Archive for March, 2011

Mobile Marketing

Friday, March 18th, 2011

As we have discussed previously, today’s consumers are more active than ever.  Traditional marketing media outlets, such as print and television, are not as effective as they use to be.  Therefore, the top marketers deploy strategies that mix digital signage, social media, and mobile marketing into their existing traditional media marketing efforts.  Let’s focus on mobile marketing, an area that we have only alluded to before.

The definition of mobile marketing is straightforward.  Mobile marketing uses a wireless medium to deliver marketing content onto potential customers’ mobile devices.  Many use words like pervasive, ubiquitous, and spontaneous to describe mobile marketing.  Justifiably so.  The combination of consumer demand for mobile devices and the ever expanding list of features on mobile devices, mobile marketing content is evolving from a simple ad at the bottom of the screen to a fully interactive content experience for potential customers.  This presents new challenges to many marketers.  To be successful, it is not only about presence but also about engagement.  How do you go about this?

There are numerous frameworks available.  For example, you want to enhance brand loyalty; you can release an exclusive mobile discount book.  Others integrate social media and various other mediums into their mobile marketing content.  Some utilize LBS platforms, SMS Aggregators, Ad Servers, and many others.  And most importantly, to truly engage the consumer, we must view mobile marketing not only as a medium for advertising and information, but also as point of sale.

All statistics point to the continued growth in mobile marketing.  The challenge with always be how to capitalize on this.

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Developing Standards in Digital Signage

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Last week, we briefly touched on the importance of developing standards in the digital signage industry.  Let’s elaborate a little further on this.

Standardization, as we have seen in numerous other industries, helps drive down costs, creates common units of measurement, and increases adoption by smaller users.  For example, in the auto industry, before standardization, drivers had to relearn how to drive each time they got into a different car.  Some automakers insisted on using a brake lever on the steering wheel as others used pedals.  Some automakers place the accelerator pedal on the left while others placed it on the right.  Basically, each automaker placed items like the instrument cluster, gas tank, levers, pedals, etc. wherever it felt was appropriate.  Eventually, automakers realized the benefits of standardizing items like these; accelerator on the right, brake in the middle, and clutch on the left.  As a result, parts became more interchange across different models, instrument clusters adopted common units of measurement, and people started to purchase cars by the millions.

To a large extent, this is the standardization that the digital signage industry needs. The technology providers in the industry are using so many different platforms that it is causing a compatibility nightmare.  Furthermore, there is a lack of standards in areas such as basic media capabilities and audience measurement.  This limits the adoption of digital signage by smaller users, such as local grocery stores and coffee shops, and makes large media buys more difficult to complete.  Recently, technology manufacturers such as Intel, HP, Microsoft and others are beginning to work together to develop a coherent set of technology standards.  This is good.  A set of standards will lead to the development of standalone signage solution and will allow software developers to focus on content and innovation rather than figuring out if their solutions work on a specific platform.  Lastly, given today’s connected consumer, standards will make digital signage integration with other forms of media easier.  A smarter and more connected digital signage is beginning to take shape.

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