The three types of geo-fences described in the video are:
Static – An individual receives location based offers as they get close to a specific location or an area. An SMS, MMS or kicking off an API process. This is the concept we’re all fairly familiar with. “As I get closer to Starbucks, they send me an offer, because they know I’m addicted!”
Dynamic – This type takes the user’s location into consideration when delivering multiple feeds. This concept is interesting and has someone potentially receiving a steady stream of things that are happening within a clearly defined area. This type of offering fits best for events like the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. As you get within range, you accept data pushes via the festival’s iPhone app. Once you’ve accepted AND shared your location. You get a series of updates based on your location/preferences in the iPhone app.
Peer-to-peer – This type of interaction depends on another user and kicks-off a process when they get closer. The word Facebook keeps floating through my mind for some reason or maybe a mobile dating service like meetMoi. For Facebook, as you get closer to a friend, the system would alert you that one of your friends is close and asks if you’d like to tell them you’re close AND ask them if they’d like to meet somewhere. Once they accept (because deep down inside they really REALLY like you – you’re connected on Facebook after all!) the system would send you their 10 most recent updates and whether or not their birthday was soon, so you would appear as though you were the totally up-to-date friend you’ve always dreamed of being! And to monetize this little gathering, Facebook would then deliver a coupon that they thought you’d both appreciate. They’d send it to you because you initiated the contact but you could share it with your friend by gently bumping your smartphones together.
These are just some of my thoughts and this is why I’m excited about location based services. The opportunities for a diverse set of interactions are limitless!
After lecturing last quarter, the host professor asked me; “How do you keep up with all that’s going on?”. I told him that I’d setup a personalized RSS feed via Twitter and because of this, I’d found numerous posts, articles, white papers, case studies and other resources that have proven to be invaluable. I don’t tweet much but am an avid Twitter user. That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Twitter, like other forms of social media is what you make it.
At the beginning of every quarter I have my students get set up on a personalized Twitter feed. The recipe for that is as follows:
Create Twitter account on Twitter.com ( . . . as opposed to creating a Twitter account on eBay?!?!!?)
Download Tweekdeck and install. (You may have to upgrade Adobe’s AIR and you don’t have to join Tweetdeck to use the tool.)
Setup Tweetdeck with your Twitter account information.
Got to twitter.com/michaelmyers and follow the list entitled ‘itec-4700′ (if your interested in social media & mobile marketing)
Go to WeFollow.com and search on any subject matter you’re interested in.
The end result will be updates that pop-up on your computer screen with tweets from people that share your passion(s). (Yes. The pop-up can be a little; “LOOK!! SOMETHING SHINY!!!!” But at the very least, you have the opportunity to sift through the information. Also, Twitter is a business/personal channel and you will get some; “I’m picking up @timm from the airport”. But have no fear. The noise to signal ratio is very good.
Now. Please don’t go out and follow the world without having followers. You don’t want to look like a spam account following 4000 people with only 3 followers! There are rules for building a robust Twitter account and those rules can be found here; (1-10 at the bottom of the post).
Last night we started covering the mobile landscape. My goal was to cover the basics but we quickly got into the rock-n-roll. First, let’s talk about off-deck vs. on-deck. In a nutshell, on-deck is the AOL experience for mobile. Think Motorola Razor. The official definition is: A browseable portal of links to content, pre-configured usually by the network operator, and set as the default home page to the phone’s browser. Off-deck is exactly what you’d think it is. It’s the web; free and open. Think iPhone. Why in the world would I be talking to my class about on-deck? Because there are 225 million people on the older model compared to 55 million people on the smartphone. (This is the part where you really need to know your target market.) Last year the international smart phone market grew by 110% and in the US of A it increased 148%! Not bad in a down economy but cell phones and not mobile computers still rule the world.
The on-deck world is comprised of 4 spheres.
Product/service – This group is made up of brands, content owners and interactive agencies. Basically, they have content they want to share with their customers and the agency is going to help them.
Application – This sphere is populated business that create mobile applications.
Connection – These are the aggregators and carriers; the people that collect is and bundle it and the people that deliver it.
Media & Retail – Brick and mortar or online stores.
This has been the traditional on-deck model for some time and it’s best to think of the standard SMS campaign. “Text this word to this 5 or 6 digit number and we’ll send you SMS updates until you eyes bleed!”. (A good overview of short codes/international short codes can be found here.) Also, an update to this 4 sphere model can be found here. To deliver the SMS messages you need to get a common short code (CSC) from the CSCA. We also then talked about the importance search based mobile advertising. By 2013, 73% of mobile advertising is expected to be search-based due to the abysmal performance of display ads on mobile sites which are enjoying a .30% click through! (The numbers are much better for ads in apps but we’ll get to that later.)
Then we moved to off-deck. Off-deck is mobile sites, mobile apps (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, etc . . .) and mobile social networks such as Brightkite and Twitter. (Twitter is now being called a real time news source but don’t underestimate how much of Twitter’s usage is driven by mobile users.) Services like Foursquare and Gowalla also fit nicely into the off-deck realm. We the covered the concept of location as it relates to mobile marketing and highlighted the fact that location based awareness is built into the mobile Safari browser and Google’s Android OS. We reviewed Master Cards Priceless Picks app (video below) as being one example of location based apps. It’s important to remember that long-term location based services need to enhance the experience of the venue AND that soon customers will not be looking location. They’ll be looking for product/service. From there we discussed the in-app advertising the 50% clickthrough that many businesses have enjoyed! (Don’t get too excited. When banner ads first came out the clickthrough rate was also 50% and now you’re lucky if you can get 1%. If you get 2% they throw a party!). We talked briefly about the freemium model (think Pandora) and I believe this is the future. I also forced them to watch a demo of Google Maps Navigation. (Like watching really geeky grass grow.) We then reviewed the concept of conduit marketing.
