Positioning mobile at ad:tech San Francisco
April 14, 2008
Mickey Alam Khan is editor in chief of Mobile Marketer
The nation’s top interactive marketing executives gather this week at ad:tech San Francisco to network, learn and sell. Some of them will even get their first exposure to mobile marketing.
As reported earlier (see story), this show marks the first time that ad:tech will organize a Mobile Marketing Pavilion.
Near the sales area, the enclosure in San Francisco’s Moscone Center hosts mobile marketing firms such as NeuStar, Netbiscuits, 3CInteractive, Bango, CellTrust, iLoop Mobile, LSN Mobile Technologies, M:Metrics, M3Mobile Marketing and WildPitch.TV. Full disclosure: This publication also has a pod and is the pavilion’s media sponsor.
These companies will present their case to an audience that’s completely up-to-speed on Internet marketing, but realizes that new technologies may require them to stretch their thinking and their budgets. Mobile is the next frontier to this audience.
So the one thing that mobile marketing firms should not be to ad:tech delegates is snake-oil salesmen.
Instead, first understand the mindset of the ad:tech delegate. Then learn their pain-points. Follow up with a quick education on mobile marketing today. And then offer a possible prescription. Encourage a test program or a follow-up discussion. Make sure to have easy-to-read handouts.
The biggest challenge mobile marketing firms face today, aside from technology and infrastructure, is naysayers – the Doubting Thomases, be they tabloid or mainstream media or vested interests, who say this isn’t the year of mobile marketing. Please. If 260 million consumers in the United States are doing more than talk and text on the phone, it tells you that a new ecosystem has been created.
So the key battle here is positioning. Cable television went through this exercise in the face of resistance from the then-Big Three broadcast networks and the Internet had its antagonist in the print media industry. Both cable and the Internet today are thriving channels.
Every new channel will have its labor pains and mobile’s no exception. But with new smartphones on the market, better voice and data plans, improving software and an estimated 40 million consumers accessing the Web on their phones, mobile’s a channel that’s ready to prove itself as a branding or customer acquisition or customer retention tool.
What the mobile marketing exhibitors will have to prove to ad:tech’s metrics-driven audience is that advertisers want to be where the consumers are. And where are today’s consumers? On their mobile phone – talking, texting, buying music and ringtones, taking photos, emailing, checking Web sites, shopping, monitoring weather, reading news, banking, watching TV and redeeming coupons. You mean to say marketing can’t survive in this environment?
The mobile marketing industry is putting shoulder to wheel to institute standards and metrics for ROI as well as create a channel that works in harmony with others such as TV, outdoor, radio, print, mail and online.
Above all, the mobile marketing industry is working on ensuring that the user experience doesn’t suffer, but is enhanced by the rich content delivered free through the support of marketing and advertising. Incorporate that into your pitch at ad:tech San Francisco or any other trade show where mobile is the newbie.