Mobile-first has become a cliché.
Today, marketing is more about “customer experience transformation,” said Scott Smith, director of digital and mobile solutions at Moxie, a Zenith-owned digital agency under the Publicis Media umbrella focusing primarily on digital planning, creative services and emerging technologies.
That’s just a fancy way of saying brands need to figure out what consumers want in the moment – usually on mobile – and give it to them.
“People do need to stop thinking of apps as the first thing that comes to mind when someone says mobile marketing,” Smith said. “The fact is, not every brand needs an app. Rather, what’s the right experience for the customer?”
Some brands still need to be talked out of creating an app just for the sake of having one.
“Until you create a loyal customer, which is only about 20% of your base anyway, there is no reason to create a utility app,” Smith said.
AdExchanger caught up with Smith at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
AdExchanger: You’re big on the concept of mobile moments. How are you defining that?
SCOTT SMITH: I always fall back on the Forrester definition: a point in time when a consumer pulls out their phone and receives something contextual. It’s about using the data to change the experience.
What kind of data?
It can be any data – device data, location, time spent in specific apps, app activity, conversations, anything. And then you can layer in whatever first-party data you have access to.
That’s where this starts to get more into AI and using the data to change the experience in a contextual way depending on things like the time of day, where you are, when it is, who you are.
What’s a good example of that in action?
The Delta app. I fly every week and I access that app all the time for various reasons: to book a flight, to check my flight status, to show my boarding pass, to figure out my connection if I have one when I land. Every time I open the app, it’s a different experience.
If you look at the customer journey for any brand and the touch points, it’s no longer linear because you can access an experience at any given time. Ideally, you should receive a more relevant experience based on who you are and what you’re doing.
How can marketers take advantage of a mobile moment beyond push notifications? Walking into a grocery store, for example, isn’t necessarily a signal that you want a brand to communicate with you.
It doesn’t always have to be push. Just because someone opens an app or goes somewhere doesn’t mean they should receive a notification. But when you’re able to open up an experience at any given time and know where you are in the customer journey – that’s a mobile moment.
How can brands ensure that they’re being additive to the moment rather than being opportunistic and jamming themselves in there?
If a brand is going to insert itself into a mobile moment, it does need to be relevant, useful and really integrated. That’s where data and utility come in. A brand needs to ask itself: What is the use case? Is this just a repeat of my website? Can someone take an action?
Are all eyeballs created equal? In other words, consumers are spending an enormous amount of time on mobile, but you could argue that television, for example, is richer, more compelling. People make popcorn when they settle down in front of the TV. Mobile is generally an on-the-go experience.
Why can’t we create an experience where someone gets information from a TV commercial that’s enhanced through the device in their hand? You only get 30 seconds or less of content in a commercial. But I can drive someone with a call to action to an AR experience in their living room from the commercial, and then mobile has just extended that experience further and could potentially even drive a conversion on the device.
Mobile enhances offline. It’s got to be part of the experience, not a separate thing.
