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Brian Hecht is currently the CEO of Kikucall, Inc., a premier mobile services company helping brands, agencies, and media companies reach consumers through unique wireless promotions.
From 1996 until 2002, he was the CEO of enews, inc., the leading Internet-based magazine subscription agent. At the helm of enews, Brian managed a staff of nearly 150 and attracted investments from venture capitalists and strategic media partners, including Madison Dearborn Partners, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, Time Inc., and Barnes & Noble. His client base included every major U.S. consumer magazine publisher. In 2001, Brian engineered the sale of the company to Barnes & Noble.
Brian is also an accomplished public speaker, and has made many television appearances, including Fox News Channel, CNNfn, and others.

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Forgetting the “Marketing” in Mobile? How Advertisers Can Gain Advantage in the Wireless World

Written on
Aug 14, 2006 
Author
Brian Hecht  |
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Forgetting the “Marketing” in Mobile? How Advertisers Can Gain Advantage in the Wireless World

That’s how market researchers get consumers to answer surveys in the mail, and it seems to work for them. Instead of shouting out “Free coupons,” the street team would shout out: “We’re giving away free money.” Curious consumers would approach and hear about the program. They would be given their dollar-bill once they dialed in right then and there. The results were astounding. Participants started streaming in. We exceeded our enrollment quote in the next few days and delivered a valuable and sizable audience to our roster of mobile advertisers.

The difference between abject failure and astonishing success wasn’t brain surgery: it was a simple change in tactics that aligned us with a best-practice proven by decades of direct marketers. We were asking consumers to take an unfamiliar and, frankly, peculiar, action, and we needed to ground that in a tangible immediate benefit. The cost of the incentives was minimal compared to the profitability of the program. And we’d stumbled on the most important principle of mobile marketing: it’s all about the marketing.

Inevitably, many of the early mobile marketing tests that we’re now seeing in the marketplace yield disappointing results. It’s a pity that some marketers use this limited experience to conclude that mobile marketing won’t work for them. But the problem is usually not with the mobile. The common theme I detect in nearly all of them is a neglect of basic marketing principles.

Here are five of the top principles that we’ve learned can guide your mobile marketing program to success. They are all borrowed from the world of traditional marketing.

Define your metrics and goals. Too many mobile marketing campaigns operate on the lazy premise of “let’s just try it and see what happens.” But if you are using resources to test a new channel, you need to have some expectation of what you want to learn. Otherwise, how will you know if you’ve succeeded or failed? You wouldn’t launch a direct mail campaign without some projection of the response rate. Taking the time to lay out a few key benchmarks before the campaign launches is indispensable to evaluating your results.

Use a reasonable sample size. If you’ve decided to measure participation or redemption rates, it is essential that your sample size is adequate to provide statistically relevant results. Sending out 10 messages and getting three responses does not mean you are getting a 30% response rate. I’ve witnessed many declarations of success or failure based on vanishingly small sample sizes; sadly, they’re almost always misleading. The danger runs both ways: you can be tricked into rolling out an expensive campaign based on inaccurately high projections, or be fooled into shelving an otherwise promising program based on an inaccurate diagnosis of failure.

Support your program with adequate media. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve seen marketers invest heavily in advanced mobile functionality and then neglect to think about how they are going to drive usership. You wouldn’t launch a Website without having a plan to drive traffic to it. There are many possible tactics available, including TV, radio, posters, in-store, live events, email, and Web-to-phone. But a mobile program without an accompanying media plan is like the proverbial tree falling in a forest with no one to witness it.

Provide a clear benefit. As mobile advertising begins to proliferate, sophisticated consumers are rightly wary of giving marketers license to communicate with them via their mobile phone. As a marketer, you need to overcome this resistance by offering a clear benefit and reason for them to participate. Studies and experience indicate that consumers are, indeed, willing to participate in mobile programs with a select group of trusted brands, but only if they derive a clear benefit that can only be delivered by mobile phone.

Provide a clear call to action. Traditional marketing has already done the heavy lifting for you here. Mobile programs that have complicated instructions, or require confusing specialized technology requirements simply do not compel the consumer to act. We find that we get the best results when we borrow copy and promotional tactics from the experts who live or die by response rates in fields such as direct-mail solicitations and infomercial television. Your message to the consumer should focus on the one clear thing you want consumers to do, and then make it incredibly and easy compelling for them to do it now.

It goes without saying that attention must always be paid to the mobile technology components, as well. There are unique challenges that come with operating a program using new technology, and the consumer has little tolerance for glitchy interaction with your brand. But you’ll never have the opportunity to demonstrate your new mobile benefits to consumers if you don’t successfully reach and engage them. And for that, investing time and energy in the underlying marketing strategy will deliver ample rewards.





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