The DCMS report is out now on influencers - well worth a look

Thanks to Stephen Waddington for sharing the report in his House of Marketing and PR Facebook Group. Being an 'influencer' is a relatively new career pathway and, despite what us oldies may think about it, is a growing sector. Marketing via influencers can be an effective way to reach your audience but behind the scenes, it's definitely not all glamour. Stephen highlights some key points from this morning's report:

• Influencer culture is a rapidly expanding and professionalising subsection of the UK’s vibrant creative industries, although the Government hasn't given it any attention.
• Behind the glamour that often colours perceptions of influencers, this is a challenging career beset by diversity issues, pay disparities, and a pervasive lack of employment support and protection.
• As the leaders of often small, niche and trusting communities, influencers can offer targeted and effective marketing services. Influencer marketing is therefore offering a lucrative opportunity for brands and advertisers as well as influencers.
• Updates to the enforcement powers of the Competition and Markets Authority and Advertising Standards Authority are urgently needed to prevent further damage to consumer trust.
• The lack of protection for children taking part in this new industry, both as consumers of influencer content and as influencers themselves, is a critical concern.

You can see the interactive version of the report here or download the PDF version here. It has also been widely reported on in the UK media, including the BBC here.

Ever stuck for where to go for a late night drink or meal in London?

My friend Emma has the answer for you with her 24 Hour London app (available on iOS and Android). The idea behind the app is to provide people with information about bars, restaurants and clubs that are open late at night with the added bonus of special offers of discounts and even free drinks at some of the establishments listed.

The app is in early stages but is gaining a following and Emma's on a mission to capitalise on that. Londoners, if you're ever out and about at night, then do download the app - it's free and I expect you'll find it useful.

As part of Emma's initial marketing push, she's using Thunderclap to help spread the word about 24 Hour London in January. Thunderclap simply posts a tweet or a status update on your feed at the time and day allotted and that's it. It doesn't ask you to connect your contacts or spam your friends by email. It costs you nothing save for a few moments of your time.

Your assistance will mean more downloads for her and more footfall for the venues she works with and maybe free drinks for you and your friends if you use the app. Plus, you'll probably find out about places near where you live or work that you never knew opened late at night. I'm also really interested to see how this campaign works. I've never tried Thunderclap. If there's any insight from the campaign, I'll share it here in due course.

Click on the link here or the image above, you too can add your voice to the campaign.

Day 21/25 Blogmas

Email Marketing Fail from Monsoon this morning

I don't shop for fashion very often on the High Street these days. This is partly due to fashion overload from my 10 years spent in fashion retail and my love of a second-hand bargain from eBay, a charity shop or my Mum.

There's also this small thing of not knowing what the right price is to pay for something and the potential of triggering 'buyer's remorse'. It's a horrid feeling to buy something and then find out you could have got it a lot cheaper the next day or in the next door shop. With the proliferation of promotional offers, never-ending sales and discount days, it's difficult to know what is the 'right' or 'fair' price to pay for something. My Mum also passed on her bargain hunting gene to me so I can't help but look for the yellow stickers in Marks & Spencer's food department!

My love of a bargain sometimes leads me to the Monsoon Accessorize Sample Sale. Non-UK readers may not know the brands. They're ladies and children's fashion brands at mid-range price, generally good quality, fashionable but not overly fashion-forward. Historically, they were known for great-priced evening wear but they've moved on from that (although that's still a big part of what they sell in Holiday Season).

I've been to their Sample Sale a couple of times and got a few things there and I'm on the mailing list. And the email dropped this morning to let me know that their next sale is on 21st and 22nd September. This is the image I received.

Umm, Monsoon - where is the event? It would be nice to know! The image didn't even click through to a website. (FWIW, I'm guessing it's at The American Church in London again, but I could be wrong.)

Lessons learned today:

• Even the big, experienced companies get it wrong from time to time
• Make sure all the key data is included in your email flyer, including the location!

Get your free Successful Apps Guide from Apadmi

I’ve known the Apadmi team for several years now and seen them grow from strength to strength. They’ve been busy building and promoting mobile apps and services for many clients and have now distilled what they, their clients and their partners have learnt along the way into a comprehensive guide. The guide is aimed at Start-ups, App Entrepreneurs and Indie Developers but I think it will also be useful to marketers who are building apps too to get them thinking a bit deeper as to what this app business is all about and how to go about promoting the app. It’s chock full of good advice.

It’s free to read online here and if you ping them your name and email address here, you’ll get a link to download a PDF copy to print off or read on an e-reader which I find easier.

Enjoy!

