160 characters. That’s all you get. But these 160 characters are intrinsic to the most ubiquitous communication device we have. Our mobile phones.
As I survey the present state of the newspaper industry, especially from my perspective as an owner of an advertising agency, it is clear to me that mobile phones must and will play an important role in the development of newspaper readership and advertising.
I see three major reasons why editors should be looking hard at the mobile phone delivery platform today.
First, mobile phones are already in everyone’s pocket.
Second, the use of mobile data, as in text messaging and the mobile Internet, is increasing at a rapid rate. All of the major carriers are advertising their data services. Mobile phone users can and will increasingly access your content either in short text message bursts or via a mobile Web site.
Third, mobile phones are always on. Web sites can deliver breaking news, or direct people to your paper product. But today’s newspaper Web site is primarily tethered to a desk or laptop computer and therefore requires viewers to actively seek out your URL when they are online. With text-based alerts or other forms of direct delivery you can push 24/7 news services directly to the mobile phone user wherever they are.
To me, it’s all about ubiquity and direct delivery. Think of mobile phones as another driveway.
I see three major reasons that publishers should be looking hard at adding mobile marketing and advertising to their advertising product set.
Mobile marketing is a logical extension of your existing Internet sales program. It is simply a new form of digital marketing.
Mobile marketing can speak to the potential advertiser who would like to create a direct connection to their customers via scheduled opt-in messages, promotions and product or service alerts. You can help by providing the skills, technology and the backend mobile database (which you will manage).
It gives your sales force a very good reason to visit existing and non-advertisers. Mobile marketing is an intriguing subject that is still new and can position newspaper sales people as experts in an emerging technology.
My advice is to start simple with text messaging vs. trying to convince advertisers to use the mobile Web, which remains a relatively small audience.
Text messaging, the delivery of those 160 character messages, has finally reached a large U.S. market with SMS or text subscriptions and family mobile phone plans having surpassed the critical threshold of 50 percent penetration. Importantly, it isn’t just the younger group that uses text as text messaging among 45- to 60-year-olds grew 7 times as fast as teenage usage.
According to Forrester Research, 43 percent of U.S. marketers are using, piloting, or expecting to use mobile marketing in 2007. Major advertisers including the usual suspects like Microsoft, Nike and Coke and the not so usual including Dunkin Donuts and Hyundai are going mobile. These marketers are delivering promotional alerts, mobile coupons, voting and polling, contests and imbedded links to their mobile Web sites.
The good news for newspapers is that mobile marketing is hyper local and one of the early adopter groups will be retailers who want to build a connection to their customers by sending promotions and news via text messaging. Given the very early stage of this market, I think that it can be “ownable” by the savvy newspaper sales organization. Your papers and Web sites benefit because newspaper and online advertising will be required to deliver awareness of the mobile marketing program.
Even more good news is that mobile marketing represents less rocket science than your move onto the Internet in the 1990s. Text-based mobile programs require a Common Short Code, a 5 or 6 number or letter address (think phone number) that you send text messages to. You go to the Common Short Code Administration, a third party organization that manages and rents these CSC’s. The CSC can be either a random number or a specific word associated with your paper or market. CSCs can cost from $500 per month for a random code to $1,000 per month for a custom code. Once you have the master CSC, your advertisers “rent” the CSC from you and create a word or phrase for users to text into the CSC. An example would be: texting “Macy’s sale” to the code “Mynews”.
The services that you would provide your advertisers include the rental of the code, your mobile marketing advice and skills, the management of the mobile database and most importantly, advertising to drive awareness via your traditional off and online properties. My sense is that you have approximately an 18-month window to establish your newspaper as a mobile marketing expert in your community.
To give you an idea of the future of mobile marketing, all you have to do is to look at what is currently happening in Europe and Asia where mobile marketing is about two years ahead of us. An exciting use of mobile marketing is the incorporation of the next generation of barcodes, called matrix codes or 2D barcodes, into mobile programs. Japanese advertisers are now using these barcodes in print advertising to drive a stronger connection with the reader. A phone user points her camera phone at a barcode in a print ad and the user’s phone automatically launches the advertiser’s general Web site or unique promotional page. A real time promotional message is directly tied into the previously printed ad.
Depending on where you publish you may be seeing newspaper circulation and advertising declines. I believe that mobile marketing offers newspapers a new medium that can drive both a new revenue stream and incremental display and classifieds newspaper advertising. I think that this is unquestionably the right time to take a hard look this new opportunity.
Peter Levitan is the President & CEO of Citrus, a design and advertising agency with offices in Portland and Bend, Ore. Citrus has been a full-service agency since 1985. Previously, he served as the President and CEO of ActiveBuddy, an instant messaging technology company whose clients included Intel, AOL-Time Warner, Frito Lay and Capitol Records. During the 1990s, Peter developed and launched the award-winning New Jersey Online for Advance Publications where he held the position of President & CEO. 
