Mobile Strategy » Mobile Marketing

67% Of The World’s Population Are Mobile Subscribers – What are you doing about it?

Jose HC — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:08:09 +0000

A new report published yesterday by the UN indicates that 67% of the world’s population, or two-thirds total, are mobile subscribers- far outweighing Online access.

67% of the world’s population represents around 4.6B people, up from only 1B in 2002, indicating staggering continued growth. In developing nations, however, the uptake is even more substantial with 57% of the total population in these nations being mobile subscribers, even though other technologies are scarce.

via mobilemarketingwatch.com

What’s your Mobile Strategy?

Regardless of what you do… you need to think through this. How does it affect your business? Your constituents? Your congregants? Your members?

You don’t have to be a business to have a strategy… you just need to understand that you have them right there. They all have mobile devices … what are you going to do about it?

What’s your call to action?

Posted via web from Mobile Strategy

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Mobile Strategy for Small Business: It’s About Local Convenience

Jose HC — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:02:11 +0000

Small businesses are an under served market in mobility. We constantly hear about the importance of small businesses to our economies, yet today few would argue that this sector is properly served and serviced from a mobility standpoint. Of course, carriers have plans but many times they simply rebrand a family plan as a small business plan and push it out. The effort to sell to the smallest of small businesses is often not worth the return to some of the larger players. This is all improving and will continue to do so as the cloud and open source makes business models that cater to the smallest firms much more attractive and manageable. As a small business owner you may already be seeing some improvement and your mobile strategy is starting to take shape.

Or maybe as a small business owner you still feel ignored and you don’t know what to do with this mobility thing. My humble guess would be that the vast majority of small business owners are not thinking or even remotely contemplating a mobile strategy. There are many different angles to take on the topic of small business and mobility, but for today and for now let’s just focus on one part of it: as a small business would you benefit from a mobile application?

Small Business and Mobile Applications

The simple answer, and I am sure many would agree with this, is no. The time and effort required to design, build, distribute, market and maintain a mobile application is not what you are in business for. A few may try to sell the idea of a mobile application to you but you will be hard pressed to make a case for it.

Without a mobile app you are seemingly left without mobile options. The thought of not being present when the need arises in your customers (when mobile) may worry you. In fact it may even terrify you. This is where search in general and local search in particular become your best option.

A Case for Local Search

Human geographers will tell you that everything happens in space; a particular point in space. All human interactions happen somewhere. For you as a small business owner your work, your clients and customers are mostly local. This is why local search is your friend, why competition in this space will heat up and why existing players with key advantages stand to benefit the most.

It is about convenience … local convenience!
It is the middle of January and you and your family are returning from Costa Rica where you just had a wonderful eco-tourism vacation. You are happy to hear that you just missed some of the coldest weather in years… unfortunately you walk into a freezing cold house due to a broken down furnace.

What do you do?

Blame the kids?
Boot up your computer in the basement?
Go back to Costa Rica?
Take out your smartphone?

If you answered ‘take out your smartphone‘ you answered the way I did. The other option of digging through night tables and recycling boxes to find a telephone directory doesn’t even enter my mind for this scenario. Your phone is right there with you.

Now what would you do?

Browse to your favourite search engine?
Then search for ‘emergency furnace services Toronto‘
Click on the first few options?
Click on an ad?

Or would you instead…

Open up a local search application
Search for ‘emergency furnace services Toronto?‘
Click on ‘closest to your home‘ option
Look at the first few (perhaps check a video)
Pick one and call them immediately!

We spend our money and buy a majority of our services locally. Our context is local! We may research products on the web from around the world… but when it comes to actually purchasing them we do a lot of that locally.

As a small business owner seeking presence in the minds and wallets of mobile consumers you want to be there when the moment of need arises. Lots to think about. We will try and come back to this topic over the next few weeks.

Here are some other things to consider…
How social can a local search app be?
What about product availability and inventory?
Menu and prices?
So what other things could be leveraged on top of a local search application?
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Commentary on Google’s Acquisition of AdMob

Jose HC — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:24:07 +0000

As you can probably tell I have been away. But before I get to the summary of the Mobile Money Conference (in the next post) I want to get this out of the way to avoid any distractions. What can be better than my opinion on Google’s acquisition of AdMob? Well … the opinion of those smarter than yours truly. Our Mobile Analytics Provider list will undoubtedly change in the aftermath of this deal … but for now below are four excerpts of expert commentaries for you to read and follow to their source.

1. Open Gardens’ Ajit Jaokar -

But why is this acquisition such a big landmark?

The Admob acquisition and growth reflects a deeper trend by the customer towards Mobile Web and Mobile Apps. It indicates that Mobile Web and Mobile Apps are becoming the most significant elements of the Mobile industry surpassing both Voice and SMS in importance.

Why? We all know that Mobile Web and Mobile Apps are a significant(if not primary) mode of access to the Web for many people .. but the Admob figures indicate that the manner of access is significant ..

Historically, the belief was – people accessed the Mobile Web with an ‘intent’ (such as ‘find my nearest’) .. If that were the case, we would never have seen such a large number of ad impressions. So, the Mobile Web access has become pervasive .. instead of ‘intent based.’ In other words, the Mobile Web (and Mobile Apps) have arrived.

Read entire post entitled ‘The acquisition of Admob by Google is as big as the launch of the iPhone‘ here.

2. Gartner’s Nick Jones

Unlike me, Google has started its Christmas buying early, having splashed out $750M on Admob this week. Google also just announced an upgrade to Latitude that supports location history tracking and location alerts (e.g. to notify you when friends are in the vicinity). These events are related. They’re moves in a massive emerging war to own mobile contextual information and applications which will include location-specific advertising and many other location-related business models. Apple are behind in this location game, but I expect MobileMe will get more sophisticated. Expect a future mega-vendor battleground between Google, Nokia, Apple, maybe Microsoft and a few others.

Read entire post entitled Bah Hambug! here.

3. Mobile Marketing Watch

Think about it- if an app developer decides to monetize his app via in-app advertising, who do you think he’ll chose as his provider; Google or one of the many cookie-cutter mobile ad-networks that have popped up all over the place…

When looking at the two most talked-about mobile OSs — the iPhone and Android — Google already dominates the mobile search functions on both devices, and now with it’s acquisition of AdMob, will dominate mobile app advertising on both devices through their respective app stores as well.

Read the rest of the post entitled ‘Google’s AdMob Deal Solidifies It’s Future Mobile Marketing Dominance‘ here.

4. Sensidea’s Jaafer Haidar

[AdMob has] built up quite an impressive business in a few short years; not only becoming the largest mobile ad network, but also amassing an amazing amount of data on how people are using and engaging in mobile applications… Google now has access to a ton of competitive data that will bode well in the mobile platform war just heating up with Apple. I’m not discounting AdMob’s ad business but if it was the ads Google wanted then why did they wait so long to make the buy?

Read entire post entitled ‘Google Buys AdMob. What Took So Long?‘ here.Similar Posts: