“The most creative mobile executions these days aggressively explore the wireless device itself – what the technology does, where it does it, and how marketing messages can be integrated into our most intimate communications habits,” wrote consultant and analyst Steve Smith.
Enter the iPhone. Tom Burgess, chief executive officer of Third Screen Media, a mobile marketing technology company, called the iPhone a “beachhead for converging mobile devices. It's a music player, video player and a phone all together. There's no doubt that it is a step in the right direction for a more robust marketing medium."
Cyriac Roeding, vice president of wireless at CBS Interactive, said the iPhone could “spark a surge in mobile marketing – provided that users embrace it the same way they turned to the iPod a few years ago.”
Those are the obvious advantages from a marketer’s perspective. It’s hard not to assume the iPhone could take mobile marketing opportunities to a new level through the integration of cellular, wireless, mobile web, video, audio and storage technologies.
That said, there are also challenges for both Apple and AT&T Wireless, upon whose cellular networks iPhones operate. As consultant Alan Chapell writes, “No discussion of mobile data would be complete without a word about the mobile carriers, such as T-mobile, Verizon, and Cingular…(T)he carriers currently have enough influence over the mobile space that pretty much any new mobile marketing technique or technology will have to meet with their approval in order to succeed…The carriers know all too well that customers tend to blame them for – well – just about anything that negatively impacts their mobile experience.”
Case in point, according to an Associated Press article regarding product registration delays during the iPhone’s initial roll out, iPhone customer Timothy Johnson, “said he was happy with the iPhone and credited Apple for acknowledging the problem. But he expressed concerned about the type of service he would get from AT&T in the future.”
The iPhone case exemplifies both the opportunities, as well as the challenges, inherent in technology-driven and technology-dependent mobile marketing. Mobile marketers must be aware of how their technologies and strategies will impact, or be impacted by, device developers and mobile carriers. Importantly, they must take note of how the developers and carriers react to the praise or criticism.
Showing posts with label mobile marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile marketing. Show all posts
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Connected Customer
Around a million new mobile subscribers are brought online in India alone every month. With those new subscribers comes a similar explosion in mobile bandwidth. “Mobile and wireless services are rapidly transforming from ‘poor man’s connectivity’ with data rates well below those for fixed services to comparable in speed and quality to their fixed-line counterparts. By some projections, mobile broadband services will overtake fixed broadband services as early as 2010,” writes Johna Till Johnson.
The revolution is not limited to mobile broadband, however. Take WiMax for example. WiMax enables a wireless signal to broadcast over a 10-mile radius. These new networks, and their corresponding devices and applications, are vastly increasing the reach of mobile connectivity.
Addressing Network World magazine’s IT audience, Johnson writes that these changes mean, “executives need to stop thinking of wireless and mobile technologies as a niche — relevant for a subset of users, but a footnote in the organization’s overall strategy. Instead, they should assume that mobile connectivity will become an increasingly important piece of the technology roadmap, and plan and budget for it accordingly.”
The same could be said for mobile marketers. Better bandwidth and a larger audience open the door to new, more innovative and increasingly interactive strategies and tactics. Ultimately, any effort to leverage technology upgrades to benefit mobile marketing strategies and tactics is predicated upon an understanding of the consumer’s product desires and mobile device expectations.
Michael Becker and Michael Hanley call this consumer, the “Connected Customer.” They write that “Marketers need to better understand the Connected Customer and what Connected Customers find relevant, informative and entertaining, and how the mobile channel and the practice of mobile marketing can help them accomplish their goals.”
Research surely will be important. The challenge will be to both determine those strategies and tactics which can be transferred from the web to the higher-bandwidth mobile marketing efforts, and to invent those strategies and tactics which will emerge from the new wireless and mobile capabilities.
The revolution is not limited to mobile broadband, however. Take WiMax for example. WiMax enables a wireless signal to broadcast over a 10-mile radius. These new networks, and their corresponding devices and applications, are vastly increasing the reach of mobile connectivity.
Addressing Network World magazine’s IT audience, Johnson writes that these changes mean, “executives need to stop thinking of wireless and mobile technologies as a niche — relevant for a subset of users, but a footnote in the organization’s overall strategy. Instead, they should assume that mobile connectivity will become an increasingly important piece of the technology roadmap, and plan and budget for it accordingly.”
The same could be said for mobile marketers. Better bandwidth and a larger audience open the door to new, more innovative and increasingly interactive strategies and tactics. Ultimately, any effort to leverage technology upgrades to benefit mobile marketing strategies and tactics is predicated upon an understanding of the consumer’s product desires and mobile device expectations.
Michael Becker and Michael Hanley call this consumer, the “Connected Customer.” They write that “Marketers need to better understand the Connected Customer and what Connected Customers find relevant, informative and entertaining, and how the mobile channel and the practice of mobile marketing can help them accomplish their goals.”
Research surely will be important. The challenge will be to both determine those strategies and tactics which can be transferred from the web to the higher-bandwidth mobile marketing efforts, and to invent those strategies and tactics which will emerge from the new wireless and mobile capabilities.
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