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New resource from Google: "The Mobile Playbook"
I'm sharing this with you because I think we've got work to do to make sure we win with mobile.
Read through this new content from Google called The Mobile Playbook and let's discuss.
www.themobileplaybook.com
Going offline?
Download the playbook as a pdf.
On the go? Check out the smartphone-optimized version.
Does your organization need some help figuring out what to do in mobile? Share The Mobile Playbook with your boss, colleagues, and agencies to get started.
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CHECK OUT THE
MOBILE PLAYBOOK
ON YOUR
TABLET!
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HERE TO
BEGIN
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INTRO
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toc
WIN MOMENTS THAT MATTER
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chapter1
ENABLE BETTER DECISIONS
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chapter3
CONSTANTLY INNOVATE
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chapter4
CONCLUSION
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conclusion
BY JASON SPERO WITH JOHANNA WERTHER
THE
Introduction
0.1 WIN MOMENTS THAT MATTER
- How does mobile change our value proposition?
-
Serving The Mobile Customer
-
The Local Mobile Consumers
-
The Price Transparency Challenge
0.2 WIN MOMENTS THAT MATTER
- How does mobile impact our digital destinations?
-
Mobile-Optimized Websites
-
Branded Mobile Apps
0.3 ENABLE BETTER DECISIONS
- Is our organization adapting to mobile?
-
Mobile Accountability and Ownership
0.4 CONSTANTLY INNOVATE
- How should our marketing adapt to mobile?
-
Search Strategy
-
The Full Value of Mobile
-
Mobile for Brand Building
-
Mobile Creativity
-
Marketing Channels
0.5 CONSTANTLY INNOVATE
- How can we connect with our tablet audience?
Conclusion
Additional Resources
USE RIGHT ARROW KEY TO ADVANCE
INTRODUCTION
Mobile changes Everything
Over the past year at Google, we’ve had the chance to discuss the mobile revolution with hundreds of marketers, and the same theme consistently emerges from these conversations: for the majority of businesses we speak with, the question is no longer “Why should I invest in mobile?” – we’ve all read statistics about the tremendous adoption of mobile and tablet devices – but “How should I invest in mobile?”
We created this Mobile Playbook in order to help you find answers. Every company is different, but similar questions emerged from those hundreds of meetings. We’ve distilled them down here into the five crucial mobile questions that every business executive should be asking today. We also suggest strategies you can employ to answer each of
them: benchmarking the competition, understanding how your customer is using mobile through focus groups and surveys, setting aside budget to learn and iterate, talking to your agency partners, and securing
the internal resources to get the work done and the conclusions implemented.
Our goal is to help companies at all levels
of mobile sophistication and experience to adopt the concrete mobile strategies that
can help you win – and we don’t just mean,
win in mobile. This space isn’t a sandbox anymore; the mobile revolution is sailing ahead at full steam, and your customers are on board. Embracing mobile can help you
win the moments that matter, enable better
decisions, and constantly innovate, but you’ve
got to start somewhere.
At Google, we believe that your success in mobile will determine the future of your business. Let’s make 2012 the year you make sure that future is a bright one.
“5 crucial mobile questions
that every business executive should be asking today”
Win moments that matter
01. How does mobile
change our value
proposition?
Serving the Mobile Customer
C
onsumers can now use smart-phones and tablets to interact with businesses 24/7, from anywhere - at home, at work, on a bus. And companies that embrace this always-on behavior - the taxi service
Uber with mobile pickups,
GrubHub and
Seamless for food delivery, and
Hotel Tonight’s app for last-minute bookings - can disrupt entire industries.
Below are some more examples of brands that have thought deeply about what their consumers want from mobile, and then proceeded to deliver it.
TAP TO SEE HOTELS.COM VIDEO
CLICK TO SEE HOTELS.COM VIDEO
Both Hotels.com’s mobile website and the extreme marketing they utilize to promote it (their ads feature a video of a man literally booking a room from his mobile device while skydiving) both demonstrate their firm grasp of their basic value proposition to business travelers: the ability to book rooms quickly and easily.1
ACTION ITEM: DEFINE YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION BY DETERMINING WHAT YOUR CONSUMER WANTS TO DO WITH YOUR BUSINESS IN MOBILE.
BENCHMARK AGAINST OTHERS IN YOUR INDUSTRY FOR IDEAS.
How can you zero in on the features that matter most to your mobile users?
