VIA.

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Hooked
Where KPN recently announced a price increase in mobile data (in Dutch), Base explicitly took the opposite road. They announced new bundles (in Dutch, here at ZDnet) where over a certain limit, you don’t pay extra anymore. The maximum data cost is set at 15 euro, which is not very expensive in my opinion, and I’m pretty sure that this will reel in a bunch of (young) smartphone users to get that data subscription. Once you have it, you’re hooked. I personally got it as a 3-month promotion with my smartphone, and I’m an avid user ever since.

Marketing needs online consumers
These are interesting but difficult times for mobile providers, and a whole lot of their actions have a direct influence on the usefulness of the mobile channel in a marketing strategy. Where the mobile internet is a great service that providers can offer, it directly cannibalizes on their other products/cashcows. Texting? There’s an app for that. Calling? For that too (with some obvious limitations). Providers are going to need some serious thinking and data-crunching to decide which strategy is the way to go… And that’s exactly what the people at KPN & Base are going to do: comparing the effects of their differing market strategies, and decide which one works best. If all turns out well, everyone is constantly connected very soon, bringing about a whole new era, with new challenges for everyone, and marketers in particular.

If you have an opinion on where we are going with the mobile internet, don’t hesitate to contact me at @eliasveris, I’m extremely interested in what you have to say!

Ipad owners watch YouTube movies (87%), catch up TV (74%), view live tv (34%) or check out vimeo movies (10%). iPads are used for  internet browsing (98%), email (94%), gaming (79%), social (78%), … but only 45% really use their device for business/work purposes.

For the cancellation I called the regular free customer service telephone number. After a couple of minutes a call agent picked up the phone. I explained my situation and asked for the cancellation of my adsl-subscription. After hearing that, his tone of voice changed immediately and he said I had to call a different phone number for this.

Irritating a customer for 0,45 eurocent.
Well, okay that can happen. The new phone number I received was a paid number (€0,45 per call). I called it right away and to my surprise the call was answered by exact the same agent. Even he was a bit ashamed for this although he had followed the Vodafone-procedure.

So the only reason to get me on another line was the €0,45. I was already disappointed in the quality of the ADSL-service and now I was further annoyed for this stupid procedure just for €0,45. It’s a short term vision; At this moment Vodafone ADSL doesn’t fit my needs, but that might be different in the near future. Perhaps I move to a different place next to a local ADSL-center, where I will compare the internetproviders again. Based on my experience Vodafone will start with -1 and anyone asking me “Should I take ADSL of Vodafone” will hear my experience.

Second, if Vodafone was really customer centric they would have noticed  that I still have a mobile phone subscription. So although I cancel my ADSL subscription, I’m still a Vodafone customer and this is probably not the best way to deliver service to your customers.

When I informed them about my terrible slow ADSL-connection, they even had the option to really show customer focus by temporarily enabling the option for tethering on my iPhone with the existing Vodafone mobile subscription. During the time it would take to solve the connection problem, I would still be able to have internet on my Macbook by the tethering feature. But they didn’t offer this at all. Probably Mobile and ADSL are two completely different departments with their own single view on me as a customer and not a company view.

Leave the doors open!
That all reminds me of a discussion I had in the nineties, the early days of the internet. Someone had setup a script that showed all external links in an iframe with a huge clickable banner on top with “Back to <companyname>” on it. His opinion was to keep the visitor as long as possible on his domain by raising barriers.

That was definitely not my opinion; If you organize a party make it a pleasure to be there, offer excellent entertainment, but never close any doors to keep the visitors inside. The party itself has to be so good that no one even thinks about leaving. Go for the hard way by delivering excellent entertainment, not the easy way and just close the doors.

Last impression.
To be clear, my Vodafone experience is just an example and it’s just the experience of one customer. But this could happen in any other company if  they only focus on new and existing customers.

Don’t forget that even a leaving customer can influence your brand reputation, so treat them well. And a customer who left, might get back in the future if you change your price or products, unless the last feeling he had with your company was a bad feeling.

The last impression is as important as the first impression.

For several years we have been told that mobile marketing is on our doorstep, but it never really got through. However, recent stats show that a shift is indeed taking place:

- By now, 4 billion people are using mobile devices worldwide. This is more than half of the world population. In comparison, there are ‘only’ 1.9 billion Internet connections worldwide.

