All Talk No Action – The Sad State of Mobile Marketing

Over a year ago, prior to the 2011 holiday shopping season, a major advertising agency issued a white paper saying the mobile device was the new point of purchase at retail.  Outstanding insight.  Still, brands and agencies were caught flat-footed during the 2011 holiday shopping season.  A year later, there has been little or no progress.  The disease of ATNA (All Talk No Action) is in full force.

What leads me to this observation?  The hernia educing size of the Thanksgiving newspaper (it is an anachronism, I receive a daily newspaper) most of it was filled with advertising inserts.  They were neatly packaged in two plastic wrappers.

None of the ads had a special url, sms, qr calls to action.  Forget the fact that you might be able to gain the name and phone number of someone who might buy your product, you marketers just lost an opportunity to track the effectiveness of your spending.  On top of that, with bonded mobile couponing solutions available, such as Koupon Media, there was no way for the consumer to download the coupon on their mobile devices.

According to many sources, over a quarter of the billion dollars spent during the “Gray Thursday, Black Friday” shopping period was spent online.  Several large chains reported that consumers were comparing prices on mobile devices the wares on the shelves.  This happened last year.  Yet, I did not see anyone with a display saying got to “ourstore.com” or “Text ourstore to 1245” or “scan this code” to get a unique in store special.

By the way, you have to do all three.  The consumer makes the choice on where and how they use their mobile devices and you as a marketer need to have this redundancy.  It is something many in the mobile field have preached for years.  Start doing it.

As for all of the money and time you spent going over and vetting the editorial and artwork of these inserts, publishing them and paying for them to be included in the newspaper, wouldn’t it be wise to invest some of that money into a mechanism that gives you data and a direct relationship with the consumer – mobile?

Brands and agencies have to stop talking about how mobile is the future.  They have to stop talking about embracing mobile.  They have to start investing in the infrastructure and bake it into their overall strategies. 

This morning a study came out that was done by Forrester and paid for by Velti (full disclosure, a former employer) that showed that most marketers are being tactical in their use of mobile and that they are looking for customer acquisition.  The conclusion of the article states “The report takes this as further evidence that too many mobile advertisers are using desktop marketing tactics and haven’t yet adapted to the opportunities presented by mobile.  It recommends that marketers use mobile to deliver highly contextual, relevant information that directly engage individual consumers.”

Marketers it is time to kill ATNA.  Now, before you lose the 2013 holiday season.

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