LET'S START BY DISCUSSING...
CHASE
INTUIT
WALGREENS
DELTA
STARBUCKS
The Local Mobile Consumer
Your future customers are literally around the corner, and mobile can get them in your door
94%
OF SMARTPHONE USERS HAVE
SEARCHED FOR
LOCAL INFO
70%
CALLED A BUSINESS AFTER SEARCHING
66%
VISITED IN PERSON AND...
90%
OF THESE USERS ACTED WITHIN
24 HOURS4
M
obile site builder Digby reports that across
all the mobile sites they have built,
mobile customers use store locators 63 times
for every one mobile commerce order (making these locators a valuable addition to almost any mobile-enabled website); our data suggests that roughly a third of all searches have local intent.
5
Below are some businesses that are doing a
good job of embracing local mobile consumers
SPECIALTY’S CAFE & BAKERY
ZIPCAR
PRICELINE
VOLKSWAGEN
The Price
Transparency
Challenge
S
martphones haven’t just
transformed how people find your
business; they’re also changing what
they do inside your four walls - what Walmart CEO Mike Duke calls the
"new era of price transparency.” Almost half of all consumers use smartphones for in-store product research and browsing
7, and according to InsightExpress, 53% of men and 38% of women say they use smartphones in-store to check prices at other stores
8.
Retailers have no choice but to react to
this highly disruptive “showrooming,”
9 which
turns physical locations into showrooms for products destined to be purchased online
or via mobile.
Apps like Amazon’s Price Check let shoppers take product snapshots or scan barcodes to generate comparative price lists from multiple retailers. IDC Retail Insights summed it up nicely in a recent Wall Street Journal article: “The four walls of the store have become porous.”
And this trend will only increase as the information advantage shifts ever further in the
direction of the buyer. Over the 2011 holiday season, for instance, Amazon promoted Price Check by offering $5 off any purchase made by scanning a product in-store and then buying
it from Amazon via mobile.
45%
of all consumers use smartphones for in-store
product research and browsing7
53%
of men use smartphones
in-store to check prices at other stores
8
38%
of women use smartphones in-store to check prices at other stores.8
39%
of walk-outs, when shoppers leave without making a purchase, were influenced by smartphone usage10
12%
checked other online retailers10
8%
checked availability
at other stores10
So what can your business do about this transparency?
We've seen retailers choose one of three strategies
1
IMPROVE THE IN-STORE EXPERIENCE
The merchants most vulnerable to price transparency are often sellers of the kind
of branded, big-ticket items like electronics
and appliances that spark the most comparative research. What can stores like these offer that an online experience can’t? Expert service from salespeople? Same-day pickup? (That’s how Walmart encourages in-store sales.)
CREATE AND STOCK UNIQUE PRODUCTS OR BUNDLES
One way retailers can beat the apples-to-
apples price-comparison game is by stocking products that manufacturers have modified exclusively for them. Another is bundling products with unique accessories. Target is now actively working with its suppliers to combat showrooming by selling unique products that make apples-to-apples price comparisons moot.
EMBRACE MOBILE USAGE WITHIN YOUR STORE
A ten-country study by management consulting firm Accenture found that 73%
of mobile-powered shoppers preferred phones to retail clerks for basic assistance.11 How can you use mobile to influence customers’ in-store digital experience?
Sears takes advantage of malls’ limited mobile reception by offering free Wi-Fi to drive shoppers into their stores, where they can use smartphones to compare prices on Sears.com, place orders and pick them up in-store. The company is also rolling out iPads and iPod Touch devices in almost 450 stores, and clerks can use them to help customers find product info, check inventory and place online orders.12
Nissan, meanwhile, emblazons vehicle price stickers with QR codes, “silent salespeople” that let shoppers within the lot find key information like features, options, video overviews, image galleries, incentive offers, dealer inventories and actual quotes.
ACTION ITEM: CHOOSE THE STRATEGY THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS TO ADJUST TO THE WORLD OF PRICE TRANSPARENCY.
The good news is that as the consumer
gets new tools to help their shopping
path, you get new tools in your
marketing path
You can reach connected consumers with ads right when they’re searching for products from within your and your competitor’s stores. Imagine a shopper searching for
a flat screen TV from within a major retailer’s store. If you happen to sell flat-screen TVs too,
a search ad gives you a chance to win this consumer’s business just as he’s close to purchase, even if your differentiated value prop is as simple as putting “We remove your old TV!”
in the text of your ad.
