Bentz - Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing

RELEVANCE RAISES RESPONSE

How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing

By

Bob Bentz

Relevance Raises Response:

How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing

By

Bob Bentz

Copyright 2016 Bob Bentz

All Rights Reserved.

Published by SkillBites LLC

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without the written consent of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.

The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and/or publisher do not guarantee that anyone using these techniques, suggestions, tips, ideas or strategies will meet with success. The author and/or publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to anyone with respect to any loss or damage caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.

Editing by Elizabeth Thorlton

ISBN-10: 1-942489-10-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-942489-10-8

I wrote a book 23 years ago and dedicated it to my father, Kenneth F. Bentz, who passed away when I was still in my teens. For this book, I am dedicating it to my late mother, Bonnie (Edwards) Bentz, who always was, and will always be, my biggest fan.

I would like to also dedicate this book to my friends, colleagues, coworkers, and associates through the years. Throughout my career, Ive had the tremendous privilege of working with so many fantastic people at the following companies around the world: Advanced Telecom Services, ATS Mobile, Purplegator, Advanced Federal, Advanced Mobile, Spark Network Services, Overture Interactive, and Olympic Internet.

I have always lived by the mantra:

Our people are our greatest resource.

And Ive always believed that these people were working with me, never for me. Thank you for making going to work every day (almost) as much fun as going to a baseball game.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

F inally, someone has taken an extremely broad subject called mobile and made it understandable for marketers. Bob Bentz has successfully taken extremely beefy subject matter and delivered it in snack-size portions that are easy to digest. The worry in reading a quasi-business book is the dryness factor and whether or not you have the interest and desire to slog your way through the chapters. The good news is that Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing has a brisk flow as it takes the reader on a journey through the arcane world of mobile technology while delivering valuable insights on how businesses of any size can leverage the mobile phenomena in their quest to acquire more customers. In addition, Bob Bentz manages to weave in his unique sense of humor that makes turning the pages that much more fun.

Understanding all the various aspects of mobile is daunting. Anyone who has the word marketing associated with their title or has such responsibilities within their company should view this book as a must read. In it, you will learn about incredibly powerful marketing channels, such as text message marketing, social media on mobile devices, the importance of mobile-optimized websites, mobile SEO, mobile search, mobile ad buying, apps, the power of video, and how to leverage the 800-pound gorilla called Facebook, plus much, much more. Not only does the book do a great job of educating the reader on all the companies and their technology that play a part in the mobile ecosystem, but it also gives practical advice on how to use these technologies to build your brand and/or directly acquire customers using mobile marketing.

I have had the pleasure of working alongside Bob for the last 27 years. Bob is the classic early adopter, as he never met a new consumer technologyespecially in the area of mobilethat didnt pique his curiosity and desire to sign up and become an actual user. I recall him telling me about a burgeoning Internet service called CompuServe and how he found himself unknowingly burning hours while playing around with it at nights. Our first e-commerce B2C sites were two ringtone websites that we created in the early 2000s, MonsterTones.com and RingingPhone.com. Here, Bob learned the art of SEO and SEM to capitalize on the incredible demand by consumers to personalize their mobile phones. Bob was insatiable in his quest to understand the pay-per-click model offered by Overture at the time (who was later acquired by Yahoo). I recall him traveling to attend three-day seminars on pay per click and SEO; he would return totally amazed at how the material had kept his undivided attention for the duration of the seminar. During this time, we saw firsthand the potential of using the Internet to drive traffic to various e-commerce websites that offered mobile services. Outside of baseball, Bob had found his new passion: mobile marketing.

In 2007 we experienced the dandy duo disruptors named Facebook and iPhone. Both companies created services that entertained, informed, and served as a utility in peoples daily lives. Bob could barely sleep at night as he tried to wrap his head around the awesomeness of these revolutionary innovations.

The advent of the iPhone was a game changer in so many respects. The iPhone ushered in an age of 24/7 Internet. Before the iPhone, people stopped working when they left their computers. For better or worse, the iPhone blurred the lines between work and home. Non-voice communication using ones mobile phone became a round-the-clock habit. It also created new opportunities to market to people staring at their small screens while on the go.

With Google and their Android operating system phones quickly following Steve Jobss blockbuster iPhones footsteps, smartphones were on their way to ubiquity, and an exciting new marketing opportunity was created called mobile. The new ingredient that smartphones offered marketers was location. From Bobs and my perspective, the smartphone changed the opportunity from offering features on the mobile phone to offering advertisers the ability to target consumers based on online and offline behavior.

Facebook was another major market disruptor and game changer for marketers. With about 39 percent of the worlds population currently considered active users, including 60 percent of North Americans, Facebook deserves its share of any advertising budget. They have made ad buying on their social media network simple by providing easy-to-use tools for precise targeting and custom audiences. The precision of target marketing can actually be scary, as it basically culls text written and shared by members and algorithmically uses that text to enable advertisers to target their messages to just the right audience. Add the location of the mobile device that is in everyones pocket to Facebooks marketing algorithm, and the marketer now has incredible precision in delivering their message at the right time, the right place, and to the right person.

Call it the mobile majority. Facebook generates roughly 80 percent of their revenue from mobile advertising. Mark Zuckerberg, the visionary, saw that mobile was where the eyeballs were going, so he invested heavily in being able to offer Facebook users with an unequaled mobile experience while accommodating advertisers with tools in which to display pertinent and useful advertising, a true win-win. Facebook embodies the concept of Relevance Raises Response.

Without a doubt, an archaic approach to advertising still exists, meaning many advertisers continue with the carpet bombing or spray and pray approach to advertisingno analysis or research of whether the user is interested in the brand and therefore likely to click through, but rather putting out as many ads as possible in the hope someone will bite. Its an incredibly expensive way of getting your message out there, and, if anything, it can be detrimental. Consumers, who expect relevant marketing messages (especially if they are on a paid app), are likely to be irritated by intrusive, irrelevant ads, especially as they are increasingly seeing marketing messages tailored to their interests. Therefore, the risk of not using relevant advertising techniques is greater than ever.