Top Tips for Public Speaking

I do a lot of public speaking. I always have done. At primary school, I was given the good speaking parts because I had a clear voice and a good memory. As a teenager, I acted my socks off at my local theatre and as an adult, I’ve been speaking in public in every job I’ve had – whether it was running a training course, hosting a fashion show or giving the keynote at an international conference. It’s very much second nature to me and something I enjoy doing. Don’t get me wrong, despite years of practice, I still have to prepare – including rehearsing out loud. But I don’t have stage-fright or nerves in the same way that others have it. That element of stage-fright for me is excitement rather than fear and the cue to go on with the show. And I see public speaking as being a very important way to communicate your story and market yourself or your business, whether you’re in a panel discussion or on stage showcasing your latest wares.

It doesn’t always go right though, as this video shows. It’s from CES just a couple of weeks ago and it’s Michael Bay talking up Samsung on the main stage.

It looks like he’s under-prepared and under-rehearsed. I expect Samsung paid him a lot of money to come up on stage and say nice things about their kit, but without the teleprompter, he had nothing to say. I guess that’s also why he’s a movie director rather than an actor.

Don’t let this happen to you. And don’t let this put you off either!

Here are some resources I’ve come across recently which may help you if lack of preparedness, stage-fright or just sheer dread thwart you.

Zach Holman has put together a lovely website with everything you need to know about preparing and delivering a conference talk. You can find it here http://speaking.io/. I don’t have much to add to his advice as it’s great except that it’s well worth watching and listening to other speakers. Sometimes it’s hard to take an objective view as you’re listening to them for the content and in a different context. But if you can, also check out their performance and see what you like or don’t like about how they’ve done it and have a think about how you could improve on that yourself. I find listening to panel discussions on Radio 4 quite helpful for this too as you’re not distracted by any slides or visuals and you can really tune into someone’s personal style.

Mary Portas tweeted this link the other day. It’s a short article about the one phrase you ought not to say. I concur and I’ve been guilty of this one in the past. You have been warned…

Of course, in order to do any public speaking, you need the chance to speak. Most commonly, this is about being accepted to speak at a conference. Here’s a link to some sound advice about putting that conference proposal together. It has a technical bent, but the advice is valid regardless of topic. There’s some more advice here too.

Public speaking is not rocket science. I’m glad that it’s not something that everyone’s good at as it leaves plenty of openings for me to do my thing. But it’s also clear to me it’s the sort of thing that you get better at the more practice you have. So don’t be shy. Have a go.

Good luck.

Celebrate!

This is a lovely example of well-designed HTML for email marketing. I receive too many emails that are completely blank and just show placeholders for images, especially on my mobile phone or tablet. This is what you can do with a bit more thought.

What I don’t know of course, is how it does or doesn’t work on mobile…

Hat tip to @ChrisMear for sharing.

End of term reports from Adobe and BDO

It’s December 2013 already. Christmas is in the air and the TV is awash with Christmas TV adverts. So it’s only to be expected that there are some end of term reports from some of the big guns. And I’m afraid I’m reading them with mixed feelings which I’ll share with you.

Let’s start with BDO’s Retail Compass 2013. The survey “examined the opinions of 100 chief marketing officers at leading retailers located throughout the USA. The retailers in the study were among the largest in the country, including 11 retailers in the top 100 based on annual sales revenue. The telephone survey was conducted in September and October of 2013”.

The survey covers all aspects of retail but there is a section about mobile marketing.

In the press release, the focus for retailers is on traditional channels rather than mobile:

• 38 per cent of retailers are including mobile in their marketing strategy this year—down from 50 per cent in 2012—those who are embracing it are ramping up their efforts.
• Last year, mobile comprised an average of 5.9 per cent of retailers’ overall marketing budget; this year, that number has jumped to 15 per cent.
• With eMarketer predicting a 15 per cent rise in mobile shopping volume this year, the mixed survey results suggest that retailers remain divided as to the platform’s growth potential and its ability to convert sales.
• One strategy on which retailers are not divided, however, is print advertising: a plurality of CMOs (41 per cent) are investing most of their holiday budgets in traditional print ads, which have been a consistently popular medium over the last 4 years.
• And CMOs still believe in the power of TV to reach a wide audience: 29 per cent say they will spend the majority of their holiday advertising budget on broadcast.
• Retailers are looking towards social media, but don’t know the right mix (and probably don’t realise how much of it is on mobile and how that impacts on conversions if their offering isn’t mobile-friendly).

So good news for broadcast and print in the US, and for those who are working on mobile campaigns for retailers, it’s good news as the budgets are bigger – just fewer of them by some measure compared with 2012. I have to question what the decision making process is behind this when the growth in mobile and mobile commerce is rising at a very fast pace. Of course, I don’t know how the question was asked and it may be that the retailers are ahead of the curve and have a great mobile site and/or a range of mobile apps and that the assumption is that mobile marketing in this context means mobile advertising which maybe they feel they don’t need as their mobile offering is so strong. I live in hope of that anyway! I fear that retailers may have their heads in the sand and have not yet woken up to what’s happening under their noses and are missing out on opportunities today.