Now that you’ve
determined your
value proposition
for your mobile
consumer,
IT'S KEY TO ALLOW THEM TO ENGAGE WITH YOU VIA A MOBILE-OPTIMIZED SITE.
Win moments that matter
02. How does mobile impact our digital destinations?
Mobile Optimized
Websites
D
o you have a mobile-optimized
website? If you don’t, this should be
your top priority for engaging
mobile customers. 57% of users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly-designed mobile site, and 40% have turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
13 Your mobile site will differ from your desktop site not just because of the size of the device, but because the mobile context reveals a different mindset for your consumers. Visitors to your mobile site may be at a different point of the purchase funnel. How does your site appear to mobile users? Are you making it easy for them to connect with you or putting obstacles between them and what they seek?
57%
OF USERS SAY THEY WON'T RECOMMEND A BUSINESS WITH A POORLY DESIGNED MOBILE SITE
40%
HAVE TURNED TO A COMPETITOR'S SITE AFTER A BAD MOBILE EXPERIENCE13
TAP TO SEE THE
TICKETSNOW CASE STUDY
CLICK TO SEE THE
TICKETSNOW CASE STUDY
BEFORE
AFTER
ACTION ITEM:
YOUR #1 PRIORITY IS TO BUILD A MOBILE WEBSITE
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize
Never stop optimizing your site based on what you learn from user interactions; even great mobile sites usually have plenty of room for improvement. Six years ago, 1-800-Flowers.com became one of the first e-tailers to dive into mobile, with an optimized website and apps across multiple mobile platforms. Their test-and-iterate model has since evolved into a sophisticated mobile strategy that includes analyzing mobile site traffic, benchmarking against other e-tailers,
and, just last fall, working with mobile vendor Moovweb to launch an enhanced smartphone-optimized site whose key features include “Find a Gift Fast,” which connects shoppers with local flower arrangements, deep linking functionality to ensure that searches land
on the mobile site, and an enhanced calendar to help users figure out shipping and other costs. What was the impact?
Increased conversions, and time
spent on-site up 25% from the
original mobile site.
TAP TO SEE THE
1-800-FLOWERS VIDEO
CLICK TO SEE THE
1-800-FLOWERS VIDEO
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Successful businesses are now adopting this simple but revolutionary idea: design for mobile first. Rather than pegging mobile as the “third screen,” ESPN thinks of it as the “first screen.”15 Travel site Kayak.com redesigned their desktop website to mirror their mobile experience16 and early results show higher conversion rates and shorter completion times for a design focused on speed and ease-of-use.
Finally, make sure that when consumers type your URL into their mobile browser, your website recognizes they are on a mobile phone and redirects them to your mobile site. For example, when consumers enter http://saks.com into their mobile browser, Saks automatically redirects them to http://m.saks.com to provide a mobile optimized shopping experience.
GOOGLE TIP:WWW.HOWTOGOMO.COM
At this Google site you can test your site’s mobile appearance, learn the 10 best mobile design practices, and generate a
custom report with recommendations for improvement along with a vendor list to help you get started.
Branded
Mobile Apps
N
ow that you’ve built your mobile
site, your next step is to start using
apps to enrich your relationships
with your users. A full 91% of companies featured in Interbrand’s 2011 Best Global Brands have a presence in at least one
of the major app stores - a figure that’s up 51% from 18 months ago.
17 Let’s be clear, though: having an app is not the same as having a mobile strategy. An app is essentially a bookmark for users who want to engage with you, but the majority of your traffic is likely coming from the web, not from brand-loyal power users who’ve downloaded your app. Your mobile website is also accessible by users across all devices, while apps must be designed for specific platforms.
HERE ARE
THREE KEY POINTS
TO REMEMBER ABOUT BRANDED APPS
1
OFFER USERS ENTERTAINMENT,
UTILITY OR BOTH.
If your app doesn’t deliver compelling value of one kind or another, its shelf life will be short. So be clear about why you’re building it. Do you want to bring a new type of functionality to your users? Nurture loyalty?
2
DESIGN YOUR APP FOR THE
LARGEST MOBILE PLATFORMS.
