Some More Examples of Mobile Advertising/Marketing

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One of the reasons that I like Tomi Ahonen is that he is full of examples and proofs for the successes of mobile, especially on the business side of things. And as many of you know from theological and sociological studies, there’s little difference between some of what works in the realm of religion/faith and what works in business. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve encouraged many who have asked about tracking their effectiveness in mobile campaigns to make sure that you are reading the older materials put out by Tomi. Books such as Pearls Volume 1 go into colorful detail about successful mobile marketing and advertising engagements that have not only added to the pockets, but have also changed the behaviors of the people using the services/products.

In a recent post at Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi again goes the route of highlighting some successful mobile marketing/advertising campaigns (quite a bit more updated than what’s in Pearls), and talks some about why these were sucessful. Yes, you do have to understand the context of the regions some of these were deployed in – its not like if it worked there, its going too work here. However, there are some elements of each that if you pay attention to the stories, you’ll uncover the pearls which could lead to a more successful implementation of your mobile ministry efforts.

Here are the subtopics covered in that article:

  • Building an Army of Fanatics (you should also reference Johnathan MacDonald for this)
  • Measuring/Increasing Click-Thru Rates (every flyer/announcement needs this)
  • Measuring/Increasing Response Rates (every event promoter wants this)
  • Redemption Rates/Conversion Rates (I’ve been told this is the key metric for most marketing campagns)
  • Wanting More Ads
  • Building/Implementing Cross-Media Experiences with Mobile

Its a high-level look at what has worked and why they worked. However, I would very much recommend that you take a look at Tomi’s previously published books (all of the volumes of Pearls, and the latest Mobile Almanac) in order to get these stories and more in some more depth of details.

We’ve talked about mobile markeitng in previous articles as well:

One More Thing…
Its Sunday, and many folks are being broadcast several types of messages from their churches and local communities. In a respect, this topic fits today quite well. So much so that in the article at Communities Dominate Brands, Tomi states something that I too agree with which should also come across the brow today:

…If you are in advertising, you are probably doing something in mobile already and are considering how to expand. I am here to tell you, that if you don’t achieve these kinds of levels of success, you are not doing it right. You CANNOT try to copy the legacy media. You HAVE to learn that mobile has 9 unique abilities, and using those unique abilities, you can create SUPERIOR advertising on mobile, better than anything on any other media. If your mobile ads deliver response rates in the single digits, you are doing it wrong. Fire your agency, hire some competence to teach your team. Throw the current concepts into the waste basket and start again. Read the big names in our industry, books by Kim Dushinski and Chetan Sharma. Hire the right people to advise you like Jonathan MacDonald and Alan Moore (and me haha). Use agencies that have the competence and win the awards and deliver that kind of performance as I outline. It may be global giants like Ogilvy or specialist agencies like R/GA or D2C or Naked etc. But don’t accept mediocre performance simply because it outperforms your internet advertising…

There’s nothing about mobile that should be abused similar to how some have done email and Internet marketing/outreach. You don’t game your websites for SEO, you don’t purchase email lists, you don’t have unreachable, unrealistic goals. Or, to say it a bit more direcly – Mobile ministry isn’t equal to Internet Ministry. There is nothing about mobile so complicated that you can’t take the time to do things sensably, and in a manner which respects the capabilities of the people usings the devices and services. Offer them an experience they’d not considered before. Don’t just copy for the sake of “oh, it worked there.” You have the creative genius of God running through you, make Him your standard and build engaging experiences from there.