This may sound great, but a quick check of most popular websites here indicates they (web designers), have a lot of work to do. The average download time to a borrowed 3G iPhone was over 30 seconds. Studies tell us that most people will ditch a website after a 10 second wait.

It’s not just me. There’s a handy online testing tool available at www.ready.mobi that provides the stats on any website you like to enter.

Over 90% of the NZ websites I entered gave a poor or bad result, even those that boasted they were mobile-friendly. Somewhat ironically, restaurant and associated directory websites are the worst for mobile browsers, even though this sector has some of the highest traffic potential for mobile users.

So, why have local web designers and developers dropped the ball? Is it a cost issue or don’t they realise the speed at which mobile is coming? Certainly business owners would be concerned if they knew. It’s like having a store and deliberately turning away customers.

I don’t personally believe it’s always a cost issue, since there are cunning methods to ‘mobilise’ almost any existing website in a couple days, for under $1,000.  There’s also the option to establish a Facebook page, since these are inherently optimised for both desktop and mobile users. Blog-based sites are also another option, as these are often much easier to ‘mobilise’ than those expensive, custom-built websites. For those that like video, then setup a channel on Youtube and have your mobile customers go there instead.

P.S. Want your website mobilised? email zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

I think the issues are more around education and awareness. Mobile access of the web has come upon us fast. Let’s hope these tips rock the boat a little and get local web designers on the mobile fast track. Otherwise, just give us a call….

It’s a key question for those in business.

As always, it seems consumers are way ahead of the game. Mobile phones are now a big part of daily life with text messaging the most common activity for most of us. It’s rapidly taking over other key chores too once done on a PC.

Many are already using it as their main device for emailing, twittering, Facebook page updates, youtube videos, google search, interactive maps, and generally surfing the net to quickly find the best deals while out and about.

So, where do business owners start in connecting into this super-growth mobile market?

Here’s Four Quick, Inexpensive ways to Start Mobilising Your Business

• Get your own business keyword. Add it to your ads and store signs, letting you build up a database of loyal customer phone numbers and email addresses, rewarding them with information, coupons or offers.
• Mobilise your website, ensuring it appears quickly and is easy to navigate on a mobile phone browser. It’s not as difficult or costly as many make out. 
• Setup a business Facebook page. Not only free, but very mobile-friendly and smart.
• Get a twitter account. Like Facebook, mobile friendly, free and good for business.

Bring all this together as an inter-connected, cohesive strategy

Contact us today for details and pricing. zn.oc.gnitekramlatigidnull@nivek

• Of their visitors on the web, 74% come from Google.
• Of their visitors through mobile devices, 99% come through the iPhone (they have one of the more popular apps).
• They’re seeing more than double the revenue off of those mobile users versus normal web users.

There’s been related articles here on the use of and importance of SMS messaging for marketing  – For restaurants especially, where mobile activity is strong, the success formula is really quite simple.

For lead generation they need an integrated direct mail, mobile phone and website marketing strategy. To keep customer returning they need a means to build and track everyone via an online CRM system, linked to a mobile phone e-loyalty programme.

For an innovative link with traditional media and for lead generation, utilise individual event TXT keywords or longer term introduce QR barcodes on all printed newsletters, signs and menus. Make it super-easy for loyal customers to bookmark your website or to respond to offers on their mobile.

This allows instant subscription to SMS offers, to pass on referrals and even give out e-discount vouchers to friends. Easy

You’d never know it by looking at TV, Radio, Outdoor or Print promotions today. Most still cling to the old 0800 phone number, even though it hasn’t been the crowd favorite for many years. It seems that most ad agencies and marketers today are still locked in the past, and it’s likely costing them in lost sales.

First, look at your market

However although the rapidly rising star in 2009, TXT isn’t the answer in every market. For example, a recent fundraising direct mail campaign for the coastguard used the [gasp] old post reply envelope! From this ‘older’ audience, many retired, there was a huge 35% response. Here, old fashioned mail was obviously the most appropriate. 