If limited resources demand that you prioritize, design your apps for the mobile platforms that represent the majority of the smartphone installed base. Fish where the fish are.
to keep it from vanishing into the app store's lower rankings. Here are some useful tips on doing just that:
-
Target your existing customers through desktop and mobile site links, client newsletters or other channels you already use to reach them.
-
Link mobile ads shown in other free apps directly to your app's download page.
-
Use mobile search ads to guide users directly to the app in the marketplace.
-
Time your promotional efforts to coincide with your PR push to maximize downloads; receiving lots of downloads really quickly boosts rankings in some app stores.
“having an app is not the same as having a mobile strategy”
Branded
Mobile Apps
TIP: DON'T NEGLECT "PUSH.”
In a crowded email marketing space, push notifications from within apps
can send customers relevant alerts
and calls to action.
Proceed with caution, though, and make sure your notifications are both useful and timely; users can just block push notifications whenever they’d prefer
not to receive them.
Below are some brands that are doing
apps right. These apps are very compelling
because they provide either utility or
entertainment in a highly engaging way for
their loyal mobile consumers.
Now that you’ve determined how you
can win moments that matter with your mobile customers by adapting your value proposition for the mobile consumer and bringing it to life in a mobile website and app, aligning your organization will help you enable better decisions to promote
the growth of your business.
ACTION ITEM: PROMOTE YOUR APP THROUGH EXISTING CHANNELS AND ON-DEVICE MEDIA
HP
WALMART
DOMINO'S
W HOTELS
COKE
Enable better decisions
03. Is our organization
adapting to mobile?
Mobile Accountability
& Ownership
O
ur next question is a simple one.
Who exactly holds the mobile
mantle in your company? At
Google, our chairman Eric Schmidt’s “Mobile First” principle calls on every team, from ads to maps to Doubleclick to YouTube, to include mobile in their product and business plans. While we can suggest the right questions you should be asking, only you and your organization will be able to determine the answers that are right for your business.
Does your team have a sufficient sense of urgency around the topic? How will you ensure mobile is a consideration for all of your teams?
How will you answer the key questions we’ve outlined in order to win the moments that matter, enable better decisions around
your mobile strategy and constantly innovate? It all starts with asking the right questions and selecting the right team to determine and implement the answers.
Our recommendation, at its most basic level, is a simple one: We encourage the appointment of a Mobile Champion within your organization. This person should gather a cross-functional mobile task force to work to determine your company’s approach for each of the questions listed. Benchmark your competition, understand how your customers use mobile through focus groups and surveys, talk to your agency partners, and brainstorm internally.
How will you answer the key questions we’ve
outlined in order to win the moments that matter,
enable better decisions around your mobile
strategy and constantly innovate?
ACTION ITEM: ASSIGN A MOBILE CHAMPION IN YOUR COMPANY AND EMPOWER THEM WITH A CROSS- FUNCTIONAL TASK FORCE.
Here are some of the questions that could help your organization
UPGRADE ITS MOBILE PROGRAMS, PLATFORMS AND CAPABILITIES
Is mobile a key metric in your management dashboard?
How often do you review your mobile stats, and who reviews them?
Who knows what percentage of web traffic and search queries come from mobile?
Who’s watching people’s actions on your mobile site, mobile’s inclusion
in product launches and campaigns?
Which decisions would change if key business owners were given timely mobile data?
Who’s monitoring your competition’s investment in mobile?
Who’s developing consumer insights through focus groups and surveys?
Which agencies are you relying on to help you make mobile decisions?
Now that you've thought about aligning your organization
to make better decisions, how can you constantly innovate?
Without focus and accountability, interdepartmental conflicts can arise that
can stifle your business. One of our clients explained that its call center team got credit for calls driven to the mobile site’s
call, but the
Internet marketing team only got credit for form fill leads.
Click-to-call may drive mobile orders, but how many opportunities are missed if the Internet marketing team isn’t rewarded?
An important responsibility of this Mobile Champion is thinking about budget. Your mobile owner should be able to determine the most strategic areas for your investment. You’ll also need to allow budget for mobile site development and optimization.
Assign a mobile champion in your company.
Constantly innovate
04. How should our marketing adapt to mobile?
Search Strategy
AT GOOGLE WE’VE SEEN
MOBILE SEARCH QUERIES GROW
5X IN THE PAST TWO YEARS.
