Alberta Business Marketing

Find out about the popularity, the usability and the latest funny commercial involving this open source mobile operating system

Tags: android, cellphones, Industry Reports - Information Technology and Telecommunications, Mobile, tablets
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Everything you need to know in mobile, cable and other telecommunications news

Tags: apple, blackberry, Industry Reports - Information Technology and Telecommunications, Mobile, RIM, Telecommunications
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Mobile is everything today, we love our devices. It’s an exciting time for sure for mobile marketers.

CMA now has a dedicated mobile marketing council that will be collecting best practices and building a repository of knowledge to help ease organizations into mobile marketing. (Go ahead, use this blog to talk up some of the really cool integrated campaigns leveraging mobile.) IAB Canada collects and publishes mobile ad spend data (hit $52 million in 2010, $82 million expected in 2011), comScore Inc. launched its syndicated mobile measurement service, comScore MobiLens, in Canada in June, and the leading market research organizations and consulting firms in Canada are studying consumer attitudes and behaviours from all angles. You can’t escape hearing almost daily about all the amazing apps and services to make your life easier and entertaining.

Earlier in the year, CMA put out a mobile readiness scorecard. Intended to guide marketers toward a sensible mobile strategy. Thus far, out of 125 (unique) respondents/marketers taking the survey, just 30% indicated having a ‘test and learn’ budget. Over half (53%) said their primary audience is 31-45 years old. The top marketing objective is increasing conversion/transactions (26% of respondents indicated as such) followed by deepening engagement and creating awareness (by 24% of respondents). As for marketing budgets – respondents skewed to the more digitally inclined, with 25% allocating 6-10% of budget to digital (fairly average), 17% allocating 11-20%, 10% allocating 21-40%, and 26% of respondents said a whopping 41% of marketing spend is for digital. Less than a quarter (22%) of respondents said they spend less than 5% on digital.

So what does this all mean? That digital spend is on the rise, our consumer market has arrived – but we need compelling case studies to demonstrate that mobile is contributing to ROI for businesses to participate.

This week, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is bringing a road show to Canada - a series of ½ day events - in Vancouver (today), Calgary (tomorrow) – and coming to Montreal (26th) and Toronto (27th). Being dubbed workshops - they are free and pre-registration is required. Mobilens research and case studies are on the agenda. Details here.

And a fantastic opportunity for us here in Canada to leap unto the world stage - CMA is pleased to announce a new initiative with the MMA: a Canadian edition of MMA’s award-winning International Journal of Mobile Marketing for 2012 - all Canadian content (will be made available to CMA Members at no charge). Content will be a mix of industry and academic articles – we’ll be encouraging perspective pieces from marketers in addition to an evaluation of current theory and practices, case studies, research.

The submission deadline will be Q1 2012. Details will be coming soon. Contact us if you want to know more now.

Sandra Singer

Tags: Mobile
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Empowering consumers to relate to a brand in their own personal way is the new horizon of innovation. Creating imaginative product ideas that allow consumers to explore, create and share is a new extension of real time co-creation. Brands can learn from these new co-creations and deploy new vectors of growth, based on new product ideas. The opportunities are endless.

Coca-Cola tested its Freestyle vending machines in 2009 and is rolling out the machines in the US this year. The machines offer consumers a touch-screen with an incredible 100+ different beverage choices ranging from Diet Cherry Coke to Dasani waters. Customers can even create their own combinations of flavours. Already, Coke lists a portfolio of more than 3,500 beverages, from diet and regular sparkling beverages to still beverages on its website.

In today’s mature markets, a popular strategy has been to take mass customization to the next level, to create highly personalized brand experiences for existing products. Coke has launched apps for social networks that allow consumers to create and name their own drinks. In the future, it may be possible for an app to create a bar code for a customized flavour that a vending machine can create.

Customization is driving collaborative consumption

The buzz word for C2C (Consumer to Consumer) commerce is 'collaborative consumption'. An example is Airbnb. Less than four years old since launch, the website provides accommodations in nearly 11,000 cities in 180 countries. According to Inc Magazine, Airbnb’s popularity has exploded recently, growing more than 800% last year. Airbnb reports it has booked 1.6 million night stays in other people’s homes to date. Airbnb allows its members to customize their vacaction accomodations based on a number of variables.

Five steps to deploy collaborative consumption

1. Explore surprising vectors of innovation of your products.
2. Define the relevance of these vectors. Which ones delight customers?
3. Create an experiential component to the brand. How will customers create unique experiences for themselves?
4. Create communication channels to allow customers to share ideas and innovations.
5. Stay true to the brand position. Look for innovations that reinforce the brand idea.

What other examples of mass customization are working for brands?

Tags: Branding, Customer Experience, Mobile
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Mobile is the new cloud and will continue to disrupt established technology and business models. Arguably, the most amazing and terrifying development is mobile apps that bring cost effective one-to-one interaction with prospects and clients anytime, anywhere.

Terrifying because app stores are a direct channel to your market that is largely beyond your control. Can anyone find your apps? Is anyone talking about them? What’s being said? As well, when someone downloads your app, it would be nice to know something about them beyond country of origin? Everyone’s been in such a rush to get their apps out and into app stores – it’s literally, now what?

There are some new tactics like using the apps themselves as marketing tools, but much is a “back to basics” lesson for technology marketers to use supporting tried and true techniques integrated with your mobile app program. There’s SEO and SEM for awareness and lead generation of your mobile offerings. There’s mobile sites and mobile registration to ensure a positive mobile user experience. But to attain those all important conversions and referrals, look no further than email marketing with a mobile twist - apps that ask or better yet incent users to provide their email address, an email sign up form on your mobile site, and email templates optimized for viewing & action on mobile device.

Mobile email marketing can help you connect with, better leverage, and grow your installed mobile base.

Jenn Markey

Tags: Mobile
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