#DearKen I’m under increasing pressure to show results from my team's social media efforts. Does my company need a social media rock star?
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Thank you for your question. Yes, your company must must must have a social media rock star. The twist? It’s you!
From car makers to telecom companies, a strategy that reduces complexity and encourages a robust business ecosystem pays dividends. Hani Ramzi tells why keeping it simple (KISS) is a must-have mindset that can help key stakeholders in the mobile marketing value chain focus on (and achieve) real growth opportunities.
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Show me a world-leading company, and I'll show you a management that understands the value of simplicity and the danger of complexity. Indeed, too much complexity can drag companies down a slippery slope that eliminates gains, interferes with efficiency and ultimately destroys competitive advantage. However, understanding that less is more (keeping it simple) generates profits, growth and tremendous customer satisfaction.
Give the customers what they want? The confluence of new technologies and business models, an exponential increase in the consumption and delivery of data, a deluge of devices and an explosion in apps and content makes fulfilling the number one rule of marketing harder than ever before.
Megatrends and shifts in the marketplace (primarily the massive move to mobile) are reshaping the customer landscape, providing people more choice and forcing the rest of industry to innovate in order to deliver people what they want, how they want it -- and at a price that is completely aligned with their individual needs, uses and budgets. (Translated: tailored, tiered offers and pay-as-you-go plans.)
Give digital natives what they want? It's not an option; it's a business imperative. These tech-savvy, empowered individuals (your customers, community members and employees) have grown up with the Internet and an abundance of applications designed to give them more of a say in how they create, access and enjoy content. (And don't forget that truly valuable advertising combines a sales pitch with useful content -- recipes, advice, etc.)
The advance of mobile takes this all to a new level, taking natives’ natural inclinations to interact to a new extreme. Mobile enables instant self-expression and turns up the pressure on companies and brands to deliver their marketing message via a two-way conversation within the context of what matters most to digital natives: their lives, their experiences, their networks, and their worlds. But delivering a message doesn't make for a conversation; marketers also have listen to what digital natives have to say. Connect the dots, and it's clear that permission marketing has earned a central spot in the mobile marketing mix.
From marketing to media the digital native generation is impacting all aspects of how we do business. Michelle Manafy, a contributor to and co-editor (with Heidi Gautschi) of the new book Dancing With Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That is Transforming the Way Business is Done (May 2011) tells why we must all learn to participate in two-way conversations.
Since you're a reader of MobileGroove, odds are you have one or more mobile devices within arms reach right now. You are pretty likely to fall into the early adopter category as well. However unless you were born since 1980 or so, you are what is known as a digital immigrant. Face it: No matter how techno-hip you are, you find yourself at the precipice of one hell of a generation gap.
Would you block people who drive an SUV from parking and entering your store? Probably not? So why focus your mobile app strategy on serving users of a single device (such as the iPhone, for example)? iPhone apps may be popular. But limiting your mobile strategy to one platform effectively discriminates against customers on the basis of their technology preference. Not a smart move. We look at Premier Inn, a hospitality brand in the U.K. that wracked up record downloads (and bookings) by offering a cross-platform app that works on all leading devices.
In 2010 Premier Inn noticed that a large percentage of their bookings were being made last-minute by business professionals and people on-the-move. However, the vast majority of these premium customers were not using their desktop PC to find and book rooms, they were using their mobile devices. Or at least they were trying to.