- In India, there are more mobile phones than toilets (Source: UN report). Talking about the potential of the BRIC countries, this is quite relevant.

- According to the ‘mobile marketing association’, 85% of all phones shipped in 2011 will be smartphones, i.e. devices offering far more features compared to the previous generations of mobile phones.

- In 2013, mobile phones will supersede the PC as the most used Internet access device. (Gartner research)

- In 2014, mobile Internet access will rise to a 90% penetration. (Gartner research)

- According to Google’s ex-CEO, Eric Schmidt, adoption of the mobile web is growing 8 times faster compared to the first wave of PC internet adoption.

Impressive figures. In essence, it’s important to remember that we are shifting to a market full of smartphones in which the adoption of mobile Internet access is growing superfast.

This trend has a major impact on our behaviour. We are constantly connected with our mobile phones and therefore almost permanently ‘on-line’. Personally, I notice that I regularly send tweets while driving, I check e-mails whilst waiting in the supermarket, I check my latest Facebook messages between courses in restaurants, etc. It is becoming a habit and an addiction. One thing is certain: it is changing the way we live and work.

Nomophobia

Do you remember the heated discussions about whether or not to buy a mobile phone? And who was willing to be reached all the time? Nowadays, pretty much everyone has a mobile phone, and it would be very hard to imagine our daily lives without it…

What’s more, a British study has shown that 53% of people become anxious without their mobile phone. There’s even name for that: Nomophobia (abbreviation for No Mobile Phone), which is described as a feeling of stress comparable to visiting the dentist.

Besides our keys and wallet, mobile phones have become our pocket companions. There is no communication device closer to us, literally everywhere we go. No need to tell you this creates interesting marketing opportunities.

The short YouTube movie below (a hit on the Internet) illustrates how obsessive we are using our mobile phones nowadays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPW8xmI4w6U

And it’s early days yet. The evolving mobile technology is offering more and more opportunities, which means we will use our mobile phones even more in the future. Predictions indicate that 4G users (successor of the 3G technology for mobile web access) will spend twice as much time on the web via their mobile phone compared to 3G surfers.

The arrival of new technologies, such as visual search for example, will also have a major impact. Just think of the possibilities of Google Goggles, at this moment in its infancy, but it shows what will be possible in the near future – and the opportunities it will bring for marketing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuppCYfDqts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq-hXD33vXs

The value of mobile devices can be summarized in ‘contact, convenience and entertainment’, which I explain as follows in collaboration with @eliasveris:

Contact:

The mobile phone enables a constant and real-time connection with our friends and family. 90% of the time spent on mobile phones is social. And it’s not just ‘calling’. In 2010, Twitter saw a 347% growth in mobile users. And more than 200 million people are using Facebook on their mobiles. So we basically carry our ‘social graph’ in our pockets, thanks to the combination of mobile & social.

Convenience:

We are getting more and more used to quickly searching for information while on the move. If we need to locate a restaurant or just compare prices, our mobile phone is the ideal device. But also indoor, just think of the Nespresso Application, which enables clients to efficiently order from the on-line shop via the app.

Mobile commerce (currently valued at 15 billion dollars) will increase to no less than 215 billion dollars by 2015.

Mobile phones are making our lives much easier and more efficient, and they bring various other devices together into one multifunctional entity. It is our permanent photo and video camera, our alarm clock, our diary… you name it.

Here too, technology will offer more and more opportunities.  Just think of augmented reality applications for example (still too much of a gimmick a while ago):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6FMABGBMjY

Entertainment:

Anyone who ever played the Angry Birds game knows that mobile gaming is hot. ‘Angry birds’ has been downloaded 100 million times and has brought in more than 70 million dollars in revenue. Thousands of people are dragged into the game and spend hours every day launching birds into pigs.

@GeorgeBray: “Your mobile phone has more computing power than all of NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launch a bird into pigs.”

But it’s not just about gaming; listening to music and video sharing are also immensely popular on mobile devices. In 2013, video will account for 64% of all mobile traffic.

To wrap it up: mobile phones ensure that we will never be bored again…

Eric Schmidt summarises it as follows: ‘It’s a future where you don’t forget anything…In this new future you’re never lost… you’re never lonely…you’re never bored…you’re never out of ideas.’

