This Is Not The Year Of Mobile, But I Know When It’s Coming
The last seven or so years have been “the year of mobile.” It’s now a joke with anyone in the industry that “it’s the year of mobile!” But it never is. And this year isn’t it either. I do know when it’s coming, though. Drum roll please.
The year of mobile will occur when the industry organizes itself around a way to consistently and accurately track impressions, clicks, and conversions in a fully transparent (no secrets at all) way for advertisers and their agencies. We’re nowhere near this now. Here are some examples of how far behind mobile is compared to online:
Mary Meeker’s newest report shows how the biggest upside in interactive spending lies in mobile, with just 1% of ad spending but 10% of time spent with media. What good is upside if the technology is so “online 1996” that agencies and clients feel like they need to drive a 1970s Pinto to the meeting to place their buy? Mary’s report also shows mobile eCPMs are five times less than online. FIVE TIMES! But when you factor in that you can’t target well, can barely read most of the ads on the screen, and have basically no idea whether or not your campaign worked (unless all you care about is driving app installs), mobile deserves to be five times less costly on an eCPM basis. Oh, but go try to buy mobile for a cheaper eCPM. You’ll encounter TWO TIMES greater CPMs. Maybe it’s not so coincidental that the 10:1 pricing discrepancy is equal to the time spent/money spent discrepancy!
On the positive side, at least the industry addressing these problems. Creating an Open UDID would be huge. Figuring out how to make MAC address work would be another good solution too. It’s clearly going to be a while, though, before the industry not only settles on one of these but gets large-scale adoption as well.
So, does mobile advertising have huge potential right now? No. Does the industry have huge potential? Yes. Can’t wait for the two to come together.
All-In-Ones Are Typically Experts At None – Getting Automotive Digital Media Right
Last year I had quite the fiasco with the tires/wheels on my car. I’ll spare you the details but it took 7 trips to the dealer and tire shop to get it resolved. To avoid ever being stranded roadside again I looked for an all-in-one gadget that would jump start my car, inflate the tires, and check the tire pressure. As I read the reviews I learned all of these gadgets were indeed all-in-one, but great at nothing. I ended up with three individual purchases, each of which is best in class. My total purchase cost less than an all-in-one.
If you own a dealership you have a whole lot to worry about. Inventory, personnel, facility, and the list goes on. By the time you get to advertising, “just wanting it solved” is understandable and is reflected here in wanting a silver bullet for digital media. But just like dealers have separate machines to jump start cars and to inflate tires, digital media requires the same separation of expertise. It’s not until you’re a worldwide household brand name that you’re working with an agency that truly has experts in every discipline. So, how do you get it right? The good news, it’s not so hard.
- Let your agency know you don’t expect them to have internal experts for every aspect of digital media. It’s okay for them to assemble best-in-class partners in order to get the best product through one source. Managing your social media pages requires a completely different set of skills than managing a web site, or SEO/SEM, or buying display/video ads.
- Make sure you personally can connect the dots on what you’re being told. “Facebook just doesn’t show all posts to all of your users” is true, but there’s a reason. Make sure you understand completely, or ask the agency to find a more complete explanation.
- If you’re a group of dealerships, or a truly large dealership, consider working separately with an agency that is exclusively digital. Even within that agency they may not have every discipline in-house, it’s more likely the jump-starter will know it’s not an air compressor!
- Finally, track your ROI. No, that’s not to say for every tweet you should sell ‘x’ number of cars. Just like TV where you can’t track that one spot sold you ‘x’ number of cars, you valued the media exposure. If someone retweets you, count that media exposure. If people watch YouTube videos on your YouTube channel, count that is media exposure. Value it and make sure your efforts are paying off.
Digital media shouldn’t be frustrating. It should be powerful and generate a return greater than the spend you put into it. If you can make that your silver bullet rather than wanting an all-in-one, you’ll beat your competition with ease.
How Smaller Clients Can Beat Their Largest Competitors, One Digital Analysis At A Time
If you own a local restaurant, how are you going to compete with Chili’s when placing SEM? How will a small coffee house gain any reasonable traction using social media when it’s competing with 46 Starbucks within 10 miles of its one location? And the same goes for display, web site analytics, and any other digital platform.
Large businesses certainly have an advantage in that they can share the cost of the best experts in any discipline across a larger base of sales and profits. Small businesses have a huge advantage, though, in that decisions can take seconds, not weeks, and execution is up to one or two people rather than a team that needs to coordinate over time. As Gordon Eubanks, a pioneer in the software industry once said, “Strategy gets you on the playing field, but execution pays the bills.” To execute, we have to start somewhere. Here’s how.
First you want to prioritize our digital channels in terms of impact. Do your social channels have a greater reach than your web site? Maybe it’s your email database? Whatever it is, start there. Next, it’s on to testing. In social and email, copywriting is a major factor. “Should we have $5 drink specials this Friday?” may get you triple the viral reach of “$5 drink specials this Friday!” on Facebook or Twitter. Even if you can’t afford to work with an expert, become that expert yourself by copy testing and finding patterns. With web sites, the placement of your nav bar, the types of photos you use, and the colors you pick all influence your success. Again, even if you can’t afford an expert, test multiple iterations over time and keep what works while tossing what doesn’t. This kind of science applies to every aspect of digital media. So, if you’re simply posting, emailing, or hosting a web site without treating it like a true science experiment, you’re missing out.
Also, remember only 500 companies are in the Fortune 500 but there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of companies in the U.S. The very large majority cannot afford a Madison Avenue agency, so it’s up to entrepreneurs and regional ad agencies to bring expertise in analytics to these other companies’ marketing efforts. What’s wonderful about digital media is you don’t need the most expensive SEM platform or web site analytics company to get 75% of the way there in your testing and analytics efforts. And, 75% well executed will get you a whole lot further than many companies who have the fanciest tools but only execute at 50%!
In the end, it’s not about size or money. It’s about smarts and discipline. Committing to excellence, developing analytical systems, and following through over and over and over will help you outperform the competition every time.
If you enjoyed this blog post, please CLICK HERE to share it with your Twitter followers
Tags: advertising agencies, advertising techniques, digital media, digital strategy, marketing digital, online advertising, small agency digital, small business