20% of all telecom searches
30% of all restaurant searches
25% of all movie searches
...are now done on a mobile device
With mobile search ads, you can reach consumers when they're searching for your product in the physical world. When a consumer types "buy jeans San Francisco," he’s asking a question which good ads will answer. Try a few searches from your smartphone –
"best gas mileage SUV", "Nintendo DS", "fast recipe dinner," "movie Mountain View CA." Who finds you and what do they say? Remember, convincing a shopper who’s searching for a flat-screen TV on mobile from inside a major retail store to instead buy online from you could be as simple as adding
"We’ll remove your old TV!" to your mobile search ad. It’s important to note that these searches are incremental to your desktop search traffic, and these different searches create new opportunities for your business.
ACTION ITEM: WHAT IS THE EXPERIENCE LIKE FOR A CONSUMER TRYING TO FIND YOU AND CONNECT WITH YOU?
Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand in mobile as a consumer would. Discuss the result with your agency.
ACTION ITEM: USE MOBILE-SPECIFIC FORMATS SO YOU CAN OPTIMIZE YOUR PERFORMANCE WITH MOBILE CAMPAIGNS.
HOW CAN MOBILE SEARCH HELP YOU
CONSTANTLY INNOVATE?
First, use mobile-specific formats so you can optimize your performance with mobile campaigns.
MOBILE-SPECIFIC FORMATS ARE BEST FOR ENGAGING ON-THE-GO CONSUMERS
It’s now possible to layer your search ads with location extensions. These are additional links that appear in the ad that show your business’s location and phone number. What’s more, if consumers are close enough to your business, a distance marker will show up in the ad indicating how close your business is.
TAP TO SEE HOW A DESKTOP SEARCH AD CREATIVE WOULD BE MODIFIED FOR MOBILE
CLICK TO SEE HOW A DESKTOP SEARCH AD CREATIVE WOULD BE MODIFIED FOR MOBILE
HAIRCLUB
STARWOOD
COMCAST
The Full Value of Mobile
With mobile, we are no longer seeing consumers taking linear e-commerce paths that begin and end on the same device. As a marketer, it is crucial that you start measuring and assigning value to all mobile conversions so you don’t under-invest in mobile.
Let’s take a hypothetical example: Advertiser A invested $600K in mobile advertising. Accounting for mCommerce purchases only, mobile ROI appears negative.
However, Advertiser A initially neglected to account for all of the other mobile conversions that are driving value: their $600k investment also drove 20K app downloads, 60K phone calls to their call center and 100K store locator clicks.
Using internal and external benchmarks, Advertiser A assigned value across all mobile conversions and estimated that each call was worth $3, each app download $5, and each store locator click $2. As a result, Advertiser A found that mobile ads were actually driving a healthy ROI on their business and re-invested accordingly to maintain this competitive edge.
To better understand the full value that mobile is driving for your business, check out these new resources and tools related to
Google’s Full Value of Mobile initiative. You’ll find case studies, measurement tips and a step-by-step calculator that can help you get started with estimating mobile’s value to your business.
TICKETNETWORK
FAB.COM
T-MOBILE
MODCLOTH
ADIDAS
Below are 5 key mobile conversions types that are delivering value for your business. Are you measuring the full value of mobile?
Mobile for
brand building
The mobile audience is at scale: smartphone penetration has reached 51% in the UK, 44% in the US, 38% in France, and 29% in Germany.21 Every day mobile users play 570 years of Angry Birds and watch 600 million videos on YouTube Mobile; in fact, mobile is the primary way that 75% of these users access YouTube content. Yet mobile is the most imbalanced medium when it comes to ad spending versus time spent, at 1% compared to 23%.22 Capturing all this new opportunity means exploring rich media - and now is the time to do it. New technology like touch screens, accelerometers
(which enables better animated media) and targeting that lets you reach the right users on their most personal devices are turning mobile into a branding wonderland. According to Nielsen, exposure to rich media ads across four screens – mobile, tablet, PC and TV – yields the best branding results; participants who saw ads across all four formats rated a campaign more favorably on key brand metrics than those who saw it only on TV, PC or both.23
Mobile rich media also entices users while they’re already actively browsing - as opposed to requiring them to learn a new behavior or take a new action, as with QR codes. Brands such as HP, Reebok, Coke (next page), Paramount Pictures and others have sprung to life with cutting-edge mobile display ads. One excellent example of what’s possible with mobile display ads is the memorable Coke campaign “Hilltop” with the “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” messaging that was re-imagined for today’s digital world. Viewers of the mobile display ads were able to virtually send a Coke to someone across the world through special vending machines located throughout the world with personalized messages and receive video responses.
