I run into several articles about mobile marketing and mobile apps that showed me how powerful the mobile devices’ world is. I have to admit I have no clue how adroit app developers can be. Did you know that Johnson & Johnson developed an app that guides parents through bath-and-bed time proces, provides them with useful advices and even helps their baby to fall asleep by playing lullabies? Another example – would you ever associate the insurance industry with meditation? I would not. But the meditation app provided by US insurance company Cigna found a lot of fans.

There is one thing that guarantees a success. Good and useful mobile application must be available for a user when he NEEDS it + exactly in the TIME and in the PLACE in which he needs it.

When I went through all that examples of “useful” apps I started to be little bit worried about the humankind future. Our mobile devices give us such a basic information on a daily basis that we are losing our common sense and natural thinking about problems. It is the same like the internet. Almost no one can imagine doing homework/research/project without using internet nowadays. I somehow feel that such an easy way of living only dulls the society and makes human kind more vulnerable when anything un-expectable happens. Just imagine worldwide disaster during which the internet would not work and all devices would be disconnected. We would not know what to do or where to go to save our lives just because we would not be able to read it on our mobile dashboard.

Let us look at some numbers:

• # of mobile devices on the world: 7 billion
• # of Twitter users: 555 million
• total # of iPhones sold: 193 million
• Total average of daily UPS shipments: 16 million

These numbers are only an example how we are equiped by electronic devices which connect people all around the world.

It is hard to imagine to live in today’s developed world without computer or mobile devices. I put the word “developed” in previous sentence on purpose. There are still places on the Earth where it is on the other hand impossible to use mobile devices, because of lack of any signal or electricity. And let us be honest, we all sometimes gate away to such places (mountain peaks, abandoned islands, deep forests,…) just because we are too tired of being connected all the time. We want to untie and disconnect ourselves at least for a while.

This is exactly what I did last weekend. Two days ago, I came back to Vancouver from my four-days Rockies trip and I am going to introduce you another numbers. I spent 4 amazing days in real physical connection with nature instead of the online connection with my study groups and other people. I had a chance to experience -18°C freeze in Lake Luise, +40°C hot water in hot springs, elevation of 2 451 m on Sulphur Mountains and also, unfortunately, many many hours in our bus (do not wanna know exact number here!) 🙂   Are not these numbers nicer than the top ones?

I want to take up my previous post in which I warned about some common mistakes that marketers and brand managers make. In this post, let’s focus on the marketing objectives and let’s answer the question whether they are (or can be) achieved in today’s online marketing world.

The most fundamental marketing objectives are:
– change consumers’ attitudes (change what they feel, think, in what they believe) which afterwards helps to
– change consumers’ behaviour. Marketing efforts win over consumers in the moment when they are doing (not doing) what marketer wants them (not) to do.

If any brand manager asks himself whether his brand’s presence and activity on SM are changing consumer’s attitudes and behaviour towards brand (products), the answer in most cases is NO.

What e-marketers do on SM is they try to spread awareness and positive WOM, encourage people to talk about brand, communicate problems and inquiries with them etc. I believe, e-marketers stucked at the beginning of purchase funnel – at the stage of spreading awareness. Yes, it is consumers’ attitudes towards SM and their behaviour online what had changed a lot, but this change has nothing to do with the marketing objectives!

Only smart combination of an online and offline marketing brings the brand closer to those dreamy objectives. Vancouver based company Indochino gives us a nice example. They very smartly use SM to invite men to the tailoring studio (which travels from city to city) where potential customers can experience all brand benefits offline (touch different materials, see colors and combinations on their own eyes, let a personal tailor measure them and offer them the best suit).

And this is only one example of many branches where the offline marketing still plays the prim and hardly can be replaced by any online performance.

I dare to state that we are living in a revolutionary era when traditional media advertisements and campaigns are slowly replaced by new social media tools. Nevertheless there are still a lot of misunderstandings in the business world that usually lead to not much pleasant pitfalls. If a brand manager or a marketer wants to avoid some of the fatal mistakes he should realize several basic things:

1. Social media environment is controlled by customers not by managers. We have to turn all the traditional B2C relationship on its head. It is a customer’s activity and his investment what creates SM platforms. Customers invest their time and efforts when searching for or engaging with your brand.
2. Previous note sounds very tempting, one can think: “Wow, that is awesome, customers do all the job, we will just take the cream.” The true is that you can leave SM live its own life, but then you will just cry over spilled milk. Uncontrolled SM activity and conversation related to the brand is usually more harmful than not using SM at all. Molson already knows very well…
3. On the other hand too much control harms as well. Once SM users find out that you filtered and deleted their posts or cheated on them like for example Dr Pepper/7UP did in 2003, you will recognize their hell anger. Remember, there are millions of users on the other side of Facebook wall. They can destroy you very easily.
4. Social Media and user generated content (UGC) are not for free nor cheap! Before you run your online campaign, it is very important to realize that SM monitoring and management in fact cost a lot of time and a lot of money. Once your brand enters the online world you will need qualified online advertisers and e-marketers who are in charge and keep the right track towards the dreamy objective.

… to be continued…