All posts by Jostein Flatin

Mobile Purchase Behavior (Awareness)

In the overview of this series we discussed at a very high level how a mobile marketing strategy can assist a consumer down the path to purchasing your product or service over your competitors. Here is a quick recap:

  • Consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile devices to assist them in the consumer buying process.
  • There are 6 stages in the consumer buying decision flow:
    1. Awareness: The recognition of a need, this is really an analysis of maslow’s hierarchy of needs in combination with marketing efforts.
    2. Consideration: The creation of an evoked set of alternatives. This is a mental short-list that the consumer creates based on internal and external influences.
    3. Preference: Based on the criteria that is most important to the consumer he/she will narrow down the list to a preferred brand.
    4. Purchase: This is where the consumer will actually buy a product or service
    5. Loyalty: After the purchase the buyer will enter into stages of post-purchase evaluation where they will re-evaluate the purchase they just made and file the experience away (in their minds) for future reference
  • A complete mobile marketing strategy can assist in every stage of flow because of the proximity to a mobile device for the consumer and the marketing efforts a brand undertakes.
In this post we will dive a little deeper into the Awareness stage.
The Awareness stage is when a consumer recognizes that they are missing something that they want or need.
There are a lot of factors that influence this realization:
  • Self-expression – Reflection of personal tastes
  • Affiliation – Be a part of a group
  • Independence – Stand out from the crowd
  • Novelty – Be Awesome

How does this tie into a mobile marketing strategy?

When designing your mobile marketing strategy you need to consider QR codes as your first line of communication with your buyers. QR codes or Quick Response codes allow you to engage with a consumer in a specific and measurable manner.
Specific – QR codes can be placed anywhere and can have built-in context or some text around it to give it context. The power of the QR code is that it allows you to understand and track the intention of a buyer. So when they are in the Awareness stage you can grab their attention at the right time and place.

Measurable – If implemented correctly QR codes can help you track a lot of valuable data about your consumers. Things that can be tracked are:

  • Number of QR scans
  • Geo-location
  • Date
  • Type of mobile device (brand)
  • Mobile operating system (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc)
  • Other Custom Events that help track campaign performance
By reaching consumers at the Awareness stage through the use of QR codes brands have the unique ability to understand who, what and where they need to engage consumer so they will spend more money and always have that brand on top of mind.

 

How to build a massively successful mobile web site

HTML5 is considered by many the future of mobile web design. It has been heralded as the mobile web’s saviour by more than a few bloggers and fortune 50 companies (Silicon Angel, Mashable and Apple).

Leveraging a post from a fellow mobile web app advocate (Pinch/Zoom) I am going to quickly walkthrough what it takes to build out the correct infrastructure for a massively successful mobile web app. This is not meant to be a technical discussion but more of a commentary on the key point made in the original blog post.

Device Detection

The core to device detection lives within a file that outlines all the different user agents (mobile software provider). Your user agent script needs to always be updated to reflect the changing market conditions, especially now thatGoogle has purchased Motorola.

Offline Browsing

15% of all mobile browsing is done offline so it is important to think about how the data is cached on the phone and how many levels deep someone can browse. By having a offline mobile data strategy you can guarantee that your users’ experience is optimal even when data connectivity is lost.

Interactions and Transitions

Javascript and CSS are the main building blocks to a solid user experience. With tools like jQTouch, Sencha Touchor jQuery Mobile making mobile sites look and interact beautifully is easy. However, these libraries are just a base to build off of, the first step is to identify the your mobile business objectives. After you have identified your business objectives you can pick and choose the components that support those objectives, giving the customer what they want, when they want it.

Conclusion

When considering your mobile marketing strategy you should consider:

  • Device Compatibility – Native apps only work on 1 device type, mobile web apps work on all devices
  • First identify business objectives, then build interactions to fulfill those goals
  • Have a offline mobile data strategy to ensure your visitors experience is consistent whether they have connectivity or not.
  • Consider the options. Without proper planning any technology project can be expensive, especially a mobile one. By focusing on what your customers need you can optimize your marketing and technology dollars in the most efficient maner.

 

The Time For Mobile is Now

Google released this great video, here are some highlights from the video:

Mobile is so big that it is changing and creating consumer trends
125 Years of Angry Birds are played everyday
1 in 3 Mobile searches have mobile intent
59% of mobile users visit a local store after searching for it on the mobile web
Mobile is huge in niches that you would expect, and some you dont expect
17% of all Auto searches are mobile
15% of all Finance and Insurance searches are from mobile devices
30% of all Restaurant searches are from mobile phones
What does all this mean?

with 79% of all large online advertisers not having a mobile optimized site, people are becoming frustrated with the brands that do not take mobile into account.