HP
REEBOK
PARAMOUNT PICTURES
"Mobile is the most imbalanced medium when it comes to ad spending versus time spent,
at 1% compared to 23%"
Take a look at the rich-media mobile ad campaigns below and on the next page:
ACTION ITEM: RUN RICH MEDIA HTML5 ADS TO EXTEND YOUR BRANDING MESSAGE TO REACH THE MOBILE AUDIENCE.
You’ll want to ask the same questions about your mobile marketing aims as you do for your overall marketing aims:
• Who do you want to reach?
• How can you most effectively reach them?
• What actions do you want them to take?
• How can you measure it?
• Are you after broad reach or just buzz?
Some mobile experiences won’t have broad reach or drive key metrics like rich media, but may give you a PR spike or a unique demo to showcase internally.
TAP TO LEARN HOW THE COKE AD WORKS
CLICK TO LEARN HOW THE COKE AD WORKS
Mobile creativity
Small screen, big creative opportunity
As we’ve shown earlier in this section, advertisers are embracing mobile as part of their brand building efforts. The fact that mobile was a category at Cannes for the first time signals that mobile has truly arrived as a creative platform. Let’s take a closer look at what makes mobile so unique as a creative canvas, and how this creates unprecedented ways to engage consumers.
While we encourage advertisers to push the limits of branded experiences in mobile, whether it’s a mobile site or app, brand owners should be mindful to activate these experiences through mobile advertising to ensure that they drive enough reach and awareness of these innovative touchpoints.
CHEVY
BRADESCO
EMART
TOYOTA
NIKE
See how these award-winning campaigns from the 2012 Cannes Lions Festival showcase mobile's unique creative canvas.
Anatomy of an ad
Branded experiences are great, but what goes into an effective mobile branding ad? It starts with understanding what creative elements are available at your disposal. Let’s examine an anatomy of an ad, and break down how these different elements can amplify your brand message in mobile.
GOOGLE TIP:
AS YOU CREATE BRANDED EXPERIENCES IN MOBILE, USE MOBILE ADVERTISING TO PROMOTE THESE AND MAXIMIZE YOUR REACH.
GOOGLE TIP:
Translate your brand’s big idea or message with mobile creative that is simple to navigate yet offers engaging ways to experience your brand including touch, animation, video, social, and location.
SIMPLE INTERFACE. The best performing mobile creatives are those with intuitive and clean interfaces.
TOUCH. Mobile is really the only medium where people can actually touch your brand and engage with your message. Take advantage of mobile’s touch interface by incorporating basic gestures like swiping, tapping and thumb scrolling to navigate your creative.
LOCATION. Mobile is also unique in that it provides a real bridge between your consumer and the physical world.
OVERLAYS. Allow users to explore your creative by revealing deeper levels via interstitials and overlays.
SOCIAL. 60% of mobile users use their devices for daily social network activities.21 Mobile creatives that feature a social element can amplify your brand as engaged consumers share and spread your brand message.
VIDEO. 1 out of 4 mobile users consume video content daily.21 Use the storytelling power of sight, sound and motion to communicate your brand message in mobile. Users are acclimated to viewing videos directly from their mobile devices.
ANIMATION. HTML5 creatives in mobile can now enable more organic animations that can bring your brand message to life in ways that weren’t possible with traditional frame-by-frame animations. Use HTML5 animations to punctuate key highlights in your brand message.
EXPERIMENTATION BEYOND SCALABLE RICH MEDIA MAKES SENSE...
...as long as you have a well-thought-out strategy as a foundation. A number of companies have asked us about augmented reality or location-based check-in ads. Johnson & Johnson brought Muppets to life on Band-Aids with an augmented reality mobile app that helps parents entertain away the pain for their child.
In our experience, though, only a handful of brands have covered the main pillars of a mobile strategy enough to warrant investment in experimental, lower reach activities.
GOOGLE TIP: AS ALWAYS, TRACKING MATTERS
The mobile ad industry offers many trafficking and reporting solutions. Our infrastructure advances are making the process of serving and tracking mobile media even easier, with a near-term goal of replicating the buying and tracking tools that advertisers already know from online campaigns. You can use the same Dart for Advertisers (DFA) interface to serve your ads in mobile, for instance; just change your ad type and placement. And our fully integrated reporting gives you mobile impression and click data along with standard DFA reports.
