Mobile is the new normal
It might easily be the thing we have our most intimate relationship with: our smartphone. We check it at least 150 times a day on average, British research shows, and 68% of the people already starts interacting within 15 minutes after waking up1. A third of us actually gets anxious when accidentally leaving our mobile device behind. One of the huge advantages lies in the fact that we do not only interact with our mobile phone, but with all technology connected to it – from smartwatches to the Chromecast through which we watch the latest series.
The second module of Google’s Mobile Academy focused on exactly this: how to tap into the possibilities of mobile and provide a meaningful experience to their customers. During the two-day masterclass the marketing talent of the present companies did not only pick up on all ins and outs, they were also challenged to directly apply the insights within their own brand strategies. Perhaps the most important learning brought forward by Digital Marketing experts Jeff Colclough and Emma Gribben: don’t bring what you already know to mobile. Think fresh.
1: 'Win Every Micro-Moment With a Better Mobile Strategy' - Think with Google, September 2015
Defining precious micro-moments
Every day we spend around 177 minutes on our smartphone2. Given the many moments we take it out, that makes each session last a little over a minute. However brief, these interactions are by no means less valuable. It’s in these small moments that your organisation finds its biggest opportunities.
Life isn’t lived in years or days or even hours, it’s lived in moments.
The power lies in understanding the commercial context of these so-called micro-moments. Continuous access to information means people tune-in through their devices more often, with very specific needs, depending on the situations they’re in. Depending on the context, people expect an immediate answer or the possibility to act immediately. Companies and customers have never been as connected as right now.
For instance: cosmetics retailer Sephora discovered many customers pulled out their phone in store. Whilst the executive team worried they were checking out competitor’s pricing, subsequent market research showed the customers were instead looking up reviews of products in front of them. By understanding that particular micro-moment, Sephora was able to develop an app which enables visiting customers to take a product, scan it and receive a generated list of reviews of that product. That way they played into the moment and added value to their customer’s journey.
2. 'Win Every Micro-Moment With a Better Mobile Strategy' - Think with Google, September 2015
Each and every day consists of many moments like these that brands can tap into. From ‘I-want-to-know’ moments to ‘I-want-to-do’ or ‘I-want-to-buy’ moments. Acting on them depends on their feasibility: how many people experience the same needs? Are there sufficient signals that help you recognise it? Do you have the right to speak at that very moment and is your message meaningful to the customer? Could this engagement have commercial value? And last but not least: is it not too complex to tap into this moment? By identifying and mapping out micro-moments that ultimately lead to a particular action or consumption, the masterclass participants were able to recognize many interaction opportunities they can hook onto.
Recognising customers’ signals
In order to capitalize on micro-moments, we need to delve into the signals in relation to them. Those tell us who our audience is, what they want, in what kind of situation they find themselves in and what device they use. Someone who’s searching for pizza from their home through their desktop would want to get it delivered, whereas the person looking up the same thing from their mobile in the city centre is looking for take-away or a restaurant.
Find the moments that matter to your audience. Reach the right people, at the right time, with the right message.
Mobile site or app?
It’s a popular misconception that apps trump mobile sites. Apps are intended for high frequency use. Moreover, the last few years, mobile web has immensely improved. Browsing through sites is intuitive and requires hardly any device memory.
Most organisations should prioritise building a mobile site to meet the needs of users, especially new ones. Focus on key conversion events and optimise the site to user behaviour, i.e. by using simplified navigation and clear calls-to-action. Only when your organisation has nailed its site, commit to building an app for your loyal, repeating users. Make sure to provide unique, app-only capabilities that complement your site’s functionality.
Because mobile is so personal, user interface is crucial.
Site speed forms a great part of that. Almost half of the people will abandon if a site takes over three seconds to load, and 52% says fast load time contributes to brand loyalty. Mobile pages that load one second faster, see up to a 27% increase in conversion rate3. Participants were asked to test out each other’s mobile sites and shockingly came to the conclusion every one of them underperformed in terms of loading speed.
3. 'Case study: Mobile pages that are 1 second faster experience up to 27% increase in conversion rate' - Soasta, 2015
Another assignment made participants put themselves in the shoes of the customer and consider what their mobile journey looks like. How can this experience be ameliorated? For instance: there’s no need to hijack the sales process by showing a banner requesting downloading the company’s app if this is not necessary at this particular moment. Do not undermine the customer’s trust. Using the principles of mobile design, the participants successfully redesigned their sites and apps, focusing on one of the newly found micro-moments.
The full value of mobile
Instead of looking at mobile devices as limiting, because of smaller screen size and slow typing, consider the personality and mobility of mobile life. The very thing on our mind should be: what to do with all these possibilities?
Even though conversion is better on desktop, smartphone traffic is increasing4. People are doing more research on their mobile devices, only through shorter bursts. Often when the actual purchase is made through desktop or in a store, the necessary info has been gathered on mobile. Altering the attribution makes sure you correctly value the role the smartphone plays in the customer journey. Integrate your CRM and DMP (data management platform) information to fill in the gaps. This way, for example, you can work out who’s visited your store after reading the newsletter or redeeming a coupon code.
The plethora of back-end solutions provide you with effortless front-end user experiences, letting them seamlessly switch from mobile to desktop and back. Next to that, it makes sure you collect the necessary data to attribute the right value to each of your channels and validate their impact.
4. 'Measuring Site Performance in a Multi-Device World' - Think with Google, October 2015
Measurement and attribution
How do you know which customers are best customers and which channels generate best sales? Boudewijn Beks, measurement specialist at Google, tells the participants to focus on customer lifetime value (CLTV) instead of current transactions. He also explains how to make use of Attribution Modelling. In short, this means assigning credits to all marketing channels your company is using by observing cross-device conversions, instead of by default crediting only the last touchpoint of the journey.
Tracking customer journeys across devices and physical locations remains a challenge for marketers. Google can help track and assess these cross device conversions, and therewith allow you to make a pragmatic attribution and expand your audience. The masterclass participants learned to validate the impact of their channels by assigning value to their KPI’s, using customer behaviours, such as having watched a video until the end, as indicators of success.
When uncovering the incremental impact of your marketing, make sure to take into account the relation between things – or the lack of it. Does something trigger something else, or was it just a coincidence? Are you relying on correlations to make decisions, or can you measure causal impact of changes? How can you incorporate experimentation to prove the value of my marketing?
Bringing the uniqueness of mobile into your organisation
Mobile devices hold many sensors, such as a camera and geo location, that can be used to whip up the magic, as many companies have already done before you. From the popular L’Oréal Genius make-up app that plots beauty products onto real-time video, to car insurance company Aviva which granted a discount after earning an excellent driving score based on driving skills such as ‘smooth cornering’. Or what to think of Philips, who’s created an interactive game for children whilst brushing their teeth.
Tying these capabilities together ensures not only never-seen-before experiences, they also help you integrate your products and services into people’s lives. When determining their short and long term strategies, many masterclass participants experienced a disappointing lack of mobile mind set within their organisation. In order to get mobile first, everyone has to follow. In the end it’s a top down process. The one important thing the present marketers are to do: get the message as high up as possible.
Fully understanding how customers are moving through channels and therefore investing from a data perspective has become paramount, retailer Target’s Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, Casey Carl5, clarifies in a video. ‘If there’s one piece of advice I should give; it is to listen to the guest as you’ve never done before and get ready for the transformation. It’s a mobile world out there, and we’re even just getting started.’
5. 'For Target, Mobile Is the New Front Door' - Think with Google, October 2015
