Adding Comfort and Common Sense to Your Digital Channel Strategy

Wow!  Talk about mind blowing, common sense marketing that too many of us have forgotten.

If you are reading this you probably already know that at the most basic level, channels bring products and services (or content) to your customers.  They're all about convenience and efficiency.  Communications and computing products also double as digital channels.  A means for us to conveniently and efficiently find, browse, consume and share information and content.

Steve Smith writes one of those articles that will make you forever think differently about interactive channels.  Between the lines of the Mobile Insider article, Mobile Is the Web We Really Always Wanted All Along  you'll find a good dose of common sense marketing.  Common sense that has been beat out of most of us in pursuit of all things digital.   It's time to put the customer front and center in the interactive channels equation.  I'm all for data and the amazing things you can do with it, but data without putting it into the context of being human, won't help you achieve your business goals.

The long and the short of Steve Smith's article is that people like to consume media and engage better with brands when they consume it "appropriately and comfortably" - in a big chair, on the beach, feet up, while killing time at the DMV or waiting at a doctors office.  Well, how about a big giant, "Duh!"  This human behavior hasn't changed in decades.

Common Sense
If you're like me, as much as I am attached to my computer, when I am not working, I really don't want to be attached to my desk to watch TV, catch up on reading or search for recipes.  That doesn't mean I don't still want access to media and information.  My butt simply cannot tolerate any more office chair time and I need to be closer to friends or family - or just get some energy from a bunch of strangers at the coffee house or farmer's market.  Even when I am working, I still look forward to plane rides where I grab my paper magazines and pen and start ripping out pages and writing notes for later action.  Why?  Because I can engage and consume on my terms.  Appropriate tools for appropriate use models.

Comfort

I don't anyone who enjoys pleasure reading at a 90 degree angle - do you?  A tablet or pad, e-reader, smartphone and PNDs all give us comfortable access to digital content on our sofas, in our cars, at the pool and in the sports bleachers.   They are personal devices and comfortably go with us anywhere.  A computer is a work appliance.  Doing research at a desktop, with a full keyboard and big screen and lots of pictures and videos is an awesome thing. I can write notes, cut and paste notes into documents and integrate and interact with lots of things all at once.  But we are human and crave diversity and mobility.  Just because we want to be plugged into the the Matrix 24/7 doesn't mean we want to be tethered to the comm port and stuck in our cubicle pods in the fetal position.  We were born for mobility. 

Somehow, in all the digital innovation madness, we've forgotten the basic tenants of why channels exist - to reach our customers - wherever they may be.  While I love my electric purple office chair, it is not where I consume all of my digital content.  And somewhere I remember hearing that farmers - out in their fields and on their tractors - are some of the biggest consumers of mobile digital content in the US.  Weather and soil conditions are dynamic - as are the people who consume those services and the commodity markets that affect them.  

When you take into account who your customers are, where they are, and from what device they prefer (or need) to consume your digital content, you can't miss on the basics of your digital channel strategy.

Marketing and IT - Joint Planning can Save your Interactive Channels

As marketers, we don't always look at the technology issues behind the scenes of our interactive channels, but since most are digitally based, we can't bury our heads and ignore the business impact of underlying technical decisions.   Today's marketers have to build an interactive channel directly to their IT departments. Without it, it's impossible to optimize your user experience, reduce your costs, maximize your reach or even set your pricing strategies.

This Information Week article, entitled Google App Engine Price Hike Stuns Developers is a great example of the interdependencies of interactive channels on technology decisions.  Many app and Web development and distribution platforms (both desktop and mobile) are free or low cost.  And many of them are good.  But, a business is a business and everyone has to make money.  So if you are building your interactive channel strategy and your pricing or service cost models are based on today's platform or tool pricing - stop, take a hard look, and ask if the current pricing is sustainable.  While you're at it, if you are looking at open source tools, ask your IT team if the code base will develop fast enough to keep up with your business or marketing objectives.  Software by committee always takes longer to develop.

The Cloud is here and with it come many opportunities, but oftentimes, with SaaS and PaaS services, the real costs of doing business are not clear until service levels scale.  In this Google App Engine example, even with prior warning, people were surprised by the change, which in some cases doubled the cost of using their App Engine. This can be a huge profit hit to monthly subscription services or low-cost consumer Web apps or services.  No one can plan for every inevitability, but a few questions and a few hours of due diligence alongside your IT counterparts can ensure you have a sustainable interactive channel strategy.

Data, Consistency and Relevance. Must Haves for Channel Marketers

Interactive channels are "interactive." That means knowing your partners and customers and being able to have an intelligent conversation. That is driven by data.

It also means that those marketers responsible for managing those channels need to be tightly coordinated with with the rest of the company to set proper expectations and deliver consistent and/or complementary messages between your channels.

This McKinsey article does a great job of describing how we all need to be marketers and how marketing permeates every facet of today's businesses.

There are two key steps to achieving this goal:

1. Data - The Key to Understanding your Audience(s): This should be based upon whatever criteria is important to your business - how partners and customers connect with you, their preferences, their behaviors... Today's marketers must capture and learn how to extract the value from the data filling up corporate databases. It is one of your most competitive weapons. Data and turning that data into a meaningful interactive experience is the "new" marketing. It is the first step to determining your product/service, channel and communications strategies.

2. Communicate Consistently and Appropriately: within and across each audience or channel. If your communications are not relevant and timely, or if you send mixed messages to your audiences then you are undermining all your great planning and strategy. Don't let this happen. As the McKinsey article points out, this is the responsibility of all employees. Everyone in the company should understand their role in "marketing" to your customers and business partners.

In support of the second point above, I've recently come across a unique Messaging Integration Matrix tool created by boutique firm Competitive Advantage Management. It is designed to help businesses achieve the exact kind of integrated user experience set out in the McKinsey article. It's worth checking out.

As for me, well, I'm passionate about all the amazing things you can do with the data. Data access is the foundation of my current business, so I am speaking from experience. However you get or source your data, it is the key to relevance, regardless of your channel, product or communications strategies. When you use it wisely and respect it, your customers and your partners will share even more.

Mobile Web User Experience - Location Matters

Took a trip between Denver and Boulder today and decided to test our new mobile Web performance app. I wanted to see how location affects Web page load speed in a mobile browser. In other words, what is the REAL USER EXPERIENCE for mobile customers and employees.

My methodology was simple: Same device, same carrier network, same Web page - so the only difference was my location - which you can see charted on this map. (And yes, I was either on foot or safely stopped the car each time I ran a test).

Here are the results fastest to slowest (all in seconds):

5.26

5.54

5.72

9.42

18.2

18.56

18.7

20.6

22.46

32.25

What Does This Mean to Mobile Marketers and Product Managers?

If you are looking at the Mobile Web as one of your content distribution, app delivery or marketing channels, make sure you understand everything that goes into the mobile user experience. Mobile is different, so be sure to look at the user experience from the user's perspective.

Consider sending less content to users in a location where performance is known to be slow - fewer words, fewer or smaller images and use compression.