Mobile Marketing 2.0

Editor's Notes

1. Ladies en Gentleman, good morning ! My name is Luc Jacobs from the company BlueTalk and what I will try to do in the next 30 minutes is to share with you our views on what mobile marketing might look like in the coming years and how you might use it to do what marketing is all about in the end: acquire, maintain and keep a long lasting relation with happy customers.
2. But first, let me say a word about BlueTalk. We started in 2006 and have as main core activities to develop mobile applications in order to monetize in one way or the other the assets represented by contents, brands and communities. We are therefore managing our own bluetooth network, I will come back on that in the next slide and we also provide consultancy. Here you will find a number of our reference customers. 03-07-10
3. As said, in the marketing field, we have our own bluetooth « proximity marketing » network established in partnership with the company JC Decaux, famously known for their Street furniture, and Kinepolis, the Belgian Megaplex group. We have the mobile applications activities and finally the consultancy activities.
4. So, sorry to start with a boring “numbers” slide that you have or will maybe see 100 times here but I wanted to put the things in perspective when it comes to Mobile: At the end of 2008, we had 4 billions mobile subscribers. 1/3 of that is coming from developing countries and China alone has passed the 600 millions mark. The total revenues of the mobile telecoms is about 750 Billions USD and on top of that 70 Billions for infrastructure and 140 Billions for the devices. The SMS revenue totaled 95 Billions to date , so more than box office, DVD sales and rentals, music and video games industry combined ! Nearly 1 billions people access the internet via their mobile and we sell about 1,2 billion handsets per year (39% being in the hands of one manufacturer, Nokia).
5. So, what are the “so-called” Guru’s saying about Mobile Marketing? From 2,2 Billions USD in 08 this market should grow to 3 billions in 2011 if you listen to Informa and 16 billions if you listen to IDC. Strategy analytics, ABI research even speaks of 24 Billion USD in 2013... Can I remind you from what we just saw that this means that even the most optimistic guru’s view the market in 2011 being just 1/5 of what SMS revenues are today!? So what is this mobile markting market really going to be???
6. Let’s first ask ourselves, what is mobile marketing going to be in itself??? Is this going to be sponsored links, pop-up pages and banners? All those things that we have fought against on the so-called “wired” web? Yes of course there is going to be some of this, but let’s be serious, would you accept this kind of marketing on your phone? For those interested to develop these, the Mobile marketing assoctiation (yes there is an association!) specifies or, shoudl I say advises, the kind of banners that are acceptable for the phones...
7. In the end, in order to define why is mobile a good marketing vector, let’s define some of its specifics... So it provides...
8. Now, to understand what might be going on on the mobile side, let’s first have a look at what happened on the famous participative Web or Web 2.0. as we call it. I will not go here into details of what it is because you have certainly heard it somewhere else in the conference but what you will realize is that in the end, what this all generated, are just simple and plain conversation between people but online...
9. I like to remind that sentence of Seth Godin, one of the Guru’s of Web 2.0 (a real Guru this time! ;-) saying that, it’s not about technology, it’s about people having conversations and connecting with one another, and this is what lasts online !
10. Here is another slide, inspired by the book of Seth Godin, “Purple Cow”, and I promise, I am not paid by him or his agent, but I highly recommend you to read this book, and it’s about creating content that is remarkable ! Start fueling conversation between people, help them to share it between one another, help them sharing learning, experiences and emotions. So it will be much more easier to define who are your fans in the market and they will spread the word like a wildfire !
11. Another way of looking at this, and I promise this is my last referral to Seth is what he calls “Flipping the funnel”: From a shouting marketing communication that hopes that by raising exposure, multiplying audience times frequency, you will go to a a conversationnal marketing, multiplying engagement times interactivity, where basically you help people to live interesting experiences and have something to talk about, so, have them spread the words.
12. So if you bring this back to mobile and realize that in the end Mobile is today the first Peer-to-Peer worldwide platform (remember those 4 billions people), the “only” thing you need to do in order to use this correctly as a marketing vector, is just like on the web, give the people something to talk about !
13. This means also that you will have to accept to lose some of your control, also in the mobile world. And from a linear experience evolve to a networked world of experiences.
14. So, in this new mobile experience era: Loyalty is dead... And of course the implementation is more difficult than just putting shouting banners and mini-screens pop-ups ! ;-))
15. If you do not believe that Content is going to become the Currency, look here. Vodafone has signed an agreement with the Music Majors in order to ditribute their Music without any DRM. In small here, I will read a comment from Douglas Merrill, COO of EMI Music: « With its international reach and commitments to music, Vodafone is taking a major step forward for our industry ». Would you have imagined such a declaration from a Major music company commenting on Music being distributed without any DRM’s just one year ago???
16. Another interesting article from Mobile Europe and based on a study by itsmy.com as mobile social network provider amongst 2500 respondents: 75% of active social network users would like to get a link to their operator or mobile manufacturer portal on their community site ! This means that your customers are out there and they want to get in contact with you !
17. So, let’s have a quick look at how you can enable a much more compelling user experience. First let’s seduce them with a great sexy looking user interface. Not the ones that are estetically nice but do not add any value but an GUI that basically facilitates the navigation through a tiny screen and enhance the overall experience. It is also by the way important, for the marketeers, important to measure and analyze anything happening here afterward.
18. Then make it availalbe to the mass of your end-users, not only the ones running around with Smartphones in their pocket, although this quantity will increase in Belgium thanks to Mr. Van quickenborne joint sales acceptance, but also the basic phones sometimes used by teenagers or elderly. Of course being present on the iPhone is nice but is not enough since the iPhone only represents 1% to 1,5% penetration in our regions (11 Milions iPhones sold in 2008, 45 millions foreseen in 2009).
19. Then when in their applications, make sure they get an easy to use, compelling user experience. Response time must be minimal, less than 2 seconds or even less than 1 second, interesting content and functionalities should be only 1-Click-away and all this will ensure that you get sticky apps where users will comeback over and over again.
20. Finally, to engage in the conversation, add special social network functionalities to it like profiling, status updates, messaging, media (audio, foto and video) sharing, rate or blog over that content or a status update, show them a calendar of events they can select and find groups of people participating and comment anything they enter in there…
21. And finally, if you want this to work, give them some exciting content to talk about !
22. Thank you !