A mobile-specific report, though, breaks down data by wireless carrier, mobile platform and country. You can also serve ads from DoubleClick Rich Media (DRM) into the AdMob network.
NEXT, LET'S THINK EVEN BROADER.
MOBILE IS SO PERVASIVE THAT BRANDING SHOULDN'T BE THE ONLY ASPECT OF MARKETING THAT CAN BE ENRICHED BY THE MOBILE SPACE.
TAP TO SEE THE BAND-AID® VIDEO
CLICK TO SEE THE BAND-AID® VIDEO
Marketing Channels
IN OTHER WORDS, ADDING ON MOBILE IS GOOD; DESIGNING FOR MOBILE IS BETTER.
Here’s how to examine your marketing initiatives and channels through
the mobile lens:
EMAIL MARKETING
Up to 30% of email opens come from mobile.24 Are you maximizing your emails for mobile users? A good way to start is to think carefully about layout (longer rather than wider) and be selective with images. Think also about your calls to action and links; are you sending prospects to a non-optimized page? Some leading email marketing providers now let you preview your emails in mobile mode. Take advantage of this chance to make your mobile messaging as effective as possible.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social and mobile are fundamentally intertwined; every day more than half of mobile social networkers access social content from their mobile device,25 in an average month 14% of mobile social networkers upload a photo taken from their mobile device.26 How does it change the way you talk to your social consumers when you know that they are navigating the physical world - taking buses, out shopping, looking for a restaurant? What could your brand do with mobile hangouts on Google+ that allow real-time video conversations on smartphones?
MOBILE IS OFTEN REFERRED TO AS THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE ACROSS MARKETING CHANNELS FROM OUTDOOR TO TV TO PRINT.
COUPONS AND PROMOTIONS
Whether you create a scannable coupon or a code that can be keyed into the register, be sure to track mobile separately. Users move back and forth between channels and devices; if you aren’t yet able to let customers tap or scan their device at the register, mobile can collect options for coupons that you can email to users to print out and redeem in person.
OFFLINE MEDIA
Mobile can activate offline channels. Adding a QR code to your print, outdoor and TV creative can give static ads some oomph. For instance, we recently ran a consumer electronics campaign that combined mobile search, mobile display and a picture-scanning app that let potential customers unlock exclusive content like songs from artists featured in the campaign. So if you're already running offline media, why not turbocharge it with mobile, as a complement to - not a substitute for - a solid mobile media plan.
ACTION ITEM:
ASSIGN EVERYONE IN YOUR MARKETING ORG THE ACTION ITEM OF REVIEWING THEIR PROGRAMS THROUGH A MOBILE LENS
Finally, let’s quickly review the latest evolution
of the digital platform:
THE EMERGING WORLD OF TABLET COMPUTING.
Constantly innovate
05. How can we
connect with our
tablet audience?
Tablet Strategy
Tablet devices don’t yet offer tremendous audience reach, but that doesn’t mean you should overlook them. By 2014, 208 million tablets will be sold worldwide.27 Tablet users’ love of shopping has already spawned a new buzzword: "t-commerce."
72%
BY 2014,
208 MILLION
TABLETS
WILL BE SOLD WORLDWIDE.
ON A
WEEKLY BASIS
HERE ARE A FEW POINTSON STRATEGIES RELATED TO THE EMERGING WORLD OF TABLETS.
SWEETWATER
SOUND’S IPAD
CONVERSION RATE WAS
30% HIGHER THAN ONLINE, AND ORDERS ORIGINATING
FROM IPADS HAD 10%
HIGHER VALUE.
KNOW THE TABLET USER’S EXPERIENCE WITH YOUR BUSINESS
Unless your desktop site is Flash-heavy (Flash isn’t supported on the iPad) or doesn’t function properly on tablets,
it may be passable for a short while;
the examples we highlight here are based on tablet users interacting with desktop websites.
