To mobile market or to not is not really the question – since your customers and prospects are already using mobile marketing, how to get started is really the question. The Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce and Industry recognizes this growing trend and the Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank, already an invested and adept user of this media, wanted to sponsor a seminar to help local organizations understand mobile marketing.
The seminar started with a greeting from Chamber Membership Goddess, Patty St. John, welcoming everyone to the seminar, thanking the Newburyport Five Cents Savings Bank for their sponsorship and thanking Mass Audubon’s Joppa Flats Education Center for hosting. Then, with a perfectly timed pun, Patty explained how the Chamber is “spreading its wings” with new locations to introduce Bill Gette, the head of Joppa Audubon.
Wife and husband team of Julie Cook and Kevin Bowe of Cook Bowe Communications started the seminar by getting to know their audience. In response to the question, “Is your phone smart?” just over half of the 50+ people raised their hand. Kevin explained that this year, 85% of all new phones sold will be smart phones (able to access the web) – and in a mere five years, the internet will be accessed more frequently by phone than by PC! The main benefit of a smart phone vs. PC is that is with you all the time and the access to information is therefore instant – making your smart phone your mini mobile computer. This development has led to anytime/anywhere engagement for businesses to connect with their customers. Kevin cited statistics that already 55% of the general population report using their smart phones to find stores and 45% use their smart phones to compare prices while shopping.
Does this screen make me look fat?
So, what does this mean for Chamber members? In a cleverly titled slide, Kevin asked, “Does this device make me look fat?” He spoke about how customers and prospects learn about your business through the web – and how a phone screen is substantially different from a 17” computer screen – or even a netbook’s 10” screen. He showed an example of trying to navigate on the Chamber’s website with a smart phone and how you could either see only a fraction of the total page or to get the whole page on the screen, the font was so small that it is completely illegible. Thus – what to do to enable your customers to easily get information about your company or organization optimized for the device of their choice at the current moment?
To create a website optimized for smartphones, business owners have four choices:
- Create an application (an “app”) for the various versions of smart phones
- Create a mobile website that will work with all web-enabled smart phones
- Do both
- Do nothing and miss out on this growing segment of current and potential buyers
An app is a softare application specifically designed for a version of a smart phone – and most often, an app is available for the various different smart phone platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.) An app downloaded to the phone typically works both online and offline. To develop an app for an organization can be an investment of thousands of dollars, with an average starting point being ~$5k.
A mobile website is a website separate from your primary website that is optimized for the small screens on phones. There is no need to ask the customer to download anything, it is automatically cross-platform, and updates can be done live, with no need to ask customers to download updates to the phone through an app. In addition, the cost to develop a mobile website is considerably cheaper – starting at ~$300.
A question from the audience: What will this do to customers when they access my site via PC? Kevin explained how the hosting server you subscribe to automatically “reads” the source of access to know the device and screen size being used and will automatically direct the ping to the correct site – the site intended for PCs or the site intended for mobile devices.
There are pros and cons to apps vs. mobile sites – and one way to cover all your bases is to do both. However, if you only want to dip your toe into mobile marketing a bit at a time, mobile websites is the recommended way to start. They require less effort from the customer (no need to download anything), are faster to update, no need to create cross platform versions, and are less expensive to develop.
Even then, before going into mobile marketing, Kevin emphasized that organizations should make sure that mobile marketing fits with your overall marketing strategy and that you have the infrastructure in place operationally so that a customer’s online experience flows smoothly with their face-to-face interactions with you and your employees.
The Greater Newburyport Chamber of Commerce is rolling out a Greater Newburyport Mobile Guide designed to assist visitors on their mobile-enabled smart phones. It is working with Chamber member Cook Bowe Communications to promote the new Mobile Guide and sign up participants. The Mobile Guide features retail, restaurants, attractions, lodging, downtown festivals, photos of the region and a short introductory web video. Chamber members who are participating in the Destination Newburyport marketing program are automatically included in the Greater Newburyport Mobile Guide, and chamber members can be listed for a small investment or boost their presence with a logo, picture, map and extended description. In addition, special pricing is available for chamber members seeking their own mobile-optimized website.
Part II of this review of this seminar will cover Text Marketing and Kevin and Julie’s tips of what is coming to phones near you – in the very near future!