Download the full report here http://www.bdo.com/download/2972

Now let’s look at the UK. Adobe and The Guardian have just published a survey looking at the mobile marketing attitudes of 1427 executives in the UK. The free report makes for quite depressing reading about the UK state of play.

• More than 50% said their organisation had a fragmented approach or no strategy at all when it comes to mobile
• Most respondents are unconfident about their organisation’s ability to measure the success of their mobile channels (which I’m guessing is a hindrance to offering them at all)

YET

• Most respondents felt their businesses would benefit from mobile marketing

AND

• Respondents expect to see a significant shift in the number of customer interactions supported or driven by mobile

So why aren’t they taking the plunge?

Well, rather worryingly, a lot of respondents felt that mobile wasn’t going to overtake the desktop at all or within the next two years. Many don’t have the funds to support mobile initiatives or don’t believe their business would benefit at all.

That last point worried me so I took at look back at the kinds of organisations the respondents came from. As this was run by The Guardian, there were a disproportionate amount of responses from the public sector, the arts, charities/not for profit and education. I’m not entirely surprised that those organisations aren’t as clued up and/or don’t have the funds or willingness to go mobile, at least not yet. I would hope that the results would be more positive if there were more brands, agencies and retailers who had responded.

You can read more here.

I guess the good news for us working in mobile marketing is that there’s still plenty work for us to do. Need to get your senior teams up to speed with what’s going on in mobile marketing and media? Get in touch. I’ve done workshops with a variety of media owners and agencies in the UK and the Nordic region. Maybe I can do one for you?

All your favourite brands belong to just 10 companies

You’ve probably seen this graphic doing the rounds on social media already. But if not, it really is well worth a look. It’s called ‘The Illusion of Choice’. You see lots of brands on the supermarket shelf and you get to choose your preference – maybe you choose on price, quality, smell, taste, perceived value and more. But how much of a choice is it when those brands all belong to the same companies?

You might wonder why I think this is worthy of note. Well, I think it’s worth being mindful of what you buy and where that money is going. I didn’t know that Nestle owned L’Oreal who in turn owns The Body Shop, Stella McCartney and Kiehl’s. It’s made me think again about Kiehl’s as a brand and makes me question their product quality. And can Diesel maintain its (relatively) cool brand image when its parent company is Nestle?

Equally, I think it’s important to understand how these brands and companies do deals with each other in their own company group. One example cited is Yum Brands which owns KFC and Taco Bell. The company was a spin-off of Pepsi. All Yum Brands restaurants sell only Pepsi products because of a lifetime deal with the soda-maker. Not a lot of choice going on there.

I’m not saying don’t buy these brands, maybe just be a little more mindful each time you do.

The Everything Guide to Mobile Apps

The Everything Guide To Mobile Apps has brought together the insights of more than 25 mobile professionals, practitioners and pundits to identify market trends, best practices and key lessons learned in developing, distributing and promoting mobile apps. I’m pleased to say that I’m one of them and I contributed to the sections looking at social media and networking. The guide is aimed at SMEs to help them learn how to make and app, get discovered in the app store, create a successful marketing strategy and connect with customers and boost their businesses.

Mobile app downloads are set to reach 81 billion by the end of this year according to eMarketer, so the pressure is on for companies to tackle the business and technology challenges of making and marketing a winning app. Published at the end of March in print and on kindle in the last few weeks, this is probably the most up to date guide on the market.

The book is in an easy to read style, with key points highlighted as well as pointing readers to further useful and mostly free, resources. Even if you have some experience, you’ll probably find some useful insights in there that you hadn’t come across before. And it’s less than £10 in the UK at the moment!

The Everything® Guide to Mobile Apps is available now at Amazon in Paperback or Kindle

A *must-read* for anyone doing any kind of PR

This one isn’t just for professional PR people. It’s for people who have to do their own PR for their website, their mobile app, their charity, their hobby project, or whatever. I don’t know why people find this PR stuff hard, it really isn’t. It’s thinking about the other person instead of you and following some very simple rules. Mike Butcher of Techcrunch Europe fame has nailed it with this slideshare and video of the presentation he did of it at Startup Week 2011 – and it’s relevant for all media and PR, not just technology. Read it, watch it, absorb it and share it.

How to deal with tech media by @mikebutcher

View more presentations from mikebutcher

And if you’re looking at this on a device that can’t read slideshare, here are my tips…

1. Assume your recipient has no time and communicate accordingly
2. Make sure you have news. No-one really cares about your company/charity/project in and of itself. You have to create the story and the reason for them to care. An iphone app launching is definitely not news. A business starting is not news. A new hire is unlikely to be news unless it’s an absolute coup that you got them working for you in the first place or you stole them from under the nose of a competitor.
3. Embargoes are pretty much worthless.
4. Don’t send attachments. Definitely don’t attach large pdfs or image files. You know busy people read their mail on their phone a lot of the time, don’t you? Adjust your style accordingly.
5. Plain text emails please with key messages up front. Bullet points make it easier to digest. Especially on a small screen.
6. Don’t bug the recipient about writing the post about you. They’ll either do it or they won’t. There are 100s of reasons why they might not write about you. The main one being they probably don’t have time with everything else on the to do list. Bugging them probably won’t help you.
7. Getting press coverage isn’t the only goal and it isn’t the only way to get visibility. Relationships and active participation in relevant communities of interest, be that face to face or online, will probably get you further in the long-run
8. Sending everyone the same press release isn’t interesting. You need a personalised approach – especially with mainstream media and larger blogs.
Any tips to add here?

