Take back Control! The Blog of TXT Circle

Mobile Marketing the next "Killer App"

Today, while sifting through the piles of unread articles in my news reader I stumbled upon a couple of gems:

Imedia is calling mobile marketing the next "Killer App".  They believe that the iPhone will change the landscape when its launched because advertisers will be able to leverage the power of the Apple brand and its early adopter clientele.  Because of this mobile advertising may gain quicker acceptance by the general public.

Also, I received an IDC study called

"U.S. Mobile Marketing and Advertising 2007-2011 Forecast: The Potential Actually Exceeds the Hype"

Here's and except from the article:

"Mobile marketing represents one of the most promising and challenging opportunities for both the advertising and mobile industries. With more than two billion mobile users in the world today, IDC believes that mobile prevails as the first medium through which advertisers can reach such a large audience on an individual basis in the developing world. According to IDC, the brand spend of the U.S. mobile marketing market in 2006 should more than double the spend in 2005.

In order for mobile marketing messages to be effective, they must capture the attention of and engage users. How mobile users will react to mobile marketing is the billion-dollar question. An IDC survey shows that mobile users show limited tolerance for prerolls lasting more than 8 to 10 seconds. This means that successful mobile marketing campaigns must quickly engage users in the first few seconds, not just treat them as a captive audience. If done right, mobile marketing provides an unparalleled window into the lives of mobile users such as their search, discovery and sharing of content. In addition, there are more than a dozen different mobile marketing formats that offer ways to create entirely new marketing experiences."

Man! the news just keeps getting better for TXT Circle!

Changes to this site

As you've probably noticed, I've changed the name of this blog to "Take Back Control! The Blog of TXT Circle"

As I'm a novice when it comes to html code and the effects of changing the name, I've had to change some of the widgets and other things on the site.  If you are having trouble accessing the site in your news reader please email me.

Thanks for reading so far and I hope you like all the upcoming posts.

MMM! I'm Lovin it. Part 2

I have been following a story out of Japan as it makes it way around the internet. (News Readers are a wonderful thing!)

It seems that NTT DoCoMo is partnering with McDonalds to allow people to purchase their happy meal with their mobile phone.  Japan has long been the leader in e-commerce since the launch of I-Mode some years ago.

DoCoMo  claims that their are over 3 million capable handsets in use today and that users simply need to swipe their handset in front of a reader device to have their account charged for the product or service.  Mobile Payments of this type would certainly open up revenue streams in a country where cell phone use is at the saturation point.

I think that there is a lesson to be learned from this program here in North America where the mobile market is still growing.  These types of services can help to drive that all important ARPU number that carriers all covet.  Mobile phone redemption can also help us that are in the mobile marketing space as the easier it is to redeem our coupons and offers the better response rates we can expect.

Now, I don't fully agree that the policy of offering credit lines to mobile phone users as young as 12 is a good idea.  NTT DoCoMo has offered these subscribers small credit lines, $90 a month in most cases, But still the potential for disaster is there.  I wouldn't trust a 12 year old anywhere in the world to spend $90 wisely.

I also think that mobile marketing can succeed without these mobile payment systems.  We can make redemption easier without embedding chips in handsets.  For example, Mobiqa has a solution for barcodes that display on the screen of the phone and are then readable by any store POS scanner.  This is a great idea for couponing as no special hardware is required.

Check out the Japan story as told by the BBC here

Advertisers Start Your Engines

Peggy Anne Salz (MocoNews), posting from 3GSM on mobile advertising is predicting a rise in mobile operators implementing technology that will enable them to deliver and monetize advertising while at the same time attempting to make it more relevant by tracking users activities on their mobile.  Think search advertising without the search.

I agree with her that having ads appear when doing anything on your phone would be very annoying.  It seems that mobile phone users may soon be in need of some insulation against the mobile advertising revolution.

KISS

I could spend all day talking about KISS.  But I'm not talking about the 70's rock spectacle featuring Gene Simmons tongue.  I'm referring to the phrase I first learned from my high school drama teacher...

Keep It Simple Stupid!

I have somewhere between 5 to 10 good ideas a day.  When I say "ideas" I'm referring to business ideas and not the random thoughts that we all have every day.  Anyway, these ideas usually revolve around my start-up TXT Circle.

TXT Circle has a simple goal, provide our members with valuable content to their mobile phone while respecting their right not to be bothered.  The best way to do this is to deliver basic text based communications that are relevant to the member and deliver them at the time the member requested.  However, as mentioned above I have a lot of ideas and this sometimes takes me in directions that are not so simple.  For example, I have spent a massive amount of time dreaming up new ways for TXT Circle to communicate with its members.  Some of these ideas involve things like software clients for mobile phones, flash ads, and java applets.  They are all sexy and more complicated ways to do the same thing the text messages will do.  In this case, I don't think that dressing up our content in a fancy package will make it more valuable or more effective.