But in most business to business or consumer markets, we would expect other channels to be much more appropriate and cost-effective. In business an email or link to a website form would seem perfect even adding in PURL link, to dramatically improve the click-through rate. Why is this? These business individuals are likely spending a lot of their day checking their mail and then going online. Studies tell us that 42% of people prefer to respond online often because they want to check you out first – See if you’re credible.

For modern consumers, going online to respond works well, but if the customer was out and about seeing billboards or shop signs, or even home reading a magazine or newpaper ad, today we would expect SMS TXT messaging to be better. Especially so when it’s a promotion by a highly credible person or organisation.

For example, a recent ad campaign highlights the lead generation ability of TXT keywords on advertising, and why smart, innovative companies are now adopting this strategy to get back instant enquiries from consumers.

Hampsta is a start-up Xmas saving scheme company targeting Chriscos customers and new clients with an aggressive TV and print value-comparison marketing campaign.

Fronted by the Mad Butcher’s Peter Leitch, Hampsta sought to swing middle New Zealand families to get them to sign up to Hampsta. The call-to-action offered consumers 3 enquiry options:

• call an 0508 number;
• go to the hampsta.co.nz web site
• or TXT more to 244.

Results:

Within two weeks, the company had thousands of enquiries.

Three times as many people TXTed compared to going to the web site, and five times as many people TXTed compared to calling the 0508 number. The reply TXTs let people know they would be contacted shortly to help them join. This kept the call centre productive with both taking calls during ads, and then making calls.

According to Hampsta’s Gary Alway: "We wanted to go for the maximum number of responses in order for our telemarketers to follow up. The txt response captured all the data we need and was by far the clear winner, an absolutely staggering difference. Set up was so simple and easy."

Does it have to be a choice?

So, here’s a clear trend that shouldn’t be ignored. Remember, marketing is a two-way deal. It’s not just how we promote our products or services (Radio, TV, Banners, Print or Online), or even the offer made, it’s sometimes how we ask people to respond that can make or break a campaign.

And you don’t have to choose between methods either. Just do what Hamster promotion did. Give the consumer a choice of ways to respond, then you’ll quickly find out what’s best for you and your market. Our advice is to always include TXT in that selection. It’s affordable and flexible too, since multiple keywords and campaigns can be purchased, allowing you to expertly track different promotions.

And What About Mobile Advertising?

In the short term, the use of TXT as a response channel makes more sense than pushing out ads on mobiles, which is often talked about. This will come, but it takes a lot more planning and is around ten times the cost. There’s many more legal hoops to jump through too, to ensure it’s all appropriate and permission-based.

However setting up a keyword response channel as described above is easy and for the small cost, I believe it should be added to every promotion today, whatever media you advertise in.

Certainly mobile marketing represents immense opportunities. It is not as saturated, wasteful or as inefficient as email with all it’s spam and delivery issues.  It’s growing really fast too, especially with the younger consumer market. They are clearly glued to their mobiles and use it ahead of everything else, including their laptop, which is simply a device to help them with their studies or homework. It’s only us older (30+) people who are still glued to the larger screens and constantly checking our email.

It’s only us older folks who still spend time viewing the larger screen and checking our email.

Where to Start?

For eager marketers, the key issue is how to use mobile effectively to communicate your message? You can’t just go out and buy a mobile phone list like you can a direct mail list. And even if you do get a decent list, you can’t actually do a bulk communication without incurring a huge amount of planning, effort and expense. Working with a traditional advertising agency and mobile provider to set up an approved mobile marketing campaign or promotion can cost thousands.

But this is thinking about it from an old-fashioned agency and communications provider perspective. i.e. thinking about campaigns, design, branding, offers, delivery etc. It suddenly gets very complicated. Why is this? Well, traditionalists see mobile simply as another media ‘channel’ that needs to be tamed and molded. They have a mass market, interruption-based mindset. But these old fashioned ‘push’ marketing strategies don’t work as well with the young or on mobile.