Update: Here's a great slide deck from Mike Maney from Alcatel Lucent with his tips on influencing the influencers. Well worth a look too while we're on the topic of PR.

Influencing the Influencers

View more presentations from Mike Maney

Give me just a little more time

And my love will surely grow.. Yes, that’s the lyric to a song from the 70s by The Chairmen of the Board. But it’s how I feel about so many location-based, time-based, relevant-for-me advertising.

Like a lot of people, I’ve signed up to my localised Groupon, Living Social and other services and it feels like I’m being bombarded by time-based deals. I’ve also recently signed up to Moshogo, which tells me about events going on my local area. A useful service in theory. But they’re all making the same fundamental mistake. They’re not giving me enough time.

With Moshogo, I receive a daily mobile-optimised email of what’s on today in my local area. And it’s really comprehensive and well put together. But by the time I read the email – even if it’s first thing in the morning, it’s simply too late. I don’t have time to get myself organised and friends organised to go and do something that starts in an hour’s time – no matter how amazing and how relevant it is for me. I probably need a selection of what’s on highlights twice a week and then I click through to the site for more. Or maybe I need to have the choice to hone the selection even further so it’s truly personalised.

Like a lot of folks, I do love a bargain. So in theory, Groupon style deals should work for me. But it doesn’t. With Groupon and its clones, it’s the same. I’m worn out with being shouted at as to what to buy right now. I’m just not that impulsive when it comes to shopping and making decisions about what to buy and what not to buy. I don’t think I ever was. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Back in the mists of mobile time at the start of the century, I worked at a start-up called ZagMe where we sent text message coupons to shoppers at Lakeside and Bluewater shopping malls (the two largest in Europe at the time). These text messages were offer-based and sent while shoppers were actually out shopping. (Yes, I know. We were at least 10 years ahead of our time. We learned that one the hard way). We experimented a lot with timing of offers. And we learned two key things.

Firstly, the offers we sent as people arrived at the shopping mall were the ones most likely to be redeemed.

Secondly, time-based offers had to give the shoppers enough time to redeem the coupon without them having to charge across the shopping centre to meet the deadline of the offer. So offers that were time-limited to an hour were a no-no, but offers that could be redeemed any time that day were more successful.

So Groupon, Living Social, and those of their ilk. Please, give me just a little more time.

Marketing Mobile Apps & Other Stories

For those of you who don’t know already, I help to run Mobile Monday London, an organisation that runs popular monthly knowledge and networking events, large-scale events like Over The Air (coming on 10/11 September) and Heroes of the Mobile Screen (coming in December) and also has an email discussion group, a Facebook group, a LinkedIn group and an active twitter following.

Our most recent event was 200,000 Apps, Where’s Mine? sponsored by the lovely people at BlackBerry. Essentially, we were looking at how to market your mobile application since the days of simply publishing it to the App Store (whichever flavour it may be – be that Apple, Nokia, Android, BlackBerry etc) and hoping for the best are gone. Marketing savvy is now required to make the most of your opportunity. But this isn’t an easy thing. If marketing were easy, there wouldn’t be 100s of 1000s of jobs for marketers. Equally, it’s a bit topic and we probably only scratched the surface as we only had about an hour or so to cover the topic. There was a lot more the audience wanted to know.

So with this in mind, Kath Clarke from Rosier Consulting approached me and asked if she could write a guest article as she felt there were some key things she could address on how to market mobile applications on a shoestring. Of course I said yes, it was such a great idea.  So here it is. Over to you Kath.

How to Market Mobile Applications on a Shoestring

At this week’s Mobile Monday London panel discussion, application developers wanted to know how to market apps and create awareness of their apps on a shoestring. I felt that the question wasn’t answered in full so wanted to share my experience in helping small and large businesses in mobile get their applications and services noticed, create brand awareness and ultimately drive sales.

Now, you’ve created your gym app for example, and it’s available to buy, but how do you get anyone to know about it and drive your app to the top of the charts without spending the big bucks? My tips below won’t cost you millions, but it will cost you a bit of time and tenacity.

Who are your customers?

It may seem like a pretty simple question, but you’ve really got to know who your target customers are first. To work this out, just test your app with your group of friends, colleagues and family (which usually means hitting the main age groups, demographics and interests). See who responds positively and note down their age, what their interests are (gym, music, socializing etc), what phone they have and if they know anyone else who would like your app or service.

