What did the Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt mean when he said, “Put your best people on mobile”? He was discussing the imperative for today’s enterprise to be connected to their audience, but even more so for the customer to connect to these businesses. That is the real imperative! Consumers will continue to connect to ever more people, devices, platforms, brands, etc – all via mobile, not via the traditional internet or television or any other technology.
“Every company has people who are in motion, they’re moving forward…if that’s where all the real action’s going to be, then make sure that you know what’s going on with all those mobile device” -Eric Schmidt
Consumers don’t want silo-ed marketing communication, but a consistent and integrated multi-channel approach to marketing communication.
It is a challenge to know where to meet your audience and potential customers in a multi-channel marketing world. Today’s companies are struggling to give consumers a personal and seamless brand experience across all of the marketing channels. A study conducted by Gartner showed that over 72% of consumers want businesses to take an integrated marketing approach, but only 39% actually get that approach. What this means is that consumers have a great thirst for an integrated & consistent message across all the marketing channels.
In practice, this can take the form of a viewer watching a television ad, and then seeing a text keyword to short-code call-to-action that allows them to learn more or opts them into high value loyalty programs. Chances are, the viewer is already inches away from their smartphone.
To put the need for multi-channel marketing into perspective, a study by Google found that consumers had 74% brand recall when a brand advertised across mobile, TV, and online media. Even when people are at a single location – at the Super Bowl, during a television show, or at a live concert – they will still be accessing their mobile devices.
This is the real value of mobile – as an on-the-go medium – for businesses to engage their audience at a retail store, at home, at a sporting event, and virtually anywhere else!
How does mobile fit into your marketing strategy?
Why is it so critical to have a single view of the customer across multiple touch points? Because today’s customers will interact with your brand in many ways that involve more than one channel. It is also critical that your business understands how these customers behave across all marketing channels – at each and every touch point, and what the customer’s value is to your business.
The key here is value exchange; that any marketing communication through mobile can be weighed in a companies’ favor if it provides personal and unique benefits to the consumer. To fully engage your audience on mobile devices, you must first ensure that you use the platform as a means to push personalized marketing promotions. Mobile is not the channel to blanket your potential audience with the same offers and messages.
How companies use mobile to stand out from the competition
Consistently great customer experience is your most powerful competitive differentiator. A single great customer experience is important, consistency of that experience is even more vital. Today’s consumers want their mobile experience with your brand to provide a feature rich experience on a mobile device, just as they would find on the web.
Here are some examples of successful multi-channel integration:
- Retail stores are connecting customers at point-of-sale, by sending them promotional offers, coupons, or contests while in-store through SMS, or mobile web apps. Provide consumers value through their smartphone to occupy their time while in line, creating value for both the business – and most importantly – the customer. This is just one way of integrating mobile with in-store marketing to add value to the consumer and business
- Adding Mobile to broadcast media by using vanity short codes and keyword calls to action to allow viewers to opt into receiving mobile marketing messages is another practical way of integrating mobile with another channel. As mentioned above, the TV viewer’s smartphone is either in their hands or they may already be engaged with it, making it extra convenient for them to take a desirable action. In an instant, businesses can maximize TV Ad ROI by giving themselves a chance to re-market to their TV audience via mobile. When the TV viewer opts into a mobile loyalty program, it gives brands and companies another way to measure their TV ad ROI.
- Radio, print, email, social and other digital channels can be used in a similar fashion
All of these activities will empower your business to build a sustainable database of consumers and evangelists, but to be effective, they need to be connected to your other channels as well. Remember to measure how engaged your customers are across all of your marketing channels to continually audit performance and ROI.
Meeting your customers where they are
With mobile at the forefront of a companies’ multi-channel efforts, a business has the potential to find the Holy Grail of marketing – to reach customers with the right offer, at the right place, and at the right time. Not only will an organization see sales growth, but also realize reduced costs while elevating the effectiveness and performance of their marketing campaigns.
Brands now have the great opportunity to gain consumer participation on mobile – providing the marketing team the ability to engage, convert, and grow audience with mobile marketing promotions – right where they are!
Talk to a FunMobility expert to see how we can fuel your business growth and help you be more productive with marketing spend