Mobile Experience

Beyond Eyeballs

In a world where consumer choice rules, it is surprising that marketers insist that the way to create awareness is to stimulate viewership.  Consumers are bombarded with well over 10,000 messages a day.  A "viewership" approach to awareness creation is a luxury only the largest marketing budgets can afford.  A more efficient approach would be for marketers to move beyond eyeballs to the proactive and deliberate delivery of experiences that would be noticed, individualized and of some sustainable value. 

Increasing Share of Experience Creates Loyalty

A common theme stemming from the fourth iO Mobile Experience Leadership Roundtable held at CTIA in Orlando was that insufficient investment is being made within the mobile ecosystem to understand the consumer and what they really want to do.  While this is tyupical of early stage markets, we should not forget that this same lack of customer understanding contributed not insignificantly to the dampening of the first generation e-businesses. 

High Value - Low Complexity Mobile Marketing

Why does mobile marketing need to be so complex?  It's a question I have pondered numerous times, and so it was with great relief I found that I wasn't alone when reading The Mobile Marketing Maelstrom. 

It is true that marketing campaigns delivered through an individual's mobile device must be careful not to violate permissions and security, but this should be the consideration for any marketing campaign using any medium, channel or touchpoint.  What is interesting from this article's discussion of different research studies (Enpocket, Forrester, WhitePages.com) is that if the focus of the campaign or ad is relevant to the individual's activity, then it is usually allowed, and in some cases, gratefully accepted. 

Mobile + Marketing = Service

Alvin Toffler gave us our first glimpse into today's participative commerce.  He coined the term "prosumerism" -- where consumers participate in the production of the products they buy and consume. We are seeing that today everywhere in the growth of new "user generated content" categories and new "social mobile networking" routes to market (BizReport). 

With the role of the consumer changing, I am struck by how little marketing practices have changed.  In the mainstream, and thankfully not with the more innovative practitioners, marketing is still thought of as a series of campaigns to drive "value promotions" to a target consumer who may or may not define value in the same way as the marketer.  The only requirement for a "best practice" is to get an "opt in" or "opt out" agreement.