Create your target list

Put all this information into a spreadsheet and group everyone in interest groups, their age, phone type and if they would recommend the app to anyone. Remove anyone irrelevant (i.e. their phone doesn’t support your app) and put your groups in descending order of size.

Go local first

So you’ve worked out your interest groups and have a large list of people who will recommend your app to a friend. Now, you need to look at your local community in a 5-mile radius, and select all of the private and public gyms, tennis clubs, football clubs, as well as the other key places your target audience might hang out.. bars, pubs etc. There will be people interested in your app who never actually go to the gym, so you need to go where they go. Work out your route and go around all of these places, app in hand.

Promote it

What do you say to the person at reception or the manager of the venue? Tell them that you have created an exciting new app which is going to help people improve their fitness levels and you wanted to know if they’d be interested in giving it away for free to all of their customers. This would add value to their customer offering and help promote your app. If they say yes, tell them that you’d like to show it to the staff (with supporting handsets) and demonstrate how to download it and start using it. Arrange a time to come back and tell them you will bring along some posters and flyers to promote the free give away to their customers. Fingers crossed, they will be more than happy with this.

Posters and flyers

You can get a graphic designer to create a poster and flyer in a day and get them printed up locally fairly cheaply. They don’t have to be fancy, just clearly say WE ARE GIVING OUR CUSTOMERS A FREE APP and DOWNLOAD IT NOW and don’t forget to write a succinct one liner explaining the benefits (not features – there’s a big difference) of the app and where to get it.

Recruiting local ambassadors

Your local college or university is a fertile place to recruit ambassadors to your app. Recommendation from a peer is more successful that recommendation from a sales guy. After getting permission from the person in charge of the campus, you need to find students who would be interested in getting paid a small wage to be your “app ambassador”. They will essentially be selling your app to anyone they can, and with every new registration they will get a small bonus or just a standard weekly fee. The viral effects of this campaign will mean after a few weeks you will have created awareness not only within the local student community, but with the teachers, canteen staff, families and their friends. To generate interest from prospective ambassadors, create posters with your mobile number to be interviewed and recruited.

(This campaign idea was hugely successful with Turkcell the major mobile operator in Turkey who recruited student ambassadors to promote Turkcell Messenger.)

Recommendation is your best friend

People always listen to friends, family and colleagues, so grab your list of people who said they know someone who’d be interested in the app and call them up and take them up on their offer. Get their contact details and explain what are you doing and see if they would be interested in your free app. This will not only extend your reach outside your local community but will do so as many times as you have people to call. This is viral marketing at its best.

Get local coverage in the press

Some people don’t know how easy it is to get local coverage. Local newspapers love local stories and they would be interested in covering a story about a local innovative app developer who has created apps which people in the local gym are using. All you need to do is call up a news reporter on the local paper and explain why your app is great and they might want to interview you, take your photo and hey presto, you have your own press coverage which will read by a lot of people in your local community.

Get coverage in the right subject area

Again, getting press coverage isn’t rocket science when promoting apps. If your app is a gym app for example, then research online all of the online and print media, and the blogs to do with sports and fitness. Get the email and phone number of the features writer or the blogger and call them up and explain that you have the best app in the market for this, explain why and ask if they would like to feature it. If they like it, then they’ll likely to write up about it. For the big magazines like Men's Health for example, you can offer to give it away for free to all readers for a limited time only.

[Ed: Please be aware though, that journalists are very busy people and that bloggers are often blogging in their spare time as a hobby so don’t pester and don’t be offended if they didn’t get round to writing about you. Also be clear on benefits, not features – features are only meaningful to you. Customers are interested in benefits and results. And if you say you’re the first at something, really make sure that you are by doing your homework. Also, don’t assume that the blogger has an iPhone, Android or whatever phone you expect them to have. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has an iPhone..]

Social Media

A great tool when marketing to consumers, use Facebook and create a page about your app. Get your ambassadors and friends, family and colleagues to sign up to the “I love this App” page and their friends will see their updates and might look to find out more.

You can do loads of things to keep your Facebook page alive. For example you can profile your ambassadors with a short video clip talking about how much they love your app and post on Facebook. Write up short stories about how they have used the app, how much weight they’ve lost, or what they think is the best benefit. Customer stories and testimonials really work but you may have to go out and ask your customers for this.

You can even create a competition for your Facebook followers to come up with new ideas for your next app or for work experience with you on an existing app. Regular activities will help spread the word and maintain your Facebook page.

Creating a Twitter page will tap into the Twitter followers, and you can update new events and with entries on anything else interesting to engage conversation with a new audience.

Now, you should be set to generate sales for your app and push it to the top of the app store charts.