BUILD UNIQUE TABLET EXPERIENCES
Some brands have already rethought their mobile experience for tablets. Kraft’s iFood assistant mobile app helps moms with coupon-clipping, product barcode scanning, adding items to shopping lists and saving recipes for quick meal ideas. The company’s Fork & Spoon iPad app, by contrast, is designed for both moms and kids to use during meal preparations. It features recipes and videos similar to the iFood assistant, but also serves
up more in-depth content and games.29
TWEAK YOUR SEARCH CAMPAIGNS FOR TABLET USERS
Tablets are primarily used at home, on evenings and weekends, most likely from a comfortable couch. Adapt your ads to take advantage of this. “Shop now from your tablet” is a stronger call to action than “Shop online.” Don’t ask tablet users to call by phone; tablets aren’t phones. Segment tablet-specific performance and learn about your tablet customer’s needs and interests.
LET RICH MEDIA SHINE ON TABLETS
Volvo and Grow Interactive agency developed the richest tablet-optimized HTML5 creative that we’ve yet seen. The campaign uses various interactive media to profile a Volvo car that’s approaching 3 million miles. The HTML5 landing page features a Google Map that shows the car’s real time location; interactive games highlight new Volvo features like city brakes; embedded videos show off new models. What’s possible when rich media meets tablets?
TAP TO LEARN HOW THE VOLVO AD WORKS
ESPN and Shazam let Winter X Games viewers on ESPN TV use the Shazam smartphone app for video highlights, photos and exclusive music from the event. The tablet revolution is gaining momentum, as more people purchase and use tablets to search and shop. Even if you’re still playing catch-up in mobile, it’s not too late to be early with tablets. We encourage you to be one of the first to take advantage of this new channel. Invest now or chase your competition later.
ACTION ITEM: CHECK OUT YOUR WEB EXPERIENCE ON A TABLET.
Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand on a tablet as a consumer would. Maximize the tablet format with rich media creative. Discuss both these topics with your agencies.
CLICK TO LEARN HOW THE VOLVO AD WORKS
CONCLUSION
Hopefully by now you’re ready and
eager to wield mobile tools to make
your brand more valuable to
increasingly tech-savvy consumers and spawn innovative marketing strategies that connect you with your customers in new ways. Imagine what you might be able to accomplish this year if you start right now.
Start how?
Just keep asking the questions we cover here, work closely with your Mobile Champion,
and keep your eyes on the rising mobile tide. At Google, we believe that constant connectivity represents a sociological shift with how users relate
with both the digital and physical world. Businesses that understand this will win.
At Google, we believe that constant connectivity represents a sociological shift with how users relate with both the digital and physical world. Businesses that understand this will win.
TO SUMMARIZE THE ACTION ITEMS INCLUDED IN THE PLAYBOOK WE’VE PROVIDED THE FOLLOWING CHECKLIST...
MOBILE PLAYBOOK ACTION ITEMS CHECKLIST
Define your value proposition by determining what your consumer wants to do with your business in mobile. Benchmark against others in your industry for ideas.
Build a mobile website. Once you have a mobile website, check the stats and optimize based on consumer usage.
Build an app for a subset of your audience after your mobile site strategy is in place. Don’t forget to promote your app.
Assign a Mobile Champion in your company and empower them with a cross-functional task force.
Set up a meeting with your agencies about what’s working and what’s not for your brand on mobile and tablets.
Search for your brand in mobile, as a consumer would. Take 5 minutes and do this today. What’s working? What’s not?
Use mobile-specific formats so you can optimize your performance with mobile campaigns.
Run rich media HTML5 ads to extend your branding message to reach the mobile audience.
Assign everyone in your marketing org the action item of reviewing their programs through a mobile lens.
Check out your tablet consumer’s experience with your brand. Take 5 minutes today and search for your brand on a tablet as a consumer would. What’s working? What’s not? Maximize the tablet environment with rich media creative.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
www.ourmobileplanet.com
A Google research tool that makes it easy to learn about mobile users and mobile usage patterns around the world.
www.howtogomo.com
A Google initiative to educate businesses large and small on the benefits of mobile optimized sites.
www.google.com/mobileads
Everything you need to know about mobile ads for performance and branding including mobile search ads and mobile display ads.
www.projectrebrief.com
A Google campaign that shows how creators of four iconic ads from the 60's and 70's re-imagined their ads using today's digital technology.
www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights
Google’s online destination for consumer trends, marketing insights and industry research.
www.mmaglobal.com
The Mobile Marketing Association is a global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain.
www.iab.net
The Interactive Advertising Bureau educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising.
SOURCES CITED
Google internal data, 2011
Google and Ipsos: "Our Mobile Planet: Understanding the Mobile Consumer". May 2012