Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing

224 Pages·2016·1.23 MB·English

by  Bentz

RELEVANCE RAISES RESPONSE
How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile
Marketing
By
Bob Bentz
Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and Acquire with Mobile Marketing By
Bob Bentz
Copyright © 2016 Bob Bentz All Rights Reserved.
Published by SkillBites LLC
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without the written consent of the
author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.
The purpose of this book is to educate and entertain. The author and/or publisher do not guarantee that
anyone using these techniques, suggestions, tips, ideas or strategies will meet with success. The author
and/or publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to anyone with respect to any loss or damage
caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
Editing by Elizabeth Thorlton ISBN-10: 1-942489-10-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-942489-10-8
DEDICATION
I
wrote a book 23 years ago and dedicated it to my father, Kenneth F. Bentz, who
passed away when I was still in my teens. For this book, I am dedicating it to my
late mother, Bonnie (Edwards) Bentz, who always was, and will always be, my
biggest fan.
I would like to also dedicate this book to my friends, colleagues, coworkers,
and associates through the years. Throughout my career, I’ve had the
tremendous privilege of working with so many fantastic people at the following
companies around the world: Advanced Telecom Services, ATS Mobile,
Purplegator, Advanced Federal, Advanced Mobile, Spark Network Services,
Overture Interactive, and Olympic Internet.
I have always lived by the mantra:
Our people are our greatest resource.
And I’ve always believed that these people were working with me, never for
me. Thank you for making going to work every day (almost) as much fun as
going to a baseball game.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication
Forewords
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction To Mobile
Chapter 2: Advantages of Mobile
Chapter 3: Mobile-Optimized Websites
Chapter 4: Text Message Marketing
Chapter 5: Social Media
Chapter 6: Mobile Advertising
Chapter 7: Mobile Apps
Chapter 8: Mobile Commerce
Chapter 9: The Future of Mobile
Endnotes
About The Author
Acknowledgments
Additional Resources
Index
FOREWORDS
F
inally, someone has taken an extremely broad subject called “mobile” and made
it understandable for marketers. Bob Bentz has successfully taken extremely
beefy subject matter and delivered it in snack-size portions that are easy to
digest. The worry in reading a quasi-business book is the dryness factor and
whether or not you have the interest and desire to slog your way through the
chapters. The good news is that Relevance Raises Response: How to Engage and
Acquire with Mobile Marketing has a brisk flow as it takes the reader on a
journey through the arcane world of mobile technology while delivering
valuable insights on how businesses of any size can leverage the mobile
phenomena in their quest to acquire more customers. In addition, Bob Bentz
manages to weave in his unique sense of humor that makes turning the pages
that much more fun.
Understanding all the various aspects of mobile is daunting. Anyone who has
the word “marketing” associated with their title or has such responsibilities
within their company should view this book as a must read. In it, you will learn
about incredibly powerful marketing channels, such as text message marketing,
social media on mobile devices, the importance of mobile-optimized websites,
mobile SEO, mobile search, mobile ad buying, apps, the power of video, and
how to leverage the 800-pound gorilla called Facebook, plus much, much more.
Not only does the book do a great job of educating the reader on all the
companies and their technology that play a part in the mobile ecosystem, but it
also gives practical advice on how to use these technologies to build your brand
and/or directly acquire customers using mobile marketing.
I have had the pleasure of working alongside Bob for the last 27 years. Bob is
the classic early adopter, as he never met a new consumer technology—
especially in the area of mobile—that didn’t pique his curiosity and desire to
sign up and become an actual user. I recall him telling me about a burgeoning
Internet service called CompuServe and how he found himself unknowingly
burning hours while playing around with it at nights. Our first e-commerce B2C
sites were two ringtone websites that we created in the early 2000s,
MonsterTones.com and RingingPhone.com. Here, Bob learned the art of SEO
and SEM to capitalize on the incredible demand by consumers to personalize
their mobile phones. Bob was insatiable in his quest to understand the pay-per-
click model offered by Overture at the time (who was later acquired by Yahoo).
I recall him traveling to attend three-day seminars on pay per click and SEO; he
would return totally amazed at how the material had kept his undivided attention
for the duration of the seminar. During this time, we saw firsthand the potential
of using the Internet to drive traffic to various e-commerce websites that offered
mobile services. Outside of baseball, Bob had found his new passion: mobile
marketing.
In 2007 we experienced the dandy duo disruptors named Facebook and
iPhone. Both companies created services that entertained, informed, and served
as a utility in people’s daily lives. Bob could barely sleep at night as he tried to
wrap his head around the awesomeness of these revolutionary innovations.
The advent of the iPhone was a game changer in so many respects. The
iPhone ushered in an age of 24/7 Internet. Before the iPhone, people stopped
working when they left their computers. For better or worse, the iPhone blurred
the lines between work and home. Non-voice communication using one’s mobile
phone became a round-the-clock habit. It also created new opportunities to
market to people staring at their small screens while on the go.
With Google and their Android operating system phones quickly following
Steve Jobs’s blockbuster iPhone’s footsteps, smartphones were on their way to
ubiquity, and an exciting new marketing opportunity was created called mobile.
The new ingredient that smartphones offered marketers was location. From
Bob’s and my perspective, the smartphone changed the opportunity from
offering features on the mobile phone to offering advertisers the ability to target
consumers based on online and offline behavior.
Facebook was another major market disruptor and game changer for
marketers. With about 39 percent of the world’s population currently considered
active users, including 60 percent of North Americans,1 Facebook deserves its
share of any advertising budget. They have made ad buying on their social media
network simple by providing easy-to-use tools for precise targeting and custom