About Rosier Consulting

Rosier Consulting specialises in marketing for businesses in the mobile industry. We provide marketing, events, PR and new media services to companies who are looking to enter the mobile marketplace or are already established and need to raise their profile, attract new customers and create business leads.

Delivering results, on time and to budget, Rosier Consulting can help any company stand out from the crowd through hard hitting marketing and PR campaigns. We also provide new lead generation programs, build the brand through rebranding initiatives, develop market leading product collateral and service demos and set up and manage events, exhibitions and user forums internationally.

www.rosierconsulting.com

Thank you for that Kath. What great tips.

I have a couple more to add myself…

Copy someone else who has successfully created and marketed an app similar to yours

If someone else has already been successful, and you think you’re just as good, if not better, then you need to make sure you’re getting coverage in the same places that they’re getting coverage. Or that you’re contributing to the conversation about a particular genre of apps or services. Don’t use this as an opportunity for a sales push – instead, join the conversation, add value to the article, community, forum or whatever it is. In doing that you will pique interest in what it is you’re doing. Leaving a message on a blog or facebook that says ‘My app’s brilliant, buy it now’ will just get deleted and is a complete waste of time. This technique is particularly powerful in a b2b setting, but it can work beyond that too.

Public speaking and events

You need to get out there. Someone from the team needs to be a visible face for the company. The one they get quotes from in articles and soundbites, the one they can turn to when something goes wrong and who they know will reply to them, someone who is taking the lead in a chosen field. If your early adopters are going to be from your industry, then you need to hang out with them at their events – asking interesting questions during sessions, putting yourself forward as a speaker for example. If your customers are somewhere else, you need to be where they are – both online and offline. And being at the Sports Conference, hanging out with sports enthusiasts to show off your gym app might just be the ticket.

Don’t forget to read the write-up about the MoMoLo event. And if you read down to the bottom of it, you’ll see a whole bunch of useful links which might just help you sort out your app marketing strategy with tips, hints and insight galore.

Oh, and keep an eye on the Mobile Monday London website and email discussion group for updates – we’re going to be doing a few free webinars in the coming weeks to help you further with this topic covering youth, PR and marketing techniques.

Technorati Tags: marketing campaign,marketing,mobile applications,mobile monday london,pr,mobile marketing

Pinking it up, does it work?

I've often asked the question as to what research has been done into what difference gender makes (or not) in terms of how we use technology - laptops, software, mobile phones, whatever. I've asked user-interaction designers, marketers, commercial folks, media owners and no-one has been able to point me to anything tangible. I suspect that the mobile network operators may have done research in this area, but they're not telling. And maybe the nice folks at What If? have done something in this area? (They happened to hold a lovely evening a couple of weeks back to celebrate the women in the mobile industry and I was invited.) Or maybe there's no need for stuff that is used equally by both genders?

Anyway, the few attempts by the handset manufacturers to appeal to women have had mixed results to say the least it seems. It feels like phones designed for women look prettier but are often dumbed down when it comes to functionality and applications. Is this just a reflection of how Western society views women anyway (i.e. they like us to be pretty but not too clever because that's scary)? Maybe I'm stretching the analogy a bit, or maybe there's more truth to the stereotype than I care to admit.

Anyway, I digress. A pal sent me a link to this article from Marketing Week talking about marketing to women and how successful 'pinking it up' is or isn't. It talks of Motorola's new Moto Jewel handset launch. which is certainly pretty, and has lots of features you may want from a phone at the sub £100 price point. And is aimed at women when mostly Motorola aims its handsets at men.

I know that putting a gadget in pink does sell product whether it's a pink kettle or a pink phone. But where is the insight into marketing a phone to women beyond making it shiny, pink or bejewelled? We probably don't necessarily need different phones (I'm very happy with my Nokia N-95 and I'm certainly tempted by the G-phone in white - neither handset is aimed at women specifically) but maybe men and women need them explained to them in different ways. Maybe changing the language is all you need rather than changing the model.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: women,handsets,motorola,cellphone,mobile,gender,marketing

Voice marketing is part of the mobile marketing mix too

When talking about mobile marketing these days, the assumption is that it's all about mobile data and that the format of that data is mobile internet and sms. Let's not forget that the mobile phone was primarily designed so that we could *talk* to each other wherever we are and whenever we want to. Voice communications are still important and voices do matter. So it's great to see companies taking this seriously and using voice effectively as part of their marketing efforts. And I've stumbled across a couple of examples just today to share with you.

First off, you can jump start your kid's morning routine with a Hannah Montana (TM) wake-up call! This is a new(ish) campaign from Walmart and Disney. The idea is quite a simple one... you subscribe to the service and you can organise a pre-recorded surprise telephone call from Hannah Montana to brighten up your sprog's day. It's good to see good, old-fashioned voice at work. I haven't tried it myself, and let's face it, I'm a tad old to be a Hannah Montana fan but even I know she's incredibly popular so I imagine this campaign should fly too. The FAQs are very clear that it's a free service and no email addresses will be used for marketing purposes. Very refreshing.

