Who uses the mobile Internet and why this isn't important

Paradoxically, this is also where the immediate problem lies. How do you convince your prospective clients that what you offer works differently to what they are accustomed to? After all, they don't know what they don't know. This is particularly true when it comes to a still young and developing industry like mobile marketing.

It is only for the last few months that the opinion emerged internationally of how we all have to “unlearn” what was drilled into our heads for decades about advertising when we want to fully exploit all the communication opportunities that the mobile phone offers. Up until recently, all the “advertising” that was done on mobile phones was based on well known methods from other media like television, radio, print and online.

Quantity still king

The inherent approach of marketers is to reach as many people as possible, in the hope that some of them will actually respond to their ads by buying their products. Quantity versus quality has always been, and still is, king. This works well in television and radio. Print is a bit more specialized because readers actually have to actively buy the publication and thereby display an above-average interest in what the title has to offer (including the ads, one hopes). Online advertising went a step further and introduced e.g. banner advertising in various forms, whereby the advertiser only pays if someone actually clicks on the advert/link.

However, media buying for all of the above has in common that it is based on who the people are who watch this show, listen to that program or read these magazines. This approach makes sense for traditional media, because no one can ever tell you exactly who saw, heard or read your ad, never mind if they responded to it in any way or not. So traditional advertising, as academic as it has become, still remains to a large extent, a guessing game.

And now we have mobile.

So when you sit in front of your prospective client, open up your goodie bag and excitedly share with the marketing heads how mobile marketing can really, and for the first time ever, open up 100% measurable one-on-one dialogues with existing and prospective customers (and isn't that what advertising should be all about?), you are bombarded with the usual “killer” questions: Who are these people who use their mobile phones? What LSM are they? What is their profile? What age group do they belong to? And so on…

The good news

The good news, at least, is that you no longer have to explain that people actually use their mobile phones. Why would they otherwise buy them? Worldwide over 4 billion people own a mobile phone versus only 1.5 billion people who own a TV set. But marketers want to know what the phones are used for, who the users are and if they fall into your client's target market.

This line of questioning reminds me a bit of an experience I had in the early ‘90s. At the time I was heading an agency in Hamburg, Germany, which conceptualized, marketed and organized boxing bouts together with a promoter and RTL television. We started off with TV ratings of only about 400 000 viewers per fight but build this into a viewership of over 18 million viewers per fight. It took some time, but eventually international celebrities like Boris Becker and Michael Schumacher graced ringside and the bouts became the “talk of the town” in the whole country.

One of the services we offered was a VIP shuttle service between hotels and venues, and for that we secured car sponsorships from various manufacturers. When we had ratings of “only” 6 million viewers, the marketing director of one of the manufacturers that we approached argued that these 6 million are not his brand's target market.

So who is the target market?

Now, if you know how many people are watching television at 11 pm on a Saturday night in Germany, you know that, at the time, 6 million viewers constituted a market share of over 20%, or almost everyone who can and will watch television at that time and day. The concern that these viewers are not the brand's target market begs the question: who then is the target market?

The reaction of the marketing manager in question (by the way, he soon came knocking on our door, begging to supply his cars for the next fight…) is obviously typical of individuals who don't know what they don't know. And the same is happening in mobile marketing today. For example, in South Africa, a quarter of the population is accessing the mobile internet, and if you follow this trend you notice that this figure grows exponentially. But marketers still ask the question: who are these people?

How can you reach those people?

If 25% of a country's population is using a specific medium, especially if it is “always on, always with me and always personal” such as mobile, the right question for marketers to ask should be: how can I get to these people? But many marketers seem to assume that the market for their products and services is so small and specialized that over 10 million mobile internet users are not, and will never be, their customers.

Note that, unlike other media like TV, radio, print etc., mobile marketing offers opt in communication solutions, so no one who is not interested in your products and services will enter into a dialogue with you anyway… and you consequently pay only for those who do! But that obviously only works if you “unlearn” what you know about traditional advertising and use the mobile phone in other ways than simply “dumping” banner ads on mobi sites. Or tagging 2 million “Please Call Me's” a day with your ad. Or pushing sms's to a network's data base without having established a relationship with the recipients. Or…

So who uses the mobile internet?

Currently almost everybody in one way or another, so it doesn't matter who they are because you have a 99.99% chance that your existing and future customers are among them. Ergo, let's get down to work and create ethical and sustainable solutions for how you can benefit from this scenario, Mr Marketer!