As most of you know, mobile has been the primary medium in other countries for some time and because of this we talked about lessons learned.
Video content should mobile specific – Don’t repurpose video shot for TV. It’s too small for the mobile device and looks awful. I will say that content that is primarily screenplay driven, such as Kevin Smith work well on a mobile device but the latest Star Trek movie is not a good fit for the device (IMHO).
Video & Photo (UGC) are essential – Allow users to create content and “add” them to your business via social mechanisms. Most have camera (still & video).
Unlimited plans = growth – Many places in the world are not on unlimited plans. Australia has 60% iPhone penetration but they’ve got no unlimited plans. This will hinder adoption of some of the deeper/data rich experiences.
It makes calls also! – Don’t forget that the device is also a phone. Best example I’ve seen for this on an iPhone was an ad that when pressed called the appropriate business representative.
Things to consider – What culture(s) are you targeting? What kind of privacy concerns do they have? What is their level of sophistication?
Task focused – Mobile devices are great at helping users complete a task. Find the restaurant. When does the movie start? As of now, people do not surf for hours on end using their mobile device.
After that we talked about how to get started.
Make sure your strategy is market driven. Please sell something somebody wants.
Tools like Distimo, Motally, Tap Metrics to see what people are doing/buying
Decide if your market is on-deck or off-deck. Eventually the belief is that the majority will be on a smartphone. You know what they say about assumptions . . .
Select a team mobile team that is familiar with your vertical. This can be a plus (familiarity) or a negative (“Same old. Same old.”)
You need to start early on-deck solutions can take up to three months to get approved by the carrier! Just for SMS-based based strategies.
Take a holistic approach. Drive traffic to your mobile campaign using other mediums such as online, print, radio & television.
Opt-in – People must opt-in to receive SMS/MMS messages.
Free To End User (FTEU) – The business and the carrier have a deal to deliver the offerings at no charge to the end user.
Standard Rate – The user must acknowledge that they will be charged for the SMS messages they receive.
Premium Service – The user must acknowledge that they will be charged for the MMS messages they receive.
Opt-out – As a business, when someone sense you any of the following messages you must remove them from the send list – STOP, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE or QUIT.
Location Based Privacy – You must ask for the users permission to know where they are.
The master list of best practices can be found here.
This post is for all of those businesses whose site search is so bad that you have to leave their site, go to Google, type in your search terms with their business name just to find anything on their site.
Search is such an integral part of our online experience . An essential key to usability. To not get search right is dangerous. Categorically, everyone business that’s not using Google, is “doing it wrong”. Amazon get’s this wrong! There are three reasons you should go buy a Google Search Appliance tomorrow.
People are used to how Google search works. Again, a key to usability. They’ve got plenty of users and have figured out what to return. (As of 2 years ago , 25% of searches performed on Google where searches that they’d never seen before! Point is they’re still working to address all searches.)
Their algorithm is better than yours. No really. It is.
Their developers are really smart AND there are rooms and rooms filled with them!
So dear friends, give in to peer pressure. Everyone’s doing it. Be one of the cool kids! Just use Google.
Monday and Wednesday, Professor Stephen Haag came in and lectured on Metrics. One of the promises of IT is the ability to know where your business is. The trick is measure what is measurable (as crazy as that sounds), essential to the business and most importantly compare yourself to your competition and not just your internal benchmarks. One of the quotes he showed at the beginning of the presentation was a quote by Professor David J. Hand.
Many people are resistant to the notion that numerical data can convey the beauty of the real world. They feel somehow converting things to numbers strips away the magic. In fact, they could not be more wrong. Numbers have the potential to allow us to perceive that beauty, that magic, more clearly and more deeply to appreciate it more fully. Admittedly, ambiguity may be removed by couching things in numerical form.
Haag then moved on to talk about the differences between effectiveness and efficiency. When I think of these two concepts I think of Zappos for effectiveness; 4 hour customer service call!!! (video below) and Walmart for efficiency. The major points around both concepts are listed below.
Effectiveness
Questions the correctness of the process
Measures the output of the process
Focuses on the synergistic nature of the entire process
Generally, “external” customer-centric focus
Realization horizon is longer
Efficiency
Assumes the process is correct
Measures the internal workings of the process
Focuses on each step in the process
Generally, “internal” organizational focus
Realization horizon is shorter
He then discussed how metrics help eliminate many of the communication issues between business and IT by focusing on the numbers. Metrics don’t guarantee alignment between groups as to what they perceive as important but it does help shed light as to what the other group believes to be important. And yes: it’s all important.
Haag then reviewed the discipline of business intelligence and the nature of metrics.
Codification
Internal and external
Focus on supporting decisions
Across all organizational levels
The ultimate goal is predictive metrics . . .
Lastly, Professor Haag mentioned one of my favorite books that I haven’t read called Freakonomics. Yes. It’s on the list. It was an honor to have Professor Haag come in an lecture in my class. Enjoy the video below!
I sent an email out to my students later highlighting some of the better metrics tools I’ve found.
After lecturing last quarter, the host professor asked me; “How do you keep up with all that’s going on?”. I told him that I’d setup a personalized RSS feed via Twitter and because of this, I’d found numerous posts, articles, white papers, case studies and other resources that have proven to be invaluable. I don’t tweet much but am an avid Twitter user. That sounds contradictory, but it isn’t. Twitter, like other forms of social media is what you make it.
