This post was written by Kasey Skala, the owner of Interactive Revolution – a communications and new media consulting firm in Minneapolis. His experience includes work in beauty & healthcare, education, finance, nonprofit and sports & entertainment. Additionally, he spent time as a sports journalist at a small daily. He currently blogs at The Electric Waffle and iFinance. You can find him on Twitter at @kmskala.
Last week when I was listening to a presentation put on by MIMA, I mentioned that I believe the talk around mobile is a lot of hype. Hype I don’t believe in. Let me be perfectly clear, I thi
nk mobile is a highly effective medium. However, the “potential” being associated with the mobile platform, in my opinion, is a bit premature.
Again, the mobile platform can be quite effective for businesses. After all, the mobile device is the one item that most people carry on them at all times. So it would make sense to focus your attention on mobile, right?
One big misconception, and one that can easily be countered, is the idea that a small percentage of mobiles phones are considered “smartphones.” But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here – mobile doesn’t necessarily need to be smartphone-focused.
Mobile marketing started back around 2000 – 2001, when it really caught steam for a few years, but then phased away (in a purely “trending” sense) around 2006-2007. It’s only due to the development of the iPhone and Droid that hype has returned.
So back in the early 2000s, we had SMS marketing. The beauty of SMS, which I feel is still relevant, is that it’s essentially like email marketing. It’s quick and we’re able to measure it quite easily. You have users “opt-in” and you simply push strategic content out to a highly targeted audience, allowing for users to “opt-out” at any time. Pretty painless, right?
Imagine you’re a bar or restaurant. What better way to promote events and specials? The fact that you know how many people you’re reaching and the fact that they’re at least partially interested (otherwise they’d opt-out) is highly valuable information. SMS is effective (if done properly) for any industry. Put it this way, there’s a reason American Idol and other big brands continue to utilize SMS.
As technology and mobile devices evolved and got smarter and faster, we’ve switched to MMS marketing. While SMS could essentially be considered text marketing, with MMS, we’ve traveled quite a distance. With the introduction of smartphones, mobile marketing has been taken to a whole new level. With this opportunity and power, however, I think there are a lot of misconceptions – which ultimately lead me to believe the mobile trend is more hype than anything.
Why I don’t believe the hype & what we’re doing wrong with mobile
- Mobile is NOT social. We need to stop thinking that it is.
- How effective is mobile web marketing? What’s the conversion compared to platform-based web marketing or SMS?
- We access information and share content via mobile, but do we want to be marketed via mobile?
- Things get lost in the clutter.
- Marketing is targeted, but is it relevant?
- Browsing on mobile improving, but not ideal
The type of mobile marketing that’s getting the most hype is location-based markerting, with Foursquare and Gowalla being labled as the next “big thing.” A few things about location-based markerting:
Why neither will work…right now
- Too much noise
- Lack of knowledge – business usage
- Lack of acceptance amongst “general” population
Why it can work….eventually
- Consumers want to be rewarded
- Consumers enjoy the “chase”, competition
- Inexpensive & low maintanence.
Another area of mobile that is of high interest to me is augmented reality (AR). Like location-based marketing, I feel we’re a year or so away from digging into AR as a means of mobile marketing; however, I think there’s an incredible amount of opportunity if businesses figure out how to utilize.
I’m not arguing that mobile doesn’t have the potential to be a major player in 2010. In the past few years, we’ve already seen great advancements within the space. All the stars are beginning to line up and we’ve finally been able to have the key ingredients – technology, access, acceptance. Again, mobile marketing has and will continue to be an effective practice. SMS is not going away, MMS is not going away. We’ll continue to find new and creative ways to use the mobile device to reach our audiences.
However, I liken mobile to the hybrid phases with automobiles: we saw the technology and we jumped on the first models; we realized there were ways to improve the models and starting proclaiming hybrids as the next movement; the technology has continued to improved but it hasn’t lived up to the craze.
[...] One True Sentence – I had commented that I felt mobile was a lot of hype and Rebecca Denison reached out and asked if I’d be interested in elaborating. One of the benefits of mobile is that it’s incredibly easy to measure, and knowing that Rebecca is a huge measurement and analytics guru, what better platform to post on than her blog. [...]