Here's a recent Q&A I did with Campaign Asia magazine, in my role as Online Director for Dell, on the mobile marketing landscape in Asia.
1. For mobile marketing, what are
the do’s and don’t’s?
The latest research from our agency, Mediacom, tells us that our
customers (IT-savvy consumers and IT professionals) are heavy users of mobile
apps and mobile Internet. However, the challenge is that their use of mobile is
more personal than it is for business. For example, using Google or Bing Maps
to see an address, using local search to find a restaurant or café nearby, or
updating your Facebook, Twitter or Weibo profile when they are out and about.
This is a concern for technology companies (like Dell) because we don’t want to
interrupt or annoy customers who have a low likelihood of using mobile ads to
buy an IT product. The buying cycle of a $500+ laptop or a server is quite
different to how our customers are using mobile and our challenge is to work
out the best way to communicate to them using mobile. It’s still a
work-in-progress.
We also find that IT professionals love m-commerce. They will consider
buying via a mobile device but they will not tolerate hard selling
(location-based marketing, etc.). The definition of “hard selling” in the
context of mobile usually means overt advertising. So we need to adopt a more
natural and contextual approach to providing information on mobile – more
information and less advertising.
2. What ‘mistakes’ you have you made
in mobile marketing, and what are the learning points from this experience?
There are no mistakes, only learning opportunities. Dell is
fundamentally is a test and learn organization, so even if a marketing campaign
doesn’t meet our initial forecast there’s always great learnings we can take
into account for the next campaign or quarterly activity. What we specifically
learned about mobile is that mobile apps that are downloaded by existing
customers are fantastic for customer self-service. For example, an IT manager
who has the Dell mobile app can check their order status, review e-support
information, view product videos and walk-throughs and contact their Dell
account manager. This is extremely relevant and useful to an existing Dell
customer. For mobile advertising, we’ve had less success. Ads on mobile
internet sites give us a below average click through and site visit numbers
compared to web/online advertising, search and social media. Dell has a long
heritage and has perfected the performance marketing model and we’re still
trying to understanding where or even if mobile advertising can work in a
similar way.
3. How do you measure the ROI for
mobile marketing?
The major advantage Dell has is our strong heritage in e-commerce and
our direct business. This means that we drive most of our transactions through
to an e-commerce (or m-commerce) platform and we have immediately identifiable
ROI measurement.
4. What is your ad spend for mobile
(by percentage)?
We spend approximately 50% of our consumer and SMB marketing budget in
digital in Asia. The key vehicles we use are Email, Search Marketing,
Affiliates, Online Advertising and Social Media Marketing, in both a brand and
performance marketing context. Right now mobile marketing is less than 5% of
the digital marketing spend and is still considered more of a “trial” or “nice
to have” rather than advertising we must do. This is because the buying cycle of
a laptop or business technology simply doesn’t match the current usage of
mobile devices. When mobile devices become more aligned to how customers
research technology purchases, the spend will increase.
5. Android has taken over iOS. How
does this impact for you, as a brand?
This doesn’t make any real difference to Dell as a brand. The only sales
and marketing implications are that if we’re going to build an m-commerce or
customer self-service application it needs to be build for Android and iOS (as
well as BlackBerry).
6. What is the newest thing in
mobile marketing/social for you?
The newest and biggest thing in mobile is the upcoming release of
Windows 8 by Microsoft. This is a game-changer. The interface is beautiful and
bridges the gap between touch screen applications and traditional mouse
point-and-click applications. Windows 8 will bring iPad-like functionality to
all technology devices and this will mean that content and apps will become
more portable, universally available on any device and touch/gesture enabled.