All of this offers plenty of opportunities for marketing. Among marketers, we currently encounter two situations:

1. We do nothing!

Many marketers are too busy integrating social media and want to keep focus. This implies that mobile marketing is nowhere on the agenda. However, society is changing so fast that we have to respond faster and faster. There is no room for single focus anymore; you have to be super flexible to keep up with the ultra fast moving consumer.

Even though user numbers of particular channels (e.g. Foursquare) or certain devices (e.g. tablets) are still fairly low, as a marketer and as an organisation, it is essential to grasp opportunities.

2. We must create an app!

Marketers who are open to new opportunities and see the relevance of mobile marketing often ignore the basic principles and have just one thing in mind: we have to design an application for our brand.

Not the right approach either. After all, you don’t just create a TV ad just because television exists, right? It is important to approach mobile marketing from a strategic angle so that it can actually have impact.

Below you find a short guide with 7 concrete actions to get started:    

1.      Use a smartphone: This might sound obvious, but all too often we talk about things we don’t understand. Just think about how many people judge Twitter without ever having come near to a tweet. It is important to have personal experience of what is actually possible in order to be able to think about opportunities for your brand or organisation.

2.      Build internal knowledge: Appoint someone within the organisation to follow up and to experiment with mobile marketing opportunities. Select someone who has affinity with the topic.

3.      Research the mobile potential of your target group: Investigating your target group is an important step. State the current requirements and research the ‘mobile’ behaviour: To what extent have smartphones penetrated your target group, which types of devices are used most often (iPhone, Android, Blackberry…), which applications are being downloaded, what are they expecting from your brand, etc.

4.      Get the basics right: More and more people are consuming mobile content, so it is important that your content is delivered in a mobile-friendly way. Just think of a mobile website, a mobile shop and also the design of your communication (e.g. e-mail) on mobile devices.

5.      Set clear objectives: It is important to determine beforehand what you wish to achieve with your mobile strategy. Do you wish to increase awareness of your brand, boost your image, generate sales or trigger customer loyalty? Make clear choices that will form the basis for your mobile strategy.

6.      Stay relevant and think about contact-convenience-entertainment: Reflect on how you can take advantage of the three principles of contact – convenience – entertainment, based on your brand values and your target group. Use them as a guide to translate your objectives into a relevant mobile proposition.

7.      Measure and report: Even if they are experiments or pilot projects, it is extremely important to measure your actions and compare them to your objectives. Also ensure you measure the correct aspects. Research has shown that 26% of mobile apps are only used once. Therefore only measuring the downloads is not sufficient. Select the correct KPIs in order to make a sound evaluation.

The way most organisations are approaching mobile marketing is comparable to the way we approached social media 3-4 years ago, or even the Internet 15 years ago. No structural budgets are being released, no knowledge is being built up, and in most cases, there is no strategy or any clear objective.

Hopefully, this story will inspire you to make a start. In a next article, I will discuss the toolbox of mobile marketing. In the meantime, feel free share your opinions in the comments or via @dadovanpeteghem on Twitter. Good luck!

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about FourSquare, and how the innovative approach of a theatre near our offices surprised me.

Today, I’m even more surprised. When I got at the office and wanted to check-in on FourSquare, I noticed 8 specials nearby! Knowing that the influence of my article could never be that important, I wondered what these specials were.

FourSquare Specials near Mia, my office

When examining the offers I received through FourSquare, it suddenly struck me that all of them came from smaller independent shops. This has gotten me thinking.

Normally you would expect big brands, with big budgets, to be able to invest more in these new initiatives. However, in real life it are small independent shops that take the advantage over the big international brands.

Foursquare Specials near Mia (1)

After some time, I realized that it’s normal: the chain of command and decision in an SME is very short: only one or two persons will decide whether to invest the time or not. Because let’s face it: it’s not about the money…

FourSquare offers a complete set of free tools to manage your venues and promotions. Yes, in plural: even big brands with multiple venues could manage them all in one profile.

So, how come the big and international brands haven’t tapped into this potential in Belgium yet?

• Is it because their advertising agencies don’t have the know-how?
• Is it because they aren’t convinced about geo-localization?
• Is it because they don’t dare to innovate or even ‘try something new’?

Foursquare Specials near Mia (2)

Maybe larger brands can learn something from these small entrepreneurs that explore and try new things to get closer to their customers. Because finally, that’s what it’s all about.

Via Microsoft Tag