audiences. The precision of target marketing can actually be scary, as it basically
culls text written and shared by members and algorithmically uses that text to
enable advertisers to target their messages to just the right audience. Add the
location of the mobile device that is in everyone’s pocket to Facebook’s
marketing algorithm, and the marketer now has incredible precision in delivering
their message at the right time, the right place, and to the right person.
Call it the mobile majority. Facebook generates roughly 80 percent of their
revenue from mobile advertising.2 Mark Zuckerberg, the visionary, saw that
mobile was where the eyeballs were going, so he invested heavily in being able
to offer Facebook users with an unequaled mobile experience while
accommodating advertisers with tools in which to display pertinent and useful
advertising, a true win-win. Facebook embodies the concept of Relevance Raises
Response.
Without a doubt, an archaic approach to advertising still exists, meaning many
advertisers continue with the “carpet bombing” or “spray and pray” approach to
advertising—no analysis or research of whether the user is interested in the
brand and therefore likely to click through, but rather putting out as many ads as
possible in the hope someone will bite. It’s an incredibly expensive way of
getting your message out there, and, if anything, it can be detrimental.
Consumers, who expect relevant marketing messages (especially if they are on a
paid app), are likely to be irritated by intrusive, irrelevant ads, especially as they
are increasingly seeing marketing messages tailored to their interests. Therefore,
the risk of not using relevant advertising techniques is greater than ever.
The timing of the book Relevance Raises Response is ideal. As we enter the
third decade of desktop Internet and work through the first decade of mobile
Internet and downloadable apps, consumers are getting progressively savvier.
Marketers are increasingly able to build profiles of people based on their
interests and what they share across the open web, and are serving relevant ads
accordingly. Consumers have reacted well. They understand that they are going
to be served ads online these days—it’s what makes the Internet tick—so why
not make the ads useful to them? And, as mobile marketers, why not deliver the
right ads in the right format to the right potential audience? The tools are there
for the using; just do a little research (such as reading this book) and become
skilled at the art of mobile marketing.
Bret Dunlap
Senior Vice President,
Mobile Division, Autobytel Inc.
I have known Bob Bentz over 10 years and have always been impressed with his
hands-on expertise. It came as no surprise to me when he mentioned he was
writing a book—I thought, ah, of course. I’ve always known him to constantly
be searching for a way to satisfy his hunger and curiosity to learn more about the
digital world. He has placed himself in an industry where the only way to learn
and grow is to do it. And he has done it. Bob proves his excellence and
knowledge inside these pages—it makes me think he’s finally satisfied that
curiosity.
This brilliant book on the optimization of mobile marketing is extremely
timely, since in May of 2015 Google announced that mobile searches were more
than 50 percent of all searches.3 That will only continue to increase. Also, as
Bob points out, Google “near me” searches have increased 34 times in the last
four years, which highlights the benefits and explosive growth of location-
targeted mobile advertising. With mobile phones transforming through the
decades—from devices designed purely to accomplish a simple phone call to our
most translatable identifiers—they have become personal devices attached to our
hands. We never go anywhere without them, so we can be reached anywhere, at
any time, with any kind of marketed information. Nobody understands this better
than Bob.
Bob has designed and successfully compiled a guide to understanding and
maneuvering the realm of digital marketing. This book takes you through a
quick tour of the mobile world, from its beginning to its ever-changing present,
before diving into what it takes to transform that marketing medium into much
more. It’s a page-turner of pure genius. I found myself nodding along to the
ideas and exchanges that take place in the text.
SMS text-based messages have the biggest reach. Bob has designed an
unarguable discussion about the reasons why this is possible. He says it himself,
“What can be simpler than sending a text message?” The only negatives of
mobile marketing are the smaller footprints, multiple formats, and regulatory
issues, which call for careful design, but Bob provides amazingly comprehensive
checklists on all the key factors to optimize.
Relevance Raises Response is the marketing guide to everything mobile, and
soon everything marketing will be mobile. Bob has constructed a navigational
map to maneuver around the bumps in the road for mobile marketers at a time
when they are going to most need it. Bob touches on every aspect that mobile
devices are revolutionizing for marketing—SMS text-based messaging, social
media advertising, mobile-optimized websites, software applications—and he
has elaborated on each with a mind that is immersed in the culture of digital
media. Bob’s book is what this industry needs—an updated, experience-driven
text that is proven successful by his own strategies and business success.
Bob’s book is an ideal reference for any mobile marketing pro!
Michael Cowpland, PhD
CEO, Zim Corporation
Founder, Corel, Mitel Networks
There has never been a time in the history of communication like the time we
live in now. Today, you can instantly be connected to almost anyone, anywhere,
at any time. Time zones, countries, and even language barriers are no longer
roadblocks. We literally carry the world in our pockets and purses with ever-
smarter smartphones, tablets, and watches. With so much available at the touch
of a screen, how can you and your business stay relevant to your customers and
continue to build your brand? What does this mean to you and your business?
How can you harness this tremendous power of information and commerce?
With so many options and so much noise in any marketplace, mobile
marketing has to be a key part of everything you do for your company, your
personal brand, and your customers. Amazon, the number one retailer online,
has seen a steady trend of commerce, with well over half of their business
coming from mobile devices. There is no question that this trend will only
continue to grow.
Bob Bentz saw this trend long before anyone else, and so his advice and
perspective has much more depth and context. He understands how the industry
was formed and developed. There isn’t a more knowledgeable expert than Bob.
You will also appreciate his humor and direct approach. He has a way of
keeping you engaged and moving through the concepts and tools that makes this