mobile platform is not enough to make it compelling to the audience, who have expectations and concerns (particularly around privacy) that are unique to the mobile space.
In the final analysis, mobile marketing can be very attractive from the brand/agency perspective, provided that some very fundamental issues can be addressed. Once costs go down, and measurement is addressed, once mindsets about mobile marketing have shifted to where it is a valuable part of the marketing mix, then there will be space for amazing ideas to come forth. A look around Asia, where mobile marketing is slowly reaching that state, should be enough to demonstrate that it is an effective way to reach customers. Done right, mobile marketing can be the basis for fostering strong customer relationships – and at the end of the day, for marketers, technologists, service providers and agencies alike, customers are the most important consideration.