Because of this, it’s not this creative sector that are really succeeding with mobile marketing overseas, but small entrepreneurial companies with a clearer understanding and vision of this new world order. And they’re making simple, quick and cheap too…

In part 2 we’ll see how it’s being done by these new industry leaders…

For example, mobile phones

Having access to MMS picture messaging was not an obvious answer to many marketing problems. An unimaginative marketer may have decided to simple broadcast txt or small graphical advertisements.

But an imaginative marketer realises that each customer can be sent a unique QR/2D barcode to act as an on-screen loyalty card or coupon identifier. Telstra in Australia as well as vendors in Japan, Europe, UK and the US encourage these barcodes in many ways for vouchers, payment or rewards. read more.

[Unlike the emerging NFC options outlined below, most camera-equipped phones are already compatible to handle QR barcodes].

Coming Soon – Mobile NFC technology…

In terms of indirect uses for customer loyalty, the mobile phone presents marketers with a quick, cheap, and ever-present channel of communication that more often than not leads directly to the targeted consumer within seconds of broadcasting a message. It’s an excellent communication channel that allows consumers to send requests, receive information and transaction confirmations, receive coupons and vouchers, and even to make micro-payments (through premium rate numbers and text messages). In terms of direct uses for customer loyalty,

the mobile phone can take the place of the loyalty card, whether by means of on-screen identity numbers and bar codes or the simple use of a mobile phone number.

A number of the latest mobile phones now have both Barcode Readers as well as NFC (near field communications) chips built into them. HFC enables very close range (usually up to 4cm) wireless communication with other NFC devices (such as POS terminals or in-store kiosks). This effectively allows each consumer’s mobile phone handset to become a unique identifier, not only for payments and identity checks but also to replace loyalty cards and key fobs.

The applications for NFC technology embedded in mobile phones are growing rapidly as consumer awareness and acceptance of the technology grows. Apart from obvious applications such as contactless payments and transport or event ticketing, other uses already include:

1. Smart posters
This technology means that consumers can pick up promotional offers and mobile content (e.g. coupons, voice messages, sounds, video clips, wallpapers, ring tones, special offers, and so on) by simply holding their phone up against a promotional wall poster or billboard;

2. Loyalty card surrogacy
This means that consumers can opt to use their 2D Barcode, Tag or NFC-enabled mobile phone as their loyalty programme identifier instead of carrying a separate plastic card or keyfob – and if this is done with enough loyalty programmes, the problem of ‘plastic fatigue’ could become a thing of the past;

3. Contactless couponing
This means that consumers can automatically pick up personalised coupons or offers from kiosks and offer boards on the way into a retail store, just by holding their phone up as they walk in;

4. Peer-to-peer sharing
This enables the quick and easy sharing of promotional coupons and media content with other consumers, in cases where sharing of the coupon among friends and family in an almost viral way is desirable (for example, an open-to-all offer such as a ‘buy one, get one free’).

The Time Has Come…

A report by Impaq Group put forward some convincing arguments to suggest that the time has come for the mobile phone to replace the loyalty card. Over 30% of consumers never remember to carry their loyalty cards or have lost them. But the customer-facing elements of a good loyalty programme (i.e. clear rules, an acceptable currency, simple redemption, relevant rewards, achievable results, and flexibility) are not bound to any particular medium, so the mobile phone can stand in for loyalty cards without affecting the operation of the programme.

In practical terms it would be a relatively simple matter for almost any modern mobile phone handset to display a customer’s identifying bar code (or other machine readable image) on-screen, either as wallpaper or as a saved image or MMS message. The consumer then only needs to show their phone at the check-out to identify themselves. And it certainly would encourage interactivity, leading to additional engagement in the programme. Members could be reminded before Happy Hour promotions or other member events. They could have their points balance available at all times, encouraging them to redeem them more regularly.

