The illusive mobile marketing quest: Continuing the mobile insanity

Implications: Charging me a fee to sell me things is a bad model and always has been Success of this model is dependant on the systems powering the 30% of businesses that sell things – and will limit choice to those with huge IT budgets and sophisticated inventory management systems. The remaining 70% of business that sell time or other casual services (dinning, for example) will not be players. GPS, as any pilot can tell you, is inherently dependant on the availability of clear line of site – and such signal is non-existent inside buildings

Analysis:  

I am always amazed at the perception that buying can be automated through mobile. This initiative is similar.

1)Mobile carriers have long tried to charge users for services/applications to receive information about goods or services without success. The real model is to charge the sellers on a pay-per-action (PPA) basis. In this, the sellers would manage a campaign of coupons, incentives, and inventory specials. The challenge for most carriers, built in the hubris-driven days of double digit subscriber growth, however, is that they have no relationships with LB businesses, have little understanding of marketing and usability, and seem to allow the minority of users with data plans to foot the bill. This is no different than the Sprint/IAC service/application for similar mobile marketing that costs the user $9.99 per month. Charging me for a service that wants to sell me things is a bad user experience.

2)Small retailers and restaurants (the holy grail of all interactive “It’s easy. All we have to do is get a million restaurants to put their menus up”) simply do not have the systems, time, temperament, and talent to participate. Most do not have websites and the vast majority of them that do have not updated them in 18 months. Any mild success here will be limited to Big Box and chains restaurants – as if their menu actually changes.

3)GPS, as a tracking and targeting device, is simply not practical. Trying this inside a car is difficult without an external antenna, inside a building will just not work. Without clear line to at least 3 satellites (four if you are flying) you cannot get a fix on the location – try this in Manhattan walking on a street. Even then the delivery of content, in a mobile environment, lags the fix as the targeting queries the data base for relevant information to deliver, as the user moves on.

To succeed, the mobile carriers need to make the application free, build the platform to deliver multiple services (not dissimilar to Google) and charge the advertiser a cost per action, and then control the user experience.