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The Modern Era of Mobile Marketing part 1
We don’t need to tell you the floodgates have opened. Here’s how you can stay afloat and not end up without a paddle.
Friday, September 28, 2012
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The emergence of mobile device usage has changed not only how you do business, but it’s changed the way we operate as a culture. That may sound a little heavy-handed, but people now are constantly connected to each other through this platform, and as a result, have an ongoing outlet for commerce in a completely different way than what we’re used to on the Web.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in marketing to today’s consumers is figuring out how to track their engagement through the mobile space.
“The mistake many marketers make is assuming mobile consumers are different customers than who they’re reaching on the Web, or through offline channels,” says Jason Harper, vice president of analytics and marketing intelligence for Organic. “They ignore that these are not necessarily incremental eyes.”
In other words, mobile is not necessarily a new “channel,” something that is taking customers away from other booking outlets, such as the Web did from phone callers and walk-ins. If anything, mobile returns those types of guests to the mix, and creates a more complex marketplace for travel distribution. It’s truly a platform, like “online” or “traditional,” that isn’t specific to one particular type of advertising or marketing. And the sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can provide better solutions for potential guests.
We can’t claim to have all – or even a majority – of the answers. With that in mind, the first step for any brand, company or individual property is to understand how potential guests are interacting with you where they are at any given time. That way, because they’re constantly available through myriad channels – physical, virtual, social, and transactional – you can begin to target who wants to target you for their travel needs. The tables truly have turned.
Luckily, you’re not alone.
The Mobile Trinity: Consumer, Brand, Product
We’ve all seen the stats on mobile consumer trends. But here are some more, to burrow this point in your brain. Chris Davidson, executive vice president of global strategy and client leadership for MMGY Global, reports that are more than 72.5 million smartphones in U.S. – that’s nearly a quarter of the entire population. More than two-thirds, 67 percent, are using these to access while traveling.
“If you look at the travel planning funnel and every point of the decision making process, you have to be more involved with your consumer,” says Davidson. “Growth and expansion of mobile technology is changing our lives, and it’s changing what we do and how we travel.”
The marketplace has responded, as Davidson notes mobile will dominate U.S. interactive marketing spending in the next couple years, growing to a 70 percent share or $56 billion. That includes content development, advertising and any other spending related to interactive platforms, but again, that’s 70 percent of it. But it’s not enough to just to spend on development and advertising; there’s the intangible, priceless imperative of engagement.
“So you have a mobile friendly site. Great. What’s your strategy?” Davidson asks rhetorically. And more pointedly, “How do you engage the consumer all the way through their buying cycle in mobile channels?”
Think about it this way. Advice of friends and family is the number one most trusted source for travel recommendations, and on top of that, visiting friends and relatives is the number one purpose for leisure travel. Where do your guests connect with friends and family? Not at your direct booking page. Not through Google search. Through social media.
Though the solutions will vary widely, Davidson offers some guidance points for strategy, considering context – taking information of when and how people travel and applying it – and what he refers to as content, connectivity, and relationships. Content must be accessible; information must be easy to share; and you have to recognize and engage friends and followers of your brand or product.
Taking this information to the brand level, the main question today is how to organize around such a monumental task of tackling an multitude of mobile connections. First and foremost, who should be responsible for mobile? Because it’s an emerging technology, many interactive teams are learning on the go, just days it seems after they were tasked with engaging through social media.
“This is our midterm grade; I don’t have a doctorate in this stuff yet,” says Bill Keen, director, product management, mobile solutions for InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), acknowledging the nascent stage of widespread analysis and development in this area. “But in your organization, you need to pinpoint someone to identify the end-to-end journey of mobile strategy.”
Put simply, mobile touches so many points in a hotel organization, for example – distribution, interactive marketing, brand teams, IT, regional operations, franchise and in-hotel operations, enterprise support and reporting, just to name a few. And if you talk to each of these departments, each of them has a slightly different picture of what mobile strategy should mean. Therefore, having a dedicated mobile team to gather input and information from all relevant areas of the company is crucial to develop a platform for the opportunities at hand to touch every step of the guest journey.
The sheer complexity underscores Keen’s advice against outsourcing as well. Better to have someone who understands the infrastructure of your company than an “expert” who may be excellent at theorizing in the mobile marketplace, but can’t apply those lessons to the specific goals of a particular brand.
“We know ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ because we have a complicated infrastructure,” says Keen. “At the same time, innovation is in the hands of the hands-on.”
On Monday we’ll hone in on what’s going on at the property level and locally.
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