Tag: marketing

Nokia Express feature phones

Smartphones now dominate mobile phone sales — even in poor countries. Yet not everyone wants a touch screen device with the power of a laptop in their pocket. Or not everyone can afford to pay for a touch screen device.

The obvious name for a phone that doesn’t qualify as a smartphone is ‘dumb phone’ or possibly ‘ordinary phone’.

This creates a problem for the insecure marketing people working for phone makers. They can’t bring themselves to use such honest, straightforward terms to describe their products.

Hence we have feature phones. A remarkable term given the main thing about a feature phone is that it has few, if any, features worth talking about.

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The mobile mind shift

Smartphones and tablets have changed the way many of us deal with the world. We now expect to find the things we want instantly at the moment we want them wherever we are.

However, few companies and organisations have a clue how to deal with this change in consumer behaviour.

That’s the basic idea behind The Mobile Mind Shift by Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff and Julie Ask. All three authors are Forrester Research analysts.

Mobile moment

Schadler, Bernoff and Ask argue the key battleground for business competition is that moment when a potential customer reaches for their phone or tablet to get what they want — immediately. If your company isn’t that at the mobile moment you’ve lost the sale to a rival.

So far, so good. Anyone who keeps up to date with technology could work this much out for themselves. The problem is how can companies get mobile right? 

The authors argue this requires a completely new mindset. It isn’t enough to commission someone to build a mobile app.

Not easy

If you want to win business in the mobile moment you have to change the way you think about your customers and your relationship with them. You also need to put the right systems in place, not just technology but the people and processes too.

Schadler, Bernoff and Ask say much of this is counterintuitive, hence the book. There’s a lot of jargon in the book and while it’s not the easiest read, it is accessible. The authors pack it with case studies to illustrate key ideas. In that sense, there is something for everyone.

Small business, big business

Being written by Americans, there’s an assumption the reader’s business is larger than most New Zealand businesses.

It’s one thing to find resources to put mobile systems in place when you’ve hundreds of employees and turnover a hundred million or more each year. It’s another thing entirely when you’re running a small New Zealand operation.

I sense a gap here for entrepreneurial types who can cobble suitable strategies together for smaller organisations.

Apparently, only a minority of consumers live in the mobile moment. Forrester puts the number at around 22 percent of Americans —  the New Zealand number is similar. However, that 22 percent is wealthier and is far more inclined to spend money than the other four-fifths of the population.

The electronic version of The Mobile Mind Shift sells for US$5 at Amazon and a hardback version, which includes the electronic version, for around US$20. There’s also an audio version.

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Online security specialist Symantec almost got its marketing right when it sent out a simple, clear image telling users how to plug the latest security hole in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The crisp, easy-to-read, straightforward information card shown below does a fine job of getting the basic facts out quickly and efficiently to users. Hats off to the company for helping Windows XP customers abandoned by Microsoft.

There’s branding, of course. Symantec uses its familiar yellow and black colour scheme. The company logo appears, large enough but not overbearing. Symantec cleverly adds the official company Twitter handle and an appropriate hashtag so concerned users can watch for updates.

Symantec not shrill on IE fault

The whole is almost a classic exercise of restraint. It was different in the past, but these days security companies know not to shout too loud during a panic, it doesn’t pay to look gleeful about online criminals serving up business opportunities.

So where did Symantec go wrong? In item 5. It’s fair enough to tell customers they are protected by the company’s products. It’s fair enough to let non-customers know they could have been safe had they purchased security software.

But that last bullet point just looks too much like an inappropriate sales message at the wrong moment for my taste. What do you think?

“Your company sent 0 Gmail messages and has 0MB of data stored in Drive. That means you’re already doing great things with Google Apps.”Screen Shot 2014-04-09 at 8.23.12

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Here’s a true story from the days before the IBM PC.

A small start-up made microcomputers for business in the days when they were still called microcomputers.

The company had one basic computer design. It was similar to every other CP/M computer on the market at the time. Except in one important respect: there were three versions.

  • Version one was the budget model. It was for buyers looking for a bargain.
  • The second version cost almost twice as much. It was the mainstream model.
  • At the top of the line was the professional version. This cost three times as much as the budget model. It cost more than almost every other CP/M computer on the market.

You can probably guess which was the most popular. The élite model sold more than the other two. Some customers took budget models. Usually this was part of a multiple order where managers got élite computers and peasants got the budget ones.

The mainstream model barely sold at all.

As you’d expect there’s a sting in the tail of this story. Internally the three computers were identical. They had the same processor, same memory, same disk and ran the same software. The only difference was in the colour of the cases and the badges on the front of the machines.