In addition, catching the consumer when their interest is at its peak (e.g. being able to hold a mobile phone next to an advertisement poster to book event tickets) means that the transaction is decided upon and completed while the consumer’s desire is high. The ticket seller could then use a simple text message to remind the consumer when the event is near, and either give instructions on how to print tickets at a kiosk or deliver a uniquely coded ticket to the mobile phone for presentation upon arrival at the event.

Using customer feedback to increase loyalty…

At the same time, improved communications and CRM systems that provide cross-enterprise customer information will make it possible to enter into much more meaningful dialogue with customers while, at the same time, making it much easier for customers to respond. In order to make the transition from mass marketing to individual communication with customers, and to begin accurately anticipating customer response rates, a truly integrated customer segmentation and dialogue application (e.g. on the internet) could allow marketers to increase the accuracy of segmentation, and to develop more cost-effective campaigns for cross-selling, up-selling, customer profitability, and customer loyalty.

This kind of customer feedback should be a key part of any customer satisfaction and loyalty initiative. After all, a loyalty programme’s purpose is to collect data that helps a company respond better than its competitors to the consumer’s needs and desires, and to provide the kind of service and product offering that just can’t be matched.

This article is an edited extract from the 36 chapters of detailed coverage in ‘The Loyalty Guide III’, which is The Wise Marketer’s latest 920 page global guide to customer loyalty programmes, techniques, practices and theory. The report is available now, worldwide, for £1150 (approx. US$1995 or Euro 1495).

See TheLoyaltyGuide.com for the free executive summary, downloadable chapter samples, table of contents, online searching, and online ordering.

"Ever since the iPhone came around, it turned the mobile-advertising opportunity from something really stiff, cramped, awkward and slow into something beautiful, sexy and fast."

Faster 3G networks plus new software provide enhanced opportunities to do much more with the amazing iPhone and other Smartphones. A recent Advertising Age article provide clues of what’s to come for publishers and advertisers.

As one commentator put it: "It’s just good business for publishers to move as aggressively as possible to serve content on as many platforms as readers want to consume it, and in ways that optimize each platform’s strengths…" Our new multi-platform world undoubtedly provides great opportunities for innovative publishers, advertisers and retailers.

However I personally believe that’s only part of it. If it’s tied in with other print-to-mobileweb enablers like QR barcodes, RFI chips, we start to see the bigger picture of where mobiles fit in the marketing and wider e-commerce arsenal.

Look to your Cellphone to become your wallet. 

The cellphone could become your cash, ID, loyalty card, travel pass, discount voucher, credit card and much much more. In fact in Japan all this advanced technology is already commonplace. The rest of the world is only now catching up. Because everything is digitised, this transaction data is collected in realtime, helping forward-thinking marketers monitor and plan campaigns.

It’s easy and consumers want it.

As was once remarked by a great scientist*, to know the future, watch your kids, don’t ask the academics. So, I’ve been watching mine and other kids recently, seeing how they interact with others and use emerging technology. Conclusion?

The small, not the large screen will dominate

Anyone who’s visited South Korea or Japan in recent years will know how the small screen mobile phone has dominated the lives of their teenagers. A friend’s 14 yr old son here does the same. He always uses his iTouch to surf the web, answer emails, listen to music, watch videos, often ignoring the bigger screen TV and his own laptop.

I asked him why he didn’t use his laptop for web access? "No, it’s stupid – laptops are just for old people" he said "much easier and faster on the iTouch".

Wow. So, where does all this leave direct marketers? I guess it’s that we need to look at tools and applications like this that puts more power in the hands of users and let’s them interact on their terms, not ours.

QR barcodes is another particularly interesting print-mobile-web application that will likely play a big part in coming years. Marketers could easily (and cheaply) use these types of innovative tools to boast sales. There’s likely to be many more coming. Ask your kids, they’ll know…

* Clifford Stoll on TED