A Strategy for Mobile Marketing

While I’m an early adopter for new ideas and technology, when it comes to spending clients’ money I tend to get pragmatic. Earlier in my career I encouraged clients to jump in without hesitation and the response from those efforts was generally, “So what did that get us?”

Now that all of us marketers have iPhones, Androids or Blackberrys, let’s jump in to the vast opportunities mobile marketing offers. It’s terribly exciting! I’m actually consumed by it. QR codes in magazine ads? Cool! Location-based apps that push a menu special every time I walk past a restaurant. Yummy! But hold on. “What did that get us?”

My pragmatism now takes over. Mobile is Marketing and as such needs to follow the same rules other media usage follows. At a recent mobile marketing meeting we facilitated, it became crystal clear from those presenting case studies that if you follow solid marketing principles, the fun and rewards will continue beyond the last campaign.

1. Strategy based on marketing goals and objectives

2. Establish outcomes and measurement, up front

3. Understand your target audience

4. Understand the opportunities unique to mobile devices

5. Develop tactics based on the target audience’s behaviors

6. Test, track and optimize

7. Expand based on successes (document, measure, expand)

And (though not a principle), have fun!

My First NRA Show

Nothing could prepare me for the National Restaurant Association NRA Show 2010 at Chicago’s McCormick Place.  Being the  largest restaurant and hospitality show in the western hemisphere, with more than 1,600 exhibitors from 100 countries and a 200-page Exhibit Guide & Program containing all the information you need to navigate the show can be an overwhelming experience.

Here are a few of my favorites and must-see booths and pavilions:

Ashby’s Sterling Ice Cream- A rich, creamy, old-fashioned ice cream parlor with new product ideas and award-winning flavors.  Try the Amaretto Cherry, made with homegrown cherries from Michigan.  Delicious!  Flavor trends also include, pomegranate and a five-flavor Spumoni.

Vienna Beef- It wouldn’t be a Chicago food show without the official Chicago-style hot dog!  Vienna had a line down the aisle with lots of show buzz and excitement.

Taylor – Promoting their new multi-flavor slushy equipment with simple operational features allowed me to mix four different flavors; raspberry, energy boost, blueberry and strawberry into one refreshing slushy.  Every gas station in America should have one of these nifty gadgets.

Red River Valley Red Potatoes- These potatoes are from The Red River Valley of North Dakota and Minnesota and are grown in some of the darkest and richest soil in the world.  I found these potatoes to be firm, sweet and non grainy like most red skins. Impressive.

Grecian Delight-I had the opportunity to sample one of Grecian’s low calorie sandwiches made with whole-wheat flatbread, Lebanese chicken shawarma and skhug- it was love at first bite.

Gluten-Free Pavilion- This trend is definitely here to stay. The section was packed with 33 suppliers of gluten-free breads, crackers, baked goods, pastas and even beer.  Conte’s Pasta had great tasting gnocchi and ravioli to sample, Violet Family Products was sharing their scrumptious pizza crust and Crunchmaster was handing out their multi-seed crackers that had the perfect amount of seasoning on each cracker.

Food Trucks Pavilion- This section promoted the latest in food truck technology for chefs and entrepreneurs who want to avoid the expense of an actual restaurant. Fun idea!

2010: Mobile Marketing Trends

We’ve declared 2010: The Year for Mobile Marketing, primarily due to the influence of consumer acceptance and adoption of smartphones, such as iPhone, Blackberry and Android OS phones. By Q3 of 2011, it is projected that 50% of all mobile phones in use will be smartphones. This fact alone should make any marketer sit up and take notice that the dynamics of mobile devices is or will be a major influence on consumer and B2B research, decision-making and purchases.

Colman Brohan Davis recently hosted an event featuring Mickey Alam Khan, editor-in-chief for Mobile Marketer, and in my opinion a futurist for the industry. His online publication not only reports news and insights, but also nurtures the mobile marketing industry through guidebooks and case studies of cutting edge and novel uses.

Mickey gave us five trends driving mobile marketing and commerce this year, in his words…

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Fidipidi: Cool concept maybe launched too soon

I thought I had finally found a solution for my HBFS [holiday and birthday forgetfulness syndrome]…

Being notorious for buying greeting cards I never get around to mailing, I was excited to hear about Fidipidi™, a new online application that allows users to create personalized and printed greeting cards in Facebook. They’ll print the card out and mail it in an envelope for you for about five bucks.

That sounded good to me, so I went to take a look. All-in-all a pleasant site. The cards they offer are nice-ish but, as templated cards usually are, generic and impersonal. Not a single Hallmark moment among them. They’ll let me design my own card and pull in photos, but I was hoping for more card categories and sentiments, and less of “your customized message here.” There’s also no brand experience in either the cards or the transactional site…which might be a wasted opportunity to drive maximum customer lifetime value.

On the Facebook side, they do show that one of my friends has a birthday next week. However, she’s not getting a Fidipidi™ card, because like many of my social network contacts, I don’t know her physical address.

I will be interested to see how Fidipidi™ evolves. Until then, I’ll probably just keep having good intentions.  In fact, right now in my bag, there’s a beautiful Mother’s Day card that never got to fulfill its destiny. I take comfort in the fact that it was printed on recycled paper.

Pantone Color – CMYK or RGB

Pantone did it again. They came out with yet another cool app.  When was the last time you were working with PMS colors on your printed brochure and the client asked for the same palette for their website? You know the PMS color, you don’t have access to a Pantone Book, but you need the RGB breakdowns for the web.  Well, now you can just pull out your iPhone and click on the myPANTONE X-Ref app. Click here to learn more.

I only need one and it needs to be personalized

Years back, we would have said “Are you crazy?”. But now, with the old 4 – 8 color presses being replaced by the digital presses – your wish is their command! I remember seeing a printed piece from one of the earlier digital presses when they first came out. I saw color shifts and even banding on the same form, and I was thinking that they had a long way to go to catch up with the big boys. But, with recent improvements, they are gaining fast.

It’s amazing when you can print a 24-page brochure with variable copy and images, and not faint when you are asked to print only one. Now, when you compare a piece that was printed conventionally vs. digitally, you can hardly tell the difference.

Just remember, there is a lot of up-front organization that needs to happen with the variable data and art files before you press the print button. So please, work closely with your printer/letter shop to make sure your piece is printed beautifully.