‘The Mobile Marketing Review’ Goes LIVE!

As a member of ‘The Mobile Mavens’ on The Mobile Marketing Review, I am happy to say that the first broadcast of our show is now LIVE!  And I think you’ll agree that it’s full of useful content and interesting insights from ‘The Mobile Mavens’, Kim Dushinski (author of The Mobile Marketing Handbook), Peggy Anne Salz (publisher of the Top 50 technology blog, mSearchGroove), and myself, Linda Daichendt (CEO, Strategic Growth Concepts; Founder, Mobile Technology Association of Michigan; and Co-founder, Mobile Monday Michigan).

The show begins with our ‘Under the Radar’ segment which will be a standard part of every broadcast.  In this show’s ‘Under the Radar’ we explore a recent Mobile study by Adobe entitled, Adobe Mobile Experience Survey: What Users Want from Media, Finance, Travel & Shopping which was published earlier this month.

The Adobe study contains some interesting findings, but what really drew my attention was the final conclusion and recommendation, “As the pace of smartphone adoption quickens globally, businesses have to be invested in the channel and move beyond the planning stages to start executing and gain some learnings on how users are interacting with the mobile channel.”  My take on that, “it’s time to get out of the kiddie pool, and jump into the ocean and start swimming!”  The bottom line is, you can study Mobile Marketing all you want, and you can read every expert opinion you can find, but you’re never going to figure out how it really works until you start implementing a campaign!  Sure, your business may make some mistakes – just like you’ve probably done with every other medium you’ve ever used.  But every time you use it, you’ll do it with a bit more insight, a bit more education; and therefore, each time you do it, it will be more successful.

And that’s what the company who produced our first evaluated Mobile campaign found out!  We explored a North American campaign by Arby’s which promoted their RoastBurger sandwich.  The company’s goal in implementing this first campaign was to develop local databases that could be used by their individual franchises for re-marketing efforts going forward.  Our research indicated that they incorporated TV, print, public relations, and in-store signage / collateral.  This first effort helped them build 172 local databases as a result of 89%+ response rates to the various media.  Now, the local markets are taking advantage of those Mobile databases to continue  Mobile Marketing efforts in their communities.  The Arby’s campaign appeared to be well-thought-out and fully-integrated into an overall marketing strategy for the chain – signs of a firm doing Mobile Marketing the “right” way.

However, the power of Mobile Marketing will really shine thru once the medium is fully embraced by small businesses.  It’s all well and good that the large chains and corporations are utilizing Mobile – and those firms always tend to be the early adopters – but the story is yet to be written with regard to small business.  I, for one, am quite confident that small businesses who learn the proper way to engage in Mobile Marketing will find it an extremely valuable, cost-effective tool for marketing their businesses.

To showcase that, we at The Mobile Marketing Review are anxious to review campaigns on the show that have been submitted by small businesses and/or the mobile platforms they utilized to implement their campaigns.  Therefore, we encourage firms that have taken their ‘first stab’ at Mobile to go to our website and submit their campaign information to us.  Give us the opportunity to review your campaign so that we can help you, and other small businesses, improve the benefits you obtain from using Mobile Marketing.

And since my fellow ‘Mobile Mavens’ and I have all discovered a shared affinity for Star Trek (and we wonder if that has anything to do with our shared love of Mobile Technology!), I’ll close with a wish for all who follow this blog and will be following The Mobile Marketing Review that is a greeting from Star Trek, “Live long and prosper” in growing your business with Mobile!