Nearer home in the UK, the teams at Spinvox and Moblog have joined forces to launch the 'We Love Your Accent' competition and voice blog. This is your chance to tell the world what accent you like and why and in doing so, you're in with a chance to win a fancy schmancy new Nokia phone, a year's free subscription to both Spinvox and Moblog and 250 shiny new personalised moo cards. So have your say and tell the world what your favourite accent is and why.

If you have other examples of marketing campaigns where voice is the key element, then please add a comment below and share what you know.

Adidas and Samsung team up for miCoach

More than a website, MP3 player or phone, miCoach is a total coaching system that creates personalised training plans, keeps tabs on your stats, and coaches you along the way.

It's a suite of impressive sounding sports coaching services that help you:

• Find Your Level: miCoach guides you through your first run to determine your fitness level.
• Set Your Goal: miCoach gives you a range of goals that suit your fitness level, and a series of workouts to help you reach your goal.
• Get Your Plan: With the help of professional sports’ top trainers, miCoach creates a customized training plan just for you.
• Play Your Music: miCoach lets you download 4 gigs of music, and can even customize a playlist to match your stride rate.
• Start Your Run: miCoach gives you audio cues to keep you on pace and in your target heart rate zone for the duration of your run.
• Track Your Stats: miCoach tracks your pace, distance, calories, stride and heart rate to keep you and your goals on track.
• Reach Your Goal: miCoach has everything it takes to get you there. The training expertise, the personalized coaching and the music all work together.

It all sounds great. It's only available on the Samsung F110 handset which seems to have the standard things you'd expect from a phone these days - 2mb camera, mp3/4 player, 1Gb flash memory but with the added extra of the ability to keep track of your running data - heart rate, speed, distance and stride and to manage your personal miCoach programme.

The phone is currently on sale at Carphone Warehouse in the UK (and has been for about a month now it seems). In addition, Adidas is offering a £25 voucher for all new miCoach phone owners.

Is this just a marketing gimmick or a genuinely useful bit of kit? I'm a little skeptical because at the moment, it's all focussed on one single handset. If it was software that could be downloaded on to a range of handsets then I believe it would be a much longer term proposition for Adidas. I don't have any figures on how well feature-specific handsets do in the marketplace so it's hard to judge this one. If you're half-way through your contract, would you pay for a sim-free version of this handset? Or is this only something you might consider if your contract was up and this happened to be an option at the time?

Comments please, especially from any handset marketers out there or customers who have a view on this stuff. (I'm trying out disqus which I'm told is very good).

Did you miss the mobile marketing forum?

I didn't make it to this year's MMA London mobile marketing forum for the conference, but I did manage to say hello to pals and colleagues in the evening courtesy of Admob. It sounds like it was an interesting day and worth going to. So, if like me, you missed it, then you can read all about the 'What Agencies Want panel session' here. It's well worth a read if you're an agency, working with an agency or want to work with agencies.

Via mobhappy.

Recycle your rabbit

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Tips and hints on marketing via email to blackberry users

Yes, it's true. Blackberry is addictive. Some say that it's as addictive as hard drugs. In fact, once you have email on your phone (I use gmail for mobile) then it really is addictive, but it's a very different experience from the pc or laptop based version. Personally, I use gmail on my phone to take a cursory glance at my inbox to see if there's anything really important in there. If there is, the chances are I will call the sender back as it's easier to talk something through than tap it out on the keypad. Or if I do reply on my phone, I use text speak (and all the associated abbreviations and emoticons) which might look a bit odd to the recipient.

Marketing Sherpa has recently completed a report on how key decision making folks are reading their emails and it seems that 64% of them are reading them on blackberries or other mobile devices. This is important news to email marketers.

Marketing Sherpa gives some interesting pointers as to how to make your marketing email mobile and blackberry friendly including using the full URL i.e. http://www.technokitten.com in the message rather than a hyperlink. The chances are the full URL will be 'read' by the email reader as a website and create the hyperlink for the reader. Whereas the link will just give you the link words and will not be a hyperlink.

They also have some information (with a US bias?) about who's using email on their mobile and why, including:

• 38% are ages 18-44 vs 12% for ages 45-64 (so does that mean 60% of survey participants don't use mobile email?)
• 80% access their mobile email at home (yup, guilty as charged)
• 39% admit to checking email while driving their cars (I don't drive, so this doesn't apply to me, I do check it on the bus though).
• 87% access the same email accounts from both their mobile device and through a computer at home or work (yup, that's me - in fact, that's one of the reasons I route all my work email via gmail so I can do precisely this)
• Mobile email users scan their email for important one-to-one messages, leaving the rest for perusal on their PC later (absolutely)
• Sales reps and road warriors are the main mobile email users, but this is going to change in the next six months as the software and pricing becomes more accessible to consumer users.