Other firms in the mobile marketing industry have taken a more complicated approach and it may be the cause of their downfall because once the novelty wears off the effectiveness of their content will suffer.  I believe this to be a great competitive advantage for us moving forward.

Remember  "more complicated" does not mean "more effective".  Keep it simple stupid!

I'm not crazy

For awhile now I've been preaching about spam text messages.  I think I was hoping that my little blog would have an effect on the mobile marketing industry and the people working in this field. (Naive? Maybe a just little.)  As I have said before, the type of tactics that lead to email spam are bound to be repeated in the mobile world without constant policing from industry participants. 

After reading this article from "The Internet Patrol" on the tactics being used by MBLOX and DadaMobile I realized I am fighting a gorilla.  Read some of the comments.  They are eye-opening.

At least I'm not crazy and this is actually a problem thats happening right now.

Cellphones as Billboards

Carolyn Johnson's article in the Boston Globe about mobile advertising pointed out that the mobile phone is poised to become a "hip billboard".  I really liked the article but I was left with some questions....

How effective are real billboards today?

And

What happens when consumers get bombarded with mobile ads as they become trendy?

Its really about me and you

I like to be ahead of the curve when it comes to new trends in business.  For example, I saw the the potential in mobile access to business applications for small and medium sized firms.  Unfortunately for me, I saw it before these solutions were really affordable for the target businesses.

I see an exciting trend right now with mobile advertising.  Everyone knows that it is something that will take off but nobody has figured out precisely how to make it go yet.  Before starting my current project, I wanted to make sure that I was ahead of the pack but not too far ahead.  So I took to reading a lot of industry publications with predictions on mobile ad spending. I quickly found this to be confusing and contradictory.  Even some of the same "experts" were predicting both increases and reductions.

I realized that the best way to find out if mobile ads are going to take off was to actually talk to real people and see what their attitudes were towards it.  After all its the market that determines what tactics we marketers use right? I spoke to university students, professionals, some unemployed bums with cell phones at length about mobile ads and what they might   Well, I fortunately found that some people were alright with mobile ads as long as they weren't intrusive and were actually valuable (no generic viagra ads).  Others were not so enthusiastic and I take this to mean that the market is almost ready.

Simply put, now is the time to get started in this game. 

Free Texting for Ads?

Here is a link from the UK about the subsidy of text messaging fees with advertising.  Something like this, executed properly could really help drive text messaging and other data services here in North America.

Ohh wait, that's  one of the things that TXT Circle will do....More on that later I promise.

Link

What is ARPU?

We live in a world of acronyms and abbreviations.  Maybe its just the laziness of people in general that results in the butchering of trade lingo and celebrity names. (Who could forget "Brangelina"?)  I think that the actual meaning of a term can be lost once we start using an acronym.  Take the term most used by mobile operators in almost any market in the world, ARPU.

Average Revenue Per Unit, is a fancy way of saying how much money the operator receives from an average subscriber.  Better ARPU means a better share price, happier shareholders, and hopefully a more profitable business.  Although they talk about it a lot, I don't think that mobile operators have really done what it takes to drive up their ARPU.  Don't get me wrong networks are getting better, devices are cooler, and prices are going up.  These are all things that contribute to ARPU in some way but if you really want to drive ARPU you must focus on the right applications.

Take text messaging for example, this is the easiest, cheapest way to drive up ARPU.  Text messaging  applications for search, group messaging, and alerts are already out there and offer real value.  Why not promote these services better.  Mobile operators in the UK have always embraced text messaging and so have their users as a result. I must say that some carriers here are doing a good job of this, Rogers Wireless for example does promote text messaging well and also has great ARPU.  But there is still room for improvement. 

Other carriers need to wake up and smell the coffee.  High speed networks that can deliver broadband type downloads are great but what are we downloading! Recently, in an effort to drive ARPU Telus Mobility added the Playboy channel to its mobile TV offering.  Great! I've always wanted to look at porn when I'm on the go, especially when I'm driving.  Do they think that these types of applications are going to entice high ARPU customers? Bell Mobility will be launching full length movies on their handsets this year.  This I find completely ridiculous.  Who has the time to watch a full length movie on their cell phone? and who would want to?  Your battery would likely die before the climax anyway!

Applications with real value are the only way to drive significant improvements in ARPU, not devices and networks alone.  Wake up carriers!  Provide better and easier access to infrastructure that enables text messaging and others (API's whatever)  Let more application developers do what you seem unable to do.