If you also have a look at GigaOM's roundup of AOL's latest mobile email research (of US customers) there are even more tidbits of info of email usage:

Mobile email:

• 59% of people check email in bed (yup, guilty of this one too!)
• 53% in the bathroom (only while I'm waiting for the bath to fill up)
• 37% are checking email while they drive (don't drive, see above)
• and 12% admit to checking email in church (absolutely not! The phone goes to silent and is put away as soon as I enter a House of God of any denomination).

Who's addicted to email generally:

• Women (16%) are more likely to describe themselves as addicted to email than men (13%), and are actually spending 15 minutes more per day on email than men.

• Forty-three percent of email users check their email first thing in the morning, and 40% have checked their email in the middle of the night. Twenty-six percent admit to checking email on a laptop in bed while in their pajamas.

• Sixty percent of people who email admit to checking their personal email at work an average of three times a day. While only 15% of those who do so have been “busted” by their bosses, 28% say they feel guilty about it.

Read more of the special report for technical guidelines and further hints and tips for marketing via email to mobile devices and you can request a free whitepaper on the topic from the folks at Exact Target.

And it seems that emozes is giving RIM (the folks behind Blackberry) a run for their money.

Mixed response for phones for the elderly

It won't come as much surprise to many that the mobile phone operators and handset manufacturers squarely target youth segments - you only have to see their advertising which mainly seems to be focussed around using phones for enjoying music, ipod stylee. Just occasionally, you see advertising promoting mobiles for business. But if you visit any mobile phone store, Carphone Warehouse, Phones4u et al, their in-store offers are all aimed at the youth segment (by which I mean under 30s) - free Sony PSP, free wide screen telly, xbox 360 or a free ipod Nano.

But having met Dick Stroud not so long ago, my eyes have been opened to the lucrative over 50s segment, which is incredibly diverse, but under represented when it comes to technology offerings - mobile or web.

Recently, there's been a phone launched on to the market, the Emporia Life, and it seems the network operators have snubbed it. The phone is aimed at the over 50s, although, I think they've made the assumption that all over 50s have trouble with their eyesight, hearing and manual dexterity. And having a brother and sister who are over 50, I can safely say that although they wear glasses, they have no problems handling their Motorola Razr and Nokia 3310 respectively. Russell's noted that they're going to find it tough and thinks their approach is patronising. And I have to agree. Defining customers by age is a bit daft these days. There are 50 year olds out there who have more in common with a 20 year old than they do with a 60 year old. Age is a state of mind not an accumulation of years.

I think it's disappointing that Communic8 has got the Emporia Life marketing and PR message so wrong. There are clearly a *lot* of folks out there who would find this kind of mobile phone incredibly useful - easy to read display, nice big buttons for easier dialling and texting and a simpler UI (user interface) as well as an emergency button. But Communic8 need to sharpen up their marketing to reach their market better. Not all over 50s are the same as Dick Stroud will happily tell you. And if they do that, then maybe, just maybe, the network operators will sit up and take notice.

Mobile Advertising News

So Nokia is saying 'no' to adult ads and yet the 'community' is stunned at this. I'm not really sure why they're stunned. As a brand, I can quite see why Nokia would want to steer clear of advertising erotica and gambling as it's not the brand fit they're quite looking for. Whether that will change once they work out the economics remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Google Adsense is launching on mobile and Debi Jones wonders what impact this will or won't have on Admob over at the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog. And not only that, but the word on the street is that Medio is ramping up to tackle the EMEA market more aggressively in the coming months. And surely it's only a matter of time before the likes of Doubleclick finally make their move into the market, now that everyone else and his wife has already done so.

But advertising doesn't solve all your marketing and sales problems. Success starts and ends with a good product or service and too many folks don't start with a good enough product or good enough service. Marketers can't hide behind their old advertising, marketing and sales tricks any more. As an audience, on the whole, we're too savvy to be taken in any more. If you have a good product or service, then advertising, marketing and sales are going to help for sure. But you need to have the basics right first, otherwise you're wasting your cash.

I recently stumbled across a new mobile video service that had gone live. Having gone to their website, I eventually found a demo buried amongst their none too coherent corporate blurb. I entered my number. About 30 minutes later, I get a text message telling me to go to the mobile internet to a specific URL. Note, I didn't get a wap push. Note 2, there was a typo in the SMS message I received. D'oh on both counts. Anyway, I click on the link, only for the wapsite to hang on me and I still haven't seen my 'free' video clip. I'm not going to name them to give them a chance to redeem themselves but I do know this company is about to do a big marketing push, but clearly the demo product isn't ready. And if that's not ready, what's the end product going to be like?

Hmm, something to think about.

And if you'd like more on which to ponder, then this Seth Godin video is well worth a look. It's not very long - about 17 minutes. And while you're at it, it's also worth having a look again